Chapter Twenty-Two
The Cyclone
My hands hang loose by my sides with dripping suds as I stare at Atlas.
I don’t want to believe it, but it is plausible.
My fathers suggested such things happen—the taking of women, especially those born with higher female birthing probabilities—and this confirms that a desperate power will do desperate things to get what they want.
“When was this?” I ask, wiping my hands dry against my jeans.
“A little over eighteen months ago. Five hundred and thirty-nine days.” He goes to the wall, pulling a frame from it. “Here.”
He passes me the photo—a younger version of the guys posing before their bikes, with their Renegade logo still on their denim cut-off jackets.
Zeke has short, spiky hair, while Leon is clean-shaven with his hair curling below his ears, and then there’s Atlas.
His face is transformed—not by the lack of beard or his buzzed short hair, but by his smile.
His wide grin makes him barely recognisable as the man I know now.
A young woman sits behind him on his bike, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders, with her long, dark locks hanging over his chest. She’s not looking at the camera, but is clearly besotted, staring at him with wholesome satisfaction.
“She’s beautiful… I know nothing about her, but I will tell you, women are the bravest creatures on Earth. Wherever she is, I bet she’s a champion for your little girl.” I’m reluctant to break my gaze with the heartwarming photo, passing it back to him, only to find his bottom lip pouting.
I’m not bold enough to hug him, so instead, I gently stroke his arm.
My dreams take a tour of my most difficult memories, trapping me in a turbulent trance on loop.
The dark characters I have met. The painful goodbyes.
The persistent echoes of violence throughout my years.
I urge myself to wake, but I’m caught within a current I cannot escape.
The pounding of the batons as they hit Joey.
The hiss of Krick in the tunnel of my ear.
The wide eyes pierce me as I shoot cans from the fence.
Above it all, someone shouts my name, distant but advancing.
“Everlee… Lee… Wake up… Lee!”
The darkness releases my mind, and I crave air, my skin damp as I frantically grab for my knife, only to find Zeke leaning over me.
“Whoa! Calm down. It’s me.” He sweeps his wet hair back, chucking a fresh towel above my covers, and perches on the end of his bed. “Did you know you’re an awful sleeper? You’ve practically been somersaulting all night.”
For the first time, we have all slept in the same room, and with them, I felt secure enough to sleep in a bed. Mama Cooper hosts travelling club members, enjoying the company and the opportunity to mother them as they stop by, and the bedroom offers multiple beds.
“Sorry, Zeke,” I say, rubbing my face.
“As long as you’re okay. I thought about waking you a few times. If you want to grab a shower, it’s ready. We’ve got some club errands to sort out between us.” He rubs his hair dry with his towel, looking different—younger, even, with his hair curtaining his face.
I swing my legs from the bed and rest my blade on the bedside. “What errands? Can I help?”
“Nah. Leon is making the rounds, seeing if he can get more info on what lies west. Atlas is doing some woodwork on the fence, and I’ve got a few tattoos to do for some bike parts we need.”
“Tattoos? You do tattoos?”
He scoffs, shaking his head. “How did you not know that?”
“You said you like to draw, but you never mentioned it.”
“I didn’t?!” He laughs. “Well, I usually bring it up any chance I get. I did all of Leon and Atlas’s—”
“Can I have one?” I say, only for his smile to drop.
“Ahhhh… You know I would… It’s… If the employer sees I’ve tattooed you—”
“A little heart here.” My finger hovers over the crook of my thumb. “A tiny outline. Joey had one done … from when I drew on his hand. His tattoo traced over the top of it…” My excitement dwindles. Talking about him catches me off guard, straightening the curl of my smile.
“Okay, okay. Sounds easy enough. Go grab a shower, stay here with Mama Cooper, and then Leon will come fetch you. But you can’t tell anyone I did it.” He gets up from the bed, and I stand, throwing my arms around him.
“Thank you, Zeke!”
He smells citrusy, fresh, absent of motor oil and that dusky sweat. He clears his throat before giving up on resisting and brings his arms around me as my head rests on his chest.
Mama Cooper crouches beside a dark leather-bound case, flicking through vinyl records. Her lips mouth the names of artists as she scans through them.
“Ah ha! How about this?”
She pulls out a record, rests it on the turntable, and with the lowering of the needle, static plays.
Her long lashes flutter as the harmonic wail of Tina Turner lines the air, grooving towards me sitting at the table.
Since childhood, I had always wanted “long princess hair,” but my fathers assured me it was safer to keep it short.
With my years on the Independence Interval, I had grown it well past my shoulders, but I only knew how to tie it up or to scramble it into a bun.
She places a mirror on the table, insisting I watch as she teaches me how to French braid while intricately weaving along my hairline, and I study her movements.
Her joyful, loving gaze grows as she presents my hair.
“Oh, wow!” I say, patting my hands over it. “Thank you! It’s never been so tame.”
“Just three strands, moving from the outside to the centre. You keep practising. That will fit nicely under a bike helmet,” she says, looking at me in the mirror.
She continues to spoil me with a hearty breakfast, and then pulls out a photo album, praising Atlas, his brothers, and his father.
Then from the bottom shelf, she pulls out one of Zeke’s sketchbooks, where the loose, tattered pages heave with portraits and designs.
She even finds one drawing of his mother, and the charcoal photorealistic sketch reveals their matching features.
Pride oozes from Mama Cooper as she divulges stories from when the guys were boys, while I sit doe-eyed, hanging on her every word, only for Atlas to come in, blushing at the photo albums stacked high beside us.
With a shake of his head, he doesn’t argue, and I can imagine she would not tolerate it, anyway.
When Leon arrives, they escort me to find Zeke, who occupies a small corner of the “closed” barbershop.
