Twelve was an unlucky number. Ji-ji counted again. Twelve, including her. The nine they’d rescued and the three rescuers. The logical part of her suspected she was suffering from shock, which would explain why she’d stopped running less than a mile away from the pickers and leapt into a swollen creek, rolling over and over to cleanse herself. Stupid to get her clothes wet like that on one of the chilliest nights of the spring. Stupid to delay when pickers could be on her tail. She didn’t care that the stones in the creek bruised her body. She had to rinse off his sweat, his blood, and the stench of charred meat. Rudy’s look of surprise lodged in her brain like shrapnel. Not easy to kill up close like that. You had to concentrate, not let yourself be distracted. Not easy to dislodge the face that saw you push the bottle harder into his stubble-neck. For an instant, Rudy had looked like a scared little boy.…
At the moment when her feelers had stroked Rudy’s mouth and sent him into paroxysms of fear, something had awoken inside her. She’d felt what Lotter must feel, what the Lord-Secretary’s face told her he felt when he’d stood in the doorway of Storeroom 2—absolute power over someone else’s life, the most addictive high in the world.
Eleven runners had looked to the twelfth, begged the serial killer to save them. She’d told them to keep running. They hadn’t listened. Tulip and Sara-May had waited a couple of miles from the rest station for her to catch up. Stupid. They could’ve been killed. She’d arrived soaking wet and shivering. Tulip hugged her. Seemed to understand why she’d had to wash. They ran some more, helping Sara-May, whose knee could be badly bruised or twisted or fractured or broken or shattered. They came upon Afarra and the others waiting only three miles farther on. All of them waiting for Ji-ji to tell them what the hell they needed to do next.
How dare they expect more from her. Hadn’t she already given them everything she had?
Twelve. She counted them again, included herself as they looked at her expectantly. With three injureds and nine to help them the odds looked lousy. “They coming after us?” a runner asked, the cue for Sara-May to explain how Ji-ji and Tulip had killed the picker. “It was mostly Ji-ji,” Tulip confessed. “She was the one did him in. Plunged that bottle into the bastard’s neck an’ hung on for dear life.”
Eleven pairs of eyes waited for her to lead them to the Promised Land. Pastor Gillyman would put it like that, but then he was an Uncle Tom, a parrot. And what was she? Ji-ji Moses? Jellybean Un-Pyred? Killer Lottermule? She counted again. Including herself, still twelve. But the number was taken, so how could it be their number? Twelve father-men on each planting if you didn’t count the cropmaster, twelve of everything—homesteads, Cropmaster Picks, chief overseers, full-time kitchen-seeds. (Yes, she’d had her disciples too.) Twelve dents in the floor of her room in her mam’s cabin, each one marking a leg of her lost siblings’ beds. Each night and each morning she’d counted them. A ritual she’d imposed upon herself. Lotter’s followers called him the Twelfth. He’d sat next to Fightgood Worthy at the Last Supper of the Spring. She’d cooked them food that helped to grow the Territories one seed at a time.
“How we gonna run with the injureds?” someone asked.
“Who are you?” Ji-ji demanded.
“Sookie. From the 700s. We gonna take ’em with us?”
The three injureds pleaded with Ji-ji for mercy as if she had the power to grant it to them. She nearly laughed. She wanted to laugh so badly her stomach hurt. “Don’t leave us here! Please don’t leave us!” No she wouldn’t leave them. Did she say this or think it? Must’ve said it, cos Sookie was sulking and they were all running, hopping, and limping through The Margins. Someone had set up a rotation so they could take turns helping the injureds. Was that her? No. Tulip did it, with Afarra. I’m in shock, Ji-ji said to herself. Not thinking straight. “You can make yourself or let others make you.” Who said that? The Tree Witch.
And there was the Tree Witch’s hand reaching out to her. Fall-leaf brown, sympathetic. No. Not the Gardener of Tears—Afarra. “I got you, Elly. You did good back there. I got your hand.”
Twelve could be a lucky number. They’d made their own luck back at the rest station. She’d thrown away the key, wiped her hands on her shorts, cleansed herself. The pickers hadn’t followed them, hadn’t yet realized their prisoners had escaped. She was thinking more clearly now. If they discovered the raid before morning, the pickers might not be willing to hunt them on foot. Tulip kept checking to see if the gravel access road used by the trucks continued to parallel the race route. In the faint light provided by a watery moon, Tulip said it was impossible to know if the access road had ended. Next thing Ji-ji knew, Tulip said it had disappeared. The pickers couldn’t follow them in the trucks. See, what did I tell you? Ji-ji thought. The number twelve can be lucky.
SNAP! No more than a one-second delay, then Simply Brownseed, the smallest and youngest among them, shrieking the way Rudy would’ve shrieked if the bottom of a whiskey bottle hadn’t been lodged in his gullet.
The runners tore over to the screaming. In the thick undergrowth, they couldn’t see at first what had happened. It hit them all at once. Simply had stepped on an ant trap! The savage metal jaws had all but severed her little foot! The victim’s screams and sobs echoed through The Margins. “Don’t scream, Simply!” the other runners pleaded. “Pickers’ll hear! Or ants!”
