The Always War

  “I surrender!” he screamed out into the open air. Tessa could tell he was trying to make his voice as loud as possible, to reach the ears of snipers who might be hundreds of feet away. “I surrender! I surrender! I …”

  Gideon stopped talking.

  CHAPTER

  21

  It’s amazing what you can notice in a split second. In the instant after Gideon’s voice died out, Tessa stared at him so hard that she could see the individual beads of sweat caught in his eyebrows. She could see the crust of a scab already forming over the cut on his cheekbone. She could see the way his hands trembled as he held them in the air. She could see the slight smear of what might be vomit on the formerly pure-white cuff of his uniform sleeve.

  But she didn’t see any recoil in his body from bullets hitting it; she didn’t see any bloom of suddenly gushing blood on the section of the uniform covering his heart.

  She kept looking. She seemed incapable of doing anything else.

  Not Dek.

  “What?” Dek demanded, her voice hoarse with fury or fear. Tessa couldn’t be sure which one it was. “You can’t just stop like that. You’ve committed to this course of action—you keep surrendering until they’re carrying you away in handcuffs and leg irons!”

  Gideon turned his head very, very slowly.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone out there,” he said in a near whisper. “There’s nobody to surrender to.”

  Dek stared at him in disbelief for a moment; then she scrambled toward the door herself and peeked around the edge of it.

  Tessa realized that she’d slumped down in the copilot’s seat in a way that protected most of her body from the doorway. Only the top of her head and her eyes were exposed.

  What do you know, Tessa thought. Guess I have survival instincts I never knew about.

  But the longer Gideon stood in the open doorway, not being shot, the more foolish Tessa felt for cowering in terror. She even thought Dek looked kind of foolish, clutching the curve of the wall and only barely looking past the strip of rubber that lined the door. Tessa felt like she’d done way too much cowering since she’d stepped onto this plane the night before. She’d done way too much cowering her entire life.

  On trembling legs she stood up and went to stand beside Gideon. Standing freely, on her own, she gazed out into enemy territory.

  At first glance it looked like Gideon was right: There was no one in sight. There was, actually, very little in sight. Very little except for a vast field of grass, stretching out in all directions.

  Or—was this still what you would call grass? In Tessa’s experience grass was tufts of muddied green blades that tried to spring up in bare patches of dirt, when people didn’t trample it too badly. She’d seen pictures in books of expansive lawns trimmed to almost scientific perfection in the luxurious, prodigal era before the war began. But that had always seemed too fantastical to believe, like gazing at drawings of unicorns or fairies or trolls.

  This field did not look like a lawn. For one thing the grass was too tall. Half thinking, Maybe it’s not too smart to just keep standing here, a clear target, Tessa stepped down into the grass. Much of it reached all the way up to her waist; a few hardy stalks were level with her shoulders. A breeze shuddered across the field, and Tessa almost forgot herself watching the glory of it all, seeing the acres and acres of grass bowing together. It was like music, like a dance. The grass seemed more fully alive than any of the people Tessa had ever known.

  “I … surrender?” Gideon called again behind her, his voice gone soft and uncertain.

  “Would you two idiots stop and think for a second?” Dek hissed from her position still crouched at the edge of the door. “Just because they haven’t killed us yet, that doesn’t mean nobody’s going to.”

  “So what would you have us do?” Gideon asked mockingly. “Let me guess—you’ve got some brilliant plan.”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” Dek whispered. “Hasn’t it occurred to you yet? For some reason, no one seems to know we’re here. Maybe it’s our military that put some brilliant masking technology on this plane. Maybe it was my bosses. They’d love it if their planes didn’t show up on any radar except their own. And, you know, it’s not like they’d tell me about anything like that.”

  Tessa was surprised to hear a bit of pain throbbing in Dek’s voice.

  So she resents not being fully trusted, Tessa decided, then pushed the thought to the back of her mind because none of that really mattered right now.

