Authors: Kristen Simmons
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Dystopian, #Action & Adventure, #General
We were free.
Truck helped me down, carting me from the tailgate like I weighed no more than a small child. Up close I could see that his eyes were sunken with fatigue, and his huge muscular neck was the same width as his jaw.
“Where’s the ocean?” I asked, frowning.
“Six miles east,” he said, his face falling into shadow. “Usually there’s a scout here to lead us into camp. I tried to radio ahead to them we were coming, but the lines are down.”
I frowned, and he play-punched my arm. “No worries,” he said. “They probably just ran out of batteries. I know the way in.”
The injured were carried, or loaded on stretchers made from blankets. Though Rebecca had tried to walk unassisted, the soft, mossy soil was too uneven for her dragging feet, and she reluctantly agreed to let Sean carry her piggyback.
Truck led us on a narrow path through the darkness. With my good arm, I carried a bucket of medical supplies that had been salvaged from the tunnels, and Chase hauled a flat of ammunition. Despite the added weight, the weariness lifted off my shoulders and my body hummed with excitement.
We stopped at a stream to rest the injured and refill our canteens. My worries about Tucker, about Harper, about the rat who’d sold out the Chicago resistance, drifted downstream with the current. I let the cool water wash over my hands and my sore wrist and my face, and breathed in deeply.
When I opened my eyes, I found Chase watching me. His face was momentarily void of the worry he’d been carrying since the hospital, his eyes clear of the horror we’d seen there. Now a small smile lifted his mouth, and he settled back on his heels. It took me a full beat to realize that he looked relieved.
I don’t know what it was, the fresh air, or the freedom of movement after hours in a cattle car. Maybe it was that we finally knew Rebecca was safe and that we were so close to security, or just the way he looked at me, with all the secrets stripped away. Whatever it was tipped something inside, and I splashed him, soaking the front of his shirt and his shins. His mouth fell open in shock.
Then, just like when we were kids, I ran.
I raced away from the group, darting around trees and over bushes, hearing his footsteps hot on my heels. His hand grasped at my waist once, but I evaded him with a stifled scream and ran on. We were in a Red Zone, off the road, close to the safe house—we would not be less in danger than we were right now.
He caught me before the lights from the stream had disappeared. His strong arms closed around my waist and hoisted me up and I kicked through the air and giggled. He smiled into my neck, and I smiled, too, because this,
this
was joy. This, at last, was the leap beyond escape, beyond the shaking threshold of survival.
“Come on,” Chase said, taking my hand. “We’re close. I can hear the water.” We’d come back for the supplies we’d left at the creek.
I listened, but I couldn’t hear what he had yet. Still, I raced after him, faster and faster in the direction of the coast.
The smell hit us first. Pungent wood smoke, oil and dust. Something metallic, too, overriding the salt in the air. I heard it then, the sound of the ocean. The waves. But everything within me had clamped down, and excitement could not penetrate the foreboding sense of danger.
The trees cleared, and the grass grew long, almost to my shoulders. We shoved through, cresting a sand dune.
My heart tripped in my chest.
“No,” Chase said weakly.
There before us were the remains of a town. Houses were burned to the ground; some still smoking. Black and charred like the night. Brick and concrete had been blown away, decimated, like the buildings in Chicago. Piles of fresh rubble, yet untouched by moss and weeds, blocked out whole city streets. The hood of a car rested on the ground near us, warped and bent by the explosion that had catapulted it thirty feet away from its overturned body. Beyond it all lapped the silver ocean, constant and deep, unable to voice the horrors that had taken place here.
My knees weakened, and I pitched forward, succumbing to the weight of our hope as it crashed down upon us.
The safe house had been destroyed.
CHAPTER
21
THE
ashes clung to my boots, to the legs of my pants. To my arms and my hair, to the sweat of my neck. To the empty cavity in my chest, where joy and hope had both been carved away.
Fifty warm bodies within fifty yards of one another
; that was what Sprewell had said. There had been more than fifty people at the safe house, all gathered close for their mutual protection. Heat-seeking missiles had leveled them. LDEDs. That was the only explanation; soldiers on foot would have needed an evacuation route, and there was simply too much demolition to be anything but bombs.
When we’d mobilized enough strength to return to the group, I’d told Jack and Truck this, and Sean and Tucker, intent to see the damage for themselves, had been brought in to corroborate what we’d learned in the rehab hospital. Those still with their wits about them were immediately tasked with rounding up the group for a roll call. With chaos erupting and fear running rampant, this was no easy task, but after a while they fell in line.
There were forty-seven of us in all, counting Rebecca, the Knoxville contingency, and Tubman. Not fifty, but close enough.
Chase was the one to suggest we split up to survey the damage. Rebecca and the others injured in the tunnels were assisted back into the cover of the woods by Sean, the medic, and three other soldiers. There was a wildlife station in the marshes, a dingy shack filled with mosquitoes and stagnant pond water, but it had a roof, and could hold ten bodies laid out on the concrete floor.
Truck and Tubman, our drivers, formed another team.
“Someone’s got to warn the other branches,” said Truck. “Quick. So they don’t send anyone else out this way.” It was something I imagined Three would have done, but if they still existed, they would leave no directions for the carriers here.
“I’ll go.”
I turned sharply to find Tucker Morris. His face, cast downward, was stripped of all emotion.
“I don’t know all your bases, but I know where the FBR will be. I can keep us off their radar.”
I had to remind myself that he’d proven his loyalties.
Chase said nothing, but the corner of his eye twitched. He hadn’t said it, but I knew he wanted to stay and look for signs of his uncle.
