“How much longer we gotta go?” the Kid asked. He was panting, as all of us were. “I cain’t breathe.”
My eyes opened wide in the darkness. Oh, God, was there enough oxygen down here? My heart seized as I suddenly remembered folks digging wells, back home. More than one man had passed out from hitting a pocket of gas—natural methane, which you can’t see or smell. If he didn’t get hauled out fast, he’d die.
Well, gas was flammable—one way to get rid of it was to throw a lit match in the well and stand back. Way back.
I’d been using the lighter. If I used it again, I could blow us all into fish bait. Shit. The idea of not being able to at least check where we were going—
The Kid couldn’t breathe—
I couldn’t use the lighter—
Cassie had whispered that Nate was about to pass out—
I had to get out of here.
I had to get out of here.
I had to—
91
CASSIE
MY HEAD BUMPED INTO THE KID’S backside, which was how I knew that he’d stopped.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Becca’s stopped,” he said, sounding close to tears.
“Beck?” I called.
“Yeah?”
It was just one word, but it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I knew Becca’s voice, and her voice now told me she was close to hysteria. The last time I’d heard it was when she’d come across a big copperhead in one of Pa’s cornfields. Fearless, Ridiculous Rebecca had been frozen in terror, her eyes locked on the snake as it rose up, swaying slowly.
I’d screamed, Becca, run! And she’d said, I can’t, in this tiny voice. The snake was uncoiling and moving slowly toward her—into striking range.
I had circled around to her, cutting a wide swath around the snake, and came up behind her. The snake looked at me.
“Let’s run,” I whispered.
“I can’t,” she whispered back, tortured. “My feet can’t move.”
“Okay. I’m going to grab your arm and pull as hard as I can,” I told her. “Then I’m going to run. You can either get your feet moving or be dragged.”
“It’s going to come after us,” she whispered.
“We can outrun it.”
It had worked. I don’t know if the snake tried to strike at us when we turned tail, but I know we ran like jackrabbits for a long, long time.
I couldn’t grab her arm this time. I couldn’t drag her.
“Keep crawling, Beck,” I said. Nate had caught up to me by that point. I knew he was close to giving up. He’d been dragging that cast all this time, and twice I’d heard him barfing from the pain.
“Flick dat lighter,” the Kid said.
“I can’t,” she said in a small, tense voice. “Well gas.”
My heart dropped down into my stomach. Of course. Oh, my God. No wonder she was frozen. I felt myself start to panic, the darkness starting to smother me. What could I say to get her moving again? Like, “I don’t wanna die down here?” Or, “What’s the matter, is your ass too big to fit?” Anything, I had to say anything!
“Beck?” I said.
“Yeah?” Her voice trembled.
“I’d like to see Pa again,” I said softly. “Just once. You know?”
She was silent.
A minute later I heard a sound like Becca was swallowing a sob, then she started crawling, her knees scraping the damp earth, her head and shoulders hitting the sides and top of the tunnel. Ahead of me, the Kid followed her.
“Cassie?” Nate whispered just as I was starting to move. “I don’t think I’m going to make it. You guys head on without me. If they get this far I’ll try to stall them.”
Oh, not him, too.
Somehow I kept a grip on my temper and my panic, and took a firm, no-nonsense tone.
“Nate, if we get out of here, I’m going to totally, totally make out with you,” I said briskly. “I’ve been wanting to, and if you give up or die and not let me, I will kick your ass.”
There were a few moments of silence.
“You’re in my way,” he said.
“I thought so,” I said, and began crawling as fast as I could.
92
SO WE HAD PRETTY MUCH decided to crawl until we died, no matter what. A tree root gouged my face, but what was more dripping blood? I was used to it. The hand I’d punched Strepp with was so swollen I couldn’t make a fist, and hurt worse with every passing minute. I crawled one-handed with it cradled up against my chest, throbbing with pain.
Then I ran into the Kid’s bony backside again.
“Now what?” I asked, because I was fresh out of motivational speeches.
