CHAPTER 2

“Dammit,” Finn growled. “I told them the generator wasn’t your fault!”

Though she doubted pursuit, Pity locked the door of the workshop after her. All concrete floor and corrugated metal, it was little more than an old shed wedged into the back corner of the garages, just large enough for a tool bench and the Ranger. She wiped at her eyes. “It’s not…”

“Hey, stop!” Finn grabbed a clean rag and doused it with alcohol. “You’re smearing the blood around. Let me.”

Pity winced at the sting of disinfectant.

“Well, you don’t need stitches,” her friend said at last. “But you’re gonna have a helluva bruise. What happened this time? You forget to fold Billy’s underpants?”

Pity drew a breath. Simply thinking the words made her tongue go stiff. “I’m… being sent to another commune.”

“What? Where?”

“A mining settlement that needs fertile women. He and Lester schemed it up.”

Finn stared in disbelief. “That… that…” She grabbed a wrench and pitched it across the shed. It clanged against the wall, leaving a dent. “When?”

“When he gets back from the next transport.” Pity slid into the Ranger’s passenger side. The patchwork seat embraced her, as it had a thousand times before. Still fuming, Finn climbed in opposite. She fished out a flask from beneath her seat and offered it.

Pity reached, then hesitated.

“A little. For the pain,” said Finn.

She winced at the potent, evocative scent that escaped as she unscrewed the top. It was good for pain, all right—Pity’s mother had applied it liberally and regularly. But it wasn’t drink that had faded her to the shade of the person she should have been. It was misery—the despair of a wolf trapped in a tiny cage when it should have been free. That and the man who had been as much a jailer as a husband, who never touched a drop of alcohol and was a monster anyhow.

Pity took a sip and grimaced. The home-still went down like liquid flame.

“What did you say to get that, anyway?” Finn crossed her arms. “A smart man should know better than to mess with the face he’s trying to sell.”

“Who said he was smart?” There were many words she might have used to describe her father—cunning, obstinate, righteous—but not smart. “I called him a heartless, godforsaken son of a bitch.”

Finn let out a snort of laughter.

“It’s not funny! He said things about my mother…” Fresh anger crested, white-hot. “He called her an insurgent and a drunk.”

“Aw, Pity—”

“And Lord knows it’s true—she was! But he always… he always has to…”

Finn scowled. “And how many others in the commune were on the losing side of the war? Plenty. Your mother was a good woman, Pity. She could have made a run for the dissident camps out west—they’d never have caught her—but she didn’t. She made a deal and she kept it.”

“I know,” said Pity. Because of Henry and Billy.

And me.

The guilt tinged every memory of her mother. But it had served as a catalyst, too, stoking her resolve to avoid a similar fate.

Six months.

A few hours ago the thought had been a promising breeze, a hint of spring after a long winter. The Ranger would be complete, she and Finn would have enough currency and supplies squirreled away to keep them comfortable for a while. No one telling them what they could and could not do with their lives, and the entirety of the east open for them to explore. They could visit the cities, see the ocean—anything they wanted.

Now that dream was gone, set behind an unreachable horizon. Six months on an unfamiliar commune with no friends or allies—Pity had little doubt of her father’s and the stranger’s intentions. Whatever situation she ended up forced into, there would be only one way to escape it entirely.

She stared down at the flask.

On the day her mother died, the clouds had been a black line rushing toward the commune, the afternoon going from sweltering hot to shivering cold in the space of minutes. Rain pummeled the ground like bullets; lightning split the oldest tree in the orchards. After it passed, they found her mother beneath the wall, lying at the base of the ladder from which she had fallen, blank eyes staring at the clearing skies. They blamed the fury of the storm, of course, but even the torrent of rain hadn’t washed the scent of home-still from her lips. What no one had said out loud was that it was a small miracle she hadn’t fallen long before.

“I don’t care,” said Pity. On the opposite wall of the workshop, a faded CONA poster depicted happy, smiling families before the soaring skyline of Columbia, CONA’s capital city. Nothing like the family her mother had bartered her life for. Nothing like what awaited Pity. “I don’t care what’s been arranged, I’m not going.”

“Of course you’re not.” Finn’s mouth was a hard line, her face shadowed by the canvas tarp that served as the Ranger’s roof. “We planned to run, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“How? We’ve got nothing ready. The Ranger isn’t even done.”

“Oh?” Finn reached for the steering column and pressed the ignition switch. The vehicle rumbled to life.

Pity straightened. “Did you—”

“Yup. Purrs like a barn cat, right?”

