Angela was the last person through the door into the warehouse. She started when Ben began to talk, using his power to slightly amplify the volume of his already large voice. “We’re going to be piling onto 4 buses.” He gestured to 4 decommissioned school buses behind them, their paint fading and their school insignia blacked out. “Anyone with experience driving a big truck, come stand over here. Sonya, you want to coordinate with our possible drivers?
“Sure,” she said, and nodded.
“The rest of you, we raided the local dollar stores, lost and founds and donation centers for clothes. Find something that fit as best you can and dump your uniforms in one of these red, metal barrels. Cris, if you can oversee people getting changed.”
“Happily,” he said, walking towards the piles of clothes spread across the floor.
“Rui? You’re sure we’re good with these buses?” Ben asked.
“The church we borrowed them from was very cooperative. Even set us up some digital footprints, so if the cops ask about the camp we’re busing to, they’ll find social media posts about it. They wanted to do more- but I talked them down. We get to leave town, no reason for them to expose themselves to harassment from Drump’s thugs after we’re gone.”
“That reminds me,” Ben said, turning back towards children. “If anybody asks, we’re congregants of the Church of the Good Shepherd, and we are going to a Campground called Lakawana, just over the Canadian border.”
“Is somebody going to ask?” Sonya asked, sauntering back over to him.
“Hopefully not,” Ben said. “How’s our luck holding?”
“We have five potential drivers. Two of which are underage-and I mean don’t have a learner’s permit kinds of underage. But they’ve driven buses, and in her case,” she pointed at a very short girl about 14, “drove one of the last Kodak runs with her dad. I figure we put the most experienced drivers at the front and back of the caravan, and the others will cope.”
“And who are the most experienced drivers?” he asked.
“One, I think, is going to be me. Drove a tractor a couple of times at my grampa’s ranch in Wyoming. Only hit one fence post, which was pretty good, since I couldn’t see over the wheel at the time.”
“You’re not filling me with confidence.”
“Well… next time maybe we should try and liberate some actual adults at the same time, because we’ve got slim pickings. But I can handle driving stick; the rest is really just about remembering that a bus is overlong and turns like it- and can’t be taken through most drive-thrus.”
“I’d feel better if we had Rox’s luck,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t we all?” Rui said with a shrug. “But the plan’s solid. While we’re still in this state, people will assume we mean the black church we borrowed the buses from. Closer to the border, there’s a different church with the same name- and I gave them a big donation to set up a potluck for us. If we pick up a tail, we stop in for a home-cooked meal. We don’t, and we call and tell them to enjoy the food without us. It’s about as fool-proof as a plan like this can be- you know, without completely co-opting random chance. I never really thought about how much having Rox around was like cheating until we didn’t anymore. But we can do this. We’re going to do this. Because these kids deserve better than to be thrown in another fucking cage And if it comes to the worse, there’s always plan C: I hop out of the bus and burn the tires off any approaching police vehicle, and damage any choppers to the point they have to set them down.” Ben stared at him, stunned. “I meant what I said. These kids aren’t going back. .”