Page 61 of Trade
How sure are you?Not at all.
I drop Cecily and Amy’s hands and shoulder my way through the men blocking us, protecting us.
“Gloria,” Cecily gasps, but I’m already through, sprinting across the neutral zone between the guards and the people, expecting every second for a shot to ring out, but it doesn’t. I get to the crates stacked along the wall and leap onto them, racing along the top, while below, the grunts swarm the guards who have peeled off to chase me. The men swirl together, clashing. Not a single shot is fired; the rifles all become billy clubs.
There were no bullets.
There’s no time to marvel. My goal is in sight—the chain that opens the doors.
I leap for it, grab it like the rope in gym class, swinging my body to exert as much force as possible. Gears grind. Metal links creak, barely audible above the shouts and screams.
The door opens, just a crack, an inch, maybe a fraction of an inch, but enough to allow a ray of sunshine to fall over the fray. For a split second, there is silence, and then the shouting resumes, louder, wilder, a terrible roar that shakes the metal girders.
A grunt lifts me off the chain as three men take my place, heaving and hauling with all their might, and the doors open wide like you’d imagine the gates of heaven.
The roar becomes a shout of exultation. People burst out of the bunker.
“Gloria!” Amy grabs my arm, and our reunited daisy chain runs together into the sweet, fresh air.
And immediately skids to a halt.
A yard away, the drive that leads away from the bunker is blocked with an assortment of rusty, beat-up large vehicles, parked axle-to-axle to form a barricade.
Men leap from the trucks—rough, unkempt, mismatched men—old and young, bare chested and bundled in ragged layers, bearded and bald and tattooed, skinny as a beanpole and burly as bears, each one armed to the teeth with blades and a few with guns in their hands.
The men from the bunker scramble to take the rifles from the guards lying in limp heaps on the ground.
The Outsiders have more than just rifles. I see a variety of pistols and a big weapon that looks like a missile with a handle and trigger. Is that a rocket launcher?
Are they here to attack the bunker?Theyhave bullets. I have no doubt.
My eyes sweep the ground nearby for a weapon of my own, one of the chunks of asphalt, anything. I led the women out here into this.
And then a loud, clear voice booms out. “Damn, Glory. Did you forget me already?”
Dalton.
He’s standing right in the middle of the Outsiders, grinning. Same pants with bulging pockets. Same gray shirt. Same sparkling eyes and perfect teeth and calm assurance and scuffed, muddy boots.
The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
I run to him. He strolls forward and scoops me right off my feet. I wrap my legs around his waist. He kisses me, and my heart takes off like a flock of starlings. He smells like sweat and woodsmoke and everything good in the world, and he’s alive, alive, alive.
This is how happy feels. It’s as big as the Outside.
He spins me around and around, and I lean back, baring my tear-streaked face to the sun while he laughs. “I was coming to get you, woman. Did you get impatient?”
“You were coming for me?” I gaze down into his smiling, gorgeous, perfect face. There are shadows under his eyes like bruises.
“I said I would.”
“I busted out myself,” I say.
“Of course you did.”
“Well, I had a little help,” I admit and suddenly remember the rifle butt to the head. “Your noggin!” I comb through his hair, and he ducks away from my questing fingers, laughing, walking me backward so he can prop me against a faded green military vehicle.
“It’s fine. I’ve got a thick head,” he says, chasing my mouth, kissing me again and again like I’m oxygen, and he’s been holding his breath this whole time—the same as me.
