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So why was he sending for me now?
“What’s up?” Icarus called from the fire.
“Saga,” Rabbit answered for me. He was so excited his feet were practically levitating off the dirt floor.
Dare’s yellow eyes flashed in the firelight. No doubt she was hoping Saga’s summons meant she’d see action soon. I wasn’t so optimistic, and judging from the grim expression on Icarus’s face, he and I were on the same page.
“When do we head out?” Rabbit’s voice had deepened over the last lazy few months and he’d grown a couple of inches. His face was losing the roundness of boyhood and sharpening into the angles of early manhood. Even so, his expression was pure kid as he bounced on the balls of his feet. He loved visiting Saga’s bunker.
“We need to talk about it first,” I said. The kid’s expression fell and Dare crossed her arms.
Icarus nodded. “Agreed.”
“But why?” Dare asked. “He wouldn’t have sent the message unless he needed us. We should head out soon.”
I shook my head. “Maybe I should go alone.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“We’re low on food, and it’ll be easier for one person to evade patrols than all four of us.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You just want an excuse to run away.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Icarus cut me off. “Enough! We all go or none of us goes.” As he spoke, his posture dared me to give him an excuse to back up the command physically. Part of me was stung that they didn’t trust me, but the other part of me was ashamed, because they were right.
I threw up my hands. “Fine. We’ll leave at first light, then.”
Icarus watched me for a moment, as if he suspected a trick. I stared back. Finally, he tipped his chin subtly and turned his back on me to begin instructing Dare and Rabbit on gathering supplies for the trip to Book Mountain.
With all the attention off me, I let my shoulders go slack again. I should have known better than to hope that I’d have a chance at escape. I’d been pretending for so long that I’d almost forgotten how badly I wanted to get the hell away from them. It’s not that I wished them any ill, but being drafted into their rebel cause had never been my plan, nor my choice. Like with so many things in my life, I’d been threatened and coerced into cooperation.
I sighed and squeezed the rock in my hand. Sooner or later, I’d have my chance at freedom. I just prayed that the price for that freedom wouldn’t be my life.
Five
Zed
We’d been inside Book Mountain so long I no longer knew what day it was. There, underground, I didn’t have the moon or the sun to help me track the passing of time. There were only the dimly lit corridors and dirt-walled cells and the gigantic underground silo full of books. At times when the children or I got restless, Saga would repeat his favorite refrain, “Read a book!”
But the youngs and I weren’t used to such luxuries. We preferred to sit in a circle and entertain each other with stories we made up. The fact that we lacked a campfire didn’t matter much. I sure missed Bravo, though. She always told the best tales. Scary ones were her specialty.
I thought now of all the times I’d lectured her on toning down the horror. I worried the youngs would be too scared to sleep, and told her that the world was scary enough. She’d always laugh at me and call me a name, like Old Fart or Stick-in-the-Ass.
Why had I wasted so much time lecturing? I’d spent countless hours talking the youngs through lists and lists of rules, in the hopes that if I could just warn them enough they could avoid running into trouble. But where had that gotten me? I’d walked all of us into an ambush. Now Bravo and Mica were gone, and the rest of us were begging for help from an old man who was probably more than half mad.
“Papa,” Blue whispered.
We were in the book silo. Saga had disappeared into his cell with a book of maps. His massive dog, Polonius, however, had stayed behind and was allowing the children to pet him. I was lying on the floor, looking over a book of photographs of celebrities taken well before the Blood War. How obscene they all seemed with their egos on display as boldly as their garish makeup and expensive clothes. But oh, how we had adored them.
“Who’s she, Papa?” Blue said.
“An actor,” I said, looking at the beautiful, vain face. “She played parts in movies.”
“What’s a movie?”
“A story told in moving pictures. Actors pretended to be characters in those stories.”
“They played make-believe?”