“This is where it caved in,” Becca said wearily. “Apparently. I can’t feel any opening anywhere around me.”
All I wanted to do was curl up somewhere and pass out. I almost didn’t care if they caught us again. A nice, quick, painless execution didn’t sound so bad right now, and I suspected the other three felt the same way. And of course there was no way to go back. I didn’t think any of us was up for that.
That was when a mole accidentally tunneled into our tunnel, dropped down onto Becca’s neck, and turned her into a human tiller. She shrieked, flailing her arms and kicking her feet, and the poor mole jumped off her and trundled right into the Kid, who also shrieked and flailed. Then the mole ran past me, making me squeal like a baby pig, then ran into Nate, who went, “Ugh!” and was prevented from flailing because he was too big to move almost anything.
The mole scuttled away down the tunnel as we all twitched uncontrollably, remembering the feel of its dry little paws scrabbling at us.
“Hey,” the Kid said finally. “Lookit.”
As stupid as it was to turn my head and peer into the infinite darkness of an underground tunnel, I did.
And I saw the barest, dimmest bit of light.
“What is it?” Nate asked.
“I… I think I see something,” I said in wonder. “Like, actually see something.”
“You do,” Becca said, a tremulous joy in her voice. “I kicked a hole in the cave-in, and this is where the tunnel ends.”
“Oh, God, really?” I breathed.
“There’s light,” she confirmed. “Like, starlight. But I have to get this dirt out of the way.”
After spending a lifetime in the tunnel, it was agonizing to wait as Becca dug, to help push the dirt back into the tunnel, first from Becca to the Kid, from the Kid to me, from me to Nate, and Nate finally pushing it behind him. But we had to, or there’d be no room to get out.
“Okay, let me try it,” Becca said, crawling forward. I saw most of her disappear, and then I was looking at just her filthy, bare feet because she was standing up.
“Okay,” she said a moment later, ducking back down. “We’re actually really far away from the prison! I can’t even see it! Your dad did good,” she told the Kid, and his proud smile was visible even in the frail moonlight.
“That’s the good news,” she said. “The bad news is we’re in the middle of the woods, and I have zero clue where. We were supposed to meet Tim on the road outside the prison, but there’s no way to tell where that is.”
“Get me out of this goddamn hole,” Nate said hoarsely. “I don’t give a shit where we are.”
Becca nodded. “Right.” And her feet disappeared as she jumped up, out of the tunnel and into the world.
93
BECCA
THE SUN WAS JUST BARELY spreading a pale-pink mist over the horizon. We must have been crawling for hours—I’d been sure we were going to die in that freaking tunnel. If I’d had any idea what it would really be like, I don’t think I would have done it. Not to mention that goddamn mole dropping down on me…
But now we were out, not behind bars, not behind fences, not shuffling along as guards whacked us with billy clubs. For this second, at least, I didn’t have to dread alarms and calls to the ring for fights or executions. It was a
n amazing feeling, and tears streaked through the dirt and blood on my face.
I flopped down on the grass, hearing the Kid scramble up after me, then Cassie, and finally, with Cassie’s help, Nate. I was exhausted, filthy, starving, cold, and afraid. But as I looked up at the wide-open sky just starting to lighten with the promise of a new day, I knew I’d never been so happy. A couple of dragonflies zipped by overhead, as if relieved to be free also. “Thanks,” I whispered to them.
We lay there, the four of us, as the clammy sweat dried on our skin. I had no idea if I would ever feel clean again.
“Not to be a wet blanket,” Cassie said finally. “But this doesn’t count as an escape until we’re actually somewhere better than the woods outside a prison.”
“I know,” I said, sitting up and looking around.
Immediately I dropped back to the ground and hissed at everyone to be quiet. “Lights,” I whispered. “I see lights.”
Slowly I raised my head and looked again. There they were—lights in the distance. Were they guards with flashlights? Was Strepp out here searching for us? How long had we been underground?
“Thems is headlights,” the Kid said after a minute of watching.
