by Kelly deVos
Navarro and I are given box meals and sent back to the dorm. The instant we’re back in the room, I hit the bathroom. I take a quick shower and change into my sweats. When I come back out, Navarro is sitting on the sofa, opening a bag of chips and studying the diagrams of AIRSTA.
He glances up, and I almost melt under the intensity of his gaze.
I shiver.
“Okay,” he says, pushing my box dinner across the table in my direction. “Let’s assume that Rosenthal is lying about everything. What do we actually know?”
I’ve been thinking about this as well. I flop down on the sofa next to him. “Nothing. We don’t even know that my brother is actually at AIRSTA. In fact, based on the schematics, it seems like an odd place to hold him.”
Navarro stares out in space for a second. “Agreed,” he says with a sigh. “And Rosenthal...his plan...they’re setting us up to fail.” He drums his fingers on the table.
Opening my box, I pick through a cheesesteak sandwich, bag of veggie chips, apple and a carton of juice. “You mean because The Opposition is expecting us?” I ask.
He rubs his chin, thinking hard. “Well, they clearly placed Charles on that base so we’d come there. But remember when Jay said there were about 160 troops stationed at AIRSTA?”
“Yeah.” We haven’t seen Jay in almost a week.
He puts his sandwich on the low table and tries to cut through it with a plastic knife. “Let’s assume that’s a pretty good baseline estimate of what we’ll encounter when we get there. And Copeland is sending us in with a platoon, four squads of eight people.”
I can’t stop staring at him. Why does he look so much better in his jumpsuit than I ever do?
Focus.
Rosenthal is giving us enough people to attract notice...but not enough to win.
“The Opposition will be expecting us. We’ll make a lot of noise,” I agree. I fight off the uneasy feeling in my chest.
“Right.” Navarro drops his sandwich and takes my hand. “What would Dr. Marshall do?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Almost an admission that we’re already overpowered.
But.
“Don’t put your fate in the hands of your enemy.”
“Rule fourteen,” Navarro agrees. “Right, Dr. Marshall would get away. Risky though.”
A cold resignation settles over me. “The briefing doesn’t really change anything. The Spark only wants us to die at the right time. We have to stick with our plan to get away.”
“We’ll be going it alone. No backup,” he says.
That was something else that had been bothering me.
“Back there. In Quintana Roo. It was Fort Marshall. Not Fort Copeland or Fort Rosenthal. That’s why they need us. There are people out there still loyal to my father.”
Navarro nods slowly.
“What we really need to do is get away from...everyone,” I say.
Navarro draws in a deep breath before dropping my hand and returning to his cheesesteak. “It’s gonna be rough. And we’ll have to...”
Go without Toby.
“I know.”
“Tomorrow, then,” he says.
Tomorrow we get away.
I didn’t know what to make of our meetings with Rosenthal. Or of The Spark’s continued association with the warmonger Harlan Copeland. There was this question that I couldn’t bear to ask myself.
What if, in the end, political parties are incapable of putting a stop to the injustices they themselves are busy creating?
—MacKENNA NOVAK,
Letters from the Second Civil War
MacKENNA
We drive in silence for about ten minutes.
“I thought you said we needed to get off the main road,” I say.
Terminus rolls his eyes. “Sure. Any idea where we should turn? Or where we’re going?”
Okay. Um. No.
“So how exactly can I get on the planning committee for our little adventures? Is there an application process? Do I need references?” He tries to keep it light, but it doesn’t work. There’s an edge to his words.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I thought it was obvious that we needed to get away.”
He’s not wearing his sweatshirt, and I notice that his white T-shirt has THANK YOU written on it in red bubble script. Kinda like what they put on bags for take-out food.
Terminus glances at me for a second. “Well, it wasn’t obvious. And even if it was, it would have been smarter to get away from Fort Marshall, where we might have been able to steal supplies and maybe even a computer.”
My anger flares. “Right. Because it would have been easier for us to fight, like, fifty people than one distracted guy.”
“Right.” Terminus mirrors my tone. “Did you notice that Galloway had a phone in his jacket pocket?”
I had not noticed.
I keep screwing up.
MacKenna Novak is the worst.
“Probably an untraceable burner. We could have at least taken it before you broke his nose. Then we’d have GPS. And a map.” Terminus sighs. “Okay. So Galloway did pack some stuff. We have gas. Probably enough to go a couple hundred miles. We’ve got some food. Maybe a day’s worth. But what then?”
We have no information. No money. No plan.
“Both The Opposition and The Spark will be looking for us,” Terminus says. “We’ve got no way to get across the border. No phones. No way to contact Jinx. No way to contact anyone.”
We continue to drive on the two-lane Sonoran highway. It’s been a while since we’ve seen another car.
He taps the steering wheel. “We’ve got no friends.”
Of course, it will be almost impossible to get in contact with Jinx.
We pass a large billboard for a place called DOLLAPALOOZA. A dozen cheerful doll faces mock me from the signpost. A smiling stork has a speech bubble coming out of its cartoon bill. The same phrase is printed in Spanish and English.
