“To meet your purpose,” Hakim said.
He was shown his own crate, his own piss bucket, his own (full) plastic gallon jugs. The truck would travel four hours before stopping off at an organic waste facility outside Statesville to pick up a couple dozen barrel loads of compostables collected from area utility customers: food scraps and yard waste, mostly. “It’s gonna smell god-awful,” Jude warned him. Then another two hours to the Wall, and an hour for weighing and inspection. (“Keep your mouth shut and everything’ll be fine. They care more about what’s coming in than what’s going out.”) Two more hours to the composting station, and then another thirty minutes to what Hakim called a “transfer point.” “You’ll be out of the crate,” he said. “Smooth sailing from there on.” His journey would end at Ruby City, “and then you’re going to understand what all of this is about, and your whole life is going to change for the better,” Hakim said. “I promise.”
This was another promise Hakim kept. Andy spent eleven hours in his crate before emerging to see the sun, and he thought, getting into the ancient Jeep Wrangler with the quiet man named Curtis, who offered Andy little more than an apple and a grumbling hello, there was nothing in Ruby City that could compensate for the time he’d just spent in hell, and he’d sooner find a knife to slit his own throat than repeat this horror in three months. But then he met June. And the people of Ruby City. He saw how they lived, what they had achieved, their harmony and (cheesy, but he couldn’t help thinking this) their purity. For the first time in his life, he contributed to the making of his own food, pulling literal weeds now along with the metaphorical ones, loading a gun, taking aim at squirrels, deer, rabbits. He slept hard at night, his eyes popping open at first light. Mornings, he stood on the bank of the Little Tennessee and watched the sun burn the mist off the tops of the Smoky Mountains. He had never been as alive as this. He murmured thanks at night to a God he didn’t believe existed—his mother’s God, a white-bearded, benevolent king—for this chance. “Thank you for not letting me kill myself,” he said.
Jude and Hakim covered for him back home—with his mother, with Brightwater. Hakim had even promised to send emails to Andy’s mother from Andy’s account, and Andy got a kick, during quiet moments at Ruby City, imagining them: Hello, Mother. I am doing very well. This job I hold is most stimulating. And how do you fare?
But the plan was never for him to stay. He’d known that from the start. “What we have here can’t last,” June said, “unless we have some help on the inside. That’s where you come in. You and a few others like you. Will you help us, Andy?”
He would.
It was better, in a way. This was what he told himself as he climbed into another, smaller crate—more of a casket than a box—for the journey back in-zone. He had his memories of Ruby City. He had his instructions. And he had a goal, a dream: to save the little community out in the mountains, away from the corruption and consumption that characterized life in-zone, and then, eventually, to take his rightful place among them. He knew that tending the dream, keeping it hidden away like something precious, would probably be, for now, better for him than living it. But maybe, with time, he would heal enough to enjoy his reward.
—
They hiked another two hours. The trail, thankfully, had abruptly stopped its uphill climb, swerving north. There was a tense twenty minutes when they crossed a creek and the dogs were in disagreement about how to proceed on the other side. Tia must have waded down or uphill. Roz speculated that she might have circled and retraced her own steps back to some point they’d missed, and Andy was cursing as they cast yet another twenty feet downstream, sure that all was lost, when Tauntaun barked twice, decisively, and ran off ahead. Wampa strained against his leash to follow.
“Looks like they know something,” Roz said.
Damn you, Tia, he kept thinking. Goddamn you, Tia. He wanted to shake her. Hit her. He wanted to hug her tightly and press his lips into the ruffle of black hair behind her ear. He was afraid they wouldn’t find her. He was more afraid, in a way, that they would. Roz called for a halt, took a long drink from her canteen, and mopped her brow with a handkerchief. Andy sipped some water, too. He had some knots of jerky in his knapsack, and the time would soon come to choke one down, but he couldn’t stomach it yet.
He played through scenarios in his head, flickering through them almost too quickly to register. Tia on higher ground, perched on a rock, raining bullets down on him and Roz. Tia waiting, resigned, with her hands raised in surrender. Tia unconscious. Tia dead. Tia, having disguised her scent in some ingenious way, hiding behind a tree and watching them pass. And then there were all of the versions of their return to camp, Tia coming along voluntarily, gratefully, having exhausted herself and her resources in the woods all night. Tia fighting them, and Andy having to use the zip ties again. Why are you making me do this? he asks her. Don’t you know you’re doing yourself more harm than good? Tia swinging from a noose as the Ruby City villagers cheered. (Would they do that? Were they those kind of people? How was it that Andy didn’t know?) Tia incarcerated some way. He pleads to June on her behalf, tells her about the pregnancy. That child—it would mean everything to June. June wouldn’t take the life of a pregnant woman, especially now.
Then he imagined—daring himself with this thought—pointing his gun at Roz. Taking her gun. Escaping with Tia back to the zone, to his wife and his sons. It wasn’t too late to reclaim his old life, was it? It depended, he supposed, on the fate of the other OLE hostages. They’d eventually implicate him, if June allowed them to go home. (Would June allow them to go home? Andy didn’t know. He hadn’t had the courage to ask.) If Tia escaped back to the zone, June would have less reason to keep them alive. She’d have the marines descending on her. Or worse.