“Yeah.”

“There.”

It was Fi’s turn to be confused. “What?”

“I want to go there. You know the vigilantes, know where they are?”

“Yeah, but—”

Rose cut her off. “I want to go there.”

There was a few seconds of quiet while everyone took this in.

“We can’t engage. That would put the network in jeopardy, make it impossible to get other refugees across,” Fi said.

“I didn’t ask you to engage. Just take me there, as close as you can, and then leave.” Rose didn’t even blink.

“Us,” Nam piped up. “Take us there…please.”

Fi looked at the man in black, who raised his eyebrows. She pushed a hand through her short, dark hair. “Listen, you know that this is not exactly a neutral zone. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite,” Fi answered.

“Yeah.” Rose was already on her feet. “But it is a slim shot in hell.”

CHAPTER 39

SUBTRACT AND ADD

French

WHEN THE BODIES OF THE WOMEN WERE ACCOUNTED for, we knew that we had lost three: Rania, Tree, and Zheegwon. But the baby had recovered, breathing on her own and back in her mother’s arms with Chi Boy’s wrapped around them both. Before grief could push us to our knees and make us frantic and useless, Miig started giving orders.

“Pick up our family—they come with us. No time to grab anything else but the weapons and water. We cannot go into the house. There’ll be others arriving soon. We need to put some distance between us.”

“But carrying them will slow us down. We have—” Isaac started.

“They come with us.” Miig shut his lips tight.

Chi Boy stepped forward. “Miig, Uncle, we can’t bring them, not now. Besides, this isn’t them anymore.”

Emotions played over Miig’s features: anger, frustration, resolution, grief. Finally, he agreed to bring them into the trees behind the pool house—carefully manicured and trimmed, but still wild in a small way—and lay them on the earth.

Chi Boy pulled Tree over his shoulders, carrying him like a sandbag. Slopper and I shared the weight of Zheegwon, a weight heavier than I could have ever imagined. When their shared baseball cap fell off his head, we stopped to retrieve it. With both hands under his arms, I carried the hat in my teeth. It smelled like sweat and wood and home.

Isaac picked up Rania, her head lolling back on the stem of her neck, eyes watching the stars that witnessed our struggle. Rose gathered the guns and water, and then she and Miig closed up the shed, putting the locks and chains back in place to buy us time before our absence was noted.

We laid our dead under the low branches and stood quiet until we knew we risked adding more bodies to the pile, and then we walked away. Miig and Chi Boy took the twins’ hat and a silver medal from the chain around Rania’s neck and trailed behind us.