In the middle of the yard was an empty pool, the skeleton of a dog resting at its bottom. Lining the house was a collapsed deck with overturned chairs. A wood shack sat in the corner, its white paint peeling off in sheets. Surrounding all of it, nearly eight feet high, stood a yellow fence.
Arden ran at it, landing her heel into its side. It wouldn’t give. Beyond the gate the soldiers’ steps drew nearer. Arden kicked the fence again, turning her foot to the side, putting all her weight into it. Her eyes watered from the effort. “No, this can’t be happening. No!”
There was no entrance or exit around the other side of the house. There were no breaks in the wall, nothing we could use to climb. Only one way in and one way out.
“We’re trapped.” My hands shook with the realization.
Arden pulled me around the shack. We crouched low, her hand slippery inside mine, as we watched through its broken window. The soldiers came in, their guns drawn, and circled the pool. Calverton raised his finger to his mouth, as if to say Shhhh.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into Arden’s ear, my words barely audible. I had sent out the message, calling the soldiers to Marjorie’s house. Now I had led us to our capture. I had chosen the wrong way.
Richards pulled a flashlight from his belt and searched under the broken deck. Arden’s eyes locked on the overturned chairs, stacked together near the back door of the house. She pointed to them. “You can use one to get over. You’ll go out the back.”
I watched Calverton through the broken glass. He went around the other side of the shack, to where an old doghouse sat.
“What about you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Arden tried to smile but her face looked strained. “I’ll distract them. Don’t worry—I’ll meet you in Califia,” she said. “I’ll find the road again.”
“No,” I said, wiping at my eyes. I wanted to believe her, but I knew how impossible it would be, for either of us, to make it on our own. “You can’t. I’d rather be taken to the City, I don’t care, just don’t—”
“You would do the same for me,” she interrupted. “You already did.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond. She slipped her hand from mine and darted out into the yard. Richards sprang up from his position at the deck and chased her, Calverton following close behind. They kept running, their backs disappearing beyond the gate.
Gunshots broke the silence. I waited, scared I’d hear Arden scream. But there was only the soldier’s voice, moving farther out, and heavy footsteps pounding the dry earth.
I started toward the fence, pulling the chair to it as Arden had instructed. I imagined her there, her hand on my arm, guiding me over. I ran in the opposite direction, imagining the blue shock of her sweater winding through the trees. Sometimes I saw her turn to me, her cheeks flushed red, or nod off to a trail, signaling for us to change direction. I kept going, the massive rocks behind me, cutting into the sky. It wasn’t until the air cooled and the woods dimmed that I stopped, and realized I was completely alone.
Chapter Twenty-nine
TIME PASSED. TWO DAYS, MAYBE THREE. I HAD NO REASON to count.
I lay in the brown-ringed bathtub of an abandoned house, holding a dull knife. My feet were bloodied and bare. I’d run so far my laces had broken and I’d lost my shoes somewhere along the way.
Drifting in and out of sleep, I pictured the cellar: Otis and Marjorie, their bodies in a tangled, writhing heap. Lark’s face pressed into the cold cement floor. The smell of gunpowder and blood. Calverton pausing to wipe a scuff from his boot. Arden’s fingers digging desperately into my arm. Richards’s eyes, gray and unfeeling, meeting mine.
It should’ve been the first thing I said when I awoke. It should’ve been a priority to tell of the message, of the way I’d used the radio. Instead, I’d buzzed happily on the thrill of the dream, on that silly fantasy of Caleb in his room.
I wondered if there was something inside me that was rotten. I had left Pip. I had left Pip and Ruby and Marjorie and Otis and Lark, moving swiftly forward, their lives in my horrible wake. I didn’t want to witness any of it anymore, the boarded-up homes and the tattered red flags hanging from cracked windows, PLAGUE printed across them in black. The children were too young to be motherless. I wished to no longer hear the grayed bones crunching underneath the brush or feel the now inexorable fear that seemed to work its way inside my rib cage, rocking me at my core.
There was no desire to eat, no desire to move. I hadn’t drunk anything in days. My legs were frail and my back burned. As the sun slipped below the window ledge I dropped the knife, knowing that if I stayed there in that tub, the end would come before the troops did.