  “I don’t hear a plan in all that,” Gideon complained. “You open your mouth and I just hear, ‘Maybe this,’ ‘Maybe that.’ No military ever conquered anybody with maybes.”

  Tessa thought this must be something his instructors had said a lot at the military academy. He sounded like he was quoting.

  “That was background information,” Dek said. “Here’s the plan: As long as nobody knows we’re here, why don’t we keep it that way? We sneak away from the plane, find some jet fuel to steal—and some sort of container to steal it in—we come back here, fuel up, and then we’re on our merry way. No one gets hurt; we get out of here undetected; everything’s good.”

  Gideon frowned. Tessa could tell he was trying to find something to object to.

  “What if someone catches us?” he asked.

  “Then you surrender,” Dek countered. “We can always go back to the original plan if we have to.”

  Gideon’s frown deepened.

  “I don’t think you can still surrender and be protected under prisoner-of-war laws if you’re caught in the middle of a crime,” he said. “Like, say, stealing.”

  Dek threw up her hands.

  “Fine! I’ll be the one to steal the fuel!” she said. “I’ll carry the canister myself. You can stay all pure and innocent and white-uniformed as long as you want!”

  Gideon kept glaring at her, but he slid down into the grass beside Tessa. A moment later Dek stepped down alongside them.

  Once again, the other two had made a decision without even consulting Tessa.

  “Crouch down as you walk,” Dek suggested. “No point in being total sitting ducks.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to hide the plane?” Tessa asked.

  “Where?” Dek asked.

  “How?” Gideon asked. “Even if we could push it somewhere, we’d just leave a trail of crushed grass that would lead right to it.”

  “Oh,” Tessa said, feeling more stupid than ever. She noticed that the blades of grass broke off just as she tiptoed through them. “But we’re leaving a trail too!”

  “Can’t be helped,” Dek said with a shrug.

  Tessa saw that both of the other two believed they were going to get caught. Maybe they thought it would be better to get caught away from the plane than on it? Or … maybe they just thought it was better to try something rather than just wait to be killed?

  All three of them plodded forward. Tessa wondered if they’d picked a direction on purpose or if it was just a random choice. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself further by asking.

  Then something jabbed into the side of her shoe.

  “Ow!” she cried, reaching down. She came up with a handful of gravel. “Why would there be rocks in a field of grass?” she asked. She reached down again, and felt around. “There are rocks everywhere!” she said. “Rocks, and little bits of broken-up concrete—”

  “The enemy’s ways are not our ways,” Gideon said, and once again it sounded like he was quoting.

  Dek reached over and pulled Tessa’s hands back.

  “It’s really better not to touch anything you don’t have to touch,” Dek said. “I mean, I’m not sure why there’d be land mines here, but still …”

  “Land mines!” Tessa exclaimed, jumping back. She over-reacted, and teetered, almost falling down flat. “You—you think it’s possible that there might be land mines here, but you still … you just …”

  She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

&nb
sp; Dek shrugged, her ragged, oversized shirt shifting on her scrawny shoulders.

  “Well, I have been trying to make sure I step in his footsteps,” she said, pointing to Gideon. “It’s safer that way.”

  Gideon turned around. He seemed to be trying to look stoic and brave, but Tessa guessed that he hadn’t thought of the possibility of land mines either. When you were used to flying—and not even sitting in the plane—it wasn’t something you ever had to think about.

  But Gideon just said, “Let’s keep moving, all right? The faster we go, the less time we have to spend here, and the less chance someone’s going to see us.”

  He faced forward again and took another step. And another. And another.

  Though she had to stretch her legs a ridiculous distance, Dek jumped behind him, landing each time on the same patch of crushed grass Gideon had just left.

  She turned around to look at Tessa, who hadn’t moved since she’d heard the words “land mines.”

  “See?” Dek said. “If he doesn’t blow up when he steps in that space, we won’t blow up either.”

