Breaking Point

coast.

The smell hit us first. Pungent wood smoke, oil and dust. Something metallic, too, overriding the salt in the air. I heard it then, the sound of the ocean. The waves. But everything within me had clamped down, and excitement could not penetrate the foreboding sense of danger.

The trees cleared, and the grass grew long, almost to my shoulders. We shoved through, cresting a sand dune.

My heart tripped in my chest.

“No,” Chase said weakly.

There before us were the remains of a town. Houses were burned to the ground; some still smoking. Black and charred like the night. Brick and concrete had been blown away, decimated, like the buildings in Chicago. Piles of fresh rubble, yet untouched by moss and weeds, blocked out whole city streets. The hood of a car rested on the ground near us, warped and bent by the explosion that had catapulted it thirty feet away from its overturned body. Beyond it all lapped the silver ocean, constant and deep, unable to voice the horrors that had taken place here.

My knees weakened, and I pitched forward, succumbing to the weight of our hope as it crashed down upon us.

The safe house had been destroyed.

CHAPTER 21

THE ashes clung to my boots, to the legs of my pants. To my arms and my hair, to the sweat of my neck. To the empty cavity in my chest, where joy and hope had both been carved away.

Fifty warm bodies within fifty yards of one another; that was what Sprewell had said. There had been more than fifty people at the safe house, all gathered close for their mutual protection. Heat- seeking missiles had leveled them. LDEDs. That was the only explanation; soldiers on foot would have needed an evacuation route, and there was simply too much demolition to be anything but bombs.

When we’d mobilized enough strength to return to the group, I’d told Jack and Truck this, and Sean and Tucker, intent to see the damage for themselves, had been brought in to corroborate what we’d learned in the rehab hospital. Those still with their wits about them were immediately tasked with rounding up the group for a roll call. With chaos erupting and fear running rampant, this was no easy task, but after a while they fell in line.

There were forty-seven of us in all, counting Rebecca, the Knoxville contingency, and Tubman. Not fifty, but close enough.

Chase was the one to suggest we split up to survey the damage. Rebecca and the others injured in the tunnels were assisted back into the cover of the woods by Sean, the medic, and three other soldiers. There was a wildlife station in the marshes, a dingy shack filled with mosquitoes and stagnant pond water, but it had a roof, and could hold ten bodies laid out on the concrete floor.

Truck and Tubman, our drivers, formed another team.

“Someone’s got to warn the other branches,” said Truck. “Quick. So they don’t send anyone else out this way.” It was something I imagined Three would have done, but if they still existed, they would leave no directions for the carriers here.

“I’ll go.”

I turned sharply to find Tucker Morris. His face, cast downward, was stripped of all emotion.

“I don’t know all your bases, but I know where the FBR will be. I can keep us off their radar.”

I had to remind myself that he’d proven his loyalties.

Chase said nothing, but the corner of his eye twitched. He hadn’t said it, but I knew he wanted to stay and look for signs of his uncle.

If he was staying, I was staying.

Truck’s team left without hesitation, promising to return as soon as they’d found a safe place for us to hide. Tucker and I did not say good-bye, and as I watched his back as he disappeared through the tall grass, it occurred to me that I should have felt relieved to finally be rid of him, but maybe there was no room left for such a thing.

The rest of us drew what weapons we had, and sorted through the smoke and the wood and the glass. We overturned doors and crumbled stones and pieces of drywall. And we found bodies. Burned to black. Burned so badly, you couldn’t even tell they were human.

Someone who knew of this place had done this. Had pointed the MM in the right direction, had sent those long-distance explosive devices flying through the air, and killed our families and friends. Our chance at peace.

At dawn, Jack pointed out the ruins of a house that had days ago served as a medical clinic. Chase threw himself into excavating it, so savagely that his arms bled and his shirt soaked through with the same salty sweat that hid any tears that dared escape.

His uncle is dead, I thought as I watched. I am all he has left. And though I knew this feeling intimately, my heart broke for him.

I stumbled away, winding around the littered trinkets of an old souvenir shop, ears perked to the skies like in the old days when we’d watched the planes. I thought of Sarah, pregnant and scared when her life had been cut short. Of Rebecca, who could barely walk on cement, much less an uneven sandy floor, and Truck’s words in the tunnel: What were we supposed to do with him once we got him out? We can’t support that kind of care down here. Of Sean, who would never leave her side again.

I was secretly glad my mother had never made it to this doomed place.

Snow globes were broken across the ground, little shattered memories of a happier time. I picked up a few tattered beach towels that had survived the blasts, but they were impossibly heavy on my injured wrist.

My eyes fixed on a figure in the distance, sitting atop the hood of a car that had been shoved into the middle of the street. His arms and hair were streaked black, and his shadow stretched thin behind him.

My legs ached as I approached, bruised to the bone from the explosion in the tunnels, but he didn’t so much as turn his head.

“Billy,” I said cautiously. He stared a thousand yards behind me, past the house that lay in ruins at our feet, to the gray sea. His body slumped, like an empty puppet, and when he stood, he didn’t fully straighten.

“He’s dead, Ember. Wallace is dead.”

Another of us orphaned. Made old before our time.

“Billy, I’m sorry.” I reached for his hand, but it was cold as ice.

“I feel like I should tell someone—is that weird? But there’s no one left to tell.”

His hand squeezed mine, and before I knew what was happening, he was hugging me, and I was hugging him back, and we were both crying.

Below him, my gaze landed on three white lines, etched into the hood of the car where he’d been sitting. Three scars, just like I’d seen below Cara’s collarbone when we’d changed in Greeneville.

Three had been here. Maybe Cara had been working for them. It didn’t matter. Now Cara, and Three, were gone.

We were all that was left.

“There are people to tell,” I heard myself say, the words forming truth in my mouth. “We have to tell people what happened, Billy. What happed to my mom, and to Wallace. We’ll tell everyone. Everyone needs to know. That’s how we stop it.”

I was shaking now, feeling like the world was quaking beneath my feet, and I knew then that it better, because soon everything would be different. I didn’t know how, but I would tell my mother’s story. I would tell mine, too, and maybe, maybe that would shift the tides.

Someone was approaching, and when he saw Chase, Billy turned away, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

I went to him, needing to be close, but the look on his face gave me pause. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted.