He grossly stuck his tongue in my ear and thrust his hips at me—which was when he felt the long carving knife in my skirt, hidden by my apron. His eyes widened and he let go of me.

  “What are you up to, bitch?” he asked. He didn’t even sound scared, just curious.

  I made a snap decision. “Kiss this,” I said, and grabbed a cast-iron frying pan. He shot his arm up but I loosened my arc so it missed his face but cracked against the side of his head. It felled him like a tree, and he collapsed to the slate floor.

  I looked around quickly. His blood was already spreading across the floor. Huffing and puffing a bit, I dragged him beneath a large worktable and rolled him against the wall. He was still breathing and bleeding like a stuck pig. I grabbed some ten-pound cans of lard and weighed him down. Then I rolled several bushels of potatoes and onions against him, followed by burlap sacks of coffee beans, rice, green peas, and tea leaves. They’d be good for absorbing blood.

  I backed out of the pantry, listening for his breathing, straightening my clothes, and bumped into yet another hard body. Whirling, I saw… Nate.

  Was Nate a friend… or was he a foe?

  107

  “WE HAVE TO TALK,” I said quickly, scanning Nate as if a mere look was enough to tell me whether he could still be trusted. Somehow… I sensed that he was the Nate I knew—and not the double-agent I feared.

  “This way,” Nate said, leading me away from the hall of pantries and through a small door. Suddenly we were out in the garden—not the beautiful, landscaped garden for visitors, but the kitchen garden, enclosed by tall brick walls. Nate led me to the darkest corner, where we were surrounded by herby scents of basil, parsley, and sage.

  “I guess you didn’t do it,” Nate said, letting go of my hand. “All hell would have broken out.”

  “You mean, kill the President?”

  “Yeah! Our mission here!”

  “I was just about to,” I said, watching his face, “except suddenly your dad strolled in.”

  Nate looked shocked. Convincingly shocked. He stepped back and pushed his hand through his hair the way he did when he was thinking. “Whoa,” he finally said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Whoa. Right when I was about to do a ten-yard dash with a big honking knife.”

  “He must’ve done something really good or really bad,” Nate said slowly.

  “Not that these people can tell which is which,” I said. “So what now?”

  “We still need to kill the President,” Nate said in a lower voice. “Whatever else happens, we have to do that.”

  “No sh—” I began, but without warning, Nate took me in his arms and lowered his mouth to mine.

  Shocked, I stood there, too startled to close my eyes. I felt the firmness of his mouth, the strength in his arms. This was the second time in ten minutes that someone had grabbed me, but Nate was the opposite of Kirt. Till now, Tim was the only guy I’d been with voluntarily, and Nate felt so different. But… not bad, actually…

  “Hold it right there!”

  The harsh voices made adrenaline instantly thread through my veins and we broke apart.

  “There she is!” Kirt shouted.

  “I can’t believe he’s already up,” I murmured. “I’m losing my touch.”

  “And he’s in on it!” Kirt, blood-covered and holding a bag of ice to his head, pointed at Nate.

  “No, he isn’t!” I shouted. “I clocked you all by myself, you rapist!”

  “Search her!” Kirt screamed. “She has a knife! She’s planning something!”

  The guards patted me down roughly but I’d lost the knife back in the pantry, and they found nothing. Goddamn Kirt. I should have killed him when I had the chance.

  Nate and I were cuffed and dragged to a different door that led to the cellar. A couple more locked metal doors and there we were, in a whole hallway of empty cages. We were thrown into one, and its heavy door was locked. Because of course there was a dungeon in this house. All the best houses had one.

  108

  CASSIE

  “I WISH MY OLD TERRIER, Ratbane, was here,” Tim whispered.

  I nodded, casually trying to look behind me. Ms. Strepp had led us underground to a subway tunnel. It was filthy, stank of urine and human waste and the occasional dead rat or possum. We moved in pairs, walking between the two rails and staying far away from the third rail, as we’d been warned.

  I stared through the darkness at my feet, trying not to trip on the wooden crossties.

