Strikers (11 page)

Before he slips out, Jordan turns to me and runs a rough palm across my cheek. He smiles and says, “I’m so happy you’re here, Karas. Things will get better, you’ll see.”

It’s an odd thing to say given our situation, but I return the smile with a tentative one of my own. Then he disappears into the street and I’m left hoping he’ll return safe and sound.

Before we’ve even finished packing up, he slips back in and tells us we’re clear to go. He leads once more and we trail along behind him like ducklings. The rubble is less intense as we leave the area where the tall buildings dominate. As we move north and the moon rises to break the darkness, the buildings grow squatter, with more space between them. I can see the faded remains of lines on some of the broken asphalt between buildings, and Jordan tells me those are parking lots, places where people parked their cars while they went inside the stores to shop.

I find it hard to believe. The lot we’re crossing is huge and just the few lines I can make out with my flashlight tell me the individual spaces were small. That means there’s room for a hundred cars at least. The low line of a one-story building lies to the side of the lot, all the windows broken out, some of the gaps filled with old wood while others yawn black and empty. Just from the number of them and the shapes of old door openings, I can tell there were a dozen stores. It seems impossible that so many people had cars and there were so many places to shop.

In Bailar we’ve got exactly one store. Any number of stalls might be set up in the town market, but we’ve just got the one store. As for cars, the soldiers have them and the regular people have the town transport. That consists of two open-sided buses that can seat a dozen people, with hanging-on room for a few more if they don’t mind being jerked around. Only one is in use at a time, but you can be sure that every half hour during the day it will come around and get you to the other side of our small town in less than fifteen minutes. I can’t imagine a need for so many cars.

Jordan hurries us along in these open spaces and we make good time. The moon is high in the sky when he stops us for a much-needed break. My legs have loosened up and they feel better than they did when I first woke up. My feet, on the other hand, are dog-tired. The way Cassi drops to the ground and groans when she loosens her bootlaces tells me I’m not the only one feeling it.

She and Connor have been talking quietly for most of the night. Behind me, I heard the low back-and-forth between Jovan and Maddix every once in a while, too. Jordan has been quiet and intent, scanning ahead of us and figuring out our path. It’s only me who has been both alone and unoccupied, simply following along. I know it’s not intentional, but I feel a little left out.

I drop next to Cassi and nudge her shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

She grimaces and flexes her feet. “Okay, I guess. Sore,” she answers.

“No, I mean the whole thing.”

“Oh,” she says softly.

We’re silent for so long that I figure she doesn’t want to answer me, or maybe that she’s mad at me for what’s happened. I would deserve it, so I say, “I got you into this and I’m so sorry. I’ll do my best to make it up to you.”

I have absolutely no idea how you make up to someone the loss of a happy family home but I know I’ll give it a try.

When she looks at me, I don’t see any anger there. What I do see is the same girl who looks for the positive no matter what’s going on. She cocks her head to the side, draws her brows together and says, “This isn’t your fault. No one here is to blame. We’re here because things in Texas are jacked up and the situation forced our hand. People shouldn’t die because of stupid things.”

She’s right about that part. People shouldn’t be declared habitual criminals, and suffer the death penalty that comes with such a declaration, when they don’t always even get to control whether or not they break a law. Who can keep track of them given how fast they change? And a law against leaving the Texas Republic is just stupid. I squeeze her shoulder, hoping she’ll know how much she means to me.

Jordan tells us we have five minutes and there are moans all around. I lean back and let myself collapse onto the cold ground. After I close my eyes, I hear a whoof of noise as someone drops next to me. Slitting one eye open, I see Jovan beside me, arms and legs outstretched like he’s exhausted. Now I’m surrounded on both sides by people whose lives I am at least partially responsible for ruining.

Jovan rolls his head to face me and grins when he see me peering at him. His grin is like an infectious disease, spreading whenever it comes in range. I return it. He touches his head and gives a dramatic wince, which functions to peel the smile right off my face.

