Page 96 of Bitter Falls

Sister Rose changes places with Vee in the driver’s seat. Vee grabs my arm as I lunge for the door.

Rose hits the gas. “Everybody hold on!”

I still want to get Sam, and it burns in the pit of my stomach that Vee’s right, that Sam would tell me to stay here. And the RV’s moving now. I grab the Taser from the floor and hold on to it, and brace a girl standing next to me as the RV lurches into a long turn.

Rose accelerates the camper as it straightens up again. I see the church over to our right. The men’s quarters. The Garden’s on the other side, but she doesn’t slow down for it; nobody’s waiting to be picked up outside. Harmony isn’t there.

Rose lays on the horn, and it echoes like a high-pitched scream as she jams the pedal to the floor and heads for the gate.

“Everybody hold on!” I yell, and brace myself.

But we don’t get to ram our way out.

The men shoot our tires out, and Rose loses control and instead of hitting the gates head-on, we slide sideways and slam into them at an angle; the gates sway, but it isn’t a hard-enough impact to force them open.

The jolt knocks me into window glass, and I’m dazed for a second. That’s long enough for someone to yank open Rose’s driver’s-side door and drag her out, screaming. They’ve got the other door open, too, and men are coming on board and pulling the women off, and they’re fighting back with knives and fists and screaming defiance. It’s chaos.

My head aches, and I feel clumsy, but I get over it fast, because we’re going to have to fight now. And I expected to be afraid, to want to run, but I feel a weird peace come sliding down through my body like cool water. There’s nowhere to run. I’m not scared. I’m not mad. I just take the Taser and fire it at the first man I see; I remember I have to keep the trigger down, and I watch him scream and collapse, twitching. I don’t know if I can use it again, and I don’t care. I swing the bolt cutters at the next man who comes on board, and hit him in the guts. He topples backward.

The next one has a gun, and he lunges in and aims it at someone fighting near me. One of the older women. I grab his wrist and shove it up, and his shot goes into the ceiling instead of her face. I can’t use the bolt cutters; there’s no room to swing them. I punch him instead, and it hurts all the way up my arm, like I’m breaking every bone, but I don’t care, I can’t. I just need to stop him, and I don’t care how.

But he’s bigger and stronger than me, and when he punches back, I go down. It doesn’t hurt so much as just make everything white out for a second, and when I blink that away he’s standing over me, pointing the gun at me, and I realize I’m going to die.NowI’m scared, my whole body catching cold with it, and at the same time I bare my teeth and yell and I wish I’d gone for Sam, I wish he were here,I want Mom, but it’s all too late.

Sister Harmony stabs him. She’s bloody, wounded, limping, but he doesn’t see her coming. She screams as she puts her blade in the back of his neck. She twists it, and I see the whole light go out in his eyes. He falls forward on top of me, and I shove him off like he’s on fire. I’m shuddering and clumsy again and gasping, and everything in my chest feels too tight, but I’m already looking past the dead man, looking at the door where the next one’s going to come for us.

Harmony yanks the blade free and snaps, “Get the gun, boy,” and I think about the verses she’s had to stare at every day, for years, written on the walls of her prison.

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

She learned better than Father Tom ever expected.

There’s another man coming on board now. Thin and young, maybe twenty or so. I grab the gun. It’s heavy and too big for me, but I point it at him, and he freezes. Sister Harmony shakes her head and pushes my arm down. She takes the gun and hands it to the new guy. “No, he’s with us,” she says. “Remy! Watch the door!”

Remy.“My mom’s been looking for you,” I tell him. He glances at me. He’s more scared than I am, but the gun’s steady in his hand. “You’re Remy Landry.”

“I used to be,” he says. “We live through this, maybe I still am. Harmony! We have to go!”

“Not without my sisters!” She plunges off the RV again, bloody knife in her hand. Remy follows, and so does Vee.

So do I. I grab up the bolt cutters as I go. They’re bulky and heavy, but I tell myself that I can get to Sam,I can, and Sam can help us get out of here. We can all get out. Everyone.

But when we come out of the RV’s door, it’s worse than I thought.

Rose, two other women, and several of the little kids are backed up against the fence. All three of the women have knives, but they’re all hurt too. Rose’s left arm hangs limp and bloody. She’s pale as chalk, but still standing. The kids are crowded in behind the three of them, and they’re facing two men with assault rifles. “Give us the children,” one says. “We won’t hurt them.”

“Liar!” Rose screams and rushes him. He’s going to kill her, I realize, and I can’t stop it. All I have is a switchblade and these bolt cutters, and that’s not enough. I’m not fast enough. I’m not close enough.

Harmonyisfast. She kills him the same way she did the one in the RV, quick and lethal, and ducks as the other man swings his gun toward her. Rose tackles him and sends him sprawling. She grabs his gun and points it at him, panting, wild. When he laughs, she shoots him. She misses, and shoots again, and he stops laughing. I know I ought to be curled up in a ball now, like I was back in school. Gunfire. Screams. The smell of blood in the air.

But that was fake. This is real. And I’m afraid, but I’m focused on two things: staying alive and getting to my dad.I can get him out. I will.

But we’re pinned between the RV and the fence. There are at least twenty men with guns around us, but most aren’t paying attention to us; they’re firing through holes in the fence at the FBI outside the gates. And the FBI are now firingback. I see what look like grenades come launching over the wall and hit the ground on our side, and for a second I think we’re about to blow up like in the movies, but then they let out a pulsing white fog and I can’t breathe. My eyes are burning, I’m choking and coughing and gagging, and it tastes like burning paper at the back of my throat. I can see Vee, who’s bent over gasping, and I grab her and hold on.

“Side gate!” she croaks. Her eyes are streaming tears, and they’re red as fire. Mine probably are, too—they’re blurry and aching, and I’m disoriented. I don’t know where I am. Guns are still firing. “That way!” She shoves me, and we slide along the fence. I shove the switchblade in my pocket and grab blindly for a coughing little kid. Vee grabs someone else. Harmony, who’s holding on to Remy. Rose, staggering and nearly falling.

We can’t get everybody. But we have to open that gate.

We reach it and there’s a man in front of it, but he’s slumped over against the fence, and when Harmony shoves him, he falls limply. Dead.

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