"Take those to Lilly," Gage says, motioning to the books I found at the farm currently spread over my lap.
"I will."
We sit for a couple dozen breaths, night sounds piping through the open door. Ezra's car is just ahead and facing this way. I can see her inside, inhaling smoke and blowing it out the open window.
"I'll give them to Lilly," I say again, and for no reason. Then get out of the car and watch John Gage drive off without a good-bye.
Ezra comes over to collect me, her cigarette a small moon hovering over the dark road. "Ready?" She doesn't wait for an answer and walks back to her car. "Let's go meet Lazarus."
"Who's Lazarus?" I ask, hurrying to take my seat. Ezra's already behind the wheel.
She takes off before I can close my door. "The head of the resistance."
We aren't a half mile down the road when Ezra turns and frowns at my head wobbling against the rest. She bangs the end of a finger against the glass-covered fields. "We'll be driving back this direction someday. Better get your bearings now."
The "someday" bothers me. I look through my window but there's nothing to see. This is, by the Confederation's definition, a wasteland. A rural area devoid of mountains, water, canyons, anything to stop the eye. Anywhere a person can't hide, making it the worst possible place for us to be.
"Why out here?" I ask. The flat earth goes on for miles. "It's not safe. They could have planes looking for us."
"Have you ever seen a plane? I mean, outside the National Museum." Ezra laughs at the suggestion.
I don't answer. The only usable plane I've ever even heard of is President's, though its whereabouts are so secret, some people suggest it, too, might have been lost in the Pandemic.
"There's no cover."
"There's cover out here, Adams." Ezra takes a hit off a new cigarette. "Have you ever heard the term 'hiding in plain sight'?"
"No."
Ezra sighs. "There's cover."
None I can see. "How are we going to move? When it's time to fight, how will we mobilize?"
"You don't need to worry about it."
I look at the trees a hundred feet back. Maybe the wires strung between their trunks and through their arms have been turned off, like those at the farm. "Is that tree line safe?"
"This is Skinner's stomping grounds. He's got every goddamned one of them wired. I told you, moving out isn't what you need to be worried about," she says.
She's wrong. Right now, these roads aren't censored. But soon enough the satellites will be brought online and
anything larger than a bison will be stopped. Any vehicle carrying unslated people blown up. Unless we move quickly, we'll be stuck out here.
Ezra looks at her face in the rearview mirror as the car pitches over dirt hills and mud valleys. "So, now you know about John," she says, plucking at her bangs.
We hit a deep hole and I have to steady myself on the roof. "All I know is that he recruited me. That's not much."
Ezra swings her muddy eyes over to where I'm trying to look calm. They're done in browns tonight with coffee-colored shadow on the lower lids and topaz across the brow. "I'm giving you three free answers about Gage just to stop this bullshit from going down into the bunker with us. And you'd better hurry it up. Only one more mile before we get there."
"He says he's one of ours . . ."
"Yes. He's one of ours. Next?"
I didn't mean it as a question but let it go. "How long has Gage been with the resistance?"
"Sixteen years. Now hurry it up, Adams." Ezra turns the wheel sharply and we careen onto a muddy drive. "We're almost home."
"John Gage killed Candace. Why?"
Ezra parks the car in a clearing hidden from the road by a line of trees. She leans forward and rests her chin on the wheel. "
Your recruiter
put a bullet in Candace's head before a line could form between her legs. He saved her from a fate far worse than a bullet. It is what it is." She glances in my direction. "We can't afford your naivete, you understand? Not all Blue Coats are what you've experienced."
Ezra goes to open the door and I put a hand on her arm.
"Do you have any idea what I've seen Blue Coats do? To little girls, I'm talking. To
babies
!"
Ezra pushes away my hand. "Gage is an important member of the resistance
and
your recruiter. And he saved Candace, whether you like it or not. Now I have three questions
for you. How many people died on your watch up top? And do you really think a Blue Coat is any less a part of President's justice system than a Monitor? Guess I didn't need three questions to say fuck you, Adams. You're no better than anyone else here, including John Gage."