  Tessa made herself take a step forward. She stopped again.

  “It’s not fair,” she said.

  Dek and Gideon both looked at her.

  “Fair?” Dek repeated. “You flew into enemy territory looking for things to be fair?”

  All’s fair in love and war, Tessa thought, remembering something she’d read a long time ago. She’d been a little kid and confused; she’d thought that the saying meant that love and war really did make everything fair.

  But was that really the issue?

  Tessa pushed the thought aside.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, it’s not right.” Both of the others were staring at her, dumbstruck, but she bumbled on. “We shouldn’t just automatically assume that Gideon should be the one in the lead, the one at risk. We should take turns.”

  “Hey,” Dek said. “He’s the one who got us into this whole mess. He’s the one that flew us into a war zone.”

  “No,” Tessa said again, stubbornly shaking her head. “We each got ourselves into our own mess. I followed him. You stowed away on his plane. We’re both responsible for being here too.”

  These were all such new thoughts for Tessa that it was amazing she could find the words to explain. There was something about standing in this vast field of grass, something about seeing the wind blow each individual stalk, something about feeling the constant danger—all of that made Tessa see everything differently than she ever had back in Waterford City.

  “Tessa,” Gideon said gently. “It’s all right. I’m military. I was trained for this.”

  “No,” Tessa said. “You weren’t. I’m sorry, but all you were ever trained for was to sit at a desk and kill people hundreds of miles away by remote.”

  Gideon stared at her. Tessa wasn’t sure what he saw in her face. Did he see mockery and blame? Did he think she was taunting him as a “fake flyboy” even more cruelly than Dek had? Or did he think she was forgiving him for not being the hero she’d longed to idolize?

  Tessa wasn’t sure what showed in her face, because she wasn’t sure which thing she believed—or which she believed most strongly. All she knew was that she couldn’t walk the entire way across the field with Gideon taking all the risk.

  “Okay,” Dek said. “It’s official. You’ve both got martyr complexes. You two want to take turns leading the way, fine. But let’s keep moving. You can trade off every twenty paces. And, here.” She scooped up a handful of gravel and dropped it into Tessa’s hands. “Whoever’s in the lead, you test the route you’re going to take by throwing rocks at it first.”

  Tessa expected Gideon to protest—either to refuse to let Tessa ever take the lead, or to insist to Dek that she take an equal turn at the front too. But Gideon just squinted at Tessa for a long moment, as if seeing her for the first time. Then he pointed off into the distance.

  “That’s where we’re headed,” he said.

  Tessa stood on her tiptoes, making herself nearly as tall as Gideon. Now she could see past the rippling grass, to a structure that barely topped the horizon. It could have been an excessively tall tree, an odd sight in the midst of all the grass.

  Or—it could have been something man-made.

  “I think that’s an old air-control tower,” Gideon said. “I saw it on our way down. It looks abandoned, don’t you think? We get up there, we’ll be able to see for miles.”

  Tessa could tell he was being very careful not to add a depressing corollary: Or, if there’s someone up there, they’re going to be able to see us a long, long time before we see them.

  CHAPTER

  22

  It was slow going. Every few steps the person in the lead had to throw out a handful of gravel, walk forward, then scoop up another handful to throw. It amazed Tessa that there was always more gravel around to throw. This seemed man-made too, or at least of human design. Nothing in nature would dump tons of gravel in a field of grass, would it?

  Once they got close enough to the tower to see the windows at the top, they slowed down even more, stopping every few steps to watch for movement, to listen for the first hint of any shouted commands. Gideon began walking with his hands high in the air, back in the pose of a surrendering soldier. He walked that way for so long that Tessa was certain his arms must have gone numb, but he didn’t complain.

  While Gideon was busy constantly surrendering, Tessa took over the job of throwing out the handfuls of gravel to test the route ahead for him.