When Ji-ji saw what the trap had done she knew those pleas were ridiculous. It took four of them—Ji-ji, Tulip, Sookie, and a runner called Hopeful—to pry open the trap. Meant to cripple a much larger creature, it left Simply with a crushed foot that no longer looked like a foot. Ji-ji used the bandages for her sproutings to bind Simply’s wounds as best she could.
Ji-ji gave two painkillers to Simply, who weighed about eighty pounds. Less than a minute later, she passed out. The superstrong killers might have killed her. Another murder to confess.
The undergrowth became too dense to traverse. Forced to return to the path, the runners took turns carrying Simply between them. Though she weighed very little, they could only manage an arduous jog when they carried her. The three other injureds—Helen, Sara-May, and Honeybun—limped along with help from others.
Afarra spotted him first: a tall male speeding toward them. It was too late to hide.
The runner carried something. Ji-ji peered through the dark. It wasn’t something on his shoulder, it was someone.
“Tiro!” Ji-ji cried. He must’ve sensed how much trouble they were in and come to the rescue. But why would he be carrying someone else? It wasn’t Tiro.… It wasn’t a male either.
“Big Pike!” Hopeful yelled. “She’s come back to help us!”
The tall, powerful runner, who’d led after the first leg, raced to their rescue.
Some of the runners took off to greet her only to careen back a moment later when Pike screamed out a bone-chilling warning: “Snarlcats! RUN!”
“Find a tree an’ climb!” Ji-ji shouted.
The runners abandoned the race path and tore into the wilderness. A frantic search led them to climbable trees. They clawed their way up them; even the injured runners managed it. All except Simply. Afarra, Tulip, and Hopeful hoisted her up into a bough and laid her in Ji-ji’s lap.
“You sure we’re safe up here?” Tulip asked.
“Yeah. I’m sure,” Ji-ji lied.
Lotter used to tell her you could escape a snarlcat that way. Claimed they didn’t climb trees unless there was a threat below. She’d been a seedling back then. He could easily have been lying to make her less afraid on the hunt. She’d soon find out.
Pike, perched up in a neighboring tree, discovered that the mauled runner she’d been carrying was dead. She climbed back down with the corpse and sat at the foot of the tree where Ji-ji and the others hid. She rocked the girl’s limp body for a while. They urged her to climb up and join them. She wouldn’t—said there was something she needed to do.
Pike called up softly, “Hey, Wild Seed!” She means me, Killer Lottermule, Ji-ji thought, struggling to hang on to Simply, who lay unconscious in her arms. “I’m taking Penny’s body and leaving it for the cats,” Pike said. “It’ll keep ’em busy for a while. Forgive me, Pen.”
Big Pike took off. The runners groaned when they saw her go. She was older, taller, and stronger than any of them, and she’d earned their respect repeatedly during the first leg. Pike had come in first, Tulip said, but she’d never crowed about it. During the first leg, she’d sprinted off several times to get water for the other runners and returned with full canteens.
Pike’s exit jogged Ji-ji back into the present—sort of. She told the others Pike had promised to come back—not exactly true but an encouraging thing to say at that moment. The girls tried not to imagine what their fellow runners had just endured. Too horrifying to contemplate.
Once again, Tulip reassured the others. “We got ourselves a ant talker in Afarra here,” Tulip said, tremulously. “If they come, she can sing ’em lullabies an’ such. Ji-ji’s seen her do it. Right, Ji-ji?”
Ji-ji lied again. She was getting good at it. “Seen it with my own eyes. Snarlcats turned into pussycats, an’ stripers into puppy dogs.”
Sookie didn’t buy it. “You’re lying,” she said. “Delilah said you were a liar. A parrot too.”
Tulip happened to be sitting next to Sookie on one of the tree’s higher limbs. She leaned over and smacked her hard on the mouth. “Ji-ji saved your sorry ass. Think we would’ve gone back for you if she hadn’t? Say she’s a parrot again an’ I swear I’ll push you off this damn tree!”
Every sound terrified them. Most hadn’t ventured off their plantings before, but they’d all heard stories about the big cats in The Margins. To fill the silence, Ji-ji told them she’d seen one. She said they usually didn’t attack unless provoked, and failed to mention that the snarlcat she’d seen had been tearing a hunter to pieces.
Lotter had shot the cat six times with an assault rifle before he’d dropped his prey and slumped to the ground. By then the hunter’s wounds were fatal. His great legs trussed up like a chicken, the ant had taken up most of the truck bed in Lotter’s full-size Chevy. Lotter had given the beast to Herring, who had mounted the head on the wall of his study in Cropmaster Hall. Ji-ji still couldn’t figure out why Lotter hadn’t kept it. A taxidermist had stuffed the snarlcat, though Ji-ji had only seen the result after Lotter became cropmaster, when she’d delivered lunch to his study and seen the snarlcat’s severed head affixed to the wall above the fireplace. The creature had been caught mid-roar. Its glass eyes looked real. Ji-ji had the strange sensation that the cat had been caught and held by the wall itself and that, if she walked round to the sitting room on the other side of the study, she’d see his back end sticking out from the wall.
