But he’s bigger and stronger than me, and when he punches back, I go down. It doesn’t hurt so much as just make everything white out for a second, and when I blink that away he’s standing over me, pointing the gun at me, and I realize I’m going to die. Now I’m scared, my whole body catching cold with it, and at the same time I bare my teeth and yell and I wish I’d gone for Sam, I wish he were here, I want Mom, but it’s all too late.
Sister Harmony stabs him. She’s bloody, wounded, limping, but he doesn’t see her coming. She screams as she puts her blade in the back of his neck. She twists it, and I see the whole light go out in his eyes. He falls forward on top of me, and I shove him off like he’s on fire. I’m shuddering and clumsy again and gasping, and everything in my chest feels too tight, but I’m already looking past the dead man, looking at the door where the next one’s going to come for us.
Harmony yanks the blade free and snaps, “Get the gun, boy,” and I think about the verses she’s had to stare at every day, for years, written on the walls of her prison.
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
She learned better than Father Tom ever expected.
There’s another man coming on board now. Thin and young, maybe twenty or so. I grab the gun. It’s heavy and too big for me, but I point it at him, and he freezes. Sister Harmony shakes her head and pushes my arm down. She takes the gun and hands it to the new guy. “No, he’s with us,” she says. “Remy! Watch the door!”
Remy. “My mom’s been looking for you,” I tell him. He glances at me. He’s more scared than I am, but the gun’s steady in his hand. “You’re Remy Landry.”
“I used to be,” he says. “We live through this, maybe I still am. Harmony! We have to go!”
“Not without my sisters!” She plunges off the RV again, bloody knife in her hand. Remy follows, and so does Vee.
So do I. I grab up the bolt cutters as I go. They’re bulky and heavy, but I tell myself that I can get to Sam, I can, and Sam can help us get out of here. We can all get out. Everyone.
But when we come out of the RV’s door, it’s worse than I thought.
Rose, two other women, and several of the little kids are backed up against the fence. All three of the women have knives, but they’re all hurt too. Rose’s left arm hangs limp and bloody. She’s pale as chalk, but still standing. The kids are crowded in behind the three of them, and they’re facing two men with assault rifles. “Give us the children,” one says. “We won’t hurt them.”
“Liar!” Rose screams and rushes him. He’s going to kill her, I realize, and I can’t stop it. All I have is a switchblade and these bolt cutters, and that’s not enough. I’m not fast enough. I’m not close enough.
Harmony is fast. She kills him the same way she did the one in the RV, quick and lethal, and ducks as the other man swings his gun toward her. Rose tackles him and sends him sprawling. She grabs his gun and points it at him, panting, wild. When he laughs, she shoots him. She misses, and shoots again, and he stops laughing. I know I ought to be curled up in a ball now, like I was back in school. Gunfire. Screams. The smell of blood in the air.
But that was fake. This is real. And I’m afraid, but I’m focused on two things: staying alive and getting to my dad. I can get him out. I will.
But we’re pinned between the RV and the fence. There are at least twenty men with guns around us, but most aren’t paying attention to us; they’re firing through holes in the fence at the FBI outside the gates. And the FBI are now firing back. I see what look like grenades come launching over the wall and hit the ground on our side, and for a second I think we’re about to blow up like in the movies, but then they let out a pulsing white fog and I can’t breathe. My eyes are burning, I’m choking and coughing and gagging, and it tastes like burning paper at the back of my throat. I can see Vee, who’s bent over gasping, and I grab her and hold on.
“Side gate!” she croaks. Her eyes are streaming tears, and they’re red as fire. Mine probably are, too—they’re blurry and aching, and I’m disoriented. I don’t know where I am. Guns are still firing. “That way!” She shoves me, and we slide along the fence. I shove the switchblade in my pocket and grab blindly for a coughing little kid. Vee grabs someone else. Harmony, who’s holding on to Remy. Rose, staggering and nearly falling.
We can’t get everybody. But we have to open that gate.
We reach it and there’s a man in front of it, but he’s slumped over against the fence, and when Harmony shoves him, he falls limply. Dead.
The gate’s got two sliding metal bars across it. Both are secured with combination locks, like I have on my locker at school.
Like the one I’d planned to cut off my dad’s cell.
It doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I’m making a choice here. Like if I cut these locks, I can’t cut Dad’s. I have to choose him, or the people who are helpless here at the gate.
And I know what he’d want me to do.
I use all my strength to cut through the first lock, then the second, and Remy slams the metal bars back, and he starts to charge through the open gate.
“No!” Harmony shouts, and takes his gun. She throws it away. “No weapons! No weapons!”
She’s right. The FBI’s out there. If we come out with guns and knives, they’re going to think we’re the problem.
I put the bolt cutters down. Harmony puts her knife down. She grabs Rose, disarms her, and puts the woman’s hand in that of a little, crying boy. Then she shoves them out the open gate. Then Remy. Then one by one the other women and children.
She turns to me and Vee, and coughs out, “Go!”
“You first,” Vee says.
Harmony vanishes through the gate. I can’t breathe, I have snot running down my face, and tears, and I want to throw up. I turn and pick up the bolt cutters again. Vee stiff-arms me back. “The fuck are you goin’, boy?”
“Dad,” I croak.
She takes the bolt cutters away and tosses them into the mist. I yell and swing at her; she ducks. She’s coughing and gagging, too, but she manages to say, “Your dad’s okay. We have to go.” Then she’s dragging me through the gate and into clearer air, and FBI agents are shouting at us to keep moving, keep moving, hands up, keep moving, and I’m stumbling and falling to one knee. I look back at the big steel fence, the closed gates, and I hear something weird.
They’re singing in there.
Father Tom’s people have stopped shooting. They’re singing some kind of hymn. Mostly men’s voices, but I can hear some pure, high notes. Some of the women too. The ones who wouldn’t leave. The true believers.
The FBI has us sit down on the side of the road, and they wash our faces and give us oxygen masks, and I start feeling better after a few minutes. It’s dark out here, cold, and the singing hangs in the air like the tear gas clouds. A few more people come out of the side gate. None of them are my dad, and I tell the man rinsing my face a second time that I need to go back in, that my dad is Sam Cade and he’s in there and they have to find him.
“Connor?” A big man in a dark windbreaker kneels down next to me. “Connor Proctor?” I nod. I don’t know him. “I’m Agent Torres. Special Agent Lustig asked me to find you and stay with you. You all right?”