We slide together off the porch, a long line of uniformed troops already extending out fifty or sixty feet. We're blinded by the wide white sky and our heads fill with shooting stars. When my vision returns, I look around. Nothing to see for miles but dull earth.
Our team is moving surprisingly fast, considering Lazarus is near our tail. We've been told to keep an undulating line as we go. To regard ourselves as the individual vertebrae of a very long snake.
Ahead and behind us, the other squads and platoons travel in this same back-and-forth manner, keeping us in their middle. What Ezra calls a
traveling-over watch
. If we're ambushed, if bombs drop out of the sky, there is one way to go. Not back to the house that's been locked up tight, or sideways to the electrified tree line, or across the road to the wide-open fields. The only direction we're to go, even if the enemy comes marching up from that way, is east. Forward, always forward. If need be, into the barrels of their guns.
I think of last night's music, of the bard's young daughter
and her voice. That was sweet music, what Lazarus called a love song. The music we're making with the
swoosh, swoosh
of our legs is its opposite. There won't be any cover at all. We're as exposed as caged birds. Anyone driving down this road would find a few hundred soldiers single-filing it along. It wasn't real when I had forty feet of earth between me and the Confederation. Up here, there's literally nowhere to run.
Ezra is marching along as if she hasn't noticed the saturated earth. Most of the rain has been soaked up by the dry fields. But in places, our footfalls are like cups. They fill with standing water as soon as they're made and become potholes that threaten to trap us. Lazarus, most of all. He's behind me, his legs blackened up to the calves with mud. He suffers to make each step. The two guards behind him have begun to close the gap between them. They come to stand on either side of him and each takes an arm. I imagine there was a plan to somehow carry Lazarus to the square, but with the rain, even two men's combined weight would set them a foot deep into the soggy earth.
"Adams! Eyes forward!" Ezra whispers harshly. She's two people up on our chain, waits for me to turn around. Then goes back to a discussion with a guard who's pointing to the moist earth with his gun.
Ezra marches farther up the line to discuss the perimeter with another guard. He hands her a set of tubular eyes that allow her to see long distances. She points them toward the far horizon, where there's nothing but the cleft between sky and earth. Bond is still not in sight.
I divert my attention by watching our group. We are a sorry bunch of marchers. The only ones holding a staggered
V
formation are the guards who comprise a good third of us. There is the point guard and three others with him at the front, a few more sprinkled between, another three or four guards pulling up the rear. We are in some semblance of a serpentine line for the first mile. Then the moist, sucking earth wins out and we become a wounded snake.
Sidewinding left, then right, wearing Ezra out with our lousy footing. It doesn't help that I'm having a hard time keeping hold of my package. Twenty pounds wasn't much weight for the first mile, but every step since,
Noah
seems to have grown in girth and bulk.
Most of our guards carry their weapons waist-high with their index fingers resting ever so lightly on the trigger. All save for Rita, whose gun is dangling next to her thigh. They walk in a half crouch, with their eyes in constant motion all over the landscape. Not Rita. She turns, and shows me her mouth, curled up on both sides.
There's something different about Rita.
Is it that I've never seen her smile? It worries me, gets into my feet.
We trek along another quarter mile with Ezra at the head of the line. She turns and frowns at someone behind me. Comes back down the chain and tells the guards we're slowing down for Lazarus. He's having a hard time keeping up. The words aren't out of Ezra's mouth when we hear gunfire.
Our point guard, Aaron, has a line of black hair down the center of his head and massive shoulders built disproportionately to his thin waist and stick legs. He stops and holds up one arm, his hand made into a fist, and we drop to our bellies as directed. As if tripped by our sudden weight, a bomb goes off somewhere to the east.
I hear movement all around me. Think it's someone come to shoot us while we're sprawled out on the ground, but it's our people. Ezra and another guard from the rear have begun a forward march on their elbows. They shoot past me, nearly as fast as if they were walking. Behind us, the guards have made themselves into a shell covering Lazarus. He won't be able to move but he'll also have a hard time getting shot.
