Page 27

twenty-five

Runaways

Noah

I didn't think we'd ever make it, but I was wrong. We drove for about thirty hours, only stopping for food, when I needed to vomit, and to use the bathroom when it was absolutely necessary. I thought I was going to throw up when we crossed the border, but they didn't ask us many questions. Silas gave them an address in Saskatoon that we very much wouldn't be staying to visit a friend named Jake, then they opened the trunk for a few seconds and sent us on our way.

Silas switched off with Tate only once to sleep for about seven hours, and I moved to the backseat until they switched back.

We arrived at our destination before the sun had risen and parked outside the locked gates of the community, the entirety of which seems to be interred in barbed wire.

"Hey," Silas says, nudging me, "wake up."

I open my eyes and lean my seat forward. It's later in the morning, and still, at this latitude, the sun is barely visible on the horizon. And it's cold—much colder here than it was in Washington. Bare trees and a thin layer of snow covering the rocky terrain indicate winter has already arrived wherever here is. The sign on the front gate cautions anyone who comes upon it that they're on private, surveilled property and warns trespassers to turn back.

Or else. It literally says, 'or else.'

A man jumps out of an old red Jeep and unchains the gate, nodding to Silas as if he knows him before waving us through.

Silas pulls in, waiting at the entrance while the man chains it closed again and approaches the window. He gives him directions to something he calls the big house about a mile down the road and to the right.

"Do you know these people, Silas?" I ask as he rolls the window up.

"We've been communicating," he replies succinctly.

A few minutes later, we pull up to what I assume must be the big house . It resembles an old ski lodge, though I can't imagine it was ever used in that way. As we approach, we're ushered into a garage off the side of the house. Two men manually roll down the door behind us, and suddenly, I feel uneasy in the dimly lit space.

"Silas…" I whisper.

"It's okay," he says. "Get out of the car. It's fine."

I nod, turning toward my door, but one of the men opens it before I get a chance, waiting with an impatient look on his face. Tate exits on the same side, and I quickly move until I'm right next to him, watching as Silas gives the vehicle's keys to another man. A third takes our belongings from the trunk and sets them on the ground.

Tate moves to grab his suitcase and backpack as well as my own garbage bag of crap, and I watch another man peel back the bottom of the trunk and start pulling out guns. I hear a cracking sound as the one who impatiently waited for me to get out of the car pops off the side panel.

Jesus. This is a lot more than what they took from Jodie's house.

"Let's go inside," Silas says, grabbing his own suitcase. He places his hand on the back of Tate's neck and kisses him before adding, "I'll take that, too," and then takes my bag of shit from him.

Inside, there's a large wood-burning stove, a very dated kitchen, and two long tables where a handful of people are eating breakfast.

"What do we do now?" I ask.

Before I get an answer, a woman in her fifties with tanned skin and piercing blue-grey eyes approaches us. She's dressed in camo pants and a long-sleeved shirt and has a rifle over her shoulder.

"You must be Silas," she says, using his real name. "It's nice to meet you. The guys said you got everything we needed and then some, so thank you for that."

It takes me aback. I don't like the idea of anyone knowing his real name. It doesn't feel safe.

"Why don't you grab some breakfast, and I'll get your keys and a map for you."

"Great," he says. "Thank you."

"I'm Wendy," she says to me. "What's your name?"

I stare straight ahead with my arms crossed in front of me. I'm not falling for it. I don't need a third mother figure to try to shoot me.

"Is she mute? Deaf? "

"Nope," Tate says. "Just angry and jaded."

I narrow my eyes at him. If I'm angry and jaded, then what the fuck does that make him?

"That's okay," she says. "We've had quite a few runaways. They always show up like this. Do you have any warm clothes? A real winter coat?"

Again, I refuse to answer.

"Noah…" Silas says, his tone reprimanding as he nudges me.

"No," I tell her. "I don't have a winter coat in my modest garbage bag of belongings."

