Breaking Point (2 page)

“We’ve got supplies coming in from a raid last night,” Wallace said, and I realized this must have been what Cara and the others were doing. “The truck’s parked at the checkpoint and needs to be unloaded. And there’s a package in Tent City waiting for delivery.”

I still hadn’t gotten used to people being
packages
. Fugitives were moved for their safety to a checkpoint, a secret location where they could hide until a driver for the resistance, called a carrier, could transport them across the evacuated Red Zone lines to a safe house on the coast. Once we helped Sean rescue Rebecca, Chase and I would be going there, too.

My breath quickened. The checkpoint was across town, past the Square.

Two eager hands rose.

“Good. Inventory?”

On impulse, I raised my hand. Inventory kept me here, and kept everything on the outside, lurking just beyond the rain-stained windows.

“Miller,” said Wallace slowly. “Right. Miller on supplies.”

Chase’s brows lifted.

I dropped my hand and picked at the peeling yellow wallpaper behind my lower back. Houston whispered something to Riggins, who shot a mocking glance at me over his shoulder.

“What about next door?” Fourteen-year-old Billy spoke up from behind Chase. “You said you’d post me there today.” He shoved a mop of mousy brown hair out of his eyes.

Wallace’s thin mouth drew into a smirk—an expression reserved for the youngest here.

“Billy, so nice of you to join us.”

“I been here!” His claim was cheerfully denied by those closest.

“You been here?” Wallace mocked. “You
been
sleeping late, I think. You’re on the latrines, kid, and Jennings and Banks will clear the abandoned buildings next door.”

Jennings?
Chase was leaving the building? He hadn’t even slept yet. I tried to glance back over to him, but now other people were blocking the way.

Billy’s chin shot out indignantly. “But—”

“How about tomorrow, too?”

Billy threw his head back and groaned.

A buzz, one that made my spine tingle, and the overhead globes flickered with light. Curfew was over. The day had begun.

The hall began to clear. I looked for Chase, but found my path blocked.

“Inventory, huh?” Riggins smirked. He had a sorry excuse for a moustache, which landed directly in my line of sight.

I planted my feet, not about to let him get to me. The guys here were rough, they had to be, and living with them meant having a thick skin sometimes.

“That’s what Wallace said,” I responded.

“Let’s get some food.” Sean tried to move between us but Riggins stopped him with one solid hand.

“Watch out in the supply room. There’s
rats,
you know.” He grinned, the plucky hairs on his upper lip thinning.

I wasn’t sure if he was serious or just trying to make me squirm. “I’ve seen rats,” I told him.

“Not rats this big,” he said, stepping close enough to force me back again. “These rats hide in the uniform crates. You can hear ’em sometimes. They squeal, real loud.”

Two hands closed around my waist from behind and pinched my ribs. A short scream burst from my throat. When I spun around Houston was cackling. He took off after Lincoln, toward the radio room.

Before any coherent words filled my mind Chase was there, his fist twisted in Riggins’s collar as he shoved him into the wall. Because Chase was several inches taller, Riggins was forced to lift his dimpled chin to return a hard glare.

“Temper, temper,” Riggins rasped.

“What’s going on?” Wallace’s voice broke through my surprise. He had rules about fighting. We were family here, that’s what he always said. All Chase and I needed was to get kicked out, to be out there again running from the MM.

I squeezed Chase’s bicep, feeling the muscles flex beneath my fingers. His grip eased, and finally released.

Riggins smiled before sending Wallace a no-problem-here wave.

“Come on,” said Sean. He grabbed my elbow, towing me down the hall toward where the brothers were distributing dry cereal for breakfast.

Riggins leaned close as I passed. “You actually gonna do something useful today? Or just disappear again?” When I turned around he was sauntering toward the west exit, chuckling to himself.

My whole body burned.

It was no secret that Chase and I hadn’t left the motel since we’d escaped the base, but I didn’t know anyone had noticed that sometimes, when the fourth floor grew too confined, I’d escape to the roof to clear my head. It wasn’t like I was hurting anyone, and we pulled our weight where we could. We passed out rations, and Chase took shifts securing the building, but it wasn’t the same as pounding the pavement, holding up supply trucks or helping those in danger. Riggins and I both knew it.