Ezra swings one leg over the threshold of the car and I see where her beige tights have been torn. It draws my attention to her other clothes. To a sleeve where a seam has been loosened. A trace of blood smeared against her skirt and just a dab more on the inside of a thigh. It's cranberry colored. Fresh.
Someone's been rough with her. I should hate her. There are so many reasons. But I find myself angry on her behalf.
"What are you looking at?" Ezra asks, voice sharp.
"You tore your outfit."
Outfit
. She makes a face. "Let's go."
This is why she's always late. Rough johns. The Blue Coat named Jingo. Men who control her time and abuse her body.
I hurry and follow. "Are you all right?"
"I'll tell you what. You just worry about you," Ezra says, her back turned. She's walking toward a hole between the trees and a house hidden behind. "Now just follow me and don't say anything stupid. Got it?"
We're flanked by a line of thin, poorly kept firs. Most are dead halfway up, their top branches gone or turned brown. Their remaining pipe cleaner arms are strung with cigarette butts and bits of yellow paper that were once official notices of some kind. When the house beyond them comes into view, my heart sinks. It's a misshapen box. A beige square with missing strips of siding and boards over almost every window. Suddenly, I don't want to walk the path to this front door, knock on it, and meet the people who live here. Who live like this.
"There are procedures. You do what I tell you." Ezra takes the books from my arms and arranges them so
The Grapes of Wrath
is on top. "You need a minute?"
I almost laugh. To what? Take in the natural beauty? The dead trees and rotting house? Or maybe she's asking me to pick up the yard. "No."
"Okay, then. Watch where you're walking. We have a dog."
There's an enormous clump of tan, cracked feces just a few strides away. I step around it and find myself in a sea of discarded bottles, wrappers, and bits of partially eaten food. It's disgusting, the way these people have ruined such a generous patch of land. Having lived my entire life in the city, I've never seen such filth. Whatever else the government may be, they are efficient landlords. These people have managed to make nature unattractive.
"Buck!" Ezra shouts as she walks, craning her head from side to side. "Buck! Come here, boy!" Buck fails to appear and we make it to the front door without an introduction.
Ezra rings the bell and we wait a whole minute before a shadow fills the space behind the peephole. It's enough time to notice the door's wounds. Dents and holes, some round and small that go straight through. Others, scratches with mold growing in their centers.
"Yeah?" It's an older woman. Her voice is thin and grating. A reed in high wind.
"Hello, Lilly." Ezra slides the books into one arm. "Let us in, please."
The door opens and there stands a woman in her sixties. She's short with a slightly rounded spine. Her hair is dark gray and curly, hanging just below the line of her jaw. Barrettes hold the fray away from a face obscured by a pair of enormous glasses. Her eyes, magnified by the lenses, have turned a milky cornflower blue.
"My sight's going," she says, reaching out to feel the muscle of my arm. "Not too shabby. A little too tall. Talking to you will wear out my neck." She turns and smiles at Ezra. "How you doing, honey?"
"Fine, Lilly. Let's go on down."
The woman nods. "They're all waiting."
I try not to stare, but with her thin lips pulled upward into a smile, the transformation is remarkable. The cheeks drooping over Lilly's jaw become wide and high. The blue eyes bright. Certainly, this woman was beautiful before the hardness of her hidden life. In the right light, she still is.
Ezra takes me by the elbow and leads me farther into the house. The stench is awful, worse than outside. Flies are everywhere, collected on half-eaten, spoiled bits of food. Reproducing themselves in the foam of the decaying couch. Cans that contained soda or beer litter the floor, their contents spilled on the unfinished wood. Rude or not, I have to pinch my nose.
"I don't think she likes it here." Lilly nods at me. Shakes her head.
Ezra nudges me forward with an elbow, puts up a hand to cover her nose, too. "Introduce yourself."
"Harper Adams, ma'am."
"Lilly Bartlett. How do you like my house?" Lilly waves at the ceiling that appears to be caving in. "It's been in my family for generations."
