CHAPTER 23
Old Town District
Marbella, Spain
Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the Immari soldiers behind them. She had expected them to rush through the promenade and capture her, Martin, and the two boys, but they hadn’t. They simply loitered at the streets and alleyways that fed into the square, pacing in front of the massive trucks, some smoking, others talking on radios, all holding automatic rifles, waiting for what, Kate didn’t know.
She turned to Martin. “What are they—”
“It’s a loading zone. They’re just waiting for the people to come to them. Come on.” He charged into the narrow street, running straight for the oncoming mob of people.
Kate hesitated, then fell in behind him. The crowd was a hundred meters away and closing fast.
Martin tried the closest door—that of a ground floor shop—but it was locked. He looked around.
For what? Kate wondered. Something to break the window?
Martin tried the next door. Locked.
Kate ran across the street and tried the door to a cafe. It wouldn’t budge. She pulled the boys closer to her. The crowd was fifty meters away. She tried the door of the townhome next to the shop. Also locked. The crowd would be upon Kate and the boys in seconds, trampling them. Maybe she could put the boys in front of her, press them into the doorway, shield them. She moved them in front of her and waited.
She heard Martin run up behind her. He was going to position himself to protect her, in the same way she was covering the boys.
The crowd was thirty yards away. Several runners had separated from the pack. They charged on with determined, lifeless eyes. They didn’t glance at Kate, Martin, and the boys as the first of them passed.
In a second-story window, someone pulled a thin white curtain back. A face filled the window, a woman about Kate’s age, with dark hair and olive skin. She looked down, and her eyes met Kate’s. A moment passed and the woman’s expression changed, from alarm to… concern? Kate opened her mouth to call to her, but the woman was gone.
Kate pressed the boys into the doorway. “Be still, boys. It’s important.”
Martin glanced back at the oncoming crowd.
Then the door before them clicked and swung open, sending Kate, Martin, and the boys spilling onto the floor. A man pulled them up as the woman from the second-story window slammed the door. The low rumble of the crowd seeped in through the door and windows.
The man and woman led them deeper inside, out of the anteroom and into a living room with a large fireplace and no windows. Candles lit the eerie space, and Kate struggled to acclimate.
Martin began conversing rapidly in Spanish. Kate inspected the boys, but they twisted and resisted her prodding. They had had about all they could take. Both boys were agitated, tired, and confused. What was she going to do? They couldn’t take much more. Can we hide here? Those were Martin’s words: run or hide.
She unzipped the pack on Martin’s back and took the two notebooks and some pencils out, then handed them to Adi and Surya, who grabbed them and scurried off to the corner. They needed a little piece of normalcy, something they knew, if only for a moment, to calm them.
Martin was motioning with his hands, making it almost impossible for Kate to rezip the backpack. He kept repeating one word: túnel. The couple looked at each other, hesitated, then nodded and gave Martin the answer he seemed to want. He glanced back at Kate. “We need to leave the boys.”
“Absolutely not—”
He pulled her aside, toward the fireplace, and spoke in a low tone. “They lost their sons to the plague. They will take the boys. If the Immari here follow their previous purge protocol, families with young children will be spared—if they take the pledge. Only teens and childless adults are conscripted.”
Kate looked around, her mind searching for a rebuttal. On the mantel above the fireplace, she noticed a photo of the man and woman standing on a beach, their hands on the shoulders of two smiling boys who were about the same ages as Adi and Surya. The hair color and skin tones were roughly the same as well.
She glanced between the couple and the boys, who were hunched over their notebooks, quietly working in the corner by a stack of candles. She squinted and tried to think. “They don’t speak Spanish…”
“Kate, they barely speak at all. These people will care for them as best they can. This is our only play. Think about it: we are saving four lives here.” He motioned to the two adults. “If they catch the boys with you or me, they will instantly know who they are. We put them at further risk. We have to do this. We will come back for them. And besides, we can’t take them where we’re going. It would be… more stressful.”
“Where are we—”
But Martin didn’t let her finish. He spoke quickly to the couple, who started out of the living room.
Kate didn’t follow them. She walked to the boys in the corner and pulled them into a hug. They fought at her, grabbing for the notebooks, but after a moment, they settled down. She kissed each of them on the top of the head and released them.
Outside the living room, the couple led Martin and Kate down a narrow hallway to a cramped study with a large oak desk and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The man marched to a bookcase along the back wall and began throwing the heavy volumes onto the floor. The woman joined him, and soon the shelves were empty. The man planted his feet and pulled the bookcase away from the wall. He pressed a button in the adjoining bookcase and the wall snapped and receded slightly. He pushed and the section of wall swung open, revealing a dark, grimy stone tunnel.