by C. A. Gray
“Ah,” said Voltolini, and then told the cameras, “Fortunately our team is working on a solution to this security leak as we speak. Citizens need not fear terrorists loose on the bullet trains; within about 24 hours this should no longer be possible.”
“Better keep the car, then!” said Charlie cheerfully.
“Back to you, Jillian,” said Voltolini, with a broad smile. Stone’s eyes grew wide, and he began to squirm before the cameras cut away.
Jillian’s concerned, perfect face reappeared on camera. “Uruguay Stone hoped to purchase his own pardon with the information he revealed regarding fellow terrorists MacNamera and the others. However, we have verified that the rebels caught tonight were, in fact, bound for New Estonia, where they intended to join forces with our enemies. And as you know, the Potentate has a strict policy of not negotiating with terrorists.”
The camera cut again to the hillside, where twenty-seven members of our former group stood in handcuffs and jumpsuits, facing a firing squad.
“Brittany!” Kate breathed as she saw her friend, just as they reached the count of three and fired. The whole group of them collapsed, and Kate covered her face with her hands.
“I am happy to report that justice has been carried out, and citizens can sleep easy tonight,” Jillian said. “The Potentate has also ensured that any terrorists residing in Beckenshire will not be able to terrorize our Republic again.”
My stomach turned over.
“Kate,” I whispered, pulling her hands away from her eyes gently, so she could see what I saw.
The cameras cut to an aerial view of our brief home.
It had been completely decimated.
Chapter 32: Kate
When the screens went blank, we drove in silence for awhile. Finally Charlie asked, “So if we’re not headed to Beckenshire, I’m gonna need alternate directions.”
“Friedrichsburg,” Jackson croaked.
“Molly,” I whispered. Aside from Jackson and Will, she was my only real friend among the rebels.
Jackson added, “And Pete, Nelson, Brenda, Rachel, Sam…”
How many more deaths? I sunk my head into my hands, and said, “This is my fault! If I hadn’t left the group and gone off on my own, none of this would have happened… I sentenced our entire group to death!”
“That’s not true, Kate.” I felt Jackson’s hand stroking my back. “You shouldn’t have gone off on your own private mission, no. But it was Uruguay who betrayed them. Not you.”
I looked up at him hopefully. “Do you think the hunters survived? Will and Nick and Alec and Jean?”
“And Roger and Jacob too,” Jackson said. “I hope so. That’s why I want to go to Friedrichsburg. They might not know what happened yet. They’re probably not in Friedrichsburg anymore, but it’s thirty some miles to Beckenshire from there, so they were probably somewhere in the forest in between the two when the bombs fell. If they weren’t close enough to Beckenshire to get hit, once we get close enough, we can track them.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, and turned around so I could see everyone in the car at the same time. “I came here in the first place, back on the grid, to find Charlie and broadcast the truth.” I paused. “Why not now, before the people have been thoroughly brainwashed not to trust me?”
Nobody replied at first.
“Now?” Charlie asked finally.
“Yes, now! It might be too late already, but the longer I wait, the more likely that becomes! There’s got to be some dissonance with most of the citizens right now, since they’ve adored me for so long. We have to capitalize on that while we can, right?”
It was my mom who broke the silence.
“How could you do this to us?” she whispered.
I blinked at her, confused. “What?”
“How could you, Kathryn? You don’t really love us! How can you put us in so much danger? Don’t you think of us at all?”
This flabbergasted me. “I don’t—”
“How could you do this?” my mom wailed again.
It took me a second to find words. “This isn’t about you, and you don’t have to come!” I shouted, furious. “This is the one thing I can really do to contribute to this cause, and even if I don’t, there’s probably a 95% chance that we’re all going to die no matter what we do! Most of our group stayed behind in Beckenshire thinking they were perfectly safe, and they’re probably all dead now! And the hunters could have been there too when the bombs were dropped, for all we know!”
I choked back a sob, thinking of Will. It should have occurred to me that I might never see him again before he went to Friedrichsburg. I wished desperately that we’d had a better parting.
I looked from Jackson to Charlie. Jackson’s face was unreadable, so I turned to my brother in desperation. “Tomorrow clearly isn’t promised to any of us. So at least I want to do as much damage as I can before I go. Will you help me?”
Charlie set his jaw, and gave me a single nod. I almost cried with relief. Then he added, “On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
Charlie pointed at Jackson. “He comes with us.”
I whirled around to face Jackson, but before I could work on him, my mom wailed again, “What about us? You’re going to just drag us into this without even asking our consent?”