  I’d never seen a train that ran underground, never imagined there could be so many people who would need one. And I’d never imagined that Ms. Strepp would have a backup army. I looked back at Strepp’s army. They filled the tunnel, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of soldier-kids, or kid-soldiers. Ms. Strepp must have been collecting them for a long time.

  “Once Ratbane killed twenty-three rats in one night,” Tim said. “It was the year of no fuel, and no food had come in months. We ate ’em.”

  “You ate. The rats,” I said, not even trying to keep the shock off my face. I remembered the year of no fuel—it hadn’t affected our cell much, except that our crops piled up and some rotted. It had never occurred to me to wonder what effect no fuel would have on other cells. Tim had eaten rats.

  Still staring at my feet, I walked right into Ms. Strepp, almost bouncing off her thin, hard body. I froze, waiting to get punished, but Ms. Strepp was looking behind me, holding up one finger.

  She nodded shortly. “Train,” she said.

  Tim immediately said “Train” to the next pair of soldiers. On and on down the line, our followers heard “Train” and did as instructed: dropped to their stomachs between the tracks, flattened themselves as much as possible, and turned their heads to one side.

  We did the same and I tried not to gag at the smell, tried not to think about what might have happened right where my face was. Tim and I looked at each other tensely. I prayed Ms. Strepp was right about train clearances.

  In moments I felt the vibration, heard a distant rumble become louder. Soon the train let out an ear-splitting whistle. I squeezed my eyes shut and reached out for Tim’s strong, scarred hand. Even if I had admitted being afraid, he wouldn’t have heard me. But what if the ground vibrated so much that it bounced me right up into the wheels? What if the train rode much lower than Ms. Strepp knew?

  This sucks this sucks this sucks this sucks.

  The train was right over us, its heat and noise and smells of oil and fuel weighing on me. I wanted to cry. Gripping Tim’s hand, I thought about how back home, I’d be out in the sunlight and fresh air, smelling the clean scent of corn ripening, freshly mown hay, the wild honeysuckle from which Becca and I used to suck the nectar…

  My teeth rattled in my head. My brain shook inside my skull. I started to feel sick but was too afraid to even raise a hand to my mouth. Instead I clung to Tim’s hand and tried not to breathe.

  Suddenly it was gone. Its rear light shot down the black tunnel and disappeared faster than it had appeared. We all got to our feet, brushed ourselves off. I heard one kid whisper, “Ick,” and another said, “Yeah.”

  I felt trembly and embarrassed that I’d been so scared, and my face heated when I saw Tim shaking his fingers slightly, trying to get his circulation going after I’d practically cut it off.

  Turning to me and Tim, Ms. Strepp murmured, “When we get beneath the palace, the Loner will set off a bomb big enough to blow a hole in the floor. We’ll swarm up over the rubble, and I want guns blazing! We need to cut the head off this elite monster, we need to spear its heart!” Her drawn, angular face was grim, her eyes dark holes burning with something I hadn’t seen before.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, as Tim relayed the message down the line. I knew something he didn’t: My days of blindly following Ms. Strepp were coming to an end. When I climbed up into the President’s palace, I’d have only one thought in my mind: finding Becca. If Becca was still alive, then Becca was my only mission. If Becca wasn’t alive… well, it’d be time for me to strike out on my own. With or without Tim or Nate or whoever was left.

  109

  BECCA

  “HERE WE ARE AGAIN,” I said tiredly, pacing our small cell. It was ironic that they’d decided to call all their little nodes of factories, farms, mines, mills—cells. The cell we grew up in had been a prison cell. We just hadn’t known it.

  I sat down on the metal cot next to Nate, unwilling to meet his eyes. Yes, of course I knew his kissing me had been a diversion, a ruse. All the same, it had been… well, not unpleasant.

  Then at the same moment, he and I looked at each other.

  “You hear that?” he whispered, and I nodded.

  People were arguing, faintly. But where? We peered out into the hall, walked the perimeter of our cell, trying to pinpoint the direction. I shook my head.