  Tessa remembered the question Dek had asked her back on the plane, as soon as Gideon was out of earshot: He your boyfriend? She remembered the way Gideon’s mother had looked at her, as Tessa had walked into Gideon’s bedroom. She remembered the taunt nasty Cordina Kurdle from school had flung at her back at the auditorium the day of the ruined award ceremony: If you and the hero are so close, why aren’t you running after him?

  All that had made Tessa feel a little bit sleazy. She had run after Gideon. She had chased after him all the way into enemy territory. In her wildest dreams she might have hoped for a hug or a kiss from the glowing hero.

  She never could have imagined how intimate she could feel, not even touching him but walking together in silence through a field of grass, throwing rocks out in front of him, trying to keep him alive.

  Was it because I spoke up, and volunteered to risk my life too? Did that make us true partners?

  Something moved at the top of the tower. In a flash Dek had her arm reared back and began throwing rocks toward the dark windows.

  “Stop! Stop!” Gideon begged. “It doesn’t work for me to surrender if you’re launching projectiles at them! They’ll retaliate!”

  A flurry of wings flapped out the tower windows.

  “Guys, look! Stop arguing! Stop throwing things! It’s only birds!” Tessa cried, pulling back on Dek’s arm.

  Dek dropped the rest of her handful of gravel and wiped her hand across her sweaty forehead, leaving a trail of dirt.

  “Yeah, and we wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t flushed them out,” she bragged.

  Tessa looked at Dek carefully. Dek had been the cautious one before. Why was she taking risks now?

  “You already knew it was just birds, didn’t you?” Tessa asked. “How were you so sure?”

  Dek shrugged.

  “Educated guess,” she said. “Look at all the bird droppings coming down from those windows. I bet they’re even thicker inside. Nobody’s going to be hanging out in the midst of all that. Or—if they are—it’s not going to be somebody who’d know or respect the rules about how to treat a surrendering enemy soldier. So I had to go on the offensive.”

  Tessa squinted up toward the top of the tower. Now that Dek had pointed it out, Tessa noticed the streaks of white and gray and brown running down from the windows. And Tessa could see now that all the windows were broken. Only a few jagged shards of glass remained in place, throwing off reflected light from the sun. r />
  She looked to Gideon, wondering what brilliant deductions he’d figured out, staring at the tower.

  “Still,” Gideon said stubbornly. He wasn’t looking at the tower. He was glaring at Dek. “Still. We have to make it look like we’ve come in peace.”

  “But we haven’t,” Dek said. “We can’t. Not when our whole country’s at war.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. They walked on, each step tense and fearful. It was a relief finally to reach the base of the tower, out of sight of the dark windows overhead. Tessa saw that a metal door hung open, rusted half off its hinges, revealing a flight of stairs inside.

  “So we’re going to be really, really quiet climbing up there?” Tessa whispered. “Just in case?”

  “Won’t work,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “We don’t have any weapons with us. If someone up there does …” He leaned his head into the stairwell, tilted it upward and shouted, “We surrender! We surrender!”

  The words echoed back at him, -ender … –ender … –ender … But no other voice replied.

  Gideon pulled his head back out into the sunlight.

  “You two want to wait here while I go up?” he asked.

  Yes, Tessa thought. But somehow it seemed like it would be more frightening to stand around at the bottom of the tower, waiting.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  She turned toward Dek, expecting the other girl to say, Okay! Let me know what you find up there! But Dek was already headed for the stairs.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  Why? Tessa wondered. Why isn’t she letting Gideon and me take all the risk, like she did before?

  Tessa noticed the stiff way Dek held her shoulders, the way she clenched her jaw as she walked.

  Oh, Tessa thought. Dek doesn’t trust us. She isn’t sure we’d tell her the truth about what we’d see.

  All three of them began climbing the stairs together. Tessa guessed that Dek wasn’t worried about any land mines being left here, because she wasn’t making any effort to walk behind the other two.