“But we don’t have supplies yet, and my father—”

“Will be gone for a couple days.” Finn ran a hand over the steering wheel. “I have enough currency to get us on the Trans-Rail, so long as we don’t mind riding freight. After that, well, we’ll figure it out.”

Pity shook her head. “No. This isn’t fair. You don’t need to do this. You’ve got some promise of a future here.”

Finn scoffed. “Like what? Fixing engines and swapping solar cells until the day I die? I want to do more, see more—Columbia, Savannah, New Boston. Like we always talked about. Might be sooner than we expected, but you’re not leaving me behind. If you go, I go.”

Pity searched for an argument, some reason to spare Finn from troubles not her own. But a crack had already formed in her doubt, letting a trickle of hope leak in.

And, fueled by that hope, came the beginning of a plan.

Pity took a deep breath. “It’s now or never, isn’t it?”

“Yup,” Finn said. “We’ve got our reason, and we’ve got our ride. So where are we going?”

Tears filled Pity’s eyes again. She blinked them back.

“Anywhere but here.”

Morning dew still clung to the grass as Pity gingerly climbed the back steps. At the door she paused, senses straining for the sound of her father’s voice, his footsteps, his presence. When it opened suddenly, she jumped, but it was only Henry.

“You can come on in. Daddy’s gone.” He clutched a mug of coffee. “And pissed, with dirty gear to boot. I suspect you got one last good thumping when he gets back.”

“You gonna pretend you care?” Pity pushed past him into the kitchen. From the table, Billy gave her an oatmeal-specked grin. “You swallow whatever you’re about to say, Billy Scupps. I ain’t in the mood!”

The smile faded. Pity stared him down as he struggled for a retort—Billy had never been particularly quick—but in the end he scowled and went back to his breakfast.

“Where have you been?” said Henry, as if he didn’t know the answer.

“Finn’s.”

“She must be heartbroken.” Billy shoveled another spoonful into his mouth. “Did she cry when you told her?”

Pity was halfway to the table before she stopped herself. Upending the bowl onto Billy’s head would mean he’d have to wash. Get rid of them, she thought, just get rid of them.

“You know what your problem is?” Henry came up behind her, so close that icy wariness rippled over her skin. “You got too much fight in you. Think you’d know better by now.” He went over to Billy and slapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

Billy sneered at Pity as he and Henry grabbed their rifles and disappeared out the door.

The instant they were gone, a keen impatience shivered through her. It was sheer will that forced her to sit at the table and wait a few minutes in case they came back. On the wall, a small display screen—one of the few luxuries her father allowed—quietly broadcast the daily news update. Pity stared at the front door, paying only passing attention to the coverage: a new trade pact signed with the African Unification, the narrowing field of the upcoming presidential election. Above the display screen, the hands of the clock crept forward at an agonizing pace.

At last, she couldn’t wait any longer.

Their plan was simple: head for the Trans-Rail, keeping away from the main roads, and pick it up a few stops past where anyone might be looking for them. Her footsteps echoed hollowly as she went upstairs, dug out her mother’s old pack, and filled it with clothes, her meager stash of currency, and her good knife. Downstairs, she packed a week’s worth of food and water purification tablets.

After that, there was only one task left, one thing she couldn’t leave behind.

Well, two.

Her heartbeat turned from a dull throb to a pounding drum as she fingered the cutting tool in her pocket.

It’s now or never.

She went back upstairs. This time she entered her father’s room, pushing the door open with the tips of her fingers. It creaked like a coffin lid. A long chest sat tucked between the bed and the wall. She wrapped her hand around its steel padlock, hesitating.

After this, there was no turning back. Even if she chickened out and managed to replace the lock, she knew her father would somehow realize what she’d done.

She flicked a switch, and the cutting tool flared to life. A moment later, the lock banged to the floor. On the top shelf of the chest was one of her father’s spare rifles, which she placed on the floorboards beside her. They would need it, but it wasn’t what she was after. She continued searching until she found the box, buried at the very bottom.

Hands trembling, she placed it on her lap.

Inside, on a bed of red velvet, lay two shining revolvers. Modeled after guns from a time long gone, their chased metal barrels gleamed, contrasting with the black ebony grips inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl. Only six shots each but deadly accurate.

A lump formed in her throat. The last time she saw these weapons her mother had still been alive. When she picked one up, it was as familiar as pulling on a pair of old boots. The guns had been a gift to her mother from the remnants of the United Patriot Front, who had fielded the fiercest guerrilla fighters in living memory but lost the war anyway. They were also the only things her mother had brought with her to the 87th, save the clothes on her back.