  “It’s above us,” I said, climbing up onto the metal cot. “Give me a lift.”

  This was when I longed for Tim, big, muscled Tim who could probably lift me with one hand. The Provost’s son was almost as tall and well-built, but no Tim.

  Still, he held me on his shoulders securely, walking where I told him, not complaining.

  “This is where the voices are loudest,” I told him softly.

  “Can you see anything?” he asked.

  “Uhh… nope. Dungeon wall,” I said, tapping against the stones. Then one of my taps went right through and I moved my hand left and right. “Oh, so gross!”

  “What? What?” Nate said.

  “There’s a… grate in the wall right below the ceiling,” I told him. “Clogged with basically the grossest stuff ever.” Grimacing, I pulled it away like it was horrible, dirty witch hair. I pressed closer to the grate and could hear the voices more clearly. I slid off Nate’s shoulders and we both stood on the metal cot.

  “That’s Dad,” he said quietly. “I’d know that bellow anywhere.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Did you tell your dad where we were?”

  His face flushed and he jumped to the floor. His hands made fists and when he looked back at me I realized I’d never seen him so angry. “Screw you!” he snapped. “You think I’d go through all this to help my dad? The dad who basically lobotomized my mom? You asshole!”

  He looked ready to punch me, and I decided I was convinced of his loyalty.

  With dignity I said, “Okay, I stand corrected.”

  Above us, Provost Allen was reporting grim conditions in his cell: crop failures, food shortages, people revolting—especially the teenagers—and worst of all, an outbreak of the plague.

  “Shit,” Nate breathed. “That’s home he’s talking about!”

  “The plague?” I said. “I heard people talking about it in the dining barn. But what plague? Did you hear anything about it in the kitchen?”

  Shaking his head no, his face paled and I remembered that his mom was in our cell. Barely living, but still. Both my parents were gone, and who knew where Cassie was? Still being Strepp’s pet librarian, safely back at camp while our friends and neighbors were dying back home?

  A heavy door slammed somewhere down the hall, and without speaking we both jumped down and sat on the metal cot with bored expressions on our faces. I didn’t know what was coming, but I knew enough to look broken down.

  The face that appeared on the other side of our bars was only too familiar, except he’d gotten his head injury bandaged. He stared at us with loathing, then smiled a horrible, knowing smile that made my skin crawl.

  “Here it is!” he shouted back to someone down the hall. “I found the fire! Turn on the water!”

  That’s when I saw he was holding an emergency fire hose in his hands.

  110

  I DID AN IMMEDIATE SURVEY of our cell—the cot was fastened to the wall and there was nothing else. Nowhere to hide.

  “Shit,” was all I had time to say before the fire hose came alive in Kirt’s hands. He struggled to control it, then aimed it right at us. I braced myself, my arms crossed over my face, but the full force of the water was like a cannon, easily knocking Nate and me flat on our backs on the stone floor. Keeping my back to Kirt, I struggled to get to my hands and knees but every time the water blasted me, I was flattened. If I was on my stomach, my face scraped against the stone floor. If I was on my back, Kirt aimed at my face with gleeful rage until I wondered if I had skin left. It was harder and harder to breathe—water filled my nostrils, blew my mouth open, peeled my eyelids back.

  The violent, freezing water was like a living beast that couldn’t be slain. If only I could grab it by the neck, crack its spine, break its nose. Instead it pinned me to the floor, to a wall, and it felt like my skin was being flayed from my bones.

  Above the rush of the hose I got glimpses of Nate not faring much better than me. He was bigger and heavier and seemed to be trying to reach me but was shoved back by the powerful force each time.

  “I’m going to drown you, you bitch!” Kirt screamed over the noise. “And then you’re going to hang for treason, you and loverboy both!” Once again he trained the hose at my face, its power knocking my hands away, making me gulp water and gag. My lungs were starting to scream for air. He was drowning me, minute by endless minute of incessant assault. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t swallow fast enough, couldn’t move. Was this how I was going to die? Being drowned in a dungeon cell beneath the President’s house? The President I was supposed to kill? Not only was I dying, but I was dying a failure. I just needed to breathe, goddamnit!