Ahead of me, Lilly is the only one standing. Noam vaults past the others between them to push her down. The couple makes it to the ground as a second bomb goes off. This one is stronger. It shakes the ground. There is a brief silence, then the sound of small-arms fire off in the distance, toward Bond.
"Ezra?" Lilly asks from beneath Noam's protective arm. Raw fear has smoothed out the pleats of her face.
Ezra doesn't reply. She holds up a finger and makes a circle in the air. Immediately, the front guards begin walking the perimeter. All save for Rita, who remains sitting, her gun still put away.
"Harper?" It's Lilly's voice. When I turn back around, she and Noam are next to me, hunched into a clump of Queen Anne's lace a few feet away. "They'd be in Bond by now, wouldn't they?" She means the first group out. Given our status, and the fact that we have
The Book of Noah
in tow, our group is positioned in the middle.
I nod slowly. "Probably." Truth is, Lazarus has slowed us down. If it weren't for his disability, we'd probably be in Bond right now, too.
Ezra's put her phone back in her trouser pocket and is walking quickly up the line. She gives me a look as she goes, doesn't plan to stop.
"Hey!" I shout.
Ezra doubles back to where we're standing. "Shut up and move out, now!" she whispers hotly, then turns to Noam and Lilly. "I can't reach the blue team by phone." She pauses, something else on her mind to say. Then turns and marches to the front guards. She huddles up with them. Points at the road leading east and comes back down the line again.
"We're to proceed as planned," she repeats slowly and calmly until she's at the end of the line. Standing in front of Lazarus, her weapon cocked. Again, the guards lead us out. No one refuses to go.
Lazarus is in pain. His knees won't punch and push. Don't accede to the uneven ground as well as ours. Were it anyone else, Ezra would have left them behind. She motions to his guards, who provide him one arm each to be used as rails.
"What's so interesting?" Ezra asks, stopping next to me.
"Nothing."
She looks at me, her head turned while her body moves
straight ahead. "What's on your mind, Adams? You have something to say, say it."
"Where was Rita last night?"
"Why?"
"Something's different."
"What's different?"
I shrug. "Look how she's carrying her weapon. And she wasn't spooked by those explosions."
"What are you trying to say? You think she's a spy?"
"Yeah. I do."
Ezra shakes her head, but I can tell she's thinking about it. She's watching Rita. Noticing how the girl's eyes don't follow the curve of the field, like the other guards'. How easily she walks across the earth. As if it's neither new nor dangerous.
"Keep your eyes open," Ezra says, heading off toward the easternmost part of the line, where the final clouds of night are beginning to disperse.
We march the next mile without event, the yellow group bowed out ahead of us. Rita has her own pair of binoculars. She holds them up as she walks, looking at the land that will eventually plane right up to the houses on Bond's west side. Ezra's noticed Rita's diverted attention. She lifts her own pair of eyes and begins watching the windows for flashes or people. Anyone that might be signaling to Rita, or anyone else in our crew.
As often as I can, I check on Lazarus. Despite the pain, he's looking everywhere, at everything. At the yellow sun low on the horizon, and higher up where the clouds are taunting us. His eyes follow a red bird with black wings to something new in our path. It's a fence stretching the length of the field.
The prairie beyond this wooden boundary is shrouded in twilight. The browns and blacks and shiny hollows of gray there change as the clouds disperse. I hear the small rupture of sun before I see it. People are sucking in their breath, trying not to shout. A finger of light is spilling onto the grass. This beam grows eastward toward Bond and lights up everyone in
its path. People stop and gape. Hold up their hands into the bright, dust-specked air like children.
The guards at our helm are smiling. They shake their fists in the air. Rita, who's been six years without the sun, doesn't even notice. Her eyes are set on something small and silver. A bullet she's preparing to slip into her open gun.
I march ahead, pushing past a guard, then Lilly and Noam. I march toward Rita until I can see her face clearly. And there, on her nose, is what I've been noticing all day without understanding. The clue I didn't need my sentient abilities to see.
Freckles
. Fresh, light brown remnants of yesterday's rosy-red skin.