"You're not here against your will, are you?"

"Not entirely."

"Noah, take this seriously," Silas says. "Please."

I sigh. "No. I'm not here against my will. Existentially? That's debatable."

"Veronica?" she calls out.

A smaller Black woman turns around, making eye contact with Wendy, and crosses the room.

"This is my wife, Veronica," she says. "Veronica, why don't you take Noah and let her look through the things Lorna left behind? She looks like she's about the same size."

"Sure," she says. "Follow me."

She takes a few steps forward, pausing when she realizes I'm not following her.

"Go," Tate says. "I'll go with you."

I follow her through the main room and down a hallway until she stops in front of a storage closet, pulling out a cardboard box with Lorna written across the front in cursive .

"What happened to her?" I ask. "Did she disappear because she didn't follow the rules?"

"She left," Veronica says. "People come and go. They're not prisoners; it's not uncommon for them to move on after a while. You should take these," she says, handing me a grey Carhart jacket and a couple of hoodies. "What's your shoe size?"

"Eight and a half," Tate answers.

"These are nines," she says, handing Tate the boots. "But they should work for her. She'll need to wear two pairs of socks out here in the winter, anyway. You should take these jeans, too, but they might be a little big."

"Thanks," I say.

"You're welcome," she says. "Go ahead and get something to eat. We'll give you a couple of days to settle in before we get you on the schedule."

"Schedule for what?" I ask.

"To contribute. Everyone has to contribute in some way. We are almost entirely self-sufficient and off-grid. This is how it works. We still need to do shopping runs every couple of months or so for clothes and pantry items, but that's pretty much the extent of our contact with the outside world."

"Well, where does the money come from for the other stuff?"

"We do contracting work for neighboring communities and sell extra food and crops in the summer."

"Don't you miss it?" I ask. "The outside world, I mean."

"No," she says. "The rest of the world is a dumpster fire. Last I checked, they were on the verge of World War III and the collapse of late-stage capitalism, racism and homophobia were on the rise, and a lot of them were foaming at the mouth to live in a religious dystopia. Does that all still sound accurate to you?"

I shrug. "Yeah."

"What's there to miss?"

She has a point.

"Grab a plate while you can."

Veronica walks away, leaving us in a fuller dining room than the one we left a few minutes earlier. There are even a handful of children here eating now. The food sits on large serving platters on a butcher block kitchen island where Silas stands with his back to us, filling a plate with some kind of meat and pancakes.

"Give me the clothes," Tate says. "I'll put this stuff in your bag."

"I can put it in my own bag."

He rolls his eyes and snatches them from me before walking away.

I sigh and step into the kitchen, grabbing a plate and looking over the food.

"I'll save you a seat," Silas says, nudging me with his shoulder when he walks past.

He's smiling, and I have to bite back a smile of my own. He really is happy about all this. Maybe I should try to be happy, too.

I grab a couple pieces of toast and a glass of orange juice and then sit down beside him.

"Is that all you're going to eat?" he asks, frowning .

"My stomach is still upset from…" From the pills , I don't say. "My head still hurts. I don't think I could eat anything else right now, even if I wasn't in front of all these people."

He takes my hand in his and squeezes. "I'm going to make all of this up to you. I'll make it better—I promise."

"The mystery meat is pretty good," Tate says, sitting across from us.

"It's deer," Silas says.

"How many people live here?" I ask.

"Twenty-seven," Silas says. "But that includes the kids, too."

"I don't like that she knows your name. It doesn't feel safe."

"It's mutually assured destruction," Tate says. "We're among our people."

"Wait…what? What does that mean?"

Silas lowers his voice. "Wendy and her wife are on the run, too. They're wanted for eco-terrorism in the U.S."

"They're what? We can't stay here."

Tate snorts. "Look who you're sitting with, Noah. We're the worst things in this place…probably."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"They just want to live a quiet life and be left alone, like us. Just finish your food; it's probably better to save your questions for when we get to the house instead of whispering about them in a crowded room."

