Article 5

“A whole underground system,” said the girl twin. “Lots of people have been heading there. That’s where half our cars have gone. Total liquidation.” She laughed.

“Knoxville,” I repeated. I felt Chase release a slow breath beside me.

We were back on track.

* * *

IT was a long day.

The new Red Zones, those cities evacuated from the War, and Yellow Zones, those areas entirely comprised of MM, were marked in bold corresponding colors on highway signs and called for multiple detours throughout Virginia and Northern Tennessee. For brief patches I dozed, never falling fully asleep. I lingered on edge, my heart always beating a little too fast, my mind filled with worries.

The girl twin occasionally popped up in my mind, and I found myself bitter when I thought of her. She’d insisted on a trade for the car, and since we had nothing they wanted, we’d had to pay them. One thousand dollars. Cash. For an item that wasn’t even theirs to begin with. But since they’d siphoned all the gasoline, our hands were tied.

Still, I didn’t regret the interaction.

A whole underground system, the girl had said. A whole resistance movement. My mind couldn’t wrap around what this might look like. People like us. On the run. Scheming against the MM. My fantasies seemed too unrealistic. All that mattered was that someone would take us to South Carolina.

As the day wound on, my chest began to squeeze with that familiar anxiety. My mother was just beyond our grasp, but now when I focused hard on her, I only saw fragmented images. Her short, accessorized hair. Her socked feet on the kitchen floor. I needed to find her soon, or I was afraid even more of her would disappear.

Finally, we came in range. As we closed in on the city of Knoxville, the MM presence on the highway increased. There were other cars as well. Not many, but enough for us to blend in. This fact didn’t ease our minds as the FBR cruisers began flying by with regularity.

Then we saw the sign. YELLOW ZONE. The western half of Knoxville had recently been closed to civilians to make way for an MM base.

“Think they lied?” I asked Chase nervously. “Do you think they sent us here because we didn’t give them enough money?”

“No,” Chase answered, though he didn’t sound very convincing. “I think the safest place is right in the enemy’s shadow. There’s resistance here.”

And so we went to hide beneath the belly of a monster.

He took a busy exit after crossing over the gray waters of the Holston River, and parked in a dark lot behind an outcropping of sandstone medical buildings that belonged to the city hospital. Outside we were flooded by the sounds and scents of a working city during rush hour. Even after just a couple days in the country, being around so many human bodies made me feel crowded and paranoid, like everyone was watching us. I could smell the sewers, the sweat, the smog filling the stagnant air. It did nothing but add to my sense of unease.

It was cool, but not cold. The sky hung low with humidity. Rain was coming. Chase grabbed the bag and rounded the car. He didn’t have to tell me not to leave anything. I already knew we wouldn’t be coming back.

We entered the street and were immediately surrounded by pedestrians. Some rushing, fortunate enough to be wearing their work clothes and therefore employed. Some homeless, begging off to the side with their cardboard signs. Some twitching, scratching, talking to unseen hallucinations. High or mentally ill. The Reformation Act had eliminated treatment programs to fund the FBR.

There was hardly enough room to walk here. Chase came close, and though his expression was dark, I knew he was more comfortable than me. After Chicago had been bombed, he’d survived in places like this. Places where people had congregated after being displaced from the major cities.

“Watch your back,” he warned me. “And mine, while you’re at it,” he added, tightening the straps of the pack. He’d moved the money to his front pocket.

“Where do we start?” I asked. This was the biggest city I’d ever seen. No matter how large the resistance here, we were searching for a needle in a haystack.

“Follow people in dirty clothes,” he said. “They’ll lead us to food, and where there’s food, there’s people talking.”

He was right. We walked for several city blocks, finding ourselves part of a massive stream of hungry people. Every telephone pole, fence, or door displayed a prominent posting of the Moral Statutes. We crossed the train tracks and came to a place called Market Square, a long cement strip lined by flat-faced brick buildings that might once have been shops but were now hostels, medical stations, and abandoned buildings.

The crowd grew denser toward the back of the square. Thousands of people were here for food or shelter. Sisters, too, in their navy skirts and knotted handkerchiefs, bustling around the temporary cots of the Red Cross camp. I swallowed thickly, realizing this could have been me.

A dose of adrenaline shot into my veins when I caught a uniform from the corner of my eye. The clean, neatly pressed blue stuck out amid a sea of shabby garments.

Soldiers.

My eyes lingered, and I saw two more, standing behind an unmarked moving truck, unloading wooden crates of food. Their setup was positioned on the right side of a bottleneck, leading to the open space of the square. They didn’t try to hide their weapons; they were all armed and ready to fire upon anyone who might try to steal.

Chase had seen them, too. He lowered his head, trying not to look so tall. I scanned the crowd. Too many people were shuffling into the square; no one was going out. If we ran now, we’d cause a commotion and our way would be impeded by bodies. Besides, if the MM wanted to pursue us, they had guns. People would get out of their way a lot faster than they’d get out of ours.

We needed to get to the kitchen. Chase thought we’d be safe asking some discreet questions about the carrier there, and the only way to get there was to walk by the soldiers. We wouldn’t be locked in once we passed—there were exits in the back of the square that I could see from my vantage point—but it would be a tremendous risk. The soldiers would only be ten feet away.

I reached for Chase’s hand, and a quick squeeze asked the question I didn’t dare speak aloud. With only the briefest of hesitations, he squeezed mine back. We were going to pass them.

“Pull your collar up,” Chase commanded. I did so quickly. We shuffled forward, bodies bumping against us on all sides as we entered the bottleneck.

Please don’t look this way. I concentrated all my energy on the two soldiers.

“Eyes forward.” Chase’s voice was low enough that only I could hear. “Don’t stop.”

Sweat rained down my face, so contrary to the firm gust of cool evening air that blasted over the crowded square. A vice squeezed my temples.

Keep walking, I told myself.

I saw the soldiers in my peripheral vision, only ten feet away. One of the guards turned quickly, a radio glued to his ear. From the back I caught a glimpse of his light brown hair and narrow build, and an odd sense of familiarity crept over me.

Keep walking.

We passed by the crates of food and the soldiers and headed toward the open area of the square.

I fought the urge to turn around. Chase strode faster, pulling me around the corner on the damp sidewalk, out of the stream of pedestrians. It was quieter here, and I breathed for what felt like the first time in minutes.

“What are they doing here?” I asked. The MM provided the food for the soup kitchens at home but relied on volunteers to deliver it to the sites. I always thought this was because it was below them to mingle with poor people they didn’t have reason to arrest.

“The city must be on a supply crunch.”

“That explains the guns,” I commented wryly. The sooner we could get out of here the better.

As we resumed our path, I became acutely aware of how clean, how well fed, we looked. Single floaters loitering near the sidewalk stared resentfully at us like we were royalty. From their famished condition, I guessed that Chase was right about the supply crunch: There clearly wasn’t enough food to go around in this large city.

We passed a homeless man leaning against a loud generator outside a community restroom with a sign that