It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do more. I did. I wanted to make a difference, to help someone, the way no one had been able to help my mother. The MM may have thought we were dead, but I remembered too well what it felt like to be wanted. First as a Statute violator when my mother had been charged with an Article 5, then as a reform school runaway. Chase had been charged with everything from his AWOL as a soldier to assault. Sometimes I could still feel the MM breathing down our necks.

But those things didn’t matter to people like Riggins. He hadn’t trusted me since Sean had brought us here for shelter. And hiding while he and the others risked their lives did nothing to prove my dedication to the cause.

Fury stoked through me, sudden and sharp. I’d survived the MM’s unforgiving rules, escaped execution, and come here, to the resistance, where we were all supposed to be on the same side. I didn’t need Riggins making me feel weak, or anyone else doubting me.

I shook out of Sean’s grasp and spun around—right into Chase, half a foot taller and broader even with his shoulders hunched forward. Quite a pair they were, like my own personal bodyguards. I should have been grateful for their help, but instead felt small, too in need of their protection.

“I’ll talk to Riggins,” said Chase. “He doesn’t know when to quit.”

“It’s fine. He’s just messing around.” My voice was too thin to be believable, though, and I could feel the terror and the emptiness pushing back from behind my thin veil of control. It had been this way since I’d learned of my mother’s murder. Sometimes the wall felt thicker, sometimes I felt stronger, but it was all an illusion. It could break through at a moment’s notice, just as it was threatening to now.

Chase took a step forward. “Look,” he said, leaning down so that our eyes were level. “We don’t have to stay here. We can catch the next transport to the safe house. Put all this behind us.” His voice was filled with hope.

“Not yet. You know that.” We had to find Rebecca first; if I hadn’t blackmailed her and Sean into helping me run away, they would still be together, and she wouldn’t have been hurt. I could still hear the baton coming down on her back as the soldiers dragged her away.

“You guys go on. I’ll catch up later.” I cleared my throat. My walls were cracking. Chase sighed, and after Sean’s prompting followed him down to breakfast.

Before the despair could take over, I fled down the corridor toward the supply room. It didn’t matter if I skipped rations; the hollowness inside had nothing to do with hunger. It wasn’t until the hallway was quiet that I remembered that Wallace had assigned Chase to clear the empty office building next door, that he was leaving the Wayland Inn without me. Even if he would be off the main streets, the thought of him out there alone made me sick.

*   *   *

BY
midmorning I’d rearranged the boxes of used clothing and boots to clear space for the new shipment. I’d stacked the toilet paper into columns and consolidated ammunition into four large cardboard boxes. The small silver cartridges I’d learned belonged to our stolen 9MM’s were running low, and I made note to remind Wallace of that later.

The uniform boxes stayed against the back wall, untouched.

“You put the cans in alphabetical order.”

I jumped back when Billy appeared in the doorway, brows arching beneath his shaggy hair, a Horizons bottle of bleach and a shredded sponge in each hand. I pointed him toward the metal rack where I’d moved the cleaning supplies. He’d recently switched hand-me-down jeans to a pair that was too big, and I spun away as the waistband dropped below his hips.

When I turned back, he was attempting to tape them in place.

“Stop,” I said, unable to hold back a laugh. “There’s a belt. Over there. By the uniforms.”

“You put the clothes in alphabetical order, too?”

I grinned. “Give me time.” I sobered as he made his way over to the crates, one hand holding his pants in place.

“Um, Billy?” I stayed back a few steps. “I heard there might be rats in there.” I was pretty sure Riggins was just being a jerk, but it couldn’t hurt to see if he’d been lying.

“There are,” said Billy. “Why? Did one bite you?”

I cringed. “No, I just … thought I saw one, that’s all,” I lied.

“Oh, hang on.” He backed out the door, smiling broadly. The hall was quiet—the night shift was sleeping, and most of the day shift was out on assignment. Billy’s feet slapped obnoxiously all the way down to his room.

He returned a few minutes later holding Gypsy, the mangy stray cat he’d pulled out of the stairwell last week. She was mostly black with missing clumps of hair on her hindquarters, but less emaciated than before.

“She’s letting you hold her.” She’d done nothing but hiss and scratch for days, and on cue she began to meow furiously until Billy dropped her on the floor.