He’s stooped over an older man’s forearm, using an ink-soaked rag to clear the skin, while his hair curtains his face as he focuses.
The man whimpers when the needles press against his skin, the gun humming away as Zeke meticulously colours in a black helmet upon a skull.
I whisper to Leon, “He did all of yours?”
He nods and lifts his sleeves to show me. I am astonished at the artwork, with his talent shining through in the details and shading: the individual strokes within his feather tattoos, the fine line work on his compass, the shading within the roses of his upper bicep.
After Zeke cleans the man’s arm, the tattoo is complete with a rosy glow crowning the artwork, and the man empties his pockets, clunking metal bike parts on the side in lieu of payment.
Zeke pats the tan leather chair before him. “Come on up, buttercup.”
I skip over as he passes a pen and paper to me to sketch the heart. It’s not quite how I remember it, and I wonder how many wrong ways I can draw the shape.
“That one,” I point out. It is so basic, but I want it to be accurate.
He smiles and nods, bouncing his foot on the chair’s pedal to raise me. “Easy. So, which hand did Joey have it on?”
“Mmm… His left. Why?”
He grabs my right hand, cradling it. “So when you find him, they’ll sit next to each other every time you hold hands.”
My breath stutters, the sentiment almost setting me off as I nod.
My heart twists between the heartbreak of losing him and the first spoken hope of finding him again.
Zeke is the only who will talk about Joey in casual conversation.
It’s nice. Joey feels like more than a memory when he is spoken of like a friend of mine Zeke is planning on meeting.
He spoke about our reunion with such certainty, as if it were just a matter of time, and not a matter of if.
Zeke traces the image onto my skin before pulling out his tattoo gun.
After he dips the needles in ink, lightly humming above my skin, his tongue sticks against his lips as he concentrates.
The sharp needles drag, cutting like a knife, but he’s so quick, it's over within a minute, barely long enough for me to believe it hurts. The raised dark line is warm with a gentle pink glow. It’s simple, but perfect.
My permanent promise to Joey, right beside his ring on my thumb.
“Did you hear anything new, Leon?” Zeke asks while cleaning his kit up and returning it to a small tin case.
“Nothing overly specific,” Leon says, “only more horror stories.”
“Horror stories about the rebellion?” I ask, jumping down from the raised chair.
“No. About the commander. That’s the only definitive information we’ve ever got on them.”
“What did they say?”
“The commander has been fighting the government since the world war, slaying rangers who cross his path. They say he’s got a church decorated in ranger helmets, with their spines hanging out. It’s even said that the government’s secret service has hunted him, making him a credible threat.”
With no certain evidence, it sounds more like an urban legend.
By lunch, we pack our things and say our goodbyes, with Mama Cooper bravely standing by the large wooden gates, waving us off.
We are travelling towards a safe house, since we can’t make it to South Dakota in a single journey.
It is still early in the day as the clouds creep in, darkening the land, and I sweep my hands to mop my face when the air leaves a moist shroud against my skin.
The clouds grow heavier, and the winds pick up, pulling on the bikes as we travel without the shield of trees, and beneath the shadows of the darkening day, it becomes difficult to tell the passing of time.
We eventually pull over for a respite, and I jump off the bike, watching the clouds misbehave. Instead of revolving with the wind and earth, they sit dense and motionless, hovering above.
“Are we heading that way?” I ask Leon, pointing towards the sinking darkness.
He looks over while puffing on his cigarette. There’s a dwindling of joy as he considers this, then exhales streams of smoke from his nostrils.
“Hey, guys!” he shouts, pointing them towards the storm.
“That doesn’t look good,” Atlas comments.
Zeke says, “There’s no storm cellar at the Hastings lodge.”
“Is it what I think it looks like?” I ask cautiously, as if my words could jinx it.
Leon’s face creases with a shrug. “It’s got potential… Right!” He claps his hands together, his tone serious as he flicks his cigarette away. “To the cabin!”
He jumps back on his bike, with a thickening haze around the opaque navy cloud, and the wind picks up to another level, pushing his hair back as he readjusts his backwards cap. “If that cloud starts rotating, or you see anything lowering from it, signal me,” he says with the start of his engine.
We set off across the earth, and I twist my neck while tracking the cloud. The trees bend and bow to the gusts, kicking up loose debris, and the sand stings my cheeks as it whips with the wind. I become unsure if it is growing, or if we’re just getting closer to it.
As the pressure builds, I can feel it in the air—something similar to the weight of the water when I dived deeper into the lake.
It peaks, causing my ears to pop and pulling my attention to the change.
A wispy grey cloud stirs below the ominous shadow like a coiling finger of cigarette smoke.
With a rumble of thunder, I repetitively tap Leon’s back as the cloud lowers, evolving to a point.
The thunder continues, and we feel it vibrate through the air more than we hear the ear-assaulting noise itself.
In an instant, I understand how people can fear God.
It feels vengeful, powerful. The wind continues to push us, and the guys struggle as they fight their handlebars to keep upright.
Then it begins.
Sheets of rain immerse us, and the engines’ acceleration drops with the worsening conditions. The guys’ tyres cut through, spraying a perfect white water V shape, while the cloud hounds with a threatening point, holding, hanging, howling.
I turn back to check the cloud, hoping we’re close to the cabin, only to hear brakes screeching ahead of us.
My arms clamp around Leon’s waist as our momentum switches.
Our tyres hold tight against the saturated surface, and I brace my body, squeezing my eyes shut, waiting to fall from the bike with him.
As we skid to a stop, metal scrapes ahead of us, sending a shiver down my spine.
With water pouring down my face, my body goes cold at the scene before me. Leon and I jump from the bike, sprinting towards Atlas—his bike on one side of the road, and his body on the other.