Three (Article 5 #3)(63)

“You’ve got to get them out,” interrupted Marco, coming toward us from the supply room where Polo was still trying to calm the refugees. “We’ve got one scheduled visit a week on the night shift. Now who knows when they’ll be dropping in. If we don’t get these people out of here, we’re closing up shop. I mean it.” The fear thinned his voice until it almost broke.

They were right. All we could do for Billy now was hope Three’s army would be able to help him in Charlotte. If he was caught, he was as good as dead.

“Then let’s get out of here already,” I said grimly.





CHAPTER


16


THIS time I rode in the front of the truck, seated on a folded blanket in the narrow space behind Chase’s seat. There was no longer enough room in the back; the space was packed with the twenty-one refugees and boxes of hijacked Statute circulars that we would use to show the resistance posts once we found them. The thousands of flyers running through Marco and Polo’s printing press would be taken and distributed by the MM. At least until someone in a blue uniform actually read them.

I hoped Marco and Polo had a good exit strategy before the MM figured out what they’d done.

Night shifted to dawn. The gears of the truck grinding loudly beneath the sticky floor mats were not enough to stave off thoughts of Billy on his way to the prison base, or Sean and Jack in search of Tucker. I didn’t like us all being split up like this, not knowing when, or even if, we would see each other again.

I reached between the passenger seat and the door until I found Chase’s hip. His hand closed around mine and squeezed. It was enough to say he was thinking the same.

We stopped twice during the day to give everyone a break. Once at an old rest stop off the highway with wooden benches under gazebos, and posters featuring information about the over one hundred species of trees found in the Great Smoky Mountains. The second right off a deserted road, where the smell of moss and damp leaves was so thick you could taste the earthiness on your tongue.

Our drive became increasingly more difficult in the delivery truck. We had to slow in the afternoon on account of all the fallen branches and debris in our path. Chase and I took to walking ahead, clearing the road by hand as we climbed the curvy incline.

“I sure hope he knows where he’s going,” I said between breaths, the sweat running down my face. I’d tied the heavy skirt around my thighs and caught Chase looking, not for the first time since I’d done so.

“Jesse never lies,” answered Chase, returning to the task. “He may not always tell the whole story, but the parts he does tell are true.”

“Kind of the same as lying,” I muttered, thinking of the prisoner at the cemetery.

Chase gave a half smile, then pointed ahead to where a dirt road forked into our path. A closer inspection revealed tire tracks in the mud that hadn’t yet been washed away by rain.

It looked like Jesse was right after all.

*

IT was late afternoon as we clunked along through the low clouds into the mist. My pity for those stuck in the back was about to get the better of me when Jesse hit a sharp bump, and the truck began to rock unsteadily. I gripped the seat in front of me for support and felt the air hiss from my lungs just as it began to hiss from the front tire.

“Damn,” said Jesse. He opened the door.

There was a movement in the trees behind him, a flash of gray in the bright emerald hues. It could have been nothing, but the tingling in my hands told me differently.

“Ten o’clock,” said Chase. And then a moment later. “Another at two o’clock.”

I forced my breath to steady. Soldiers would have set up a road block, but there were other things that lurked off the map—the Lost Boys on the coast had proven that.

“Leave your weapons on the dash,” instructed Jesse. “Everything you’ve got.”

The metal gun clattered against the plastic partition as Chase did as he was told. He reached into his boot and removed a knife. I had a gun, too, one I’d placed beneath the seat in front of me and hadn’t realized I’d reached for. I leaned between the front seats and put it beside Chase’s, hoping Jesse knew what he was doing.

Jesse stepped slowly out of the cab, hands raised.

“We aren’t here to stir trouble,” he said. His uniform jacket was still in the car, and his undershirt, damp with sweat, stuck to the caramel skin of his back in a V shape. “There are two more in the cab, and a whole mess in the back.”

A beat of silence, and then four figures, two on each side, emerged from the woods. They were armed with rifles and wearing tattered old-school military fatigues, camouflaged with browns and greens and gray. Their faces were painted in the same colors, making it hard, but not impossible to distinguish that the two on my right were women. I jumped as the back door slid open. There were more of them, now verifying Jesse’s claim.

The closest man walked up to Jesse and patted him down. When it was clear he was unarmed, he withdrew, the whites of his eyes standing out in sharp contrast to his dark face paint.

Jesse saluted him, the way I’d once seen the army soldiers do during the national anthem at a minor league baseball game I’d gone to with Chase’s family. With his chest puffed out and his shoulders thrown back he looked like a different man.

“Sergeant Major Waite,” said Jesse. “I was with the thirty-first cavalry division in Operation Unchained.”