“How can you tell?” I asked him, and earned a sneer.
“’Cause I seen headlights before. Jesus,” he said.
“Is that Tim?” Cassie asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Another light popped into existence, this one wavering, sweeping back and forth. A flashlight. Far in the distance, I heard dogs barking.
“Shit,” Cassie whispered.
I met my sister’s eyes, knowing we were thinking the same thing: only three of us had the slightest hope of outrunning dogs. And probably not even us three. As tired as we were…
“I’ll go see.” I didn’t want to risk standing, hiding behind trees, so I gritted my teeth and freaking crawled again. My knees were so bruised that every movement brought new tears to my eyes. My wrists ached from being bent for so long, and my palms were scraped and bloody. I had knots on my head from hitting roots in the tunnel.
But I crawled, sticking to the undergrowth, being as quiet as possible, no doubt leaving a trail as obvious as a rainbow to anyone tracking us. At least I was making another path for the guards to follow—maybe leading them away from the others.
A few minutes on, I heard the faint idling of an engine. Then I heard it shut off, heard the truck door open and close softly. I didn’t hear guards talking to each other, and the dog barking grew slightly dimmer, not louder. Above my head, the flashlight beam bounced from tree to tree. If there was only one guard, could I take him? With my fighting skills? I just didn’t know.
I was crouched down, thinking through my next move, when my ears caught the barest glimmer of a birdcall. I sat up slightly, straining to hear.
There it was—a whip-poor-will! It called again, and my heart leaped. Standing carefully, I whistled back. It returned the whistle, and a moment later the truck door opened and the headlights flashed. It was Tim! Somehow he had found us!
Still I kept to the shadows, moving cautiously. I took slow steps, making sure he was alone. He called again like a whip-poor-will, and seemed startled when I returned the call from so close.
Then I stepped out of the woods, he saw me, and he dropped the flashlight and took long strides toward me. He caught me up in a tight embrace, and I threw my arms around him.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t make it,” he murmured against my hair. “I’ve been waiting for hours.”
I smiled tremulously. “Thanks for not giving up. Now can we get the hell away from here?”
He nodded. “Definitely. Where’s Cassie?”
Tim came with me through the woods and was surprised to see we had the Kid and Nate with us. I was so thankful for Tim’s hulking strength as he put his arm under Nate’s shoulder and practically carried him to the truck.
Five minutes later Nate and Cassie were in the backseat of the United truck, and the Kid was next to me as Tim sped down the road away from the crazy house, toward freedom. Toward home.
94
“NO,” THE KID SAID, HIS small, pinched face set in an all-too-familiar stubborn look.
“You’ll like it in our cell,” I said.
“No,” the Kid said. “I’m goin’ home. You cain’t stop me.”
I didn’t point out that we could totally stop him, since there were four of us and we were all bigger and, oh yeah, we were in a speeding truck. Instead I said, “Is it safe for you to go home?”
He sneered. “Safer’n comin’ with you guys!” he said. “You got taken from yer cells, didn’t cha? Me, I jest wandered off! I’m goin’ back. Ain’t no way I’m comin’ with youse.” He crossed his thin arms over his chest and stuck his jaw out. His black eyes were narrowed.
Tim looked at me. I shrugged: the Kid had a point. “I can take him to his cell,” Tim said. “I know where it is. My dad drove a semi for the United, picking up wheat here, delivering stoves there. I used to go with him.”
“Now yer talkin’,” the Kid said.
His cell wasn’t far away. Only twenty minutes later we pulled up to the gates of a run-down cell. When we got close to the entrance gate, Tim stopped the truck and cut the headlights.
I got out to let the Kid jump down from the front seat. It was barely daybreak and only a few of the houses showed lights on.
“Take care, Kid,” I said.
“Yeah. Hope I never sees you again!” He turned to run off, but I grabbed his wiry little arm. He glanced back at me, startled, as I pulled him to me in a fierce hug. His too-thin body told the tale of how hard life was in a mining cell, and yet it was home, and he wanted to go back.
