The Wanted (34 page)

ROSA

I’m too used to grief. I expect it. It’s a sad friend that wraps itself around my ankles and makes me drag it through the streets. These empty, ghost-like streets.

Back in this grey world, I felt like a child.

“He’s gone, Rosa,” Gwen said lightly, like she knew it would happen.

“Huh?” I could barely concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

“That Denis guy, your friend.” She swept her head back and forth, her plait snaking up and down her shoulder, an offered rope of safety withdrawn, her eyes running over empty doorways and doors half-cracked. She winced every time she saw a body in the street. Trampled. I swung Rosa-May to my hip so I could shield her eyes.

“He wasn’t my friend, not really.”
He used me. I used him
. I wasn’t surprised that he took off.

Rosa-May kept saying Mama over and over again as we passed through gate after gate. It was like a steady flow of small punches to the stomach. I crumpled deeper at each repetition.

Joseph’s parents were quiet in their horror. Several times, Jonathan ran to a trampled body to check their pulse. Every time he returned, shaking his head. Steph kept her hand over her mouth like that would stop fear from winning, horror from slipping out. Pau Brazil was now a hollow shell. Footsteps sounded like single stones falling from the sky. Solitary, too loud.

Everyone was gone.

Everyone.

I checked every few paces, but the sky remained clear. The Survivor’s video hadn’t started, and I worried something had gone wrong. That he wasn’t here. That they got to him first. My feet sped up, my leather shoes squeaking on the stones. Gwen and Joseph’s parents kept pace with me and soon, we were running. We caught up with the noise, the panicked screaming, and were sucked into the thrashing fishtail end of thousands of people fleeing the compound. They had to be heading somewhere. I jumped up to try and see over the sea of heads, but I was too small. Jonathan stood behind me. He shielded his eyes with his hand, the sun casting a plane of light right into his face.

“There. Up ahead. I’ll be damned. Someone’s blown a hole through the wall.”

I squeezed Jonathan’s arm. “He’s here.” The words a balm, a medicine to keep me from liquefying into a pool of sadness.

I clutched Rosa-May tighter, grabbed Gwen’s hand, and moved with the crowd, losing Joseph’s parents in the throng.

JOSEPH

After the blast, Pelo made it to us and we crouched down behind the chopper. Waiting. Watching for people to start coming over the rubble and into the open. A lid flipped open near the nose of the chopper, and the little guy with the case popped his head out of the ground like a mole. He took one look at the wall blown to pieces, swung his head to the chopper where he saw us crouching over the bound soldiers, and disappeared back into the ground before we could really register his presence.

In the other towns, people had warily picked their way over the broken wall and peeked their heads out like nervous mice. They tested the air. Sampled the freedom. Some had retreated. Some had stepped over carefully and wandered out. My eyes rested on the pile of rubble, anticipating the same kind of reaction.

A bald head poked its way up from behind the hill of twisted iron and concrete dust. Eyes squinted and blinked behind round glasses. The old man put his hand to his brow, searched the horizon, and was flattened. I surged forward but Gus grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me back. Hundreds of people flurried over the debris, trampling the man. Desperate, dirty faces, women clutching children to their hips, others chained to each other by tight, clasped hands as they pulled loved ones through. They poured over the breach in the wall like an avalanche. People tripped, their legs getting stuck in the gaps between the rubble. They were run over before I could blink.

I tensed and clenched my teeth.
What the hell had happened in there?
These people weren’t just escaping the compound; they were running away from something. Running for their lives.

A young woman with golden brown hair scrambled over the edge of the debris. People streamed passed her, yet she held still. Another girl came behind her and put her arm on the woman’s shoulder, pulling herself up and passing her a small girl about Orry’s age. I squinted. I knew that face.

“It’s Gwen,” I said to Gus, elbowing him.

Gus shook his head in disbelief and whispered, “It can’t be…”

My excitement overcame any other panic. We’d found Gwen. I rose from my crouch.

“Joseph, look…” Gus said, pointing at the woman standing next to Gwen. She still wasn’t moving, standing atop the pile of rubble, looking down at the small girl who clung to her leg. She leaned down, spoke to the girl, and then she flipped her hair, put her hands on her hips, and smiled wide.

The sun crossed her face and those eyes… those eyes I’d wanted for so long, flashed defiantly. A revolution standing in front of me. Rosa.

ROSA

This was what I had wanted. To stand atop the crumbling wall and watch the Woodlands disintegrate before me, turned to dust. But not like this. Terrified people clipped my shoulders, and I struggled to hold my ground. I clung to Rosa-May, keeping my body rigid, a barrier between her and the crush of the crowd. She wouldn’t stop crying, that sticky, hick, hick, hick, hitching her breath. I had run out of tears. I was an empty drum with salt lines running around my walls.

Gwen spoke, though I could barely hear her through the screaming. “They have to be here. Let’s go.”

Rosa-May’s perfect little jacket was smeared with dirt and blood. I leaned down and dusted it off, carefully checking her for injuries. My heart broke as I said, “It’s okay, little sister. Hold tight to my hand. Don’t let go.” I was all she had left. I tried to smile for her sake.

