Jamison

THERE’S TWENTY-FOUR OF US ALTOGETHER. INCLUDING GROVER Denton. I have no idea why he’s here, but his eyes keep darting over to me in the back of the pickup truck. It’s raining and we’ve covered ourselves with tarps, but my pants are still soaked from the water pooling in the bed.

We’ve been driving since this morning—only stopping once to get situated after the rain started. That’s when I realized I still had the road atlas we were using before we met up with the Nomads. Not that Cal and the other guy in charge need it. They’re taking the same routes we took to Faraway, but will eventually cut across South Carolina to get to I-95. From there, Denton’s given them directions to Fort Caroline in Georgia.

After a couple of hours, the rain starts pouring down even harder. The person driving the truck pulls over, and he and Cal get out and come around to the truck bed. Cal motions for us to climb down.

“We’ll swap you six with six in the RV so you have some time to dry off.”

The RV folks have already been chosen, probably because Cal radioed back and asked for volunteers. We thank them and get into the RV.

They’ve removed the bed from the rear of the RV to make more room for supplies and for people to sit. One of the people at the dining room table looks up from the maps in front of her. She’s an older white woman with messy brown-and-gray hair. She points behind her.

“There’s a bathroom you can use to change,” she says. “The plumbing isn’t hooked up right, so don’t use it. But you can throw your ponchos in the shower, and we’ll hang them to dry when we camp for the night in Orangeburg.”

The guy in front of me nods and goes into the bathroom. I have no idea how Cal managed to recruit so many people on such short notice. I scan their faces, looking for Niki, but she isn’t here, so she must be in the back room of the RV. The people around me all look serious, like they’re totally ready for this. They aren’t doing it for me—I’ve said maybe fifteen words to anyone in this RV since we first met up with the Nomads—so they must have their own reasons. Denton isn’t the only one from Faraway who joined either.

The bathroom door opens and I go in, throwing my poncho on top of the others in the shower. I change my pants, underwear, and socks—my shirt is a little damp but not bad—and look at myself in the mirror.

I used to be able to shave only every other week, but the hair on my face has been getting thicker. Andrew still gets away with twice a month, tops. He could do it even less, but it makes him itchy.

The moment I think of him—and how far away he is right now—my chest tightens, a wave of anxiety walloping me. My hands shake and I have to turn away from my own reflection.

I push the door open and head to the back room without saying anything to the next person. Some of the canned food, weapons, and ammo we found in the neo-Nazi hideout are stacked around us. The rest they left in Faraway.

Niki is sitting on the floor next to a stack of boxes. She gives me a wan smile as I sit down next to her and say hi.

“How is it out there?” she asks.

“Wet.”

We’re dancing around what I really want to know: why she left her brother back in Faraway and came with us. How did she go from worrying about him being out of her sight in an amusement park parking lot to leaving him in a new place while she goes to a white-supremacist settlement?

And she isn’t the only Black woman in the RV. There’s also a handful of other people of color who joined up with us for this mission. This whole thing is even more dangerous for them given Fort Caroline’s racism. The silence seems to stretch longer between us, and she anxiously rubs her hands up and down her jeans.

“My grandma survived the flu,” she says. “It was me, Jamar, and her who Cal and the others found in Arkansas. She was ninety-six. You wouldn’t think it, though. When we got to Pastor Phillip’s settlement, there was a law. We weren’t allowed to share our own food with people over seventy. They got their rations, and anything else they had to find themselves.”

“How?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like we could walk several miles a day with her looking for food. Especially when they had taken everything already. They would have raids and double-check the rations they gave us to make sure we weren’t hoarding food. If they found extra, they would take it. But the rations got smaller and smaller for the elderly, and my grandma . . .” She shakes her head. “They were just trying to starve the older people. They didn’t see her value, and maybe they didn’t want the old folks to talk about what things were like before the flu.”

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Jamar is a good kid. He’s so sweet and sensitive. Grandma was getting so weak she couldn’t even leave the apartment, so he gave her some of his food. And he hid a little bit. We had a surprise inspection and they found it. I knew it was him, but I told them it was me, so they arrested me, put me in their jail with a few others who had been trying to help the people they loved.

“Then they cut Jamar’s rations, too. And Grandma wouldn’t eat because she knew he needed it.” Tears spill down her cheeks. “They let her starve; they let a lot of people starve while Pastor Phillip and his family ate well and lived in their mansion.”

I hold out my hand and she grasps it, squeezing hard.

“This Fort Caroline. They’d do the same, wouldn’t they?”

I say yes, but it’s possible they’d do worse. It’s also possible that Pastor Phillip’s settlement did worse.

“I trust Cal,” she says, turning to look at me. “And I trust you now, too. We’re doing this for the people we love.” Like she went to jail for her little brother. I nod and pull up my shirt.

“This is where they shot me. We left them, and even though we took only the food we’d brought in with us, they sent people after us. One of those people was a leader’s son, and he wanted to kill Andrew and me because we’re queer. I’m doing this because I don’t want them coming after us anymore.”

Someone else walks into the back room and I look up. Of course it’s Denton. His eyes drop to my scar then immediately away once I lower my shirt. He takes a seat on the opposite side of the room.

“What about you?” Niki asks, turning her attention to Denton. There’s a little venom in her voice, and it makes me feel like she’s absolutely on my side. I’m glad she’s here. “I heard you the other day talking about how you and Nadine narrowly escaped. Why are you here?”

He stares at me, and after a few moments I start to think maybe he won’t answer her—that he thinks it should be obvious. Or even worse, that he thinks it in some way exonerates him from getting me shot, which it doesn’t.

Finally he says, “Because I don’t want people like that growing into power unchecked. And I know a lot of people don’t realize it, but our resources are dwindling. Everything that was made before the superflu is now in short supply, and it’s going to be generations before we even get close to where we were before. The big settlements that don’t collapse on their own are going to be the ones in power. And I’d like for them to be welcoming.”

I don’t know if I believe him. If he cared so much about a just and tolerant society, he would have left Fort Caroline before Andrew and I even got there.

A woman from the back of the truck—her name is Valerie—joins us, sitting between Denton and me. She adds her own context. “I think there’s a couple people just in it for the chaos.”

“Seriously?” I ask. I would absolutely not be here if I could help it. I’d rather be walking with Andrew and Amy and Henri-Two. Even in the rain if we had to.

“Oh yeah,” Valerie says. “There’s a girl up there who followed her boyfriend when Cal asked for volunteers. The two of them seem to be hoping it turns into a full-scale violent uprising.”

I shake my head. “We’re not doing that, though.”

She shrugs. “Not to start. But convincing a bunch of people to turn against those in charge is rarely peaceful.”

A younger white guy on Denton’s side of the room shrugs, giving a wry smile. “I mean, I don’t want there to be an all-out war, but I wouldn’t mind some firefighting.” His eyes dart to the guns next to the food. “But, you know, not front-of-the-line cannon fodder.”

“So who do you think deserves to be cannon fodder, then?” Valerie asks.

The two of them start arguing back and forth. Denton just gives me a look that I can only interpret as him saying, You did this.

I give it right back to him until he turns and looks out the window.