Fifteen minutes later, Big Pike reappeared. The ecstatic runners implored her never to abandon them again. Pike didn’t say one way or another whether she planned to hold herself to that. In silence, she climbed up into the tree where Ji-ji hid with Simply and settled back into the branches. Ji-ji could see how shaken she was, but the tall, dark-skinned woman didn’t give in to panic. After several minutes, she described what had happened.
At least five runners had been killed during the attack by a pride of four or five snarlcats, big as ponies. The five had fallen back behind the lead group and been picked off by the ants. The ones running in the lead group with Pike had taken off like bats out of hell when they heard the commotion behind them. Pike said she couldn’t help herself—had to run back: “Was like the screams lassoed me. You know what lassos are? We use ’em where I come from.… The ones attacked didn’t stand a chance. I snatched Penny from under the cats’ noses. She was flung a little ways off from the rest an’ still moving some. The cats was busy with … busy. So I slung Pen over my shoulder an’ ran like the devil. Came back this way cos I was scared runners behind us would be next in line for ambush. Had almost given up. You seeds were further back than I thought.”
Hopeful explained they’d been picked—told her how Ji-ji, Afarra, and Tulip had rescued them. Big Pike said getting picked saved their lives. “You were real lucky. Those cats would’ve attacked you if you’d been further on down the road.”
Tulip returned to her old refrain: “They promised there’d be guards along the route.”
“Since when do steaders keep their promises?” Pike replied. “Seems to me the Districters, some of ’em anyway, are in cahoots with the Territories. Sure looks like they don’t want us females to make it.”
The runners clung to the trees. Occasionally, they heard roars in the distance; mostly there was an eerie silence. “Sounds like they’re full,” Big Pike said.
“Oh god!” Hopeful moaned. “Cats is worse than pickers. We’re doomed.”
Pike disagreed, echoing something Man Cryday had said: “Pickers is much worse. Cats are clean, kill you quick.… We can try an’ make a run for it now. I’ll take the little one. Can’t weigh more’n a peanut. Stepped on a ant trap?”
“Yes,” Ji-ji said.
“Foot’s gonna detach then, guaranteed. Those picker-jaws don’t mess around. Let’s hope she don’t bleed to death. I’ll run on ahead with her. Cats may smell fresh blood an’ attack again.”
They coaxed the other terrified runners from the trees and returned to the race route.
Pike pulled Ji-ji aside. “Listen, Wild Seed. If they go for me an’ Simply, get the others to cover their ears an’ run like hell.”
“I’m not their leader,” Ji-ji said.
“Looks like you are from where I’m standing.”
“I murdered a picker,” Ji-ji blurted out. “Had to.”
“Up close?” Ji-ji nodded. “Did the bastard deserve it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it won’t be the worst thing you ever do. Trust me.”
With Pike leading the way, the group stumbled along for a few more miles. Thirteen runners now, but if Simply died, twelve again. Pike loped ahead with Simply on her shoulder and returned to let them know the coast was clear. The group’s pace was dangerously slow. By the time they passed the site where the attack had occurred, the victims had been dragged from the road and into the wilderness. Trails of blood and gore were the only things left.
The injureds kept pleading with the others not to leave them behind. Ji-ji promised they wouldn’t. After hours of slow progress and a night without sleep, exhaustion took its toll, forcing the runners to take a nap. The pickers had stolen the runners’ backpacks, so the others shared their supplies. They’d come upon another creek and drank from that, but with only a few canteens to fill, they’d need more water soon.
Not surprisingly, their brief naps afforded them little rest. Sara-May woke up and began to scream, convinced she was still being raped by pickers. At one point, they heard the roars of snarlcats way off in the distance and panicked. Tulip calmed them again by revealing details of how Afarra had tamed a pride of snarlcats.
“It’s like hynotics,” Tulip said. “Puts cats to sleep in less than five seconds. I seen it.”
Pike, who wasn’t fooled for a moment, said, “Is that so?”
Sookie put it more bluntly: “You’re lying through your buck teeth, Tulip,” which struck Ji-ji as odd cos Tulip didn’t have buck teeth but Sookie did. In spite of Sookie’s derision, Sara-May inched closer to Afarra, and later, one or two other runners moved in closer too.
Ji-ji didn’t sleep even though she trusted Pike to keep watch. They’d hit a wall. As the red light of dawn bled onto the horizon, Ji-ji pulled up her knees, rested her head on them, and wished for the kind of strength she’d possessed just before she’d boarded the Liberty Train.
Afarra scooted up beside her. “It is right to do it,” she whispered.
“You know what I’m planning?” Ji-ji asked, even though she knew the answer.
“You are planning a split, yes?”
“Yeah. The injureds will be devastated. I promised we’d stay together.”
“We stay together an’ no one is Free. To leave behind Sara-May and the injureds is very sorrowful, so I will stay with them and magic-talk the ants. You ask the monitors to be rescuing us soon. And if not, you petition me when you reach the city, yes?”
“Oh, Afarra, of course we’ll come back an’ find you! But I’m hoping there’s another way.”
Ji-ji conferred with Big Pike and Tulip, who confirmed her worst fears. The injureds couldn’t make it without more help.
