Chapter Thirty-three
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES I SAW ONLY WHITE. FOR A moment I wondered if I had died and this was heaven. I lifted the section of fabric that half covered my face. The snow was still there. The ground was frozen. But the storm had cleared, leaving only the glowing sun in its wake.
I pulled myself from the battered tent. Caleb was asleep, his eyes fluttering, one arm slung over his side. Beyond the shelter, far beneath me, the world was soundless and small, a thing to be marveled at, with no guns or troops or Schools. My body hummed with the same energy as the rocks, the leaves, the sky. I was simply and impossibly free.
I raised my arms up, letting the breeze come through my fingers. I must’ve been there for a few minutes, when something hit me hard in the square of my back. I turned. Caleb kneeled beside the shelter, a wet snowball in his hand and a mischievous grin on his face. He threw it at me, nailing me in the neck.
I squealed and grasped at the ground, pulling handfuls of snow into my palms and packing them tight. “You’re going to pay for that!” I chased him through the short trees, over rocks, nearly tripping as I pelted his back once, twice, and a third time, my steps faster with delight.
He threw another, missing me, but I grabbed his arm, pulling him down into the snow. “Uncle! Uncle!” he cried, laughing.
“Who’s uncle?” I asked. I took a handful of snow and rubbed it on his neck. He twisted away, bristling from the cold.
Then in one swift motion he turned me over, his arms around me, his face pressing against mine. “It means mercy! Have you no mercy?” He kissed me again, slowly, playfully, letting my back fall softly into the snow.
MAYBE IT WAS THE PASSING OF THE STORM, THE MOMENtum of the decline, or the swell of happiness, but we descended the mountain in less than a day’s time. When the sun lowered in the sky, we hit our first stretch of flat road, its even mossy pavement a relief beneath our feet.
“We can stop there,” Caleb said, pointing to a small cluster of buildings about a mile off. “Hopefully there will be something we can use for the last part of the trek—bikes, a car, anything.”
“How did you get the car anyway? That Volvo?” I asked. I’d been so relieved to see him on the road, to feel his body next to mine, I hadn’t thought about how he’d gotten there.
A fly circled the back of Caleb’s head, and he swatted at it. He paused a moment before answering. “I traded Lila to one of the gangs.” He smiled a half smile. “They’re not bad people. Just selfish. She’ll be all right.”
I knew he loved that horse—it was in the way he combed her mane or calmed her by whispering in her ear. It was how he’d scanned the horizon that day after we’d run into the troops, how he’d kept searching for signs of her. I grabbed his hand and squeezed, knowing that a simple thank-you wasn’t enough. Nothing I could say would be enough.
WE WALKED IN SILENCE FOR A FEW MINUTES WHEN Caleb suddenly stopped, his gaze settling on something on the side of the road.
“What?” I asked as he pulled my hand, taking a half step back. “What is it?”
“We have to hide.” He pointed to the brush off the road, where the shrubs were flattened in two straight lines, as if smashed by tires. “It’s a trap.”
I turned back. The mountains reared up with nothing but grassy land between them and us. “There is nowhere to hide.”
A hundred yards off, near the cluster of buildings, something moved. A figure, then two, barely visible in the dusk.
“You have reached a roadblock. You are required by law to pass through,” they called through a megaphone. One of the figures raised his arm, beckoning us forward.
Caleb dropped my hand. He looked at me, back to the mountain. “Just follow my lead. Hide your face with your hair.”
As we walked forward, the pack heavy on my back, I reached for the tangled mess underneath my hood, covering my cheekbones.
Three soldiers stood in front of an old shop, an AUTO REPAIR sign hanging crooked on its front. A government Jeep was parked inside and the dusty workbenches were strewn with rusted bars, tools, and piles of cracked tires.
“We’re sorry,” Caleb said, averting his eyes. “It’s just me and my sister. We’re looking for food.”
A soldier approached us. He had red hair. His eyelashes and brows were so light they gave him the hairless look of a salamander. I kept my gaze on his boots, which were shiny and black. I had never seen shoes so clean. “You went into the mountains to find food?” His hand rested on the gun at his hip.
“Through them. We came from the other side. Our house was set on fire by a rebel gang.” The soldiers studied us, taking in our ripped clothes, the dirt crusted underneath our nails, the thin layer of dust that browned our skin.