Rise

twenty two

I ROLLED THE DIAL BETWEEN MY FINGERS, TUNING THE RADIO to the station Moss had marked in pencil. The air filled with a low, crackling static. Ruby and I leaned in, waiting to hear something-anything-but the minutes passed with no word. "Not as many rebels are sending messages now," I said, finally clicking it off.

"Kevin and Aaron would've sent word if the boys were on their way back," Ruby said. I set the radio into the duffel bag, taking the battery out and nestling it in my inside pocket.

I peered into the narrow mud room. "There's enough for four months," I said, running my hand over a row of cans, their labels long gone. Just below were jars of dried berries and nuts, salted boar, and boiled lake water. Boxes were stacked in one corner of the room, the result of a recent storehouse raid.

"The boys said it could last as long as six." Ruby pulled a few jars of water down. "But we've been adding to it. We found rose hips, wild berries, grapes. If there's fish in the shallows we try to bring them in with the net, but we can only go out so far without being able to swim." She sat back down beside Pip, twisting off the lid for her. Pip was quiet.

"That's smart," I said. "It's impossible to know if they survived the siege or not. By the time you did run out of supplies, it might be too late to collect them." My eyes fell for a moment on Pip and Ruby. They were further along than I was, by at least two months-maybe more.

Across the room, the girls sat in front of the fire, more comfortable now that they'd seen Silas and Benny. Helene, who seemed the least affected by their presence, explained her splint to Silas, taking it off so he could see the leg beneath. Beatrice ladled out the carrot soup into the plastic containers the boys had once used as cups. "Eve came back," Benny said, carving into the mud floor with a twig, showing Bette and Sarah the words as he spoke them. I should've been relieved-that Leif wasn't here, that my friends were alive and safe. But my gaze kept returning to Pip. She sat with her back against the wall, swirling the spoon around, her eyes fixed on the soup's steaming surface.

They were both more than five months pregnant, but it had affected them so differently. Ruby looked healthier, her face filling out, her cheeks full and pink. Whenever she wasn't talking, one hand found its way to her stomach, her palm resting on the tender spot below her belly button. Pip looked as though she were fighting off sickness, the color gone from her face. Her eyes were red rimmed and sad, and in the passing hour since I'd discovered them, she'd said only a few words to me, each one clipped and strange.

"And Arden never got pregnant-you're certain?" I asked, keeping my voice low to avoid being heard.

Ruby nodded. "I'm certain. That's part of the reason we left the compound when we did."

"When did you escape, then? How did Arden get you here?"

She glanced sideways, and for a moment Pip met her gaze, making some passing expression I didn't recognize. Pip's eyes were unfocused, as though she were in some other place and time. "About a month ago now," Ruby said. "We'd been in the room next to her for weeks and she hadn't said anything. And then one night she was there. Everyone else was sleeping. She opened her hand and there was the key. She said you gave it to her, and we had only this one chance to leave.

"She'd befriended one of the guards. Miriam, I think was the name. Arden sometimes helped with tasks around the building-sweeping, moving equipment, that sort of thing. She thought it would make them see she had changed, that she wasn't a threat. If she was useful in the compound, she thought they wouldn't make her train for the army-there were rumors about that, what would happen if she couldn't get pregnant. We left that night with her-she'd stolen a security code from Miriam. And she swam us across the lake, one at a time. We were just south of the dugout, so we came here for supplies. That's when we first heard about the siege. Within the week the boys left. They went to liberate the first labor camp with a group from a settlement up north. Arden went with them."