And Pity had no intention of leaving them behind.

She pulled out an old gun belt and wrapped them in it before grabbing the rifle and as much ammo as she could carry. Then she bundled the whole lot in a blanket, not bothering to close the gun chest. She wanted her father to have no doubts about what had happened when he arrived home. The bedroom door she made sure to shut, though; letting her brothers make the discovery would be a waste of a good surprise.

At the back door, she took one last glance around the kitchen, trying to muster a happy memory, one good thought to attach to the house she’d spent her entire life in. The specter of her mother surfaced, bringing a holiday dinner to the table. She smiled down at Pity, eyes bigger and browner in memory than in real life as she placed a bowl of mashed potatoes in front of her daughter. Pity had reached for them. Years later, she could still feel the grind of bones in her wrist as her father grabbed it.

“You will wait for grace,” he had said.

Pity picked up her pack and strode out the door.

“Aw c’mon, Rawley.” Finn flashed the smile she saved for when she was getting what she wanted, come hell or high water. “We’re not going far. Just a little ride and a picnic to celebrate her maiden voyage.”

Rawley stuck a finger under his hat and scratched. “I don’t know. Lester say it was all right?”

Finn tapped the steering wheel pointedly. “I’ve been working on the Ranger for years. Do you think I was gonna let him tell me no? He even gave me the outer gate code so I could try her out on the plains.”

Pity marveled at the ease with which Finn spun her lies. It was Hale who had provided the code. A calculated risk, but Hale, bless him, had taken one look at her face and given it over. No questions, no comments. She said a silent thanks to him as she kept her gaze straight ahead, certain her expression would give them away. Her heart felt ready to beat right out of her chest.

After an elongated moment of thought, Rawley reached for his radio. “I better check in with—”

“Wait!” cried Pity.

He paused and gave her a quizzical look.

She faltered, mouth still open. Say something! She sat straighter in the passenger seat, letting the fear within rise to her face. “Lester gave Finn permission… but not me. And if he finds out I went with her, then…” She turned her head so the swollen, purple bruise on her cheek was more visible.

Finn caught on. “It’s just a little fun, Rawley. Everyone is allowed that, huh?”

Rawley wrestled with the problem. Her father’s temper was no secret, Pity knew, but gambling on sympathy wasn’t a tactic she liked having to employ. Shame joined her apprehension.

“Fine,” Rawley yielded. “But be back before quittin’ time.” He went over and opened the front gate.

“Of course!” Finn winked at him, then hit the accelerator.

Relief melted Pity back against her seat as fallow brown fields enveloped them. An overnight rain shower had dealt with the worst of the dust, but even so, when Finn turned and drove them off the main road, an earthy cloud followed in their wake. Finn maneuvered a bit, winding over the bumpy, weedy ground, but kept them moving steadily toward the outer fence. If anyone was watching, by all appearances it would look like they were joyriding. And, Pity supposed, Finn actually was. Her expression was pure delight.

Pity, on the other hand, could only focus on watching for commune vehicles. Oily fear filled her stomach, growing stronger as scenarios played out in her thoughts: Rawley could decide to radio Lester after all, or they could cross paths with a crew of field hands. And there were the wall-walkers, too; at any point, they could pass by on their rounds.

Beneath Pity’s coat, the comforting weight of her mother’s guns pressed against her hips like a vow.

I’m not going to die here, too. I’m not.

Finally, Finn returned to the road and Pity spotted the gate, the last barrier between them and the unsettled wilds of the CONA territories. Finn slowed to a stop and jumped out. Pity leaned out the open window of the Ranger, blood pounding in her ears as she took one more look around. In both directions along the fence, she saw no one. With a hiss of hydraulics, the gate began to slide open.

“Sit down,” said Finn, returning. “It’ll close after us.”

For a moment, Pity couldn’t move. Her limbs might as well have been concrete.

No one was watching them.

No alarms had gone off.

No one was going to stop them.

“Pity!”

She slid back into the Ranger. The wind that hit her face as they barreled through the gate was cool and fresh. Cooler and fresher than the air they had just left. At last, she smiled. Then she smiled wider and stuck her head out of the Ranger. “Whooooooooo!” she bellowed.

Finn laughed and added her voice to Pity’s. They howled like wolves as the Ranger picked up speed, tires rolling over the pavement with an invigorating reverberation.

“Good-bye, 87th!” yelled Finn.

Pity twisted in her seat and looked back, unable to hold her elation in. “Good-bye, 87th!” she repeated, screaming at the top of her lungs. “And good riddance!”