"What's your name?" Hope asked the new man that carried her. Maybe he would be as nice as the other one.
"Epps," he said.
"I'm Hope."
"Pleased to meet you, Hope," he managed to string together between breaths.
She didn't respond. He was nice, she decided. They skidded to a stop, and Epps put her on the ground again. This time, she sank into the deep snow, and her legs and belly were too cold. Her teeth started chattering against her will. She couldn't make them stop. Then Epps was lifting her over a fence. The tall man took her, and she wrapped her legs around his torso and hugged him tightly. She watched as they did the same with her brother, and then Epps climbed the fence after them.
She wondered if she would be able to climb that fence on her own. She would like to try one day. It looked like it might be fun to climb up and be tall for a moment, and then drop down to the snow below. She wouldn't land on her feet like Epps did. She would flop into the snow and make a snow angel the way that Mommy had taught her.
The tall man stuffed her inside a broken window and said, "Be quiet."
She did as she was told. Mommy had told her to listen to their instructions. The tall man bent his body and pulled himself inside the window.
It was dark inside, scary. It didn't seem like a home, not one that she would want to live in anyway. "Is this your house?" she asked.
"Shhh," the tall man said.
"Sorry," she said, feeling bad that she had disobeyed the man's orders. Mommy would be mad. She was always mad when they didn't do the things that Mommy said to do. When D.J. had unlocked the door to peek outside, he had gotten a whuppin' that she could still hear in her head. Mommy didn't like when you broke the rules. She wondered if she were going to get a whuppin' when Mommy got there.
She began to cry.
****
Tejada paced in the abandoned office space. He was kicking himself for sending off three of his people. What if they never came back? He'd have to go looking for them. He might be able to allow a random survivor to go off to certain death, but not his boys, not three of them. He must be out of his mind for even considering it. But, it had been a snap decision, one made with haste in mind. Every second he had delayed had been another second that something could go wrong.
Blood seeped from his thumbnail, where he had chewed it down to the quick. Then he heard it, a small voice, crying.
Gregg burst into the room where Rudy and Amanda and Walt sat, their eyes closed in slumber. They had been tired enough to fall back asleep. They roused as Gregg started speaking in a hushed whisper. He needn't have bothered. That crying would be enough to wake the dead, literally.
"They're back, sir," Gregg said.
"All of 'em?" Tejada asked.
"Plus two."
Plus two? Tejada waited impatiently. He didn't want to have conversations near the broken window. It was best to keep quiet when the dead were around. There wasn't a lot of them outside right now, but that could always change. If they didn't have an opening when it came time to leave, it would be exponentially harder to leave. All thoughts of their escape vanished from his mind, as Epps, Allen, and Brown escorted in two small forms.
"What the fuck is this?" he asked, the words spewing forth from his mouth before he could stop them. The little girl, her head covered in a fine down of blonde stubble, bawled. Her face turned red, and her mouth hung wide open as snot and tears ran down her face. A little boy stood next to her, holding her hand in his tiny little paw. His eyes were watery with tears, but at least he wasn't bawling like the girl.
"Someone shut her up," he hissed.
The soldiers looked at each other. They didn't know what to do. Part of the reason these men were still with him was that they didn't have families to go to. All the family men had left Portland, heading back to their homes—hopefully to find their wives and children still alive. His men had nothing. So, they all looked at each other and shrugged their soldiers.
"What's wrong, little girl?" Tejada asked.
This only sent the little girl into another wave of even louder crying. Then, in response, her brother's chin started quivering, and he knew the two little ankle-biters were going to start doing a duet any second. "Masterson, Gregg, you two are on the window. Close that door behind you."
The two soldiers did as they were told, and the look of relief on their faces was enough to make him want to call them back. Maybe I should guard the fucking window, he thought. Getting these two whelps to shut the hell up was beyond him.
"Amanda, you know anything about kids?" he asked, grasping at straws.
"Just 'cause I'm a woman? Nope. I don't know anything. I was an only child."
"Me too," Walt said.
Brown threw up his hands and said, "I don't know nothin' about no little white kids. Back at home, if me and my brothers started bawling like that, we got the strap."
To Tejada's surprise, Rudy was the one that stepped up. He rose from the floor and came over to the little girl. He squatted down and rubbed her shoulder, making shushing sounds. He brought her in close to his body, and she