If he was staying, I was staying.
Truck’s team left without hesitation, promising to return as soon as they’d found a safe place for us to hide. Tucker and I did not say good-bye, and as I watched his back as he disappeared through the tall grass, it occurred to me that I should have felt relieved to finally be rid of him, but maybe there was no room left for such a thing.
The rest of us drew what weapons we had, and sorted through the smoke and the wood and the glass. We overturned doors and crumbled stones and pieces of drywall. And we found bodies. Burned to black. Burned so badly, you couldn’t even tell they were human.
Someone who knew of this place had done this. Had pointed the MM in the right direction, had sent those long-distance explosive devices flying through the air, and killed our families and friends. Our chance at peace.
At dawn, Jack pointed out the ruins of a house that had days ago served as a medical clinic. Chase threw himself into excavating it, so savagely that his arms bled and his shirt soaked through with the same salty sweat that hid any tears that dared escape.
His uncle is dead,
I thought as I watched.
I am all he has left.
And though I knew this feeling intimately, my heart broke for him.
I stumbled away, winding around the littered trinkets of an old souvenir shop, ears perked to the skies like in the old days when we’d watched the planes. I thought of Sarah, pregnant and scared when her life had been cut short. Of Rebecca, who could barely walk on cement, much less an uneven sandy floor, and Truck’s words in the tunnel:
What were we supposed to do with him once we got him out? We can’t support that kind of care down here.
Of Sean, who would never leave her side again.
I was secretly glad my mother had never made it to this doomed place.
Snow globes were broken across the ground, little shattered memories of a happier time. I picked up a few tattered beach towels that had survived the blasts, but they were impossibly heavy on my injured wrist.
My eyes fixed on a figure in the distance, sitting atop the hood of a car that had been shoved into the middle of the street. His arms and hair were streaked black, and his shadow stretched thin behind him.
My legs ached as I approached, bruised to the bone from the explosion in the tunnels, but he didn’t so much as turn his head.
“Billy,” I said cautiously. He stared a thousand yards behind me, past the house that lay in ruins at our feet, to the gray sea. His body slumped, like an empty puppet, and when he stood, he didn’t fully straighten.
“He’s dead, Ember. Wallace is dead.”
Another of us orphaned. Made old before our time.
“Billy, I’m sorry.” I reached for his hand, but it was cold as ice.
“I feel like I should tell someone—is that weird? But there’s no one left to tell.”
His hand squeezed mine, and before I knew what was happening, he was hugging me, and I was hugging him back, and we were both crying.
Below him, my gaze landed on three white lines, etched into the hood of the car where he’d been sitting. Three scars, just like I’d seen below Cara’s collarbone when we’d changed in Greeneville.
Three had been here. Maybe Cara had been working for them. It didn’t matter. Now Cara, and Three, were gone.
We were all that was left.
“There are people to tell,” I heard myself say, the words forming truth in my mouth. “We have to tell people what happened, Billy. What happed to my mom, and to Wallace. We’ll tell everyone. Everyone needs to know. That’s how we stop it.”
I was shaking now, feeling like the world was quaking beneath my feet, and I knew then that it better, because soon everything would be different. I didn’t know how, but I would tell my mother’s story. I would tell mine, too, and maybe,
maybe
that would shift the tides.
Someone was approaching, and when he saw Chase, Billy turned away, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
I went to him, needing to be close, but the look on his face gave me pause. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
“Tracks,” he said, voice hoarse. “Some of the guys found tracks leading south.”
Survivors.
He was thinking of his uncle; I could see it on his face.
Instantly, I was burning again, only this time with hope. My hand slid into Chase’s, and we glanced one more time at the charred, ruined pits of safety, at the last remaining embers that smoldered even after the flames had died. And something told me this was not the end, that there was a reason we had persevered.
Without another word, we ran south.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Now is the point where I get to reflect on how truly lucky I am. As if, with each step further into this writing world, I could ever forget.
This book would not have been possible without the encouragement, advice, and superhero powers of my agent, Joanna MacKenzie, or without Danielle Egan-Miller’s and Shelbey Campbell’s excellent organization and efforts to advocate. I am so grateful to have the Browne and Miller team in my corner.
Breaking Point
would still be locked in my laptop if not for my editor, Melissa Frain. Thank you for your patience and kindness, for your brilliant comments, and for always making me laugh. I would not trade knowing you for anything. Thank you to Kathleen Doherty for being an amazing publisher and for taking a chance on a debut author, to Alexis Saarela for organizing Chase and Ember’s social calendar, and to Seth Lerner’s art team for making this cover super cool.
A special thank-you to Officer Hernandez, who allowed me to join him through the Ride Along program at the local police department, and showed me just a hint of the risks he takes each night keeping the city safe.
An author is only as good as her support team. Thank you to my friends and family for knowing me and loving me anyway, to the great authors, booksellers, and librarians I have met on this journey, and to the bloggers who have been absolutely integral in spreading the word about
ARTICLE 5
. Thank you to those who have shared their stories of struggle and triumph with me over the past year—you are truly an inspiration. Thank you to Katie McGarry, who I refuse to call a crit partner or a first reader because she is so, so much more than that. Whatever stars aligned for us to meet, I will forever sing their praises.
And thank you to my husband, Jason. I just don’t work without you.
BOOKS BY KRISTEN SIMMONS
Article 5
Breaking Point
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristen Simmons has a master’s degree in social work and is an advocate for mental health. She lives with her family and their precious greyhound, Rudy, in Tampa, Florida.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BREAKING POINT
Copyright © 2013 by Kristen Simmons
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Nekro
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.