Gwen tugged on my arm, but I wasn’t ready to tumble into the crowd and lose my perspective. From here, I could see for miles. I put my hands on my hips and scanned the area, a smile still stuck to my face so Rosa-May wouldn’t be scared. They had to be nearby.

My heartbeat grew steady as I took in sections of the forest. Like the pie of the Superiors’ compound. I broke it up and searched each piece thoroughly. The black rocks were clear, the forest line seemed clear, although they could have been hiding behind the bushes. A soldier shoved past me, scrambling down the rubble and knocking others out of his way as he went, his uniform in tatters. Someone had pulled all the gold decoration from it, and now he looked like an urchin. He disappeared into the crowd. He was just the same as the rest of us in this situation, frightened, trying to survive.

My eyes landed on the chopper. I moved sideways, keeping my legs as sturdy as steel beams. The shadow of a person somehow shone behind the rear of the black angel.

The air around him was brighter, shining, pulsing like golden brushstrokes. Joseph.

JOSEPH

She looked thinner, her eyes ringed with dark, her clothes an odd combination of a delicate dress, torn to shreds as it reached her upper thighs, and a thick, grey wool jacket. I remembered that jacket. The way she had cursed the gate for giving her rust stains. I wondered for a second if she was an apparition, a memory, but then I would never imagine her with dyed hair.
What was she doing here?

“It’s her. Let’s go,” Pelo urged, pushing me forward.

But I froze, my feet stationed, burning a hole in the ground. Her eye’s fell on me. They ripped me open and cut me a million times with every dusty-lashed blink.

What does she see?

I am broken.

ROSA

He looked the same. His beard scruffy, his hair knitted over his brow in that delicate balance. But when he looked up at me, his eyes were deep green, ringed with sadness.

What does he see when he looks at me?

I am broken.

JOSEPH

I forced my legs forward. Something stronger than any shame, stronger than any fear I had of what she might say or do when she met me, pulled me towards her and suddenly, I was running.

She was here. That was all that mattered.

ROSA

“There,” I said as I pointed to the group of Survivors who were now approaching us carefully as the people of Pau Brazil spilled around them in scattered lines. Except for Joseph, who was flat out sprinting.

I handed Rosa-May to Gwen and helped them climb down. Slipping through the cracks, something snagged my leg, tearing my dress even further. I pulled my jammed leg out and scrambled down, holding Rosa-May’s hand, keeping us connected. Her wide eyes were open to the chaos. She sniffed, but she didn’t cry.

“You’re so brave,” I said, patting her head. Her gaze did something strange to me. Her eyelashes stuck together with salt water, her brown eyes, my
mother’s
brown eyes, blinking up at me like I was
the
one. The
only
one she trusted. It filled me with hope.

I took a deep breath and crossed my arms over my chest. Something pulled at my body, elastic getting tighter and tighter. I found him. He was here. I was broken, but I could still run. My feet hit the frozen grass and my body surged towards him, my hand still wrapped around Rosa-May’s as I dragged them with me. I wasn’t in control anymore. He was here, here, right here in front of me. My heart. My hands ached for him; everything I wanted was wrapped in a green shirt and a dark jacket.

“Joseph,” I whispered, as if it were my last breath. My first breath.

JOSEPH

If she knew of my crimes, she didn’t seem to care. And I wasn’t sure I cared either. She was here. Impossibly. She ran towards me as fast as a heartbeat. As strong as warrior. My Rosa.

My brain couldn’t take in anything other than her tiny form streaking across the muddy land with Gwen and the child behind her. Nothing could slow us. She was five feet away from me, her face dirty, her hair wrong, her mouth open and panting. “Jose…” she started, letting go of the child’s hand for a moment.

I reached out and grabbed her, pinning her to me. Squashing our bodies together and hoping they would never part. I wanted to feel her heart against my own.

“I found you,” I said.

She gasped as I squeezed her tighter, her face buried in my chest. Forcing her face upwards, she blinked up at me.

“I think I found you,” she said stubbornly, her voice like ringing bells in my ears. I had wanted to hear her voice forever.

ROSA

Joseph’s chest rattled with a chuckle. It felt old and new at the same time, like he hadn’t used it in a while. I let the vibration fill me, let the cymbals crash against us both, the sparks fly. I felt his lips press down on the top of my head, felt him breathe me in. Every brush of his skin was killing me. We were ending and beginning. There was so much more to do but right then, the force of what we had wanted, the stretching sound and the feel of our hearts being sewn back together, was as painful and pleasurable as any emotion I’d ever felt, would probably ever feel. It was all I
could
feel.

“Say it,” I said, my teeth glistening whiter than the ice, my smile too big for my face.

He grinned. “All right, all right,
you
found
me
.”
Talk forever, never stop.

I was done being apart from him.

JOSEPH

“Jooosssephh!” A woman’s scream managed to fight its way through the crowd. I lifted my head from where I was staring at the part in Rosa’s hair like it was the map to my heart. Rosa leaned back from my embrace and turned in the direction of the screams. She waved her hand, calling someone over to us.

“Oh yeah, and I found your parents too,” she said, her eyes crinkling in the corners in the most perfect way.

“You’re my hero,” I said softly, my smile cracking me open.

You save me over and over again.