Your new best friend is waiting for you...
Tu nuevo mejor amigo te está esperando...
DOLLAPALOOZA in 5 km.
Oh perfect.
Part of me wants to get back to the time when I still believed babies came from the cabbage patch and my only real problem was stopping Toby from eating all Mom’s cookies.
But. Also.
“We do know people,” I say.
At least, Dr. Doomsday did.
I’m about to tell Terminus about Dr. Doomsday’s friends at the border. Mr. Antone helped us before. Yeah, and there was that guy. Fernando. Would they help us?
Before I can put that question to Terminus, a plain black car kicks up a cloud of dust, driving onto the highway from the dirt lot in front of a minimart. It pulls up close to our rear bumper. Terminus sucks in a gasp.
Cool adrenaline courses through me. “It’s The Opposition!”
Terminus hits the gas. His voice is high-pitched and freaked out. “It’s probably our people,” he says. “Otherwise they’d be shooting at us.”
A low, loud boom follows his words. A blast from a gun.
A big one.
“Okay. Yes! That’s The Opposition!” he screams.
A bullet whizzes over my shoulder. There’s a crack, and a hole bursts open in the windshield. A long series of lines break across the surface of the glass, making it impossible to see out the front of the car.
I scream.
“Oh shit!” Terminus says.
There’s more shooting and yelling and another boom.
I turn around in my seat. Behind us there are now several vehicles locked in a firefight. Terminus must be right. We’ve got both The Opposition and The Spark chasing us. A dark SUV rams the sedan that’s on our tail. The crash is enough to let us break free of the melee. We continue to speed ahead.
But T
erminus can’t control the Land Rover, and we break into a skid. I should have put my seat belt on after we tossed Galloway from the car. But I didn’t, and I’m thrown against the car door as we veer off the road and kick up a cloud of dust.
Keep calm, Mac. Keep it together.
Even though I brace myself, I’m all over the front seat. The car runs over low bushes and the pockmarked desert earth. We’re jostled up and down, and I hit my head on the roof. Finally, we rock side to side and come to a stop in front of a series of small roadside restaurants.
“What do we do? What do we do?” Terminus asks over and over.
I’m not used to this.
I’m used to traveling with Jinx and Navarro, who have a backup plan for how to eat a bowl of cereal.
“Um. Um. Um.”
Geez, MacKenna. Stop stammering and figure it out.
More shots. The rear passenger window explodes.
“We have to get out of here!” I yell.
Without waiting for a response, I force myself to open the Land Rover door. I’m hit with the smell of delicious grilled chicken and a mouthful of dust. We’re right in front of an orange-colored shack with a large sign.
POLLO ASADOS SINALOA EL VICKI
I got a C in Spanish, but I think that means there’s someone inside named Vicki cooking up some chicken. As I’m making sense of this, men stream out of a taco shop next door to Vicki’s. People run in every direction, and there’s shouting in a mixture of Spanish and English.
Terminus sits like a statue behind the wheel of the car.
Crap.
For a split second, I feel some sympathy for Jinx and Navarro. Is this what it’s like to deal with me? Is this what Jinx felt like when she had to drag me through that pharmacy on the day this all began?
Okay.
I have to stay low, and we have to get out of here.
I dodge a screaming kid riding by on a rickety bicycle and run around to the driver’s side, then yank open the heavy door and tug Terminus into the chaos.
It’s like lugging a potato sack. I drop him onto the dirt.
“Oh God. Oh God,” he repeats. He sinks down and rests his head on the Land Rover’s tire. “Oh ouch.” He immediately puts his face up again.
Jinx wouldn’t leave without the supplies, so I open the back door next and hustle in. I find a khaki military-style pack in the cargo area and grab it.
When I get out of the car, Terminus is actually standing up. Which is an improvement.
Taking his hand, I lead us around the corner of the chicken place. We duck behind the building. We’re actually in a small town with a few houses and shops. I scan the area. There are a couple of cars, but it’s too risky to try to steal a vehicle. We have no choice but to take off on foot. The mayhem seems like it will buy us time.
“Let’s go.” I’m thankful for all the jogging I used to do.
Slinging the pack over my shoulder, I take off at a run.
* * *
Galloway’s backpack contains three steel bottles full of cold water, two extra T-shirts, a compass, a paper map of Mexico, four protein bars, an extra pack of cigarettes, a book of matches, a first aid kit, a Swiss Army knife and a wristwatch.
Which is how I know that we’ve been walking for almost exactly two hours.
Two looonnnggg hours.
I forced Terminus to jog for a mile or so before we took a break. That’s when we dug around in the pack and scanned the area to see if anyone was following us.
Oh yeah. We’ve got binoculars.
“I don’t think anyone’s following us.” I check out the desert landscape.
I feel strangely comfortable here. It’s the same kind of desert as back in Phoenix, and a familiar orange light is falling over all the brown and yellow plant life.
The sun is going down.
Soon it will be dark.
Galloway didn’t pack a flashlight.
Terminus coughs again. The dust is getting to him. “Why should they bother following us? All that’s gonna happen is that we’re gonna die out here.”
If Charles were here, he’d know what all these plants are. Even this brush that’s never noticed by anybody. Even these cacti that seem to exist for no reason other than to have defensive needles and spikes jutting out from them.
It all has names.
Like us.
“We’re not gonna die,” I snap. “Puerto Peñasco is maybe like twenty miles from here. We have food and water, and that’s not too far to walk.”
“Oh sure,” he says, in between another round of coughs. “We’ll just stroll around Rocky Point even though the Mexican government has ordered all Americans out of their country.”
I miss Charles. And Jinx. And Toby. Even Navarro. I can’t think about that or I’ll cry.
Grow up. Get real. Don’t cry.
So instead.
“By the way, thanks for all the help back there,” I say.
He yanks the binoculars out of my hands and uses them to search the wide-open space behind me. “I’m not some damn army ranger. I didn’t train in Max Marshall’s secret militia. I’m not Jinx. Or Navarro. You made the choice to run off without them. Now here we are. Alone...and we—” He breaks into a laugh.
A dry, monotonous laugh.
He releases the binoculars. The eyepieces leave red marks on his face. “Oh, I don’t believe it.”
He gives the binoculars to me and turns me in the direction he was looking. Jutting out from the desert sand like a painted fingernail is a large square industrial building all by itself.
With a large sign in front.
WELCOME TO DOLLAPALOOZA.
Perhaps God will show mercy to our enemies.
I know I sure as hell won’t.
—GEN. HARLAN S. COPELAND to
COL. C. MAXWELL MARSHALL
Log of the Interim Committee
re: Project Cold Front
Stamped: Top Secret
JINX
In the end, I get to keep only one small streak of blue hair.
We’re at the bottom of the ocean, and Amelia has brought a hairdresser to help with my image. Her name is Avery. She has perfect hair and is the nicest person I’ve met in a while.
It’s early in the morning. A little after five, the Perun returns without MacKenna and Terminus. We don’t ask about them, and no one says anything. If Toby is worried about his sister, he doesn’t say so. I heard that Copeland is back too but we don’t see him right away.
Amelia takes us to a makeshift hair salon they’ve set up in one of the other dorms. The beds are gone, and someone has taken the mirrors out of the bathroom and attached them to the wall with thick swashes of duct tape. There’s an office chair and a small utility cart loaded with brushes and hair dye. Scientists should be down here, and instead I’m getting a haircut.
This is the hair salon of the postapocalyptic, cold fusion future.
I rock slightly on my heels, trying to shake off the mounting dread.
Avery brushes her long honey-brown hair off her shoulders and motions for me to sit in the chair. “I like the blue too,” she tells me, with a wink.
Amelia enters the room, dressed in her usual uniform of expensive T-shirts and jeans. Also carrying her e-tablet as per usual. “The blue hair interferes with her likability scores.” She holds up a complicated pie chart for me to see. “Look. Positive responses to the statement ‘Jinx Marshall reminds me of my daughter’ decrease by 8 percent among women in the thirty-five to fifty-five age demographic.”
Avery has a fistful of hair swatches and is pressing them against my face. She holds up a school picture of me with my old hair and compares the swatches to that.
Amelia taps again. “Here, for males eighteen to forty-nine, we see an almost 20 percent drop in positive responses to ‘I’d he
lp Jinx Marshall escape from danger.’ That’s a real problem—”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t need a guy to help me escape from danger.”
Navarro is in a chair in the corner reading material from one of the mission binders. He looks up at me. “Really?” he says.
My face heats up.
Avery is ignoring all of this. She waves a piece of hair in front of my face. “This is the closest to your natural color, but it’s awfully ashy.”
“Something warmer would be better,” Amelia agrees.
They settle on a shade of brown that’s slightly chestnut and more red than my natural color. A jolt of shock bolts through me when I realize.
This is Mom’s hair color.
I want to object, but Avery is already swiping the white, whipped foam on my head. She isolates one lock of blue with a strip of aluminum foil. When the color is done processing, she trims my hair, turning the sloppy pixie I created myself into a sleek style with a swath of hair that falls into my face like a French girl in a cosmetics ad.
Somebody must have lugged a bunch of 3D printers and sewing machines to the bottom of the ocean, because Amelia disappears for a few minutes and returns with our new “uniforms.”
I have to say, they are sort of cool. I have a fitted pair of dark blue denim pants, a T-shirt with the hawk printed on it in an interesting, distressed way and a jacket made of waterproof scuba fabric with a hawk pin on the chest. Navarro’s outfit is similar except in darker tones of blue. His jacket is more of a windbreaker.
We could form our own emo synthesizer band.
From my chair, I can see the image of him shrugging into his T-shirt reflected in my mirror. I have to force myself to look away.
When we’re done, Navarro smiles at me. “I like this hair better,” he says. “You look more like yourself.”
Which is a strange comment really. I’m always myself no matter what I look like. And isn’t every version of me still me?
Well. We’re all dressed up and have somewhere to go.
