He looks up at me. “Brooke!” he cries. “Brooke! Help me! You have to come to me!”
I start to scream.
I wake, screaming, and look all around.
I realize I’m back in my room, in my bunk bed. Daylight is streaming through the curtains and Bree snores softly in the bed beneath me. My heart is beating fast. I take deep breaths to try and calm myself down. It was just a dream, I tell myself. Just a dream.
But it felt like a dream that was telling me something. Urging me to find my dad. To help him.
Telling me that he’s alive.
Quietly, I climb down the ladder of my bunk bed and land softly on the ground. I take the fresh uniform Neena cleaned and ironed for me and slip it on, feeling the rough fabric against my skin. It’s a sensation I’ve become familiar with over the last six months at Fort Noix. As I sling the backpack over my shoulder, I hear Bree’s voice coming from behind me.
“You’re an idiot, Brooke,” she says.
I tense. I hate hearing my sister so angry, and I can’t help but draw painful comparisons to the way I left Mom, the last bitter words I said to her.
Without looking back, I say, “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”
I take one more step, stop, and add: “I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”
There comes silence in return.
Then, without another word, I step out of this room, out of this new life, for what may be the very last time.
CHAPTER NINE
Molly, Zeke, Ryan, and I watch quietly as the Commander spreads a map out on the table in front of us. We’re in his office in the busy main building, the one where he’d first decided to let us stay all those months ago. Now, here he is, helping me to leave.
The map looks incredibly old. People stopped making physical maps because technology surpassed the need for them, and most of the ones still in existence would have been poached from museums around the early twenty-first century. There’s no doubt in my mind that this map is an old, historical relic, stolen in a raid years ago. There’s no way of knowing for sure if the roads depicted on it will still be there, or that there won’t be extra settlements on the way not shown, places where unsavory people might dwell.
General Reece leans over and taps a spot on the map. “This is us,” she says. Then she runs her finger down the length of the map all the way to Houston, Texas. “And here is where the signal came from.”
I frown and lean forward, looking more closely at the map in the dingy yellow light. It looks like such an enormous distance to cover. The thought is daunting.
“I would recommend you stick to the waterways wherever possible,” she continues. “It will be safer. Faster. And will require less fuel. Stay far from the shores. Take the Lawrence River and head west as far as you can.”
I’d been planning on leaving by the same route I arrived, traveling alongside the Hudson toward New York. It seemed logical to me to retrace my steps, to tread familiar ground, at least for the initial part of the journey. But looking at the map makes me realize that my plan is too risky. New York is crawling with slaverunners, and is the site of Arena 1. She’s right: passing through it via land would be incredibly dangerous. By sticking to the waterways and following the river for as long as possible, we’ll be able to bypass many of the main highways and cities.
“There’s just one snag,” I say. “I don’t have a boat.”
It’s the Commander who answers.
“We’ll give you a boat, Brooke,” he says, almost matter-of-factly.
My mouth drops open at the news. I can hardly believe it. Molly and Zeke are both wide-eyed in disbelief, too. My first instinct is to ask him why, why he would choose to help me by offering up a precious vehicle like a boat, but I decide against it.
General Reece taps the map again, pointing to a place in Ohio on the banks of the river.
“If you survive that far,” she adds, “the water can take you all the way to Toledo. There’s an old train station there, built during the war as a way to transport coal down south. There are tracks running all the way to Texas.”
“Really?” I gasp, my voice rising several pitches at the stroke of luck.
She nods in her typically emotionless way. It takes all my willpower to contain my excitement. General Reece and the Commander have no idea how grateful I am to them for the information.
The tracks aren’t on the ancient map, so General Reece leans forward and draws a straight red line from Toledo to Chicago, then all the way down to Houston, Texas.
“This is your first main danger point,” she says, tapping Chicago. She runs her finger down to St. Louis, Missouri. “This is your second one.”
“Why?” Zeke asks.
“They’re both major cities and the tracks run straight through them,” the Commander explains. “And where there are cities, there are arenas.”
I shudder at the thought.
“So we go around them,” I say. “Adds a day or two to the journey, but it’s not worth the risk.”
General Reece frowns. “You can’t go around them,” she states, blandly. “You’ll be on a train.”
I pause and draw my eyebrows together. “We will?”
“Well yes, of course,” she replies. She taps Toledo again. “The train station is relatively new. It operated throughout most of the war. The chances of it still being operable are highly likely. Especially since all you need is coal. You’ll just need to find an engine still on the tracks, fire up the coal, and you’ll be away.”
Molly lets out a little squeak of surprise. I shake my head, unable to comprehend.
“I’m sorry, you want me to drive a train?” I stammer.
“A coal-powered train,” General Reece says with a nod, as if that makes any difference.
I take a seat as I try to catch my breath, completely stunned by the enormity of the journey ahead of me. This journey is going to take me entirely out of my comfort zone.
The Commander looks at me curiously. “If you don’t think you can handle it, Brooke,” he says, “maybe it would be best not to go at all. You’ve made a decent life for yourself here. There’s a group about to head out looking for survivors to start their own colony. You could always go with them. Take your sister. Your friends.”
I shake my head, determined. “No,” I say, forcefully. “I can do this.”
“You can,” Molly agrees.
“We can,” Ryan adds.
I look up at my friends’ faces. They all seem to have so much faith in me, so much belief. They’re willing to leave their home to help me follow my dream.
“Any of you guys ever driven a train before?” I ask.
Everyone breaks into a smile.
My arms ache as I heave the last of the supplies into the thirty-foot sailboat, making it rock on the banks of the river. We have a huge stash of weapons; plenty of dried food provisions like cured meat and pickled vegetables; changes of clothes; and a medical kit containing slings, bandages, and antibiotics in case of emergencies.
I then reach over and begin loading the thirty-gallon drums of fuel, knowing how precious each one is as General Reece hands them to me.
“We can only spare four,” she explains, as I load the last one. “You’ll need to sail as much as you can. Use the fuel sparingly, only if you’re in trouble or in bad weather. That engine is really meant for backup, anyway. Remember, this is primarily a sailboat, not a yacht.”
I nod, taking it all in. The Commander’s map is safely stashed in my pocket. Of all the items on board the boat, it is by far the most precious. Without the map, we’ll just be four people wandering through America.