Strikers (31 page)

I’m not particularly worried that he’ll be able to catch up with us on his own. Creedy is a lot older than we are and I saw his paunchy belly and the cowboy boots on his feet. He was dressed for the comfort of horseback, not the rigors of walking.

But that doesn’t mean he won’t find a way to get a ride on a boat or barge. He must have plenty of silver. He may have angered the town in the dead of night, and they may have turned him away in the presence of others, but once away from judging eyes, his silver might be too much to resist. That thought spurs me to move a little faster and the others do as well. It’s not a huge leap to consider that happening, so I’m guessing everyone else had the same thought.

The hours pass quietly enough, nothing but the sound of the river and the occasional quick exchange of words from another sentry to break the constant rhythm of our footsteps. By late afternoon, we risk a trip past the trees to the riverbank to see what we can see. The last sentry told us we were just a few miles from the gate, and we’ve seen the billowing sails of boats peeking through the foliage more often over the last few hours.

At the far edge of our vision is one of the most awe-inspiring sights I have ever seen. I can’t even imagine how huge the bridge that must have once stood there was. On each side of the river the supports for the bridge rise so high that even the wall we’ve been walking along seems dwarfed. In the center, another support stands even taller in the water like a giant, intent on guarding the river from all comers. Whatever small parts of the bridge remain attached poke out from the sides like short arms.

There’s no real indication of a town at this distance, but small dots in the water must be boats with their sails up to catch the ever-present breeze along the river. It’s a walk of less than two hours to get there. We exchange smiles and a few breathless words but that’s all any of us wants to waste time on. I can see it in the eager lines of their bodies, the way they’re half-turned toward the trees. They’re ready to go and get this last bit of distance behind us.

By the time I can just make out the dark swath that marks a gated section of wall, a sentry peers over the side and whistles for us. He drops a coil of tightly rolled paper weighted with a pebble down to us. We gather to unroll it and find a short note, neatly printed in well-schooled handwriting, letting us know that the coast is clear to the gate.

It’s like the best present I’ve ever received and I can’t help but reach out and grab Connor and Cassi, the two next to me, around the shoulders in an exuberant hug. It’s catching because soon we’re all doing it, grinning like loons and slapping each other on the backs. The laugh of the sentry above us breaks us up, but he gives us a thumbs-up and that makes it alright.

At the gate we don’t waste time gawping at the amazing town sprawled across the river, though it’s tempting. Instead, we follow the posted directions and push a button and then back up behind the yellow line painted on the pavement.

A whir of noise draws my attention to a little box with a tiny red light on it that moves across the line of us like it’s watching us. The glass lens on the front does remind me of the camera we rented once a long time ago, so I assume that must be what it is.

After an endless moment, a small door opens and I see from the edge of it that it is thicker even than the metal hatch the sentry opened for us this morning. Several inches thick and made of dark metal, it’s inset into a human-sized door, which is further inset into a gate big enough to pass a prairie jumper through. The interior side of it, from the quick look I get, seems banded with yet more metal. These people are very serious about their wall.

I had hoped, perhaps stupidly, that one of the sentries we talked to might be the one that met us at the gate. It’s completely unreasonable, given that they have stations that they man and the gate is miles away from most of them, but I can’t help feeling fearful of having to explain again.

The man who looks us over with a guarded expression is older than the sentries, his dark hair graying at the sides, but he’s clean-shaven and his hair is combed with precision. It all screams “official” to me. That’s probably a good thing.

He stays inside the gate, his head framed by the two-foot-square opening, and takes in our dirty clothes and weary faces. He’s probably seen it plenty of times.

“You’re the kids from Logan’s Crossing,” he says and it isn’t a question, but I nod and so do the others.

He purses his lips as he looks us over once more, like he smells something bad emanating from us—which is entirely possible—then glances down to something I can’t see and studies it a moment.

When his attention returns to us, he looks directly at Maddix, then shifts between Jovan and Connor, finally settling on Connor. He says, “Maddix Blake. And that’s the minor brother you want to sponsor?”

