by Kelly deVos
Navarro’s shoulders stiffen. “He didn’t leave anything for us, Susan. He didn’t give us those disks or tell us where to find them. Dr. Marshall intended for us to come here and that’s it. The fact that you know enough about his coding habits to figure out how he stored the key is dumb luck, not evidence of some master plan.”
He glances at Toby, who is still staring at the atlas. “I mean, you really haven’t thought this through, have you? We have no idea who Dr. Marshall left those instructions for. We’re playing this game and don’t even know all the players. We don’t know what...or...or who we’ll find in those caves.”
Jay draws in a deep breath, and when he speaks again, it’s with a fatalism that makes my blood run cold. “It doesn’t matter. Either Stephanie knows about this place or she doesn’t. Either there’s something in the caves that can help us or there isn’t. But either way, The Opposition is waiting for us to make a move.”
MacKenna chews her lip.
Navarro runs his hand through his hair. “They’re waiting for us to come up with Dr. Marshall’s code. Waiting for us to leave here with the key in our pocket. This is exactly what Marshall didn’t want. His instructions were to stay here.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “Gus. When my dad...died, he didn’t know what we know. About Charles. I have to save my brother. And I can’t think of a better idea.”
Navarro sighs in defeat. “Well, we still could have discussed it first.”
MacKenna pulls the atlas closer to her, slouches in her chair and traces a thin blue line with her finger. “So. How are we gonna get there?”
“Probably walk,” he responds flatly. “There are a few dirt roads that will put us in the general area. But it’s...well...” He glances at me, and his face turns red. “I don’t know what the technical term is, but it’s essentially like a rainforest or something.”
I pull at a thread on my own sweater. Everything makes me think of my brother. Charles is the expert in all things botanical.
Toby is lost in his own thoughts. “So, it’s a jungle out there?” he mutters.
“Glad to see you’ve still got your sense of humor,” Navarro says. “You’re gonna need it.”
Jay crosses to the far side of the bunker, and I can barely hear him when he says, “I see no choice but to press on with this plan and see what develops.”
He opens another plastic bin. “Everyone get ready. We leave tomorrow at dawn.”
MacKenna pokes Navarro in the arm. “So, Ojos de Esmerelda? That means eyes of green, right? Why do they call it that?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” he tells her before joining Jay at the supply cabinet.
From the comm center, the NeXT beeps. A message appears on the screen.
SUSAN. THIS IS YOUR MOTHER.
All the dystopian books we’ve read. Everything we’ve been told about brave new worlds and doublethink. Sure, these stories are cautionary tales. But they aren’t about some big systems collapse or a warning against evil dictators. Not really, anyway. They’re about what happens when it’s no longer important to regular people to do the right thing. What’s happening isn’t a crisis of government. It’s a crisis of conscience.
—MacKENNA NOVAK,
Letters from the Second Civil War
MacKENNA
Well.
We’ve got enough guns to start our own militia.
They’re stored in four black plastic tubs that fill up half of the camper of the cruddy truck Navarro picked up back in Guadalajara. He’s got the tubs labeled with our names. It kinda disturbs me to see MACKENNA written in thick block letters on the side of a tub of Smith & Wesson M&P Shields and Glock 43s.
It also kinda disturbs me that I now know the difference between a Shield and a Glock. How to load and fire them.
Jinx gets way cooler guns. The kind that look like they belong to cops in old-timey TV shows. But Navarro says I have too much trouble with the grip safety. So, no Colt Governments for me.
I shudder. The old me wouldn’t have considered any gun cool.
Oh, for the love of Pete. Calm down, MacKenna. Focus.
The old me wrote a paper called “Your Thumbprint Is Your Weapon: How DNA-A Technology Killed Gun Culture.” It was all about how old guns should be destroyed. How The Spark basically stopped school shootings and mass murders with the National Gun Control Act. All new guns had to be connected to the internet, and the user had to login to shoot.
Jinx could probably explain all the techie stuff.
The old guns though... The Spark wasn’t able to get rid of them all.
And...here I am. Like a hypocrite. Carting around an arsenal of Dr. Doomsday’s twentieth-century weapons.
I try to tell myself that our lives depend on it.
But where is the old me? Am I in here somewhere?
I have to be, right?
I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, listening to Jinx and Navarro go through another one of their survivalist routines. It’s kinda like a mating ritual for doomsday survivors. Watching them in the rearview mirror, I can tell Navarro is still mad. He’s making that squinty-eyed face and keeps crossing his arms.
And hey...it’s looking like it was a big mistake not to tell him about the satellite dish. After we got that cryptic message, Jinx pretty much threw that old computer off the desk and, like, destroyed anything that could even possibly communicate with anything else.
LEAD: Stephanie Marshall knows where we are and is coming for us.
“How many self-heating meals did you pack?” Navarro asks.
I have to hand it to them. They’re running their drills.
“One hundred and fifty,” Jinx says.
“That’s only enough for ten days, Susan.”
Jinx pushes her reddish-brown bangs out of her face. Sometimes she looks like Stephanie. She makes these faces, with her lips kinda scrunched up. Or sometimes, she’ll reach for her neck, like she’s playing with an invisible necklace.
Stephanie used to do that too.
The resemblance scares the hell out of me.
“This isn’t a magic camper,” Jinx says with an eye roll. “We don’t have unlimited space back here. And if we haven’t found something in ten days, we’ll need to come up with...with...”
Navarro snorts. “With what? A plan better than this one?” The muscles in his arms kinda flex, stretching the fabric of his camo T-shirt.
I have to give it to Jinx. The guy is hot.
She picks up a bin of food and shoves it into Navarro’s arms. “With another idea.”
I lean so that I can see myself in the mirror.
Ugh. What I wouldn’t do for a facial. Or some kinda moisturizer that doesn’t smell like a banana snow cone.
I wonder if anyone ever thinks I look like my mother.
Toby and I both look like Dad. Even Mom used to say so all the time. These days, I try to think about Mom. Try to picture the exact color of her hair.
I can’t.
That scares the hell out of me too.
Jinx and Navarro grow larger in the mirror as they come closer to me. The space that’s right over the top of the truck’s cab is a bed. They fill it with the bins, clearing enough room for us to be able to move around in the camper.
Dad gets into the driver’s seat and pokes me lightly on the arm. “You’re in the back.”
When I stay in my seat a little too long, he adds, “We need Gus up here to navigate.”
I get out and pass Navarro on my way to the small camper door. So it’s me and Toby and Jinx in the back.
“We need to get going. Now,” Jinx says. She can’t stop pulling on strands of her hair. Or stop sounding and looking and seeming nervous as hell.
And...something’s way wrong with Toby. Not, like, in the sense that something’s wrong with me or Jinx. We�
�re scared and freaked out all the time, and probably all messed up by what we’ve seen, and we miss home, we’re worried about Charles, and we want our old lives back.
Toby is...different.
Like there’s an icy storm raging inside of him.
Always.
We’re totally smooshed in the back of this crappy camper, which, by the way, smells like an old man’s dirty socks. Almost every surface is covered in wood paneling that’s all scraped up. Like someone with freaky long fingernails used to be trapped in here.
Because the space is so narrow, I have to kinda turn sideways when I walk. Jinx and I move to the center and take a seat at a little table with a weirdly bright green top. Like a plastic lime.
It hurts my eyes to look at it.
Toby’s on the floor of the camper with his back to the bed where we stashed the weapons. He’s got his feet pushed against the tiny camper stove. He’s staring, the way that a normal person might look out the window.
Except there’s no window down where he’s siting.
And he’s not himself.
We play crazy eights for a while but, after about an hour, the ride gets so bumpy that the cards won’t stay in place long enough for us to keep the game going.
“D-d-d-d-draw two.” Jinx bounces up and down in her seat.
The truck hits a major bump, and the card pile spills all over the table.
“What’s the point?” I push the pile into a neat stack.
It hits me that it’s, like, way darker inside the camper than it was before.
I stand up. Or. I try to stand up. We take another mini hill, and I’m thrown back into my seat.
Okay. Here I go again. Up. Up. To the window.
Bracing myself using the sink, I make my way to the camper’s wide window. We’ve completely left the coast. Tall, tropical trees surround the truck, blocking out the sun. It is like a jungle or a rainforest, and I wish I’d paid more attention in school when they explained the difference.
We haven’t passed a house or a car or evidence of human civilization since leaving the beach. We could be the only five people on the whole friggin’ planet.
A couple palm trees whiz by. There’s something I recognize, at least.
Navarro didn’t want to come here.
I’m getting this sinking feeling he’s right. And I hate it.
I turn toward the cab. Toby’s still sitting there, bouncing and bobbing along like he doesn’t have any bones in his damn body. Like he’s a flipping blob of Jell-O. Through the small window, I see Dad hunched over the steering wheel while Navarro has his face pushed into the atlas. In front of us...
Well.
It’s like we’re deliberately trying to drive into a tree.
The road, or the dirt path—or the, like, whatever, that Dad’s trying to use as a road—is vanishing into a small point ahead of us. Navarro starts gesturing and pointing and yelling something.
Dad sideswipes a tree. He’s driving way too fast. I fall over again, and I’m pretty sure that we’ve lost the driver’s side mirror. I’m back in my seat.
Jinx gets up, but she moves with more purpose, heading to the supply bins.
My stomach bounces and lurches and drops.
And my brother is still...um...whatever.
Jinx is close to him, reaching above his head, into the bins. He takes to staring at her knees like he’ll need to describe them to a police sketch artist later on.
“Toby! What the hell!” I yell at him.
He jumps to attention. “What? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on?” I shout even louder. “What’s going on is that Dad is driving about a hundred miles an hour into the forbidden forest!”
He has the nerve to shrug. “What do you want me to do?”
“Act like you give a damn!”
Jinx is murmuring something to herself. She glances at the road ahead of us. “When we stop, we need to get ready to move!”
“Why are we going so fast?” I say.
She shrugs, too, but at least she has the decency to give me an actual answer. “I don’t know. Maybe they see something.” Jinx checks out the window again. “Maybe—”
Her “maybe” is cut off by a boom.
And then another.
A sound I’ve become too used to hearing.
Two shots. From a big gun. Like a rifle.
LEAD: The Opposition pursues family of fugitives through Yucatán.
Fact check: I can’t verify who was chasing us. Everyone wants us dead.
Jinx clicks into mission mode, and before I can blink a few times, she’s sliding into a holster with her Colt attached.
Boom again.
Dad hits the brakes.
Hard.
I pretty much face plant into the table.
That green tabletop realllllly sucks, and if I had any wind inside of me, it’s totally knocked out.
Seriously, MacKenna. Get a hold of yourself.
“They’re...they’re...shooting. At us.” I cough a bunch of times. That disgusting kinda cough that suggests I might have tuberculosis or something way truly gross.
Jinx is saying something in that high-pitched, semi-hysterical way she talks when she’s saying things like, We’re all gonna die or Run!
I catch only a few words here and there.
“Someone...shooting...tire...gunfire...blowout.”
I hear the clacking of plastic as the bins up on the bunk collide with each other. The truck turns and rocks and spins and skids before hitting something.
If I had breath, I’d scream.
By the time I’m able to push my face off the table, Jinx is wearing her utility jacket and passing M16s to Dad and Navarro through the small window that divides the cab from the camper. She wraps another holster around her waist and grabs her backpack.
I’m hyperventilating as she makes her way up the narrow aisle in my direction. She drops my pack at my feet and presses a loaded Glock 43 into the palm of my hand.
I hate the feel of it.
“Stay behind me.” She clutches her own M16.
Yep. That’s Jinx.
“I think someone’s out there,” she says in a whisper.
Toby finally gets to his feet and manages to put a look on his face that isn’t brooding lovesick vampire. Or bored. He watches Jinx as she passes. “She’s always so eager to risk her life. Even when she has no idea what she’s risking it for,” he mutters.
Oh hell’s bells.
That.
That right there was the problem. “We’re risking our lives for Charles. And Dad. And anyone else about to be exterminated by The Opposition.”
He loads his own gun. “Right. And truth, justice and the American way.”
“Toby! You need to—”
“Shh!” Jinx tells me, waving her hand at me to pipe down.
I know she’s right. Now’s not the time for this. But fighting with my brother is the only thing that keeps my pulse going. That keeps the cold fear from overtaking me.
Because.
I think someone’s out there.
The camper door has a small window. Jinx takes one finger and slowly pulls at the edge of the white curtain that hangs over it.
I can hear my heartbeat.
“You see anything?” Toby asks.
“No,” Jinx whispers.
The door creaks as she pushes it open.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Rocks crunch under her boot as she lowers herself onto the ground.
She carefully closes the door behind her with a soft click that only a supervillain would be able to hear.
Toby follows her. He’s got a bit of a jaunt to his walk, like he doesn’t give a damn who or what might be out there.
He lets the door slam behind him.
I grab my own backpack, but I’m not ready to roll around the jungle with a loaded gun, so I gingerly place it on the counter.
Then.
I dig my fingers into my palms and focus on that pain...and force myself to go outside.
And outside.
Outside, there’s...
Nothing.
And I do mean nothing.
We’re in a narrow clearing between clusters of huge trees that tower high above the truck. The area is gloomy and shaded. I can barely see the sky, and the sky might be made of tree branches. It’s like the land that time forgot. The sounds are things that creep me out. Rustling leaves. Screeching. Like maybe a monkey or something.
As far as the eye can see...trees. More trees. Tall trees. Everywhere. Deep greens. Green in every shade of green. And ground covered in tall grass that looks like it will be a major pain to walk in.
I come around to the side of the camper, where everyone else is already huddled in a small circle. Seeing them like that, it strikes me how much we’ve all changed. We’re dressed in fatigues and camo Ts and windbreakers. Dad has grown a salt-and-pepper beard, and his hair has gotten longer and grayer.
We’re, like, our own little army.
“You heard the shots,” Dad is saying.
“It could be nothing,” Navarro says, his voice filled with a tension that means it’s not nothing. “There’s lots of hunting out here. It’s illegal. But with everything going on, it’s probably not a priority for the Mexican police to be this far out.”
Jinx nods. “Most of the Federales are deployed at the border.” Somehow, she’s managing to sound calm. But her knuckles are white from gripping her gun.
“But...” She takes a deep breath. “Somebody is out there.”
I glance around in every direction. It seems like you could go a long time out here without seeing somebody. The trees are so thick. The forest so dense.