“Rats, Gypsy,” he said. “Yummy rats.”

Gypsy didn’t look so different from a rat herself, and when she curled around my calf I stifled the urge to jerk away.

“She likes you,” he said.

I offered a weak smile.

Other footsteps came from the hallway, these slower and heavier, and I rushed toward the door hoping Chase and Sean had returned from clearing the building next door. Instead, I came face-to-face with Wallace, the handheld radio now tucked in his front pocket. He must have seen my face fall because he cocked his head to the side and said, “Don’t look so happy to see me.”

“No word from next door?” I asked as Billy joined us. The new belt worked wonders.

Wallace shook his head. “Did you want to go check?”

Yes
. The word was simple, the building was only next door, but the word stuck on my tongue. As Billy offered to escort, I shifted from foot to foot. The thought of Chase in danger, or even Sean, forced my decision, but before I could answer, Wallace had moved on.

“Billy, if you’re done scrubbing the toilet I need you on the mainframe.” Though his mouth was set, Wallace’s eyes betrayed his pride. Billy had assembled a makeshift scanner from pieces the guys had picked up outside the base’s incinerators. A small television screen had been rigged to show the MM bulletins and lists of Statute violators in cryptic black-and-white type—it was the most use I’d seen out of a TV since the end of the War.

“Right. I’m searching for news on the sniper,” Billy told me importantly.

Outside on the street, a dog barked. I chewed the inside of my cheek.

Someone had murdered two FBR soldiers last month, in March, and then disappeared without a shred of evidence. Two weeks ago the sniper had struck again in Nashville: a soldier outside a Horizons distribution warehouse. Wallace was trying to find out his identity so that we might protect him, but I didn’t like the idea of bringing such a high-profile criminal back to the Wayland Inn. Not when the MM was on a manhunt.

“Anything new come up?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Wallace looked past me, out the dirty window behind the uniform crates. “Local news says the FBR is close to solving the case, but they’ve been saying that for weeks.” The radio reports we monitored made it clear they were chasing their tails.

“There’s nothing new on your friend either. I looked this morning,” Billy added, cheeks flaming. He’d been helping Sean and me search the mainframe for any rehab centers in Chicago where the MM might have sent Rebecca, but our searches kept coming up blank. Even Chase, who had trained there during his time as a soldier, could not recall such a place. I was seriously beginning to doubt that the tip I’d gotten in the Knoxville holding cells had been reliable.

“Go,” prompted Wallace. “And it’s about time you got a belt.”

Billy turned to leave, grumbling, but before he did he spun back and playfully swatted Wallace across the face. A second later he was sprinting down the hall, cackling.

My mouth fell open.

“Little bastard,” said Wallace affectionately, rubbing his stubbly jaw. I doubt he would have responded the same to Houston or Lincoln, or anyone else for that matter.

Gypsy hopped onto the crate of uniforms below the window and curled into a ball, assessing us with her yellow eyes. In the silence, I became acutely aware that Wallace and I had not spoken alone in weeks.

“I … I think we’re low on bullets,” I said. “I put what we had in these boxes.…”

“Come talk with me, Miller.”

Wallace turned without another word and left me trailing him toward the stairway door. The moment came when I thought he was testing me, leading me outside to see if I’d really go, but he didn’t; he shoved through the exit and went up, boots clanging on the metal steps.

Worry gnawed at me. I tried to anticipate the reason for this meeting; I didn’t know any more about the sniper, and I hadn’t been the only one to voice my doubt about Sean’s new recruit—Riggins had spoken up, too. Surely I wasn’t in trouble for that.

My thoughts turned to the MM base. There was no way I knew to break back in; we simply didn’t have the manpower to take the entrances, and soldiers—even those in disguise—couldn’t pass through the exit by the crematorium where Chase and I had escaped. Wallace knew this. He and I had beaten the topic into the ground, until the conversation had stalled and left us both disappointed.

Was that what he wanted to talk to me about now, my lack of contribution? My failure to save the others in the detention center? Because I knew I’d let them down. Wallace, the resistance, those prisoners I’d left behind. They haunted me, and maybe I deserved it. I’d saved Chase and myself, knowing others in the neighboring cells would die.