She's been up top.
"You sold us out," I say.
Rita's eyes narrow but she says nothing.
"You made a trade. Us for your freedom. Isn't that right, Rita?"
"Adams." Ezra is talking in my ear. "What are you talking about?"
"Rita's our spy."
"How do you know?" Ezra gets closer. I can feel her breath on my neck. "I thought you couldn't see colors anymore."
Before I can explain, the crackle of filtered voices starts coming out of the field phone Ezra carries around her waist. She puts it against her ear despite the terrific whine. I watch her face whiten as she listens. It's news from the blue team, nothing good.
"Ezra?" I ask.
She turns and looks back at Lazarus.
"Ezra!"
"Not now, Adams!" She's already running toward him.
Lazarus understands whatever is happening and like our Lieutenant, has gone pale. Someone's coming for us. And there's no place to put our leader. Without him we'll lose our binding and scatter like so many pages.
Ahead of us, Rita has her open gun on one hip. Is sliding bullets into her magazine when one of the guards alongside
her drops into the grass. He motions forward with two fingers, then sweeps the straightened hand to the left. The other guards follow and disappear into the high weeds. Rita is the last.
Behind me, Ezra is running. She skids to a stop next to Lazarus. Drops to her knees and pushes him backward, into the wet earth.
"Harper!" Ezra is stretched out above him, her body covering Lazarus's exposed head and shoulders. "Get down!"
There is a cold wind, like a bird diving. It bursts into the ground just beyond me. Throws up a bit of dirt.
"Get down, goddamnit!"
I fall onto my belly. Look up just in time to see Rita and the other guards pointing their weapons at something across the fence. I follow Rita's outstretched finger and see shadows in the grass, like fish beneath muddy water.
A line of cars has begun down the country road from the direction of Bond. I recognize the clipped hum of older-model Confederation engines. They're squad cars, used ones from the city that have been redistributed to the wastelands. As they get close, I'm able to see their locations of origin plastered across the driver's-side doors. Dover. Chesterfield. Whitt. Laconda. Greene. Shelby.
Ezra calls out to the guards busy hustling up from the rear. "Bury the package! Bury the package!" She turns her head to the front of the line. Tries to push those of us there away from the road with her palm. "Fall back!"
The squads are getting closer. I can see a head behind the first wheel. Behind him, another head atop the long barrel of a gun that's sticking out of the rolled-down window.
Aaron runs toward Ezra. He pulls a small black box from his trouser pocket, his head turned toward the procession of cars. Each thumb is over the single button in the small square's center and all eight fingers are being used to hold it in both hands.
"Now?" he asks Ezra, not quite to her.
"Not yet!"
Ezra stands and begins running toward the road. Aaron angles off to follow. They run in tandem, their legs throwing up mud as they sprint toward the cars.
We can now see all six squads and their drivers. The men in the backseats are aiming at us with guns. They've opened fire, but are too far off and miss Ezra and the guard. They settle their sticklike barrels against the half panes of their windows and wait for closer ground.
Ezra and our guard stop running. He holds up the box, depresses the button, and all hell breaks loose.
With an intensity that knocks some of us from our feet, the road explodes. Chunks of asphalt and dirt burst skyward and all six squads throw on their brakes. The first five vehicles begin racing backward, away from the line of explosions chasing them. The last car in their procession is the only one that pulls off the road. It finds safety off the asphalt just as the first car's tires explode over the rippling pavement. The steel frame jumps off the ground as if on springs and the tank explodes, sending up a bright yellow-orange plume. When it comes back down, the car is nothing, just particles held together by cracked atoms. The man who'd been preparing to shoot us from the backseat has gone limp. The heat has started his bullets firing, so we flatten ourselves against the grass. The same thing happens four more times, taking out the next four cars. The last squad is parked on the grass. Ruined, but still in one piece. Its tires have been blown out, the hood is smashed down into the cab, and its undercarriage is on fire. But behind the darkened windows, hands are pressing against the hot glass. Three men from what I can tell. Trying to pound their way out.