“Hey,” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was only teasing.”

“How is your head, really?” I ask. I do feel bad about it.

The uncertain way he looks at me almost looks like it’s he who has reason to feel guilty. “I’m fine. Honest.”

The awkward silence that falls between us is almost unendurable, so I close my eyes and pretend I’m resting. I’m so relieved when Jordan calls for us to get moving, I almost jump up and grab my stuff, doing my best not to meet Jovan’s gaze. Connor and Maddix head out, heads together in conversation and this time I’m the one left to bring up the rear with Jovan.

I’m apparently never going to get over my inherent inability to simply be normal around him. As we walk, I glance at him now and then. He’s paying attention to everything around us, peering out into the darkness to either side of our track and occasionally turning around to watch behind us.

It eliminates the need to chat with him or else be rude, but not forever. He and Maddix were speaking while they walked before. I glance up again and this time, instead of seeing him looking somewhere else, I catch him watching me. He looks away and if the sliver of moon were giving us a little more light, I’m pretty sure I would have seen him blush. It’s just something about the way he jerked his head that screamed “blush”.

I’d like to launch into random talk and break the ice that’s built up between us. He and I have a complicated past. We were close as children but then, suddenly and without explanation, he stopped talking to me. Not the kind of drifting apart that has happened with other friends as we grew up. It was from one day to the next. And it was the day after our kiss behind the school. That makes it doubly uncomfortable and hard to simply gloss over.

If I had just had the nerve to ask him why back then, we might not be this tense around each other all the time. But I didn’t. Instead, I was confused and hurt and then there was this giant wall between us. It was easier to pretend I didn’t miss him. Of course, I had lost more than my friend when that happened. He was my first boyfriend, my first bad kiss and then, my first heartbreak.

Eventually, I found out the reason behind it, and that should have made me feel better. It didn’t. The wound had scarred over and it was there to stay. But it did help me understand.

When that teacher saw us kissing, she reported us to his father. His demand that we not see each other had been followed with the threat of having my mother fired and us turned out of housing. Really, what choice did Jovan have? I only wish he’d shared the reason with me.

Cassi breaks away from the trio and saves me from yet more uncomfortable silence by joining us. “Jordan says we’re going to rest as soon as the moon goes down. Maybe build a fire and get some food,” she says, clearly excited by the idea of being warm.

To tell the truth, I’m pretty excited by that thought too. I’m hungrier than I’ve been in a long time and my feet are already getting sore again.

“Good,” I say. “Any idea what we’re doing after that?”

She shakes her head and hunches down further into her thin jacket to conserve some warmth. “Not really. He says we’ll be clear of the main part of Wicha soon and can spend the day in the outskirts. By the end of tomorrow night, we should be close to the Benton outpost.”

Jovan starts at the mention of Benton. “Benton is manned. We have to steer clear of that.”

Cassi just shrugs as if to say that we should talk to Jordan about it.

By the time the moon starts to sink in the sky and the dawn is just an hour or so away, we’re walking through areas less cluttered with rubble, the buildings more intact. There’s still not an undamaged pane of glass to be found, but the rooftops look fairly straight and we passed whole rows of homes where the walls show no signs of collapse. It’s abandoned. I can feel that without bothering to look inside any of the houses or buildings. There’s a desolate feeling to the place and our footsteps are the only purposeful sounds around us.

Jordan calls a halt and walks around while we wait in the street. He peers into gaps and examines the walls of nearby buildings with care. He even examines the ground, looking for something, though I don’t know what.

Standing still is letting the cold seep in and I’m shivering by the time he waves us over to one of the empty houses. He clears away some shards of glass still managing to cling to the sill of a broken window, then helps each of us through before following. The way he jumps down, lightly and with perfect ease, makes me wish I’d inherited a little of that grace and confidence. I’m a klutz.

There’s a lot of broken furniture in the house. I touch a fabric covered couch and when I do, the fabric crumbles away under my fingers. The smell is dry, but also somehow rotten. It’s all mixed in with the rank earthiness of ancient mouse droppings.