  When the water stopped abruptly I still heard its roar in my clogged ears. My skin burned. I was gagging.

  “You are the biggest asshole!” a high-pitched voice screamed.

  “Get the hell out of here, Mia!” Kirt roared in rage. “This is none of your business!”

  Slowly, on trembling arms, I sat up, coughing up water, feeling it run out of my nose and ears.

  “I swear I’m going to tell everyone you were wasting precious water, you prick!”

  Nate was sitting up now, his face scraped and red, eyes bleary, coughing up water like me.

  Throwing down the hose nozzle, Kirt stomped toward Mia. There was a lot of hushed, angry arguing, then Kirt trod heavily down the hallway. We heard a door slam loudly, and then Mia approached our cell.

  “Sorry,” she said abruptly. “He’s a complete dick. Always has been.”

  “Can you get us out of here?” I asked, my voice raspy.

  “I can’t,” she said regretfully. “Not until I ask my father. I’ll try to get you out when I can, but he’s super busy. Anyway, I brought you this—don’t tell anyone.”

  She pushed a paper bag through the bars, then left quickly.

  Nate opened the bag. Inside was a loaf of bread and a small glass jar of honey.

  “Is there a hacksaw in the bread?” I asked, and he tore it into pieces.

  “Nope,” he said, shaking the bag for the last thing to fall out. It dropped into his lap and we both stared at it. Then, freezing, sopping wet, our skin raw, we started laughing. Mia had thoughtfully provided a monogrammed sterling silver honey-dipping spoon.

  111

  CASSIE

  FOUR MORE TRAINS WENT BY. Each time I was literally inches from death. Each time I waited for my spine to be ripped open as it passed over me. Each time I clung to Tim’s hand like a total wuss, unwilling to give up his strength. I wasn’t afraid that a train would kill me. I wasn’t afraid to die. I was afraid that it would kill me horribly, messily, and for a long time.

  After each train we sprang to our feet and kept marching while I tried not to think about Tim eating rats. We were even columns, two by two, but then someone carefully pushed past me.

  “Ms. Strepp?” It was a short, slight girl dressed in black.

  Strepp halted, so the hundreds of rows of us halted, too.

  “The President has just left the building,” the girl reported urgently. “Something about a meeting. He’s supposed to get back for a late dinner.”

  “Goddamnit!” Ms. Strepp said and looked at her watch in the dim light.

  From far off, I felt the faintest rumble: yet another goddamn motherlovin’ freaking train.

  “Okay,” Ms. Strepp said. “We probably won’t get to the palace for another two or three hours anyway. Getting through these tunnels is slower going than I had anticipated.”

  Two or three more hours? Slower going than she’d thought? Gee, I don’t know! Maybe it’s because of all the goddamn trains! I shouted inside my head.

  Ms. Strepp nodded briskly, then turned and headed back into the darkness. Softly, as if speaking to herself, she said, “By the time we get to the palace, the President might well be back. If not, we’ll wait until he is. There’s no point attacking the palace unless he dies.”

  112

  BECCA

  “WAIT, STOP,” I MURMURED. “NATE, stop, hold on.”

  He paused in mid-chew and looked at me.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said, standing up. “We don’t have time to be stuck in a prison cell. The President is supposed to be dead already!”

  He pointedly looked at the stone walls of our cell.

  “Do you have a sledgehammer on you?” he asked politely.

  “No. But look—” I took a small piece of bread and rolled it into a tiny ball, then smeared it with honey and stuck it to my face.

  “That’s… so incredibly gross,” he said, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  I did it a couple more times, putting one on my arm, another on my face, smoothing the edges.

  “You look like a leper,” he said conversationally. “A really horrible one.”

  “I look like I have the plague,” I said. “They were talking about a plague!”

  An hour later, Kirt came back to torture us again, as I’d known he would. He found us lying limply on the floor, covered with oozing pustules.

  He shot back down the hall, yelling for a guard.

 

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