“No,” said Jackson. The word hit me like a punch in the stomach, but then he went on, speaking to my parents, “You shouldn’t have to come with us, but the problem is, we only have one signal disruptor. And the government is almost certainly tracking your brainwaves too now, because they know you guys will be with us.”
I turned to Jackson, wide-eyed. “So… does that mean you’ll come with us, then?”
“Well, we have to work out the details first,” he said, looking at Charlie. “But we probably will have to build a second signal disruptor first—”
Charlie shook his head, looking at Jackson through the rearview mirror. “We couldn’t use a signal disruptor while we’re trying to send a broadcast anyway, though. So we can just give it to Mom and Dad, and send them somewhere a little ways away from the studio we pick to wait for us until we’re done. Far enough away to not be in the line of fire, but close enough to see what happens and escape if things go south. We can leave them in the getaway vehicle.”
My mom started to cry. “But where would we go?”
“You’d have to get to Friedrichsburg and go from there into the forest to hide,” said Charlie. “With luck you might run into Will and the hunters, like Jackson said…” Then he shook his head and said, “Man, I wish Will was with us. He’d definitely come in handy right about now.”
“I know,” I murmured. But he’s probably already dead.
I dug my fingernails into my palms and squeezed my eyes shut.
Chapter 33: Jackson
“I know where there’s a broadcasting station near here,” Kate said, trying to compose herself. She sniffled, wiped her face, and told Charlie, “Get back on the freeway and head to Greensborough.” I assumed that that was another nearby city. “It’s a small studio, but it’s big enough.”
The sun had set already, so I pointed out, “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to actually broadcast.”
Kate nodded. “I know, I just figured we could get nearby and find somewhere to crash for the night. We can do the broadcast in the morning when everyone’s there and people will be awake to see it. I don’t know how we’re going to get everyone at the station to either help us or leave, though…”
“Um,” said Charlie, as he waited at the freeway on ramp. He held up the pistol his dad had been shooting with and raised his eyebrows at Kate. “No ideas at all, huh? Really?”
“I don’t want to hurt anybody!” Kate snapped. “You forget, most of these are my friends!”
Charlie shrugged. “That’s cool. Maybe Jackson can hypnotize them or something.”
I snorted. “Not a skill I ever learned. Sorry
to disappoint.”
“Are you serious?” Charlie asked me, and met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “All that meditation and stuff, and you never learned actual mind control? What’s the point of that?”
I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not, but I figured he was probably serious at least on some level. I couldn’t really blame him—as a boy, I’d had similar thoughts when Grandfather had first taught me to control my own mind. Could I translate that to controlling the minds of others? Because if I could, I’d reasoned, I could get my teacher to give me A’s even when I didn’t do my homework. I could convince Hannah Liechtenfield, the prettiest girl in the seventh grade, to go out with me. I could make my aunt and uncle do all my chores for me…
Before I gathered the courage to ask Grandfather about this, I’d mentioned it to Uncle Patrick. Uncle Patrick had glowered at me. “Jackson, there is a word for controlling others against their will. Do you know what it is?”
I shook my head. “Power?”
“Witchcraft.”
His tone was menacing enough that I’d never pursued the subject further with either of them.
Rather than go into all of this, I told Charlie, “I do my best not to manipulate people when I don’t have to. Mind control is your government’s specialty, not mine.”
“What about when you do have to?” Charlie pressed. “Isn’t it better to make people want to do what you want, instead of threatening to shoot them if they don’t?”
I thought about the man I’d carjacked to get to the Potentate’s palace and felt a stab of regret. “You’re forgetting the third option,” I said. “Give them a free choice.”
“Did we have a free choice?” sniffed Denise. “Albert and I were perfectly happy before you dragged us into all of this, against our will…”
“Except that we didn’t know where Katie was,” Albert reminded her gently. “We were worried sick about her.”
Kate watched her mother, presumably waiting for a similar affirmation from her. But the seconds ticked by in silence.
“We didn’t drag you, Mom,” Kate bristled at last. “That was the Potentate, remember? I wasn’t even coming to see you guys at all, I was going to find Charlie! If Nancy hadn’t told you I was coming, and if you hadn’t called the agents on us, then you wouldn’t be here right now. So if you want someone to blame, blame yourselves!”
“She’s in shock,” Albert scolded his daughter quietly. “Cut her a little slack.”