After we finish eating, I put on my new coat, and we walk another mile and a half in the cold, following a hand-drawn map Wendy gave Silas to a tiny cabin hidden from the main road. Behind it, there's a small river and an empty chicken coop.

"Come on," Silas says, holding the door open.

I step into the tiny cabin. There's a kitchen in the front corner, but there isn't much to it—no refrigerator, no oven. Just a table, a stovetop, a sink, and a few cabinets. The living space is sparsely furnished with an old sofa, a rug, and a couple of lanterns sitting on two side tables. Silas opens the wood-burning stove at the center of the room and tosses some logs inside.

"Home sweet home," Tate says, sinking into the sofa.

I walk around him to the back of the room, checking to see what's behind the closed doors. The two along the back wall lead to small bedrooms, both of which have beds with linens and fur blankets I'm pretty sure are made from real animal skins. The one off to the side leads to a bathroom.

"Do we have running water?" I ask Silas.

"Yeah, we have water," he says. "No electricity, though. We could get solar panels at some point. A snowmobile would be cool, too." He really is happy—he pauses to smile again before continuing. "There's a battery powered stovetop; I brought a radio and a ton of batteries. Wendy said I could take the car out this weekend, and I'll get us some winter clothes and supplies."

"So, we don't have the car anymore?"

He shakes his head. "It's a communal car now. They're going to paint it and change the plates. But that's okay; we won't need it."

I don't necessarily like hearing that, either. What if we need to run again? "Silas, we don't know how to live like this."

"Yes, we do," Tate says. "We've been reading about it for over a year now; we've been doing it, too."

" Both of you?" I ask.

Tate scoffs. " Yeah, I can read, Noah."

"But we realized pretty quickly that it isn't easy to do when you can't stay somewhere for very long, and you're doing it alone," Silas says.

"Well…can I read them?"

"Of course," he says. "They're in my suitcase. I'll get them for you after I get this fire started."

"Thanks. I'm going to go lie down. You can put them in my room."

Silas shoots me a puzzled look.

"Your room?" Tate asks. "What are you talking about?"

"I'll take the small one without a window," I tell them. "But I need my own room…for obvious reasons."

"They're not that obvious," Tate says. "I don't know the reasons."

"Well, then, to state the obvious—I can't be around you. I'll be in my room."

Shortly after I close the door and crawl under the blankets, Silas steps into the room with my bag of clothing in one hand and books under the opposite arm.

"I brought those books for you," he says, setting them on the nightstand. He looks around the room, opening drawers and the closet doors, even looking under the bed.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm worried about you. Are you feeling okay?"

"I've been worse."

"Do you still want to be here? On Earth, I mean. "

"I don't feel like doing it again—not right now, anyway, if that's what you're asking. Not that I'd tell you if I was planning to."

"Well, that's not helpful."

"It's true, though. I kind of want to see how this plays out first; I don't think it'll be good."

Silas finishes his search and sits at the edge of my bed, running his fingers up and down my back.

"It's going to be great," he says. "Better, even—I know it will be. But if our potential demise keeps you interested enough to want to hang around for a while, I'll take it." He leans in, pressing his lips to my temple. "I'm going to get you some water; let me know if you need anything else. I love you."

He leaves the room, intentionally leaving the door wide open, looking back at me while he does it to make sure I understand it needs to stay that way before he goes.

Instead of sleeping, I grab a book on the science of sustainability in remote locations. It's filled with Silas's highlights and notes in his tiny, messy, left-handed writing.

It's my favorite part. Reading them makes me feel closer to him—like I'm catching up on who he's been all this time while he was gone, and I was alone, missing him.

Missing both of them, but I'm no longer willing to admit that.

And by the time we leave for dinner, I'm halfway through the book, wondering if perhaps there's something to this and if I have something to look forward to after all.