“We could break some of this up for a fire,” I suggest, indicating the couch and the other broken furnishings.

Jordan drops his packs, puts his hands to the small of his back and groans as he stretches his muscles. He takes in our surroundings and shakes his head. “I’d rather not use this stuff. All this was chemically treated when it was new. Let me see what I can get outside.”

With that, he’s out of the window again and I hear his footsteps as he walks to the back of the house. Within a minute, he’s back at the window and calls in, “I need some help out here bringing in wood.”

Everyone else is sitting and stretching out, so I wave off their half-hearted volunteering and follow Jordan out the window. The moon is almost gone and the night is growing darker by the minute. I follow the sound of a winding flashlight and then squint against the light when he clicks it back on.

“We can use this,” he says and points to a dead tree. It’s still standing but the ground around it is littered with fallen limbs.

We gather armfuls of the branches and I’m surprised at how light they are. They’ve been dead a long time but the air out here is so dry and rainfall so meager that they haven’t rotted, merely seasoned. We’ve been passing many of these dead trees, more than I’ve ever seen alive in one spot if I were to add them all together, except at the lake.

Trees aren’t common out here on the borders of the dry lands. Some exist, but generally they are short things that tolerate drought. Even then, they’re found only on the margins of the waterways or where there is a spring under the ground to supply them. And almost never have I seen a tended tree that didn’t pay for itself by producing something of value.

“Why are there so many trees here?” I ask. What I’d really like to do is talk to him, find out about him, understand this person who is also my father. It’s safer to ask about trees.

Jordan stands, his arms laden with a pile of branches taller than his head. I can’t even see his whole face, just the shine of his eyes between the limbs.

“It wasn’t always this dry out here, plus people watered them and their lawns and such,” he answers.

There must be more to it than that so I ask, “Were these fruit trees or something?”

He chuckles and says, “Nope. People just liked trees in their yards. It was a different time.”

He leads me to a broken concrete area behind the house. A door I hadn’t seen while we were inside is now open and hanging askew from a single hinge. A light flares and I see Jovan, already squatting and looking at the broken chunks of concrete. He waves with his light at a spot where we should drop our wood but barely spares us another glance. I watch while he and my father create a sort of wall out of broken masonry behind which they build a small fire.

At the first crackle, the others join us and we gather around the rapidly warming spot. With the house shielding us from the wind and the little wall reflecting back the heat—and hiding the light—it’s almost cozy. We don’t often have heat this luxuriously intense in our homes and I intend to enjoy it, even if we are running for our lives. Natural gas wells provide fuel for heating, but the cost means we use it as little as possible, mostly for cooking. Heating is reserved for the coldest days. This fire is something different altogether.

Jordan surprises me again when he pulls out two camp pots from the assortment of bags. Soon enough, we’re all sharing a pot of greens boiled with a little jerky. I feel better almost the moment it reaches my stomach. We eat all of the greens because they won’t keep well for too much longer. For now, we’re full and warm and safe. I know it won’t last.

Jordan wakes me with a finger pressed to my lips. Outside the window the sky is clear and bright, the sun high. I rub my eyes, groggy from too little sleep, and he hands me a canteen. It’s filled with cold tea we brewed before the rising sun made it necessary to put out the fire so the smoke wouldn’t give us away. The tea is like a jolt to my system it’s so good and he smiles at my moan, beckoning for me to follow him outside. It must be our turn on watch, so I pull on my boots and follow.

Between two of the houses, there’s a wall made of concrete blocks that’s still in pretty good shape. That’s where we’ve decided to keep our watch from. A roof would be better, but they are as brittle as last fall’s leaves and not even remotely safe to stand on.

Connor and Maddix meet us halfway, not waiting for us to make it all the way to the wall. During their watch, they sighted a single plume of dust, moving fast in the direction of the old highway but it didn’t pause or turn around. That’s good.