The bus pulls into the car park of a diner that’s all closed up, swings round the back and stops. Pat helps me down. My fingers are caked in blood, and my arm’s numb from the wound downwards. That’s not a good sign. Would rather keep my arm, so I need to get the tourniquet off sooner rather than later.
The other passengers file out behind us. The driver stopped the bus under a carport – a flimsy plastic roof held up by wooden uprights. Enid keeps watchful eyes on the trees that circle the diner on three sides, and the road that runs in front of it. Once everyone’s off, the driver pulls a tarp down over the front of the bus.
‘Get inside,’ Enid snaps.
The back door of the diner creaks open, and a woman in a pink waitress uniform holds it open for us. Her hair’s grey beneath her cap, and the badge on the front of her blouse says Hi, I’m Chelsea!
Inside, the blinds are down over the windows, and the lights are off, giving the place a closed-up, sleepy feel. Camp people huddle in the booths, nursing cups and plates of food. My people. And now I realize for the first time: free people. My breath catches in my throat. Right at this moment, we’re free. Even if we get caught before the sun goes down again.
‘Where is my son?’ a voice booms from behind me.
I spin round, and I’m face to face with General Lall. She’s pale, face drawn in pain, and she’s holding herself up on a chair, but she’s just as imposing as ever. I throw myself at her. Her arms wrap round my waist. She pulls back and lifts my face in her hands. ‘Esther, where’s Nik?’
‘They took him.’
For the first time ever, something like devastation shows on General Lall’s face. ‘He’s alive?’
‘Last time he was seen,’ Enid replies.
General Lall pushes me away. She’s like a storm. ‘Where?’ she demands.
‘That’s the million-dollar question,’ says Enid. ‘They don’t mess around with long trials. My guess would be he’ll be going straight to a prison cell at the central courthouse.’
General Lall crosses to the window and stares out, one hand on her hip.
The woman in the waitress uniform is staring out of the diner’s front door. Keeping watch along the coastal road.
It feels like noon. Even though it’s cloudy, the sun’s high overhead. ‘How far have we come?’ I say.
‘Twenty miles, give or take,’ Enid replies. Her eyes hover towards General Lall and back to me again. ‘We’re switching vehicles here before we carry on north, and I’d like it done pretty sharpish. Pat, get the girl’s arm sorted and then grab yourselves some food for the road.’
‘What about the people who have gone before? Did they make it?’ I say.
‘First of the buses will be getting to the border any time now. Banking on Janek taking a minute to realize what’s happening. Others’ll be hitting different spots on the border, presenting different papers.’
General Lall paces up and down the chequerboard floor between the tables. The smell of old cooking oil and fresh coffee turns my stomach.
‘You’ll go north. That is an order,’ she says to Enid.
‘While you’re doing what?’
‘I’m going to get my son.’
The diner goes quiet.
Enid’s mouth sags open. It might be the first time she’s ever been lost for words. ‘What?’ she manages to say.
‘I am going to retrieve my son.’
‘It’s a suicide mission,’ Enid replies. ‘And I’m not one to shy away from a good suicide mission, God knows, but this is just stupid. We’ll all go north. Get out of here, then we turn round and negotiate the boy’s release.’
‘There will be no negotiation. There’ll be a show trial, and then there’ll be an execution. I intend to stop it.’
‘What about all the people you’ve set running and then left to fend for themselves?’ Enid says, pointing out of the window as though there might be refugees fleeing along the road.
‘I’ve done my part. I have given my life to the rebellion, and, more than that, I have given my son’s life. Nik’s childhood was sacrificed to this cause. I won’t let it take his future too.’
‘She’s gone berserk. Stark raving. Talk some sense into her, Esther.’
‘You’re going back for him?’ I say.
General Lall stands taller. ‘I am.’
‘Want an extra pair of hands?’
General Lall breaks into a grim smile.
‘So you’re going too? This is …’ Enid throws her hands in the air.
‘Enid is going to take the rest of these people north and continue with the planned escape over the border to Maine. I have every confidence that she will succeed in getting this group to safety.’
Enid shakes her head, walking around, too agitated to stand still. ‘Let me come with you, General. I’ve served as your second in command all these months. My place is at your side.’
‘Your place is guiding these people. You were never that good at being a deputy.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘I don’t kid. You’re far better as a leader. You led the Flotilla for decades. Now someone needs to lead the last of our people.’
‘And what are we going to do?’ I ask.
The waitress has left her place by the window. She’s gathering up the cups and plates, making it clear it’s time for us to be making tracks.
‘Shortly before the attack on HQ, Enid got a message from her contact inside the Federated States. Harveen, Janek’s second in command, has been placed under house arrest. I believe she’ll help us if we can get to her.’
‘Help us how?’ I say.
General Lall gives a tiny shrug.
‘She hasn’t even formulated that part of the plan yet,’ Enid says with an edge of derision.
‘We will deal with the details when we need to,’ General Lall says. ‘Perhaps Patrick could treat that wound before we leave.’
He pushes me towards a bar stool at the counter, the red plastic cover creaking as I sit. His eyes stay fixed on the wound while he unties the tourniquet.
I shrug out of my coat. When he pulls the last layer of clothes off my arm, it hurts so much it makes me suck air through my teeth.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s still bleeding. Put pressure on it.’
He bends down to where his med bag is on the floor and rummages through until he finds a field scanner. It’s cold when he presses it against my skin. I focus on the physical pain and keep away from the memory of Nik struggling against that bot.
‘You took a bullet for Nik Lall,’ Pat says.
The field scanner beeps. From this angle, I can’t see the rectangular screen, or what diagnosis it’s giving.
‘I’d take a bullet for you too.’
Pat’s eyes flash up to mine. The field scanner beeps again, and he looks down to see what it shows. ‘Despite the fact that you’re thinner than the coffee they serve here, that bullet went into and out of the flab of your arm without hitting anything important.’
‘Feels like it pulverized the bone,’ I say.
‘It will feel like that for a few days. But it’ll be healed in no time. The dressing will knit it back together. Doesn’t even need a suture bot.’
‘You sure? Because it feels like a pretty serious injury. And you know you’re not a real doctor.’
He smiles thinly and sits back on a bar stool. ‘Oh, now you’re bringing up credentials, are you? Because I’m not the only person who didn’t graduate. So who’s technically not a real doctor?’
He opens the packet of a wound dressing with his teeth and spits out the fragment of plastic, then presses the dressing over the bullet hole, flattening the edges to seal them. Instantly, the anaesthetic in the dressing kicks in and the pain dulls.
I press the edges down. ‘I’m serious.’
‘You’d take a bullet for me?’
‘In a heartbeat.’ My voice hitches in my throat.
‘And you’d die for him too?’
‘Yes.’
He looks down at his hands, and I can tell his heart is just as broken as mine. ‘Pretty confusing situation for you to be in then.’ He throws the crumpled bandage wrapper on the floor, gets up from the bar stool and brushes past me.
‘Pat, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you … If Nik had never come back –’
‘Dammit. You’re making it worse. I don’t want to hear that you’d have settled for me,’ he says over his shoulder.
‘No, I didn’t mean that –’
‘We should leave now,’ General Lall calls to me.
I watch Pat walk to the other end of the long diner. He pushes through a door marked KITCHEN without looking back. The door swings shut behind him.
I feel like I’ll never see him again.
‘What if she won’t help us?’ I say to General Lall.
‘Then we will have failed, and Nik will die.’