Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

Lori pulls me to her, sobbing, and we sink to the ground.

Mario and Lori help me upstairs.

Adrenaline spent now, I am like a rag doll.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Lori is on repeat.

“That SOB,” Mario fumes. “He set you up—that monster!”

“I don’t know,” I say. Someone had hit me in the jaw, I am realizing. It is sore.

We get to our room. The kids are all waiting at the door.

They see me and burst into tears.

“I’m sorry, Josie, I’m so sorry,” Aidan cries and hugs me. Heather and Freddy join in.

“Stop. Stop!” I growl. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t! Get OFF me!”

It is too much. Their embraces are too much. Fear grips me—I’ll suffocate—I will hurt the children.

I push them away.

“Don’t get attached to me. Understand? I don’t care about you and I don’t want you. Any of you!”

I don’t look at their stupid faces to see how they feel.

I am dead, don’t they see it? I am dead meat. I am bait. I am a rabbit, tossed to the wolves to keep them at bay.

I don’t want HELP. From a bunch of KIDS?

I pull away from all of them, even kind, loyal Mario and shut myself in the bathroom.

I run water in the tub.

Sometimes there is hot. Usually there is at least warm.

Tonight there is hot and that means steam. Hallelujah.

I take up our shard of soap. I am going to use some. I am going to use my share of lather tonight.

I realize I am shaking and I sit down on the toilet before I fall down.

“Hey!” and a rap at the door.

“Leave me alone,” I say.

I feel bile in my throat. I make myself slow my breathing.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, you’re too tough to need help. And none of us is allowed to talk to you or try to help you or even like you,” Mario quips. “But you need to see something.”

I open the door a crack.

“What?”

He slides me a quartered sheet of newsprint.

THE MONUMENT 14, reads the title. It is a letter to the editor.

They made it.

I am glad for the running water because I cry.

I feel joy for them and I miss them and I feel sorry, so deathly sorry for myself and I feel angry at myself for feeling so sorry for myself.

I am presumed dead. My name is set down from theirs. Separated. Of course it is.

I remember our times in the Greenway. All the funny things the kids would do. How Chloe was always pissing off the other kids and how small and precious the twins were. Max’s stories and Ulysses’s front-toothless grins. And I cry to be missing being locked in a superstore.

I hadn’t known how good I had it before we got locked in. And I hadn’t even known how good we had it when we were locked in.

Now my whole life before the clanking shut of the gates around the Virtues seems like a fairy tale.

I cry at Alex’s voice, laying out the story like a little salesman. Trying to get the editor of the paper to bite.

Alex would have known the letter was the best way to find their parents.

Since we have no TV, no radio, here at Mizzou, newspapers are like money. They are circulated, coveted, borrowed, and lent. It must be so in all the camps.

And have they found their parents by now? I cry for that, too.

Have they all met up with their parents and I am stuck at Mizzou?

Dead. Alex presumes I am dead.

I reach out of the tub and across the floor to my filthy jeans. I reach into the pocket and take out Niko’s note.

I read it one last time.

Then I tear it to confetti.

I put my hands into the water and open them up, letting the pieces float out into the water.

I am lost, Niko. I pull my head under the water. I am lost to you forever.

The bits of paper rise to the top. Confetti scum.

My knees bleed into the gray tap water and I cry like the stupid orphan I am.

Captain McKinley was driving a large military passenger-transport truck. A canvas cover was pulled taut over metal supports that arched overhead—sort of like a covered wagon. Two benches ran on either side.

We piled in the back.

“Hey,” he said to us through the open back window of the truck cab. “Any problems getting out?”

“No,” Niko told him.

He drove toward the base.

At any moment I expected, I don’t know, guards to fire or a cop car to come screaming out of the dark.

But it was a still, moonlit night. The wind picking up the autumn leaves a bit. Quiet.

Before he turned the corner to head to the base, McKinley stopped and typed a message into his minitab.

He got an immediate answer.

“I have a friend at the gate,” he told us.

He turned toward the base then, and waved at the guy on duty.

The guard patted the hood of the truck as McKinley slowed.

“Didn’t see you, man,” he told McKinley. “Didn’t see you at all. Carry on.”

“Thanks, Ty.” And we were on the base.

McKinley drove the truck right out onto the landing strip, where his huge helicopter waited for us.

This wasn’t the same machine that had rescued us from the Greenway. That one had been slick and state of the art. This was more like Army standard issue. No frills.

McKinley parked the truck with a screech of the brake.

“Now listen,” he said. “I’m going to open the side door. I want you to keep low and hustle right in. I’ve got two friends here—one was at the gate. The other’s working the tower. But there are people here who will stop us, if they see you. There are guards and there is brass, so be quick about it.”

He got out of the truck cab and went over and opened the door to the chopper.

We all scooted down toward the back of the truck, getting ready to dash.

“Let’s go,” we heard his voice.

We filed out onto the moonlit tarmac and ducked down, scurrying to the chopper.

Niko went first and his feet on the rungs sounded like gongs clanging.

I looked around, sure soldiers would have heard. No.

One by one we filed up into the chopper, where we were all just jammed inside. There was nowhere to go.

“Jeez, move in,” Jake whispered, pushing in behind me.

Heavy netting made out of thick bands of black nylon was strung from ceiling to floor and behind it boxes were stacked, nearly overflowing into the tiny amount of space we had. There were two jump seats that didn’t have boxes stacked in front of them—the seats were facing each other.

McKinley shut the door.

“Okay, good. We’re doing well,” McKinley said, climbing into the cockpit. He craned to look over his shoulder.

“Maybe not enough room back there, huh? Well, Jake, come up here, that’s first off.”

Jake carefully edged past us and stepped over the hand-shifters and levers in the cockpit. He got shotgun and didn’t even call it.