Safe House
FLEUR
The drive to Jack’s safe house is quiet, except for the occasional cough and sniffle from the back seat. Jack’s driving; he’s the only one aside from Chill who knows exactly where we’re going.
I drop my feet from the dash, growing drowsier the more comfortable I try to make myself. Jack glances over as I peel off my sweater and aim the AC vent toward my face. No one objected when Jack set the thermostat as low as it would go. Instead, they took the sleeping bags from their packs and spread them across each other, and within minutes, they were all asleep.
One of us should stay up and keep Jack company. One of us should keep an eye out for crows, but the cold air only manages to leech my energy. I blink out the window, my eyelids growing heavier as the trees blur by. When the sun rose this morning, revealing the first turning autumn leaves I’ve seen in decades, I felt a rush of nostalgia, flashes of memories of plastic Halloween buckets overflowing with candy and mymother’s good linens around the table at Thanksgiving, of hayrides and candy apples stuck in my teeth. But the farther west we drive, the lower the temperature falls. The piles of browning leaves along the side of the road remind me of Hunter, and the guilt sucks every ounce of warmth from my bones.
Jack hasn’t said a word since we started driving. I wonder if he’s battling memories of his own.
“You should rest.” His voice is husky, his bloodshot eyes focused on the hypnotic white lines flashing by on the road. He points ahead of us, where a mountain range forms distant hazy peaks on the horizon. “It’s not far. We’ll be there in a few hours.”
I turn in my seat, toward the familiar sound of Poppy’s soft snores. She coughs, curled into her sleeping bag on the floorboard. Chill stirs in the seat behind her, his glasses low on his nose. Marie’s mouth hangs open beside him, her head pressed against the window, with Slinky fast asleep in her lap. Woody’s crammed in the rear bench seat between Amber and Julio. His skin looks sallow in his sleep, feverishly pale, but his bleeding has stopped, and for now, that’s all we can do. We can’t risk stopping at a hospital or a clinic. Cameras are mounted in every store and gas station. For all we know, they’re on every highway marker and exit sign, too. We’re eight teenagers in a stolen SUV full of camping gear and bloody clothes, midmorning on a school day. The last thing we want is to draw any more attention to ourselves.
I keep my eyes peeled for Gaia’s spies and speed traps on the side of the road. But the farther west we travel, the more it begins to wind. My head lolls with the motion of the car, and I close my eyes.
Just for a second.
Tires crunch slowly over gravel. I blink, blinded by the orange glow against the inside of my eyelids and jostled by ruts in the road. Trees rise up on all sides of us, the setting sun glittering between their naked branches as we round a bend.
I sit up in my seat, my neck stiff and my bladder ready to burst. “How long was I out?”
“It’s almost five. You slept through a pit stop three hours ago.” Jack offers me a road-weary smile. Even so, he looks less tired than before. Refreshed, even. There’s an eager shine in his eyes as he dips his head to survey the rise of the next peak.
We wind higher up the mountain, creeping around hairpin turns. The others begin to stir, roused by the sway of the car. One by one, they rub their eyes, taking in our surroundings as we turn down a narrow dirt road camouflaged by a blanket of fallen leaves. Jack pulls to a stop in front of a low wooden cabin, its unremarkable shape and weather-worn sides almost entirely hidden by the surrounding trees.
“We’re home,” he says quietly, to nobody. To all of us. He opens his door and slides down from his seat, taking it in from a distance. The sagging porch and leaning roof, the stacked stone chimney and a mound of moss-covered firewood, the splintered remains of an old wooden shed. He walks slowly through windblown piles of dead leaves, pausing to tap his knuckles against a rusted well pump.
The rest of us file out of the car. Slinky’s gray head pops out of Marie’s jacket, his nose tipped curiously and his whiskers quivering. Poppy and Chill help Woody out of the SUV. They stand slack-jawed beside it, their wide eyes moving from the rustling branches to the clearblue sky to the pockets of blaze-orange and ley line–yellow and bloodred leaves, then down to the miles upon miles of green in the valley. A tear slides down Poppy’s cheek. She brushes it away with a nervous giggle that eases some of the guilt I’ve been carrying.
Julio blows warm air into his hands as he makes a beeline for a small wooden outhouse behind the cabin. Amber ties her sweatshirt around her waist and pops open the rear hatch, a smile on her lips as Woody limps past the cabin to get a better view.
She dumps the duffels and backpacks beside my feet, her smile fading as she watches Jack climb the warped steps to the front porch. The wooden planks creak. When he swings open the porch door, the dry-rotted screening blows loose in the breeze. I expect him to pull a pick from his pocket. Instead, he shakes out a set of keys. The door sticks, and he gently shoulders it open, releasing months, or even years, of mustiness I can smell from here.
Amber wrinkles her nose. “This is it? This is Jack’s idea of a safe house?” I hate to admit I’m thinking the same thing. The place looks frail enough to crumble under the first blanket of snow. I pull on my sweatshirt, hugging myself against the biting cold, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone but Julio and me.
“No power or phone lines,” I point out, trying to be optimistic for Jack’s sake. “We’re off the grid. No one can track us.”
She points to the moon-shaped cutout in the door of the outhouse as Julio swings it open. “No running water or indoor plumbing, either.” Heaving a sigh, she tromps through the leaves to take her turn.
“How are you feeling?” Julio asks, huddling close.
“Tired,” I say with a shiver. “You?”
He nods. Even though he’s slept all day, his eyes are ringed deeppurple and his lips are a little blue. He hefts an armful of duffels and carries them inside. I grab as many as I can carry and follow.
The front room of the cabin is little more than dusty floorboards, a table, and a single chair. A potbellied stove and a few cabinets function as a makeshift kitchen. The cast-iron door of the stove groans open. Jack kneels in front of it and loads it with wood. He strikes a match and sets a few pieces of kindling burning, staring into the crackling flames, his thoughts lost in the swirl of smoke.
Julio pokes his head into the next room. There’s no door on the hinge, just an opening in the wall. He drops the bags on the floor, stirring a cloud of dust. Two cots line the back wall, where splinters of daylight penetrate the gaps in the timber. Above the cots, the rungs of a roughhewn ladder disappear into a loft. Julio climbs up and inspects the handful of faded bed rolls left behind by whoever was here before.
“This place is a shithole,” he says, jumping down from the ladder. He claps dust from his hands and returns to inspect the kitchen. A mouse scurries out when he opens a cabinet door. Marie makes a disgusted sound from the doorway as Slinky leaps from her chest in pursuit.
Chill wanders in behind her. The reflection of the fire, or maybe a memory, flickers against his dark eyes when he sees Jack kneeling by the stove.
Someone’s stomach growls loudly—maybe mine. Loud enough to get Chill’s attention.
“I’ll start dinner.” He digs into the bags of food we stole, stacking cans of soup on the counter. Dust billows from a cast-iron pot he fishes from a cobwebbed cabinet. He lugs it outside, mumbling something about the well.
