Sanctuary: Chapters 17–22

I wondered if he was scared of losing me, or if he still resented me for leaving Mami at that bus station and, really, every moment since then.

“Okay,” he answered in a monotone.

Call it delirium or dizzy stubbornness.

On the other side of the fence were a gully of dirt, rocks, and a once-blue-but-now-burned-out sedan.

As we got closer, I saw there was also a low-slung ranch house. It was mostly obscured behind a sagging elm tree.

The women looked up and blinked in slow motion, as if they’d been sedated.

The blade was a lot duller than I’d imagined. Malakas started poking and prodding, wincing for me with each touch.

I tasted bile in the back of my throat and saw the room turn upside down.

“What’s going on?” Ernie whispered. I tried to answer him, but I was still so disoriented.

I knew that bitter smell, that manic trembling as saliva flooded my mouth.

“Please,” sniveled BJ, “I didn’t mean—”

In the mottled dawn light, I could see that one of his eyes was swollen and purple, his bottom lip split open.

I saw those two glassy-eyed women from one of the bedrooms running away through a line of straggling trees.

Her words were getting more and more shrill and discombobulated.

We were all scouring the trampled field, calling out his name. Then we ducked through a patch of woods, fanning out in a modest V formation.

And yet, when the hat fell off because Rosa was shuddering so much, all of us leaned in to put it back on her head. Over and over again, we did this futile activity. Watching the hat slip off, then wordlessly taking turns to place it back.

I wanted to project Rosa’s face out into the ether like an enormous hologram. So the entire planet and all the constellations would have to know her tragedy.

The sunlight shifted as a bank of gauzy clouds moved in from the east.

For “dessert” Malakas said we should suck on some rocks to help stave off dehydration.

Volcanoman had two older sisters who doted on him and taught him how to dance the samba.

He stifled a hiccupy sob as we waited for him to fill in the blanks.

“Are we gonna get in a train?” he asked. “Please say yes. Please, please, please say yes.” He showed me his hot, blistered feet again to make his point even more.
“Not in a train. On a train,” I clarified.

No matter how many times we went over the probable speed of the train and the trajectory of its route, I knew I couldn’t feel truly prepared.

Most of them were driverless and electric-powered, but ironically delivering coal up and down the plains, dropping off their goods at a series of extraction silos.

But if we made our move close enough to a silo, it would have to be slowing down for the approach.

His long, spindly legs were made for this kind of Spider-Man move.

We tied Malakas’s rope around the metal grates on top of the train and tethered each of us on tight.

Some way, somehow, I wanted to tell that girl that she had given me courage and purpose. That her fifteen steps were not in vain.

Malakas picked up my right arm gingerly, and I tried not to wince.

But I refused to let the binoculars go. My arms were shaking, and I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears as I leaned forward to glean more.