“We don’t need your services,” Becca said, advancing on her.
“We’ll never need your services,” I added, standing next to Becca.
The SAS officer drew herself up. “My dears, I don’t think you realize the position you’re in. Certainly the painless, complimentary gift of a gentle farewell shouldn’t be sneered at.”
“And yet, I am sneering,” Becca said.
“Girls, please,” the SAS officer said. “Your lives here simply won’t work now. If you choose to accept this gift, then you can have the pride and joy of knowing that you’re making way for two brand-new little babies. Isn’t that nice?”
“If you want to keep your face, you need to get out now,” Becca advised, and pointed at the open front door.
“You have no future here!” the woman cried, picking up her black bag.
“No,” I said. “You have no future here.” I gave her a fast shove out the door and we slammed it after her.
For a moment Becca and I stood there, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Then, for the first time in a long time, Becca broke down. She put her fist to her mouth, tears already streaming down her cheeks. “Oh, God,” she said. “Pa.”
Words couldn’t express everything—anything—I was feeling. I nodded, and then we stood there and hugged each other and cried about Pa.
102
BECCA
WE TALKED AND DIDN’T TALK, cried and didn’t cry. Much later, Cassie looked up from the sofa, where she was lying, holding a pillow to her chest. Then she frowned and sat up a little. “What’s that noise?”
I listened for a second. “Sirens? Geez, maybe a fire truck? Is there a fire around here?” Then it hit me. “Oh, shit,” I said. “This is it. Where’s Pa’s gun?”
“I lost it the night I got taken,” Cassie reminded me. “I told you.”
“Crap, right,” I said.
“Baseball bat,” Cassie said, and ran upstairs to get her aluminum slugger. I went into the kitchen and got a couple of carving knives.
It seemed to take a long time for them to get here. My nerves were razor-sharp; all my muscles zinging with anticipation. I felt like I was going to explode.
Cassie’s eyes were fixed on the long road leading to our house, at the clouds of dust the cars were stirring up around them.
“You know, Beck—I was thinking about when we were in prison. What were they training us to do? To be?”
“Uh—assholes? Fighters? Bullies? Psychopaths?”
To my surprise, Cassie smiled and looked at me, and right in that moment she looked so beautiful and angelic that I wanted to smack her.
“Nope. I’ve decided that they were training us to be heroes,” she said, and hoisted her bat to her shoulder.
“What?”
They were close enough for me to count: all six of our police cars were there, the Provost had his shiny gas-powered car, the SAS van was there (of course), and there were a bunch of other vehicles like Hoppers and mopeds and the bigger family cars we all called Biscuits because they were roundish and tan.
“Yeah. We can fight now—ruthlessly, even if we don’t want to,” she said as the cars turned down the smaller dirt road leading to our house. “But we still care about kids, people weaker than us. We still felt bad when they died.”
I was so hyped-up I could hardly think straight. “Heroes?” I repeated.
She gave me another beatific smile. “Yep.”
The crowd seemed to swell and grow, getting bigger and longer like a parade.
We’d closed and locked our ancient driveway gate, and shook our heads when the Provost’s car honked its horn. After it honked several times, the car backed up and rammed our gate, lifting one side right out of the ground.