Ji-ji woke the runners and endeavored to sound more confident than she felt. “I figure we’re only about fourteen or so miles from the start of the Dream Corridor segment. The deadline for runner arrival is late afternoon, depending on how the Freedom Race Council averages the start time an’ calculates … never mind. That’s not important. The main thing is, we gotta get to the city gates as quick as we can. Me, Tulip an’ Pike are the fastest runners. The three of us will sprint to the corridor an’ persuade the flyers to come back an’ help carry the injured ones. Tulip an’ Pike’ll keep going to the city an’ I’ll guide the flyers back here. Most of the fly-boys are real strong. They get lots of time to make it to the gates, which means they got time to spare. They’ll do this if I ask … I promise.”
Helen, a Muleseed from a progressive planting in the 400s, wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed: “You promised you wouldn’t leave us behind! I can walk pretty good with help. Those fancy flyers won’t come back for a few runners in a million years! You’re leaving us to die!”
“I know at least two, maybe three flyers who’ll for sure come back,” Ji-ji said, counting on Tiro and Marcus, and hoping Laughing Tree would be the third, his grief over Ink’s injury evidence of his compassionate nature. “I can help carry Simply. She’s real small. So that’s four, pretty much.”
“Won’t be enough,” Helen said. She nursed what seemed to be a sprained knee and ankle. Ji-ji had used Rudy the Picker’s knife to cut Helen’s swollen foot out of her shoe. “You gotta leave one of us behind. Me an’ Honeybun are the heaviest, an’ I beat her by a mile.” Helen broke down. “Don’t leave us out here alone! Not with them mutants on the prowl!”
Big Pike stood up. At six-six, she towered above the rest of them. “I can carry Simply on my shoulder and run the rescue sprint easy. She weighs no more’n a mothball, an’ she needs a medic to take a look at that dangle foot sooner rather than later. Then there’s only three needs carrying.”
“You sure?” Ji-ji asked.
“I’m sure,” Pike replied.
Tulip had reservations. “No way you can make it back here an’ then reach the city in time on the way back, Ji-ji. Let the flyers come back on their own. You done enough rescuing.”
“Won’t work,” Ji-ji said. “The injureds need to remain hidden. The flyers’ll run right past their hiding place if I’m not here to guide ’em. I’m real fast. I can still make it in time.”
Sookie demanded to know what would happen to the able-bodied. “I’m not injured,” Sookie said. “How come I’m not running with the rescue sprinters?”
“Those without injuries can run too,” Ji-ji said. “You can run with us, if you can keep up.”
Sara-May burst into tears: “You’re l-leaving us here a-all a-alone,” she sobbed.
“Afarra has offered to stay with you,” Ji-ji told them.
“For real?” Sara-May asked. Afarra nodded. Sara-May flung her arms around her.
“What’s the Cloth gonna do?” Sookie sneered. “Sing the ants a lullaby?”
Tulip was livid: “So I guess you’re volunteering to stay here an’ protect ’em instead? No, didn’t think so. You been griping ever since the rest station. You owe ’em a debt of gratitude.”
“I don’t owe nothing to no Cloth,” Sookie grumbled. “Could be all this is their fault. Could be the Cloth an’ the Hunchback brought a hex down on us.”
Tulip broke in: “Let’s leave the whiny bitch here for the ants’ dessert!”
“There’s no time for this,” Ji-ji said. “I’ll never get there an’ back in time if we don’t leave now.” She took out the knife she’d stolen from Rudy’s corpse. “Afarra, I’m leaving this knife with you. Here’s the rest of my food an’ water. There’ll be water along the way so I don’t need the canteen.” Tulip and Pike left Afarra their supplies too.
Ji-ji looked around. “It’s pretty hidden down here off the road. You can’t be seen, an’ there’s a cluster of climbing trees way back there. See ’em?”
A shy runner named Poppet raised her hand. Ji-ji told her she didn’t need to do that but she kept it raised anyway. “Can the uninjureds head off now?” she asked.
“Don’t need the witch’s permission,” Sookie said. “Who made her overseer? Not me. These injureds’re slowing us down. See some of you in the city.”
Sookie took off for the race path and didn’t look back. Poppet, Hopeful, and a runner named Mabel followed.
Nymee, a shy, uninjured runner from the 600s, stood up. She surprised all of them by offering to remain behind with Afarra and the injureds. “Don’t think I got the strength to make the rest of the run. Don’t wanna fall back an’ wind up alone. Pickers picked me first cos I was in the rear. Been throwing up ever since. If there’s a flyer to spare, maybe he can carry me partway?”
“Thanks, Nymee,” Ji-ji said, grateful that Afarra wouldn’t have to look after the others alone.
Big Pike bent down, picked up Simply as if she were a seedling, and eased her onto her shoulders as gently as she could. Simply moaned in pain before plunging into unconsciousness again.
“Those pills should last all the way to the gates,” Ji-ji said. “She’s real small. You think two pills was too many?”
“No,” Big Pike assured her. “A shoulder ride’s rough at the best of times. Better if she’s out cold. Not sure she could stand it otherwise.”
Ji-ji grabbed hold of Afarra and hugged her. She whispered in her ear, “You’re in charge now. Look after the others, little sister. I’ll be back with help. I promise.”