I go to step away from the reeking sofa and my foot sticks to the floor. "I don't have a very good eye, ma'am."
"Uh-huh. Well, she's honest, anyway. That's good." Lilly waves a hand in front of her face. "Christ, I can't stand it up here anymore. Let's go meet the family."
I follow Lilly and Ezra to the rear of the house. To the kitchen with its empty, open cupboards and all the dishes in the sink. Lilly grabs a small basket already full of small paperback books and Ezra dumps mine in without ceremony. All save one.
"This is for you." She hands Lilly the book on top.
Lilly's eyes grow pink.
"The Grapes of Wrath."
She puts the volume up to her lips and whispers quietly, "One of my favorites."
In the kitchen's dimmed light, the older woman's face spreads and contracts, threatening to break into tears. It is a
large thing to her, this book. I'd like to open its covers and read until I understand the impact that can be brought on by a collection of words. But out of respect, I give Lilly her space and look away.
"I'm going on down." Ezra disappears into the adjacent pantry.
Lilly slides the book tenderly into the crook of an arm. "You're not going to introduce her?"
"I have to talk to Lazarus." Ezra's bodiless voice floats up from somewhere beneath us. "Bring her down yourself."
"Yes, yes." Lilly rolls her eyes and motions me away from a table covered by bottles of noxious-smelling liquids. "Watch yourself. Don't knock anything over. Most of these are for show but some of them will set you on fire."
"What are they?" I step away.
"Molotov cocktails." She sees the blank look on my face and explains, "Liquid explosives. Jingo almost drank one last week. Wouldn't that have been something?" She laughs, turning to the dark of the closet.
"Jingo? Skinner?" I follow her in.
"Ummm-hummm." Lilly is moving her free arm around in the dark. Looking for something. "What'd you do to Ezra?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What'd you do to Ezra?"
"Nothing. You say you know Jingo?"
Lilly squints up at the ceiling. "Of course, but you're not listening, Harper. You have to learn to
listen
! You have a tendency to get caught up in your own thoughts and don't listen to what the people around you are saying. For a Monitor of your stature, of your
abilities,
it's a bit of a dichotomy, don't you think? Maybe you'll discover you don't like Ezra for exactly the same reason she doesn't like you. Whatever it is, you two need to resolve it soon. Before you go into a war together."
It's strange to be so intimately known by someone you've just met. It occurs to me that she's probably been watching me for years.
Lilly pulls on an overhead string and dim light spreads through the cramped space. "You ever had cashew butter and pickle on a bagel? I could make you one before we go down. It's past dinnertime. And the best stuff's up here, never mind the stench."
Lilly's going a hundred miles an hour. I can't catch up. "No, ma'am."
"Don't call me ma'am. It's Lilly. You sure? The salt of the cashew and the sour of the pickle . . ." She rubs her belly. "Umm-ummm."
"No, thank you, Lilly."
She shrugs. Puts her hand deep into a hole on the closet's right side and fumbles with something at its end. A loud
paawwpp
noise escapes and the back panel moves slightly forward, exposing the pretend wall for the door it happens to be.
"Now, you have to give the password whenever the portal keep gets around to asking for it." Lilly leans in to add, "You have to make sure no Blue Coats tailed you. If you suspect something, you stay at least thirty minutes upstairs, just in case . . ."
Thirty minutes
. Considering the smell, I don't know if I could. "Then you have to press the button there in that hole, wait to be asked, and call out the password. If you're right, they release the safety and the door pops all the way open. Right now, it's only open an inch or two. Just enough to alert the underground somebody's trying to get in."
"And if you use the wrong password?"
"Then you'd best be moving on." Lilly smiles up into the overhead light and I can see where decay has taken all her back teeth. "We shoot mustard gas through a pipe in the ceiling." She looks back down at my face. "Good things to know, just in case."
Mustard gas
. I have no idea what that is. But I like the idea of passwords. They mean I'll be coming and going. Needing to be let in because I've needed to be let out.
"What do you do if you're followed?"
"Well, then we call Jingo. But that wouldn't work for you, of course. He knows who you are."