Rebel Heart

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Lana picked her way through the forest and stopped at the edge, peering at her destination. She’d slept only when they were safe inside the emerops facilities and downed anti-sleepers between. Thus far, none of the emerops facilities had been in a town. That this one was in the middle of a town—even a tiny one—made her nervous. After ten days of walking, she needed a rest, now that she’d made it to the river.

The emerops facility was across a field and a road then down a few blocks in the ghost town that was the city of Randolph on the eastern shores of the Mississippi. Lana’s heart pounded as she left the forest. She’d traveled nonstop, sticking to narrow country roads and the forest to avoid both people and zones marked as having any sort of radiation fallout from the nuke strikes.

All the cities along the Mississippi River had been marked as contaminated to some extent. Randolph was the smallest of them, so she’d picked this town to cross the River rather than the larger ones south along the Mississippi.

Jack sat beside her. Lana sipped water. Her shoulders had ached the first week, and she’d traveled through a hazy world of discomfort and fear. She’d run into no one in her two weeks and grown comfortable in the forest with Jack. The idea of possibly running into people whose alliances she couldn’t predict made her queasy. However, she needed to get to the emerops facility in the town and then cross the bridge across the Mississippi. Once she did that, she could risk contacting Tim on her net and pray he reached her before Greenie or anyone else found her.

Because her Guardian wasn’t coming this time. The ache of loss had faded a little over the past two weeks, but she still cried herself to sleep at night.

With a deep breath, Lana left the forest. Jack loped ahead of her then paused to wait at the center of the field. As she reached him, she heard a sound that jarred her. A military transport rolled from the main road leading out of the forest a few hundred meters away towards the town. Lana froze, hoping they didn’t notice the lone figures in the middle of the field.

People emerged from the buildings that looked abandoned. Surprised, she watched a few men and women meet the transport in the road just outside town. Soldiers dressed in PMF grays and others in the fed’s black uniforms began unloading the transport, tossing cases of rations to the ground.

A few glanced her way, and Lana braced herself. Only one stared longer than a second. She held her breath, expecting them to charge her. No one did. Lana started forward again and circled the transport, puzzled by the mix of uniforms. She’d thought at first maybe the PMF scavenged the fed uniforms.

“Refugee?” one of those who had emerged from the town asked.

“Yes.” Her word came out a croak after two weeks without speaking. Lana cleared her throat.

“Follow Kelli in.”

A short brunette waved her over. Lana followed, unable to take her eyes off the soldiers.

“Where you coming from?” the brunette asked.

“Eastern Tennessee. The rebels are bringing supplies?” Lana asked.

“Rebels and regular military. They’re all there is now. I heard everything is fine out west, though.”

“Why don’t you just cross the river?”

“The bridges were all destroyed, and the old barriers from the war are back up.”

Lana sighed, her mind quickly turning to her alternatives.

“The government pretty much abandoned us,” Kelli said, tone hardening. “We found their emergency back-up supplies here. It’s all that’s kept the people alive.”