“No,” the colonel had answered. “We send twenty trucks out at a time until all the towns in Massachusetts have been covered.”
“Oh.”
I’d become silent again afterward, too lost in my own grief and thoughts to carry on a conversation with them. I could still smell Bailey’s caramel scented skin, still feel his warm body against mine. His broken wails, tear-filled eyes and flushed cheeks haunted me. A sob lodged in my throat as I stared at my clasped hands.
I hoped he didn’t think I’d abandoned him, that I had chosen this over him. If it wasn’t for my request to make sure they were safe and away from our mother, they would have had to drag me kicking and screaming from that house. Now I knew my brothers would both be taken care of, and I didn’t have to traumatize Bailey by causing such a scene. They would be together, and they wouldn’t go hungry, and as much as this hurt, that knowledge made it better.
My entire life, I’d known I was different from others, but I’d never expected that difference to rip me away from my family. They would be okay, I kept telling myself. Asante and Lisa would take good care of them until I could return. They would keep my mother away from my brothers. Gage was tough and he’d get Bailey through this. They’d cry, they would miss me, but they’d get through it.
I lifted my head again to stare at the farmland passing by outside the window. “Why don’t you send some of these crops and livestock to us?” I inquired.
The colonel glanced at me. “Your community is surviving on its own. These supplies are needed for those residing over the wall, the cities, and other areas where it is difficult to grow crops, fish, or raise livestock. Believe me, no community is better off than another. There is no wealth and plenty, not anymore. We all have to eat to survive.” His gray eyes burned into mine when he turned to look at me. “We are all equal in this world.”
“Just a regular old utopia of kidnapping people,” I quipped bitterly.
His clean-shaven jaw clenched at my words, forming a little dimple in the center of it. “Far from a utopia. Everything we have we’ve fought for, and in order to keep it, we must all do things we don’t want to do. Including you.”
“Maybe if I knew what it was I’m supposed to be doing, or why I was taken, I would be more willing to help.”
“If you’re meant to know, you will,” he replied.
The more and less he said, the more I questioned if I’d ever walk away from this alive. I glanced at the door of the truck and the woman sitting by my side. Maybe I could get the door open and shove her out before leaping out myself. I had no problem with knocking her out of my way, seeing that she’d had no problem with tearing my life to shreds.
The woman’s gaze was on me; her lips flattened as she seemed to guess at what I contemplated. I smiled sweetly at her in return.
“Why can’t I ride in the back with the others?” I asked.
“You know why,” she crisply replied.
“If I knew why, I wouldn’t be asking.”
My statement was met with stony silence. I glanced at the door again. If I could somehow manage to get away from these people, then what? Run into the countryside and walk the hundreds of miles we’d already traversed back home? I would do it if I thought I could make it, but they’d hunt me down, and the first place they’d go to look for me was my brothers. I had to do everything I could to keep them out of this.
“I’m not going to run,” I said.
“Not if you want your brothers to be taken care of and for them to stay free of us,” she replied.
And there it was, the confirmation they would use my brothers as leverage over me if I didn’t play nice. She’d also confirmed my dislike of her. I turned away from her before I opened the door and shoved her out, just because.
My thoughts turned back to what had happened at my house. The idea that Asante had volunteered to take my brothers in as a way for the government to know where Gage and Bailey were at all times crossed my mind. I hastily buried it.
Asante was my friend. He may be a Guard, but there had been true regret in his eyes when he’d stepped through my door. Besides, I didn’t think they’d expected me to request my brothers be removed from my mother’s house.
I focused on the darkening horizon as the sun slipped behind the land. Reds, yellows, pinks, and oranges lit up the sky as the truck rolled down the highway. I glanced over at the gages on the dash, trying to figure out which each one of them was. Some of them I knew, others I couldn’t recall, and some I’d never seen before. It had been so long since I’d been in a vehicle, I’d forgotten what the wheels on the pavement sounded like and the bouncing, almost soothing feel of them spinning on the road.
The sky was almost completely black when we pulled into a gas station and parked next to one of the pumps. Lights filtered onto the pavement from the store to the right of me, illuminating a small patch of the rutted asphalt. A man opened the glass door and hurried out to us. He said something to the driver of the truck in front of us before walking to the side of the truck.
“Gas,” I whispered in amazement.
The woman snorted before opening her door, jumping out, and walking around the front of the hood. The colonel turned toward me, draping his arm over the steering wheel to face me.
“You got a raw deal. You shouldn’t be here, but your brothers are safe and working the wall is something this country needs,” he told me.
I bit back a ‘save me the speech’retort. The woman already didn’t like me for some reason, not that I cared; I didn’t like her either. This man wouldn’t give me any answers, but I felt starting out with both of these senior military members disliking me was a bad idea.
“Colonel…” I strove to recall his name from the volunteering earlier.
“Colonel Ulrich MacIntyre. For now, you can call me Mac.”