Ji-ji tore herself away and only looked back three times to wave.
Soon she was tearing along the path, Pike and Simply on one side, Tulip on the other. In no time, they overtook Sookie, Mabel, and Poppet.
“Hey!” Tulip called out. “You always run that slow, Sookie, or you doing it to make us feel good?” Sookie, who was already lagging behind Mabel and Poppet, gave her the finger.
Big Pike’s stamina was astonishing. She ran as if she carried nothing at all—the great loping strides of a practiced runner. She told them she was from a planting close to the Territories’ western border. “It’s desert out there. Hot as the devil most of the time. You train in that an’ you can run anywhere. My fathermate was decent. Didn’t beat his seedmates, didn’t plow us without our say-so. Made the mistake of trying to sneak us off the planting. Got accused of Unnatural Affiliation an’ was shipped to some labor camp in the Delta. Name’s Charlie Fortinum. Bald as a coot an’ ugly as a weasel. Will be tracking him down after I get my papers.”
Tulip understood. “Guess you got a lot o’ pent-up vengeance to go after him like that.”
“Not tracking down Charlie to kill him,” Pike replied. “Tracking him down to save him.”
Tulip was so shocked she stopped running and had to race to catch up. When she made it back she demanded to know why Pike would do something as crazy as that.
Pike thought for a minute, said, “You’d be shocked how many fairskins hate the planting life much as we do. Some get caught up in it young, some are born into it. Traps ’em like it does us.”
“Long as I live I’ll never forgive ’em,” Tulip vowed.
“You got your road an’ I got mine. But I got a good ten years or more on you, Tulip, so here’s a word of advice. You keep nursing that crap steaders dole out an’ one day you’ll sniff under your armpits an’ discover you stink too. Trust me. I seen it time an’ again.”
Later on, out of the blue, Big Pike said, “If you’re a hunchback, I’m the Queen of Sheba.”
Ji-ji began to stutter out an explanation. Tulip didn’t help, launching into a bunch of ludicrous lies. Big Pike warned them it was impossible for them to pull the wool over her eyes.
“Guessed your secret soon as I saw you,” she said. “You got a couple extra arms under that cape, am I right?”
“Yeah,” Ji-ji said, exhaling for the first time in several seconds. “Extra arms.”
“How’d you guess?” Tulip asked.
“We get a lot of superfluous limbers on Planting 777,” Pike explained. “It’s the groundwater. Contaminated. Seen a dozen pigs with spare eyeballs an’ some with three tails. We had a four-legged Muleseed on our planting an’ at least two dozen other abnormals seedbirthed in the past few years. If anyone messes with you let me know. Never had a problem with freaks. Figure you’ve waded through a purple river on account of your deformity. Besides, you two an’ the Cloth went back for the others. Far as I’m concerned, that makes you worth protecting till I can set off after my Charlie. An’ now I’ll be picking up the pace. Try an’ keep up.”
There it was, Dream Corridor—the only multipurpose road leading into the city from that part of The Margins, the primary trade route between the Homestead Territories and the rest of the nation. The race path did a sweeping turn to the north to intersect with the Main Toll Road at the mouth of the corridor—a sixteen-mile passageway into D.C. and the source of the greatest joy and greatest anguish for thousands of refugees. As they stood there catching their breath, Ji-ji rifled through all the information she’d stored about this region.
Forty-foot, spike-topped, reinforced walls flanked the corridor. A ditch, like an empty moat, branched off from either side of the corridor’s entrance and stretched for miles into The Margins. The ditch made it impossible for refugees and Novans living on either side of the wall to gain entry into D.C. without venturing deep into the wilderness. Circumventing Devil’s Ditch was a treacherous enterprise; many seeds’ bodies were said to have “fallen through the cracks.”
Because there were no bridges and few access roads between Northern NoVA and Southern NoVA, and because warring gangs controlled the two areas, it was very difficult for Novans to cross from north to south. If the runners were turned away at the city gates, Ji-ji would have to make sure she and Afarra wound up on the same side of the corridor. At least then they could comfort each other and hope that Tiro would find and petition for them.
Beyond the tollbooths, the great steel-and-concrete corridor coursed like a river through the heart of NoVA. The Dream Corridor had many names—the Throat of the Gate, the One Road, even the Seed Canal—but its official name was the one Ji-ji loved as a seedling. When Uncle Dreg used to tell her stories about a corridor of dreams, she’d believed you only had to step onto it to be magically transported to a land where dreams came true, as if one of the most fiercely guarded roads in the trifurcated nation were a magic carpet. Even though she now knew the truth, her heart still swelled in her chest as she looked at it.
Inside the corridor of dreams ran a four-lane highway, two train lines (one heading into the city, one heading out), a two-lane dirt road for horse-drawn wagons and horses from the Territories (cars and trucks were in short supply), and two side-by-side walkways for pedestrians. Uncle Dreg used to say that entering the city from The Margins via D.C.’s southwestern gate was like time travel. At the end of Dream Corridor, the forty-foot gates to the City of Dreams opened, and you stepped into a brave new world. Until Zyla Clobershay explained to her why the phrase “brave new world” wasn’t as complimentary as it seemed, Ji-ji had been convinced that the corridor led to an earthly paradise—a notion that Uncle Dreg, for whatever reason, hadn’t disabused her of.