“Yes,” Maddix says, and the relief is palpable coming off him. “He’s seventeen.”

“Scooting under the wire then. You come forward first and then we’ll get him,” he instructs and holds up a small, odd-shaped box out of the opening.

Maddix walks forward and doesn’t seem at all nervous. In fact, he looks like he’s familiar with what’s going on. When the man turns the box, I see a curved protrusion on it and Maddix presses his face to it without any prompting. It beeps after a few seconds and the man takes it down, peeks at the back of it and then smiles at Maddix, like he passed some sort of test.

“Yep, you’re you. Welcome back to the Southeast and Mississippi Territory,” he says with a smile. I guess he did pass a test, though I can’t imagine what test requires a person to put their face up to a box.

He holds out another flat and shiny black surface, no thicker than a roof shingle, and it lights up. I can’t see what it’s doing other than emitting a vague blue light, but Maddix sticks his hand on it, fingers splayed just so, and it beeps as well.

That seems to settle the matter for the man, because he opens the larger, man-sized door and pushes out a cart, the top of it covered with neatly arranged objects. He’s dressed rather oddly, in a way I imagined wealthy people dressed only inside their homes. His bright green shirt has something embroidered above the left breast pocket and his khaki pants are very neatly pressed. There’s not a stain anywhere and even his shoes are clean and new-looking.

He’s slender, too, but very fit. It’s odd, how new and perfect he looks to be so old. People tend to look worn with age in Texas, but this guy looks like he’s spent his whole life indoors or something. Kind of unused looking. It’s a bit unsettling and it makes me aware of how dirty I am, even after my long dip in the river.

“Let’s get your brother first, shall we?” he asks, his tone friendly but officious, sort of like the school administrator when I go register each year.

The man hands Maddix another of those shiny black shingle-looking things and he studies it, tapping the surface every now and then while he does. Connor gets the box to his face, then his hand on a shingle, but it doesn’t stop there. The man scrubs the inside of Connor’s cheek with a small brush, pricks his finger and all sorts of other things that look altogether frightening.

I try to move closer, so I can hear the quiet instructions the man gives to Connor, but he gives me a look and waves me backward. “No cross-contamination,” he says by way of explanation.

When Maddix is done with his part, he puts the shingle on the cart and jogs over to talk to us. There’s no way he can miss the confusion on our faces.

“Okay, I know this looks weird, but remember how we talked about your pendant being coded to you, your DNA only?” he asks, pointing to my necklace.

I nod, no wiser.

“They get your DNA from your cheek and a second sample from your blood. That thing they held up to my eyes? That’s a retina scanner and it’s a quick way of confirming who you are if they have it on record. Same with the fingerprints on that tablet,” he explains.

Since Maddix got sponsored by my father and is a citizen, I assume that is why he’s on record. And that would mean that Connor is getting his record done right now. Which means we’re next.

When Connor gets finished and he sucks on the finger the man jabbed, he looks a little stunned. All those gadgets and all that touching by a stranger must have been unsettling, but he smiles so I guess he’s alright.

The man puts all that he used for Connor into a clear bag and seals it carefully, then drops it into a red box on the lower shelf of the cart. He waves us over and performs the same series of tests for Jovan, Cassi and me. It tickles when he rubs the little bristled brush on the inside of my cheek and I can’t help but wrinkle my nose. He gives me a little smile when I do and I feel better.

When he’s done he directs his next words only to Maddix. “You’re clear, but you know the drill. You have to go directly to the clinic in town and get checked. Your brother will need the same two days as the others to have his identity verified, so he’ll have to come back once that’s done.”

The alarm in Maddix’s face is real and his voice is a little higher when he asks, “How can he be verified if he’s never been here? I didn’t have to be verified before Jordan brought me in.”

“That was different. You were a Striker seeking sanctuary, and you had a sponsor who would vouch for you. A sponsor who had the means to cover a vouching should you run amok inside the wall. You’re sponsoring this boy as a brother. His DNA needs to be tested against yours to confirm a familial relationship,” the man answers, quite reasonably.

