Tom Isbell - The Capture

Sometime the next day, with the sun blazing hot and yellow, Dozer takes a long swig from his canteen … then immediately spits it out.

“This tastes like crap,” he says. “How can you drink this shit?” He turns the canteen upside down and a trail of sludge plops out, landing on the ground like bird droppings.

Instead of answering him, Twitch says, “We could always turn east toward the river.” Even though he can’t see, he’s well aware of the direction they’re traveling.

Dozer gives his head a violent shake. “Nuh-uh. We’re heading south.”

“But the river’s a water source.”

Dozer leans into Twitch. “Listen, Blind Man, when you’re in charge, you can make the decisions. But unless you want to be under house arrest like your friend Book here, I’d keep your piehole shut.” Then he turns to the rest of the group. “There’s water out here. We just have to do a better job of straining it.”

He says this loud enough so the Sisters can hear, then turns and resumes marching. The others follow, fingers of dust trailing them like shadows.

THAT EVENING, I WATCHED as Hope poured huge panfuls of brown slop onto a T-shirt. At one point, after she and Scylla shared a glance, Scylla pulled the strainer aside, allowing pure sludge to make it into the pot. An instant later, the T-shirt was back in place. When Hope saw me watching her, she looked away.

Later, over a dinner of cooked grasshoppers, Dozer spat out the water like a drowning man.

“What is this crap? Is anyone else drinking this shit?”

“Mine’s pretty bad, too,” Red said.

“Mine too,” said Angela, who pretty much copied everything Red and Dozer did.

Dozer eyed Hope and Scylla suspiciously.

“It’s that way for all of us,” I blurted out, although to be honest, my water didn’t taste half bad. Murky, yes, and with a bitter aftertaste, but there was no grit in it.

Dozer planted his eyes squarely on Hope. “Tomorrow you all better do a neater job of straining or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Hope crunched a charred grasshopper between her teeth.

Midafternoon of the next day, the sun was hot and the wind hotter. The prairie was unending. Hope’s voice broke me from my reverie.

“Hey.”

I didn’t answer. It had been a good hour since I’d produced enough saliva to even swallow, and I was in no mood to waste it on idle conversation.

“What if I said I’d help you free those Less Thans?” she asked.

“Where were you three nights ago?”

“Do you want my help or not?”

“Of course, but I don’t know how the two of us are going to take down a whole camp and free a hundred Less Thans. Especially since I’m so untrustworthy—I’m the one who left Cat behind, remember?”

She ignored my sarcasm. “What if I said others will join us?”

“Who?”

“Uh-uh. No names. Not yet.”

“Then how—”

“You have to trust me.”

Despite myself, I felt my heart beating faster.

“So are you interested or not?” she asked.

“Sure, but—”

“Good. But there’s one condition.”

What is it? I wondered. She makes all the decisions? I never speak to her again?

“We rescue the Sisters from Camp Freedom,” she said. “You help us. We help you.”

“But the two aren’t the same at all,” I sputtered. “Your camp has fences. Barbed wire. Guard towers. Liberty has none of that.”

“So yes or no?”

I thought for a moment. “How many girls are back there?”

“A hundred and twenty-five.”

“And you think it’s possible? To free them all?”

“It won’t be easy, but yes.”

Even though I was still angry with Hope and knew the odds were stacked against us, there was something in her voice that made me believe. It was like when I’d first laid eyes on her, back at Camp Freedom. She was walking with a group of others, and it was apparent— even from a single glance —that she was different. Not just her beauty, but something else. Something I could never put my finger on. Something I just knew .

“Okay,” I said.

Before I could say another word, she moved up the column and began talking to her friends.

The next day was hot and windy—a furnace blast straight from hell.

Dozer looked downright green by the time he stumbled from his bed. Twice we waited while he puked his guts out.

It was late afternoon when a small rise appeared, extending left and right as far as the horizon allowed. Was it a dam? A wall? A barrier?

Flush was the first one to get there.

“Train tracks,” he said, disappointed. We had hoped it was some kind of levee with a sparkling blue lake on the other side. No such luck.

Dozer walked across the tracks without even looking down.

“Wait,” Hope said. “Maybe we can catch a train instead of walking.”

Everyone stopped and turned. Even in a sickened state, Dozer still managed an air of belligerence. “You telling me what to do?”

“No, just trying to make sure we get out of here alive.”

“You don’t think I am?”

Dozer looked around; it was vast prairie for as far as the eye could see. The wind flapped his T-shirt. “Who says these tracks are even used anymore?” he asked.

“Look at ’em,” she said. Although knee-high weeds poked up from the gravel bed, there were places where the rails glinted from friction. Sometime in the recent past—a week? a month? a year?—a train had come through.

“But the tracks head east and west,” Dozer said. “We want to go south.”

“We’ll get off at the first water source, then head south from there.”

Dozer considered this. He was never the deepest of thinkers, and sometimes you could practically hear the squeak of wheels turning in his head.

I knew the reason for his indecision: it was someone else’s plan. Someone had an idea for saving us—and it wasn’t him.

“It’s what you told us you wanted all along,” I said. “The quickest way to a water source.”

He’d never said any such thing, of course, but I was counting on the fact that he was so dazed from barfing his guts out that he barely knew up from down.

“ I said that?” he asked.

I nodded vigorously. “On more than one occasion.”

His eyes gave a woozy acknowledgment of his genius. Then, in a voice like John Wayne, he called out, “Set up camp. We’ll catch the next train that comes through.”

“So that was your plan?” I asked Hope that night, when no one else was within earshot. “Make him drink dirt until he’ll do anything you say?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. I was pretty sure I detected a glimmer of a smile.

Later, a far-off thundering woke us from our sleep, and we spied a small, wavering star just above the eastern horizon—a freight train’s distant headlight. We stuffed our rucksacks and crouched at the base of the tracks. The train’s rumbling shook the earth, bouncing our bodies like popcorn.

Once the locomotive passed, we rose to our feet and jogged alongside. The cars were ancient—the wooden planking badly weathered, the red paint chipped and faded. But there was a problem. The doors were shut tight.

“There!” Flush shouted, pointing to a single car whose wooden door was ajar.

We turned to Dozer. As the self-proclaimed leader, it was up to him to make the first move, so when the car came alongside, he raced forward, pushed off against the ground …

… and went splat against the door. He landed hard on the gravel bed.

“Damn it!” he cursed, as though it was the train’s fault.

The car was moving away from us.