As they drew nearer, Ji-ji and the others saw that the Dream Corridor tollbooths at the entrance looked like small fortresses. No one traveling on foot, by car or truck, by train, or by wagon was granted access into the corridor without the right paperwork. Ji-ji was pretty certain most of the runners still had their papers. Some would have slipped them into their pockets while others would have stored them inside their belt pouches. An unlucky few would have put them in their backpacks, and all of the backpacks had been stolen by the pickers. It was unlikely runners who’d stored their paperwork in their packs would be allowed in. “One step at a time,” Ji-ji told herself.
“We made it!” Tulip cried, as they jogged toward the booths.
“Not yet,” Ji-ji warned. “Gotta be admitted first. The flyers’ll be on the other side.”
“Let’s hope our timing’s good,” Big Pike stated. “If not, it’s you an’ me an’ the injureds.”
“You mean … you’re offering to come back with me?” Ji-ji asked.
“Been mulling it over,” Pike said. “Can’t see how you’ll swing it if I don’t. Soon as I find a flyer willing to carry little Dangle Foot to the gate, I can pick up a coupla stretchers or something. The rules don’t let us use wheeled transportation, so carts are out. But maybe with stretchers we could find a way to manage. I know you planned on hoarding all the glory for yourself, SuperSeed One. But after the previous daredevil rescue, that’d be plain greedy.”
Pike had begun calling Ji-ji SuperSeed One and Tulip SuperSeed Two as they’d sprinted along the race route. Presumably, Afarra was SuperSeed Three. Ji-ji knew that if anyone deserved the title of SuperSeed it was Big Pike. She stuttered out her thanks.
Tulip said she wished she could head back with them but she just couldn’t.
Ji-ji patted her arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “You did great back there. I won’t forget it. Let’s get through this toll and find Tiro.”
A special tollbooth had been set up for the runners. Above it flew the runner flag with the lone runner on a winding path. The tollbooth officer was shockingly friendly for a fairskin official. He seemed genuinely concerned about Simply and called ahead to the city to have medics on standby. “No medics allowed in Dream Corridor to tend to seeds,” he said. “Sorry. Mayor’s orders. Here’s some water. Looks like you need it. She step on a ant trap?”
“Yes,” Ji-ji said.
“Thought so, poor little thing.”
Ji-ji asked if the flyers were there yet.
“Flyer vans dropped ’em off for the sprint a few minutes ago. Probably two or three miles down the corridor by now.”
They’d almost given up finding Simply’s papers when Tulip spotted them tucked inside her underwear. The guard looked as relieved as they did. He stamped their papers, wished them luck, and raised the toll gate. The runners stepped onto Dream Corridor together, but Ji-ji had no time to savor the moment. “I gotta find Tiro,” Ji-ji said.
“Go for it,” Pike told her. “If you’re alone when you run back, I’ll follow soon as I can.”
The wide, deserted pedestrian sidewalk headed into the city. Next to it, separated by a concrete median and a mesh fence, a more populated path took folks back to the tollbooths. A steady stream of people shuffled along on the tragic side of the mesh. A few pounded the mesh and called out to Ji-ji when they saw her running toward the city. “Stop, seed! Petition for my little angel!” a woman implored, holding her son up to the fence. “See this poor seedling!” begged another, holding her infant up for Ji-ji to see. “He’s gonna die in NoVA without medicine!” Others called out their stories: they’d been living paperless in the city for years, not doing harm to no one; they’d been nabbed for jaywalking and expelled. “You fancy racers’ll be next!” a man cried, spitting at her as she ran past. “No dusky’s safe in the City of Dreams!”
Ji-ji pushed herself to run faster. Her back propelled her forward, almost as if fuel in her sproutings was being injected into her legs so she could fly. A few spectators lined the corridor’s right shoulder, adjacent to the inbound walkway. Tiro had told her that Districters got passes to come out and cheer the racers on. She worried about her back and checked to make sure her backpack was securely tied over her cape. Her sproutings had retracted fully, thank god, so no one had noticed them so far. Nothing she could do about it if they did.
It wasn’t long before Ji-ji passed a flyer bringing up the rear. Soon afterward, she passed a cluster of eight or nine more, then another and another. She heard one spectator chant, “My oh my, that seed can fly!” Others joined in. A fairskin spectator with a beard stepped into the walkway and waved a large Freedom Race flag over her head. “Whoo-whee! Fly, girl!” he shouted, as if “fly” and “girl” weren’t one hyphenated word but two separate words. Lucky had called Afarra that—a girl. Please don’t let her die, she prayed. I can’t lose another friend. Uncle Dreg, if you’re listening, look after her.
At last she spied them up ahead: Tiro, running with Marcus and Laughing Tree. Yes!
She called out Tiro’s name. He heard, turned, saw her, and ran back. The spectators went nuts. “The Wild Seed’s running the wrong way!” they cried.