Kate scowled, folding her arms over her chest. Then she turned to me and said sharply, “What do you mean, give them a free choice?”
Before I answered, I winked at her. The hard lines in her jaw softened and she looked a little abashed. Then I said, “It’s surprising how often people are willing to help you if you just ask. We could go in there and take over the broadcasting station by force and make everyone leave, but if we were to do that, can Charlie do the filming and broadcast and make sure all the levels are right so people can actually hear what you’re saying, all by himself?” I’d never seen a broadcasting studio before, but I gathered from Kate’s and Charlie’s silence that I’d made a good point.
“So,” I added, “Especially since these are your friends, Kate—”
“Not good friends,” she interrupted, “I’ve just met most of them a few times.”
“Well, they know you. So I say, let’s just let the team choose. Those who want to help, should stay and help. Those who don’t, are free to leave. No violence necessary.”
“And then they’ll immediately go tell the agents exactly where we are and what we’re doing,” Charlie pointed out.
“The agents are going to know where we are anyway within two hours, if not before,” I said, “because your parents will have the signal disruptor with them. Remember?”
“But why would any of them stay to help, then?” asked Kate.
“Well,” Charlie mused, “what made you start to wake up?”
Kate thought for a minute. “Finding out Maggie got killed.”
Charlie nodded. “Exactly. And now all of them have their own Maggie. You.”
She looked a bit taken aback by this, but then she murmured, “Yeah, I guess… you mean because I’ve just been vilified on national broadcasting?”
“Right, and you said yourself that that’s going to cause some cognitive dissonance for a lot of people. They love you.”
I chimed in, “They still see you as someone they can trust. So if we show up with guns blazing, we’ll destroy that for the broadcast team, and anyone they tell. But if we tell them our story and give them a choice, a few of them are likely to help. And we only need a few, right?”
“I guess,” Kate murmured again, looking at Charlie for confirmation.
“But,” I added, “we’ll need you to be recognizable on camera, Kate. Get you cleaned up and looking like the news anchor people know, like, and trust.”
“What are you saying?” she smirked at me over her shoulder, her pasty makeup half smeared across her cheek. “Are you saying I look bad right now?”
I shrugged and held up my hands, smiling back. “Hey, I just… want you to look like yourself. Interpret how you will.”
Greensborough turned out to be a few hours’ drive from Jute. We stopped for gas once more, and although Kate and I stayed in the car to avoid the stares, the car itself was so flashy it still drew a lot of attention. I gave Charlie my ID card for gas, which fortunately no one had linked to me yet, so it didn’t seem to set off any kind of alarm. When we stopped for the last fill up of the night, I heard the sound of an engine overhead again, and rolled down the window so I could see the red lights of a plane in the sky.
“Why would Voltolini be building up the Air Force again?” Albert asked, leaning against the car door beside me.
“Maybe he thinks there’s some kind of outside threat,” Charlie mused as he pumped the gas. “New Estonia?” Then he snorted and said, “It’s funny. All my life I’ve thought of them as an enemy, but I never knew why.”
“None of us did,” agreed Albert, running a hand through his thick, graying hair and still looking up at the sky where the plane had vanished. “None of us ever asked why…”
“We should be another hour out,” said Kate, leaning across the front seat to me. “Before we stop for the night, we still have to get a less visible car.”
“Agreed,” said Charlie. “The trick is finding something old enough, though… and it has to be in a place that isn’t well lit so nobody sees me trying to steal it…”
“Plus we’ll have to ditch this one somewhere far away from our eventual location,” I said. “We don’t want to leave any clues where we’re headed in advance of the broadcast.”
Charlie popped the trunk and got the gas canister we’d brought from Voltolini’s garage, which was now empty. Once he’d finished filling the car’s tank, he topped off the extra canister too.
“Incase we have to steal a car with no gas in it,” he explained.
I nodded. “Smart.”
“There’s a lake on the edge of Greensborough,” Kate said. “I don’t know how deep it is, but it’s probably deep enough to sink this.” She tapped the front seat of the Jaguar.
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Charlie, who had finished pumping gas and got back into the driver’s seat. He nodded.
“Sounds like a plan,” he affirmed. “So I’ll head for the lake, and hope we can find another car to take along the way.”
About an hour later, Charlie pulled off of the freeway for the Greensborough exit, and Kate navigated him to a small subdivision on the way to the lake.
“Most of the homes here have been abandoned for a decade or more,” she said. “Like everywhere else. But there are a few…” She pointed at the ramshackle huts with bare lightbulