Up until that day, she’d accepted the new aching sensation along the column of her neck as a bizarre but harmless side effect of getting off the pills. During the physical portion of the Witness exam, the ache had peaked just before she passed out on the course, but she refused to give her body the option of oblivion now. The only things that made it better were the few deep breaths she was able to steal during bathroom breaks, but even then the oxygen slammed up against that same brick wall midway down in her lungs. The farther the teams traveled, the giddier Gabi got on her stunted ration of air, and the more she noticed the oxygen-starved blue of her fingertips.
By the end of the first day of their trek, they’d reached the swells and dips that signaled the proximity of the Cascades. Their route, which veered from the paved road onto rutted tracks, didn’t take them directly to any of the Tribal settlements in the area. Relations had been stable in that region for some time, but the Lilim had begun using the border communities as staging areas for their attacks. Tired as they were, Gabi, Marnie, and Jordan spent what little time they had between dinner and lights-out trying to make sense of what they were about to face.
“I thought the Lilim were Tribe,” Jordan puzzled. “Why would the Tribe need to defend themselves against the Lilim?”
“There are no Tribes, Jordan,” Marnie said as she reached her fingers toward her toe tips to stretch her abused hamstrings and calves. “That’s just something the fellowship made up to lump everyone into one category of sinners who need to be saved or eliminated. The Lilim are Tribe in the eyes of the fellowship because they don’t belong to Unitas, that’s all. The Tribes are just people trying to hold on to a life that isn’t dictated by religious fanatics. No offense, Lowell.”
“None taken,” Gabi replied, too exhausted to be indignant. Remaining upright long enough to finish the mystery meat on her plate was as much of a challenge as she could rise to at the moment. They’d each been given two bright pink anti-inflammatory pills with their dinner ration and promised two more the next morning with breakfast. Despite Gabi’s distrust of anything in pill form, when she saw Ames and Sykes gulp the medicine down, she quickly followed suit. If her recovery from the Witness exam was any indication, whatever pain she was experiencing now would be exponentially worse the next morning when Sykes roused them for a predawn start.
“I don’t know about this whole Lilim threat,” Marnie continued. “Doesn’t it seem strange that Unitas was just on the verge of converting the last of the un-Returned, and then the next thing we know they’re busing refugees into the central branches and deploying armed Witness teams? We’re definitely not getting the whole story, not that I’m surprised. I’ve read a million false reports about Willow in the bulletins. Christ, I’d sell either one of you for a cigarette right now.” Marnie had already chewed all her fingernails down to ragged nubs and taken to gnawing stripped twigs to ease her cravings.
“Then why did the people around here turn against the fellowship?” Jordan asked. “If the locals wanted protection, why did they kick out all the Witnesses? Who are we supposed to be fighting, them or the Lilim?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Marnie sighed, leaning against a rotted stump and kneading her back against the furrowed bark. “Does it really matter? The three of us aren’t here to fight, anyway.” They all grew silent at the reminder. Jordan’s objective to feed his family was now a moot point since, if they’d survived the attack in Spruce, they were now receiving refugee rations at a resettlement center. Now his focus was on finding his sister, who had been assigned to patrolling the border for the past four months. She could be anywhere within five hundred square miles, but Jordan was convinced that somehow their paths would cross. Marnie’s plan of getting to Willow had been scrapped the moment Beth’s betrayal disqualified her from the exam, but she still meant to escape the fellowship. As for Gabi, every day brought her closer to finding someone who could help her stop the atrocities being carried out on D Wing, but those horrors paled in comparison to what she’d seen at the temple in Spruce. Now she wondered if finding an ally who was both powerful and trustworthy would even be possible.
As Gabi made to rise and wash her plate, a wave of water hit her back, drenching her from neck to feet in dirty dishwater. “I am sooo sorry,” Bradley gasped theatrically from behind her. “This big old heavy bucket just slipped right out of my hands, but maybe you should thank me. I’ve been gagging on your BO all day long.”
Marnie and Jordan were on their feet in a flash, towering angrily behind her as Mathew hurried toward them. But Gabi only turned her throbbing neck to look over her shoulder at her nemesis. The water was disgusting, but she had no fear of Bradley now that Apostle Ames had taken up his role as her bully. Bradley was a kitten compared to him.
“Thanks, Bradley, I was just wishing for a good rinse. I’m sure Apostle Ames won’t
