Stay...Alive

Chapter 26

They were ordered to put their hands on their heads as they filed out of the train. They were commanded that if they conformed, they'd live. Victorine paid close attention to the soldiers keeping an eye on them now. They already looked entirely different than the other soldiers. The body armor was more gray than black, but still looked a bit more well kept. They never let their weapons fall at their side. And for the first time, she saw one soldier break a sweat.

The biggest and most convincing difference was that these people let Yolanda hold Victorine's hand.

The boy who let them in the train was behind the line of soldiers and looked like he'd just knocked over the giant formation of tissue boxes at a grocery store. He kept trying to tap them on the soldiers, but they barely broke concentration. They didn't bat an eye until the one soldier who broke a sweat stopped Laura.

"Who are you?" he commanded. "You looked familiar."

The blonde lady, keeping her cool and relaxing her elbows, answered, "Me, Lyla and Lucy were comrades. Spies. Sort of revolutionaries. Might've seen us in the news. The attention put us in the jails. Worked under the codename 'Blonde, Brunette, and Redhead.' Most noted for leaking information and stopping potential bombing at Penn station."

The soldier nodded, a little impressed. "I see you prepared your own autobiography already."

"Had a lotta downtime locked up in a cell."

"Where's Lucy?"

"Didn't make it."

Victorine still felt a pang in her heart at the mention of her name.

"These are some...friends that broke out with us," Laura explained. Victorine heard a pleasantly surprised person call, "Wait, we're your friends?"

"This boy found us at the train station," Laura continued to explain. "The lady working it bit the dust."

Victorine noticed a good half of the people there silently inhale sharply and glance down at their feet before snapping back to attention.

"So if you could just give us a place to go so we don't end up dead. We got kids here!" Laura gestured towards Victorine, who gave one glare and made even the stillest soldier flinch. And Laura noticed.

"Okay, she's pretty freaky, but there are others!" Laura defended. One soldier gestured for Laura and the redhead to followed him outside the formation, leaving the rest of the crowd and the remaining soldiers to stare at each other, unsure.

The boy tapped one of the soldiers on the shoulder, whispering, "Is that kid giving you weird vibes, too?"

The soldier and several others nodded at him, and Victorine flipped them off before Yolanda could death-glare them.

The crowd relaxed when their two leaders were away. Yolanda knelt down beside Victorine, and Cherie tapped (or more realistically, poked) Victorine's shoulder about ten times.

"You okay?" she asked, though Victorine saw no reason why anyone wouldn't be. Except for one person. Her shoulders tensed, and she walked right by Cherie and pushed past a few people to check on Primus. She took one look at him with his brother and Horace and took a deep breath as he muscles relaxed. "So you're not dead?"

Realizing the girl just wanted a response, Victorine choked out a quick, "Yes."

"So what are they gonna do to us?" Cherie questioned, a little loudly.

"No clue," Yolanda said so that Victorine didn't have to talk two times in a row.

The crowd got a little more anxious the longer their leader was gone. People started asking questions and running dreadful scenarios in their head. And with the amount of time they were waiting, it wouldn't be a surprise if one of them came true. Cherie kept trying to calm her own nerves by talking to Victorine, and Victorine kept trying to listen.

"You've been through this before, right?" Cherie asked, her voice a little shaky. "Goin'' from one haven to another?"

Victorine shrugged, scanning the crowd and hoping they don't pull what they did before.

"Everything turned out alright, right?"

Victorine shrugged again, shaking her head in secret.

"I mean, it took a while for things to get better," Yolanda considered.

"But it was okay in the end."

"Unless you consider this the end."

"After your journey, I mean."

"'Journey?'"

"I mean, what else would it be?"

"A march through a wasteland."

"I just want to know if we'll be okay!"

"We'll be okay," Victorine stated, her voice not cracking for once. Both Cherie and Yolanda raised their eyebrows at her. Victorine crossed her arms and turned to them, looking Cherie in the eye. "We'll be okay."

Just then, blonde and redhead lady emerged from the behind the train, the soldier visibly shaken. With one glare from the redheaded lady, the soldier announced, "There's...a haven a long train ride away. It's a bit off course..." his voice trembled, "but it's harder to get in...and I gotta tell ya...from the nearest station to the haven...it's sort of a long walk."

The blonde lady smirked. "I'm sure we could handle it."