“Crap,” I muttered to Nate.
“Wait, I see something else,” he said, squinting in the darkness. “Lights!”
As we crested a small hill, we saw an extremely recognizable circle, enclosed with a fence and well lit. A cell.
31
EVEN KNOWING WHAT I KNEW about the United, I was so freaking glad to see a cell, something familiar. Still, I forced us to wait and watch until after midnight before we belly-crawled closer.
It had the familiar boundary fence, the unmanned guard towers, the open gate. A sign hung on the right side of the gate: E-07-20. It was so homey that my chest hurt. We saw no police, no guards, no nothing, so finally we walked through, two at a time, waiting five minutes in between to see if we triggered something.
When we were all through and walking past large manufacturing buildings, Nate said, “Look for a sign of a cat.”
“Like poop?” Bunny asked, confused. “Scratches or something?”
Nate grinned at her and for a moment I remembered that my sister loved him. I guess he grinned at her a lot. Changed his whole face.
“No,” he said. “Like, the outline of a cat’s face, or a drawing of a cat. Painted small on something or scratched into a wooden post. Maybe carved on a rock.”
“Why?” Levi asked, so I didn’t have to.
“It’s the sign of a Resistance-friendly house. I was the leader of the Youth Resistance back in my home cell, and that kind of stuff is passed through the network—ways to find each other, help each other.”
Another thing I hadn’t known. I guess Nate had his uses.
We reached the first row of houses, all pretty much the same, mostly dark, mostly quiet. A few dogs barked. It was like home but not like home, and my throat tightened. I wondered if they had a curfew, like we had.
“Everyone, stay in the shadows,” I reminded them softly. “Don’t walk through streetlights. If a car comes, scatter and disappear.”
That was when it really hit me: this was a cell, but who knew what had been going on in the outside? Maybe they’d found the bell tower guy. Maybe we were being tracked right now, the United Army circling us in the dark. I kept my hand on my rifle, ready to swing it up if necessary.
House after house had no cat sign.
“Maybe there isn’t one here,” Nate said, sounding exhausted.
“I’m starving,” Bunny said.
“I’m really tired,” Levi said.
“Let’s check out the next row of houses,” I said. “If we don’t see one there, we’ll leave the cell and camp in the woods.”
“Maybe there just isn’t one here,” Mills said.
Very possible, I thought wearily. My stomach growled and I felt like if I lay down I would sleep for a week. The next house had a garden in front, still bare from winter. A gnome stood in front of a small windmill, laughing. There was a stone frog next to him, a stone squirrel, and… a stone cat.
32
“NATE?” I WHISPERED. “COULD IT be a whole cat, not just a symbol?”
He looked at the statue, thinking. “Yeah, I guess. You guys stay back—let me go up.” Quietly he went around to the house’s back door and we followed. Nate tapped on the door, three raps, then two, then three again.
Please don’t be a trap, I thought, or a sound sleeper.
After a couple moments the door opened, spilling light onto the cold brown grass. A white-haired man in pajamas stood there with a shotgun, which he pointed at Nate.
“You’re pretty heavily armed, eh, son?” the man said.
“I thought I smelled a pie cooling,” Nate said quickly, and the man squinted at him.