The soldiers were pounding on the outer door. Above her, Susan could hear footsteps as the two remaining children hustled Max and Nell across the floor toward the wall full of windows.
A moment later, the far door gave way, and soldiers clattered into the hall, then stomped overhead as they rushed into the empty room. The doors of the two intact closets slammed open. Boots moved to the outer wall, and Susan felt dizzy. But then one of them muttered, “Trash!” and moved across the floorboards. She heard a ringing, metallic kick — the stove — and a muffled, quickly suppressed yelp.
“Here!” a man’s voice called. Susan could hear the small boy squeak in protest as they pulled him out.
“Useless!” she heard a soldier say. “Take him!”
But a second voice intervened. “No time for that now,” he said. “We’re looking for those others. Leave him.”
And then the boots were gone.
Susan waited, crouching in the damp cotton darkness, her legs slowly cramping. She listened, but there was nothing to hear but her sisters’ shallow, quivering breaths.
Paralyzed, she waited for what seemed like hours, staring into the black. Spots formed and disappeared before her eyes, and she could feel her shirt slowly grow wet where the girls pressed against her. She tried not to flinch when something small scuttled over her foot. Jean felt it and squeaked.
“Shh,” Susan breathed in her ear.
They held still, frozen, until Susan’s legs screamed in protest and the thick heat of the place felt like it had crawled down her throat and turned her stomach.
At last she heard a scrape, followed by light footsteps. The square over her head creaked open, and her sisters flinched. Susan threw her hands up, dazzled by the light.
The girl stared down at her, offering a hand.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling the younger ones up. “Have to wait awhile before we know they’re really gone. Gets tight down there — I know.”
Susan groaned to her feet and climbed up and out of the closet. Max and Nell, blinking and dusty, stood behind the girl. The boy from the stove sat hunched against the wall, head in hands. As they emerged, he looked up and sighed shakily. Ash clung to the fine coating of hair on his skinny face, and when he shook his head, soot sprayed from it like so much snow. It settled in small gray drifts along the gritty floorboards.
“You guys okay?” Max asked Susan. She nodded.
Her neck prickled, and she turned to find the older boy and girl staring at them intently. She met the girl’s eye.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m Susan. You saved us back there.”
The girl continued to stare at her for a second, then blinked and turned to the small boy who sat by the stove.
“Get Omet,” she said.
The boy scurried from the room, and the other two continued to stare at the five of them with the same sober expression Susan had seen on Mrs. Grady’s dog when he sat by the table at suppertime. It seemed to her that the silence gained a pound or so as it sat there between them, the other children gaping like that, and the five of them unsure which way to look or what to do with their hands.
At last, Nell said, “What do they call you two?”
One of the girl’s blond knots dipped toward her forehead, and she pushed it now with the heel of her hand. “Yali,” she said, and tilted toward the boy. “This is Modo.” All the time, she kept her eyes on Susan’s face.
Not another word after that, but plenty of looking. A minute later, the sound of running feet broke the silence. Yali and Modo didn’t flinch, but to Susan it sounded like another rally, or maybe a riot approaching. Her heart, which had only now steadied after the terror of the soldiers, sped up again. She glanced sideways and saw Max slip his hand into the pocket that held the knife.
Before she’d had a chance to decide what to do, a small crowd of maybe fifteen children burst through the door, followed by a tall, lean girl with straight black hair and equally dark eyes. She had jagged bangs that looked like they’d been cut with a knife, and the hair on her face cast a dull shadow over her gaunt cheeks. One vivid clear spot stood out on her jaw, and after a moment, Susan saw why. Every few minutes, the girl swiped at it with the back of her hand, as if there were still something to rub away.
The other children made way for her as she came toward the five of them. She elbowed Yali and Modo aside, went for the side of her chin again, and nodded.
“So it’s true, then. Espin was right. You’re not just rally real.”
She had a surprisingly soft voice. The children crowded behind her, eyes fixed on the siblings.
“Rally real?” Susan said. She thought suddenly of the fruit seller, asking Liyla if it was rally day.
Omet shrugged. “When he told us what he’d seen yesterday, that’s what we thought. Get hungry enough, you see things even on a regular day. But of course, he did have those peaches. They were real enough.” She tipped her head. “Thanks for that. Takes something, to feed the useless.”
“Useless?” Susan repeated, surprised.
The girl nodded. “Of course. Espin, this is the one, isn’t it?”
She’d indicated a boy near the back of the group. Susan saw him now. It was the boy from the shed. He pushed forward, grinning.
“Yes, Omet,” he said. “That’s the one.”
Susan was suddenly ashamed that she hadn’t asked his name yesterday.
Behind the dark-haired girl, the group had gotten restless. A slim girl with red curls that extended faintly onto her cheeks slipped past Espin.
“So how did you get out? How many others did you see?”
It was like someone had rung the bell at recess time.