Now that I’m closer, I can read the letters stitched into his shirt. They read Immigration Enforcement and below is his name, Gary Walder. I may not know much about the Southeast, but I know what the words immigration and enforcement mean and they don’t mean that he belongs to the welcoming committee.

“Do you mean that the four of us will need to wait two days to go in?” Jovan asks, trying to clarify the situation because he’s just as confused as I am.

“I thought we were going to be good to go. I mean, I have this,” I say, holding up the pendant.

Gary’s face clears as he realizes our situation. He says, “You are registered, but I have no way of knowing that you are you. Your sample will be tested against the one registered to you and if it matches, you’re welcome to come right in. We’ve got your retina scans and your fingerprints now, so in two days, when the results of your DNA test show up in my system, you’ll be able to come in just the same way I cleared your friend here.”

“Two days,” I whisper. I’m not alone in my unhappiness with this new situation. The idea of having to run, hide and then somehow get back to this gate, or another gate, after two days staying ahead of Creedy is enough to make me nauseous. It’s like my organs shift inside me and I wasn’t prepared for it.

I’ve been able to ignore my hunger because I thought it would soon be over, that food was just a wall away. Likewise, I’ve been able to push back the soreness of my body, the tenderness of my many bruises and the nagging sting of chafed and reddened skin. All of it was tolerable only because I could feel an end to it just around the corner. With that hope gone, my body suddenly feels like a loosely filled bag of bones incorrectly assembled.

Pushing that aside, I force myself to think. Perhaps there is a way to make this less painful for at least one of us.

“Can’t Maddix just sponsor Connor the same way that my father sponsored him?” I ask.

“He could,” he says and addresses Maddix. “If you have the funds to commit to it. But you’ll need to sign a bond and set aside the right amount of funds. Do you have that?”

“I have no idea,” Maddix answers wearily.

“What about sanctuary? You said you have that?” Connor asks.

“We do. Minors with three strikes or in imminent danger are automatically granted sanctuary inside while we do all the rest. Just to keep them from harm, you see.”

Holding out his hands to the side, Maddix says, “We’ve got those conditions up to our necks.”

Gary looks sympathetic, but professionally so, like he’s heard this story a hundred times. He probably
has
heard it a hundred times, if not more. “The rules are very clear and I see no imminent danger coming up on us.”

At our expressions, which are pretty lost and hopeless if how I feel is at all reflected on my face, he softens a little and says, “Try to think about it from our perspective. Things look peaceful, but it wasn’t always that way. People have come to claim sanctuary who have been deliberately infected with contagious diseases. Others were dangerous criminals—and I’m not talking about the petty stuff you get strikes for—who hurt or killed our people after claiming sanctuary. Our rules are there for a reason and learned through hard experience.”

When he finishes speaking, he meets the eyes of each of us in turn, his sincerity evident and believable. As much as I would like to be able to punch a few holes in what he said, I can’t. If it were me, I’d do the same.

Whatever there might be on the other side of that wall, it’s clearly worth protecting. Even from us. I can see the near future unfolding before me right now and it isn’t the safety of walking through that gate.

My immediate future is two more days of keeping my head down and my feet moving and then hoping I do get confirmed as the person my father registered to this pendant. But I can help Maddix and Connor.

“I have funds. How much is a bond?” I ask.

Gary eyes me like I’ve surprised him but answers. “If they stay in the Gate Town at the quarantine facility and agree to curfew and restrictions on their movement, then it will be a hundred silver ounces. You’ll get it back if they stay out of trouble till he’s medically cleared.”

My face falls and my mouth drops open at the amount. That’s more money than I can imagine. It’s enough to buy a stake in a salvage run, several head of prime cattle or even a windmill capable of powering enough lights to keep a bulb in every room. There’s no way so much is on my pendant. Even Jovan looks shocked and he was carrying more than I’ve ever seen in his pockets. Maddix looks like he just got gut-punched, hard.