A small group of reporters and cameramen who’d been following the famous Wild Seed fly-boy were soon at his heels. A few of the reporters rode on pedal bikes; most were on foot. As fast as she could, Ji-ji explained to Tiro what had happened. Tiro shouted to Marcus and Laughing Tree to join them. They came running.
“How many are there?” Tiro asked her.
“Three injureds,” she said. “Nymee’s bad off too. May need to carry her as well. An’ Afarra’ll need help too. Think you can help us? You can still get back in time. You sure your ankle’s okay?”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry ’bout that. We’ll help ’em, right Marcus?”
“Sure,” Marcus replied. “You’re our sister-seeds. We look after our own.”
“Tree—you in?” Tiro asked.
“Yeah, I’m in,” Laughing Tree said. “I can carry two. No problem.”
“Not if you’ve gotta run for miles,” Marcus pointed out. “Ideally, we need four flyers. Maybe more, so we can take turns. Where are they exactly? Hey, Ji-ji. Is that blood? You hurt?”
“It’s not my blood. An’ they’re off-road. I need to show you where they are.”
“No way,” Tiro told her. “You can’t do that run again. You won’t make it back in time.”
“You won’t find ’em if I don’t. If we stop talking and start running I can make it.”
One reporter was live-broadcasting what was going on: “Looks like Wild Seed Dregulahmo and his fly-boy buddies are heading out into the ant-infested Margins to rescue a bunch of female runners attacked by vicious mutants!” The reporters wanted a quote from the “poor seed who begged for help.” “Are you grateful, hon?” one of them asked. “Yes,” Ji-ji replied. “Very grateful. But we gotta head back now.”
Tiro and Marcus found half a dozen more flyers willing to make the journey back down the race path. Now they had nine altogether—even more than they needed. Four security guards jogged up to the flyers. One of them said they’d been sent courtesy of the Dreamfleet to accompany the flyers on their quest to save the seeds. Ji-ji turned around to see a spokesperson for the fleet telling City News Live that this selflessness proved what flyer recruits were made of.
“We got to go, Tiro,” Ji-ji urged. “We got to go now!”
Laughing Tree saw how anxious she was and made a path for them through the reporters.
The flyers ran the wrong way down the pedestrian walkway. They passed the other flyers first, and then they saw Tulip running alongside Big Pike, who carried Simply in her arms. Laughing Tree called out to Pike by name, asked her if she needed help. “I got it under control, Tree,” Pike replied. “Yep,” Laughing Tree called back, “I can see you do.” Tulip cheered when she saw the armed escort. “You did it, Ji-ji!” she cried. “I knew you’d find a way!”
Ji-ji prayed there was nothing in the Freedom Race rule book about being disqualified if you were carried to the gate. She prayed that the injureds still had their papers and that Afarra’s ability to speak to mutants would not be put to the test. Talking to a stallion, to Drol, or even to a domesticated striper wasn’t the same as talking to wild snarlcats. Did Afarra realize that?
Being on the way to rescue them made Ji-ji even more nervous than she’d been before. She remembered Fester’s letter and suspected the Dreamfleet guards would turn their weapons on them; she wondered whether the reporter-cyclist with his recording device, who insisted on accompanying them on the “rescue mission,” was a traitor; she was afraid that when they got back all the tollbooths would be closed. She was afraid, period. Because she’d left little Afarra to fight off a pride of snarlcats. What had she been thinking? Hold on, Afarra! Hold on!
They came upon the other uninjured runners heading toward the city. All of them were overjoyed when they saw Ji-ji’s entourage—all except Sookie, who refused to look at them.
Ji-ji and Tiro ran side by side most of the time. “Let me know if you need a ride on my back, Ji,” Tiro said. “I’m fresh as a daisy.”
“Me too,” she replied. He thought she was joking till she picked up the pace.
“You think they’re still alive!” the reporter shouted. “Hey! You think they got eaten?”
None of the racers deigned to respond.
Ji-ji began calling Afarra’s name when they were still on the race path. She told herself they were too far away from the road to hear her. She left the path and tore through the wilderness till she reached the place where she’d left them. She scanned the area. The runners were gone! Her heart was splitting in two. She couldn’t breathe. Her sproutings hammered at her back.
“Afarra!” she cried, sinking to the ground. “Afarra!”
The fly-boys and the guards were calling too. “Afarra! Afarra!”
Ji-ji called again: “Afarra! Nymee! Sara-May! Honeybun! Helen! Anyone!”
Ji-ji couldn’t breathe. She’d left Afarra to fend for herself. Unforgivable.
Tiro pointed to a cluster of trees in the distance: “Look, Ji!”
Off in the distance a thin, dark figure was running toward them with her arms wide open, listing like a drunk. There was only one person Ji-ji knew who ran like that.
“I am saying you will come! We are okay! We are safe in the trees! We are not being eaten!”
Tiro swept Afarra up in his arms like a sister and swung her around and around as the flyers and guards ran to help the others climb down from the trees.
Ji-ji herself was useless. All she could do was repeat two words over and over again to something invisible and merciful: “Thank you … thank you … thank you.…”
At the tollbooths they were waved through, even though two of the injured didn’t have paperwork. “Thank the Dreamfleet,” the toll guard said. “Got instructions from Wing Commander Corcoran. All the runners are to be admitted into the corridor—papers or no papers.”