“Thanks for everything, Kid,” I whispered into his ear. “We would have been lost without your dad’s tunnel.”
For one second he softened into me, becoming just a scared little boy who had gone through a horrible experience. Then he stiffened and pulled back.
“Yeah. My dad did good.” Without another word he turned and ran off. He didn’t look back.
“Geez, I hope he’s okay,” Cassie murmured, and I nodded.
Feeling suddenly older than dirt, I climbed back into the truck. Now that the Kid wasn’t in between us, I moved over and leaned my head on Tim’s shoulder.
“What about the rest of us?” Tim asked.
“We gotta go back, too,” I murmured, trying not to fall asleep.
“You can’t come with me to my cell?” he asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
I sat up and looked at him. “I don’t want to leave you. But our Pa is still back home. And we have scores to settle. Can you come with us?”
Regretfully, he shook his head. “My mom and my little brother—I need to go check on them. Who knows if Strepp is going to track us, or whatever.”
“Yeah. I get it.”
At Tim’s cell, Nate contacted someone in the Outsiders, and then we waited by the side of the road for them to fetch us. It was now broad daylight and I felt super vulnerable, missing the cover of night. My throat was tight: I didn’t know if I’d ever see Tim again. I leaned against a tree, out of sight of Nate and Cassie, and kissed Tim for what might be the last time. He’d almost killed me, and he’d saved my life. Both of them more than once.
He pushed a piece of paper into the ripped pocket of my jumpsuit. “This is my cell, my last name, and my phone number. Don’t forget me.”
“I don’t need your phone number,” I said, trying not to cry. “I couldn’t call from my cell anyway. No outside lines.”
“Just in case,” he insisted, and I nodded, tears spilling down my cheeks. “Hey, hey,” he said softly, wiping away my tears. “It’s okay. If you don’t come find me, I’ll find you.”
“You broke my ribs, and now you’re breaking my heart,” I said, trying to joke. It came out much more seriously than I’d intended, and Tim looked like someone had just punched him in the gut.
“I??
?ll find you,” he promised. “Soon.”
The sound of engines coming closer made us look up. It was the Outsiders, three of them, on three motorcycles.
“You head on,” Tim said. “I gotta go drive this truck into the lake.”
Taking a shuddering breath, I nodded, then hugged Tim as tightly as our injuries would allow. We kissed again and again, until Cassie said, “Guys, come on! Let’s go!”
I went over and nodded hi to Cecily, who was waiting on her motorcycle. Cassie was behind a guy named Jefferson, who I also recognized, and poor Nate was propped uncomfortably behind Tara Nightwing.
Climbing onto Cecily’s bike, I felt again the muscle stiffness, injuries, and general pain involved with being an inmate. I held on to Cecily as she kicked the bike into gear, my lip trembling as I felt how small and un-Tim-like she was.
Then we were tearing down the road, away from prison, away from Tim. Heading home. Heading back to Pa. At last.
The big question? What the hell do we do now?
95
CASSIE
ALL ALONG, THIS HAD BEEN the plan—to get back to the cell to see Pa. I admitted (only to myself) that I had absolutely no idea what else we would do. Go someplace else? Now that we knew there were thousands of other cells, it still didn’t seem possible to go anywhere, live somewhere else. Could we live out in the woods somehow? Not be part of any cell at all? That didn’t seem better.
But first we had to go back to our cell. We didn’t know if there would be cops waiting for us at the gates, or whether the gates would be closed and locked against us or what. But we simply drove through them, and no one seemed to notice.
I didn’t know how long we’d been gone. In prison I’d lost all sense of time. But the cell looked different somehow, as if the seasons had changed or it was a new year.
“Where to?” Cecily yelled back at me, and I yelled, “Healthcare United!”
In the broad daylight three motorcycles drew attention, especially as we roared up to the hospital. But we made it there without being stopped or accosted. Once we’d parked it took all of us to drag Nate off of Tara’s motorcycle.