There was still a way to go, but they could make it in time if they kept up the pace. Marcus told her not to sweat it. “Districters fancy themselves Freedom lovers,” he said. “They just wish their Freedom could be seedless. Makes things awkward when they gotta keep spitting us out. This won’t cost them much. All they need to do is let in a handful of desperate seeds an’ they can rerun their compassion for months.”
The closer they got to the city, the more spectators lined the shoulder. News had spread of the fly-boy heroes who’d risked everything to head out into The Margins and rescue the hapless female runners. There were also cheers from beyond the wall. Marcus, who’d gotten chummy with a guard, said the District had turned on the giant screens that lined the top of the walls so Novans could watch the race. “We’re a phenomenon on both sides of the wall,” Marcus said, as he ran beside Ji-ji with Sara-May clinging to him. “Makes your heart go all warm an’ fuzzy, don’t it?”
“Yes,” said Sara-May, blissfully unaware of the flyer’s sarcasm.
Marcus stripped all the sarcasm from his voice and said, “You okay, Sara-May? I’m not jostling you too much, am I, sweetie?”
“No, Marcus,” she said. “You’re amazing.” Sara-May wrapped her arms around the flyer’s strong neck and held on tight.
Traffic stopped as the runners and flyers made their way down the last mile of Dream Corridor. A few steaders glared down at them from the halted wagons, but they dared not comment too much when they spotted their armed escort. When they arrived at the city gates, First Monitor Schultz stood with Inquisitor Pious, surrounded by reporters and cameras. The two welcomed the flyers and runners. There had never been a race like it before, they said. There were eighteen minutes to spare, Inquisitor Pious told them, but who’s counting? All the runners who made it to the gate that day would be granted admittance. “Told you so,” Marcus whispered.
A Dreamfleet spokesman advertised the final segment of the race. The flyer-battler match in the new Dream Coop had been rescheduled for tomorrow night so the flyer heroes could recover.
With great fanfare, the forty-foot reinforced steel gates to the city opened; the fly-boys carried the injured and exhausted runners through the gates. Ji-ji and Afarra followed. A reporter who wasn’t able to get to the fly-boys because of the swarm of fans around them settled for runners instead. He shoved a mic into Ji-ji’s and Afarra’s faces.
“Johnny Sanderspool, City News Live. We’re live. What are your names, seeds?”
“I’m not a seed, I’m a girl. And this is my friend and sister. Another girl.”
Cheers came from somewhere. Ji-ji didn’t know where, or if it was in response to what she’d said. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to find out how Simply and the others were doing. Tiro pried himself away from the gaggle of reporters begging for interviews. He hurried over to Ji-ji and Afarra. “They’re taking the injureds to City Hospital,” he said. “Nineteen runners made it altogether. Make that twenty,” he said, looking over their heads toward the gate.
Sloppy, in racer’s shorts and T-shirt but without the runner’s cape she’d craved, hobbled into Dream City. A reporter rushed up to her and seemed to be asking for her story. She shoved him aside. Just then, a man grabbed Sloppy roughly from behind. He had a little dog tucked under his arm.
At last Ji-ji understood how Sloppy had done it. She must’ve ridden with Chaff Man and the pickers. Had she been in league with them the whole time? Ji-ji, too exhausted to be outraged, watched as Sloppy and her executioner friend disappeared into the crowd.
Tiro was swept up by reporters again. There was a Dreamfleeter among them; his yellow wing insignia identified him as a scout. He patted Tiro on the shoulder like a proud uncle.
Afarra turned to Ji-ji and declared, “You are not staying in this City of Dreams.”
Ji-ji smiled. “I won’t ask how you know that. I’ll rest up, get my kith-n-kin petitions filed, get you settled, and then head to the Madlands to find Charra, assuming my back cooperates.”
“Okay,” Afarra said. A flyer had carried her on his back most of the way, so she wasn’t winded at all. “You are watching the battle tomorrow night?”
“No,” Ji-ji said. “It’s a foregone conclusion. An’ if it’s not, I don’t want to see him get hurt.”
A small military jet rose into the air, taking off from the airport in the city.
“I fly south too,” Afarra stated. Again, it was not a question. “On your back.”
Ji-ji laughed. “If only,” she said, as they followed the plane’s steep, awe-inspiring rise.
A woman embraced Ji-ji so fast she didn’t have a chance to see who it was. “Ji-ji!” the woman cried. Ji-ji could tell she’d felt her sproutings. She was about to make some excuse about superfluous limbs when she pulled back and saw the woman’s face.
“Welcome to the city! I’ve been waiting to say that for a long time! Come quickly.”
“Wait! Afarra comes too!”
“Of course!” the woman said. “Hurry.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not safe for you here.” The woman grasped Ji-ji’s hand and Ji-ji grabbed Afarra’s.
“Where are we going?” Ji-ji asked, as they threaded through the crowd.
“Home, of course.”
Ji-ji didn’t ask where that was. All she knew was that Zyla Clobershay had a tight hold of her hand. Her teacher and mentor had felt the weird sproutings under her cape and still had no intention of letting go. Maybe they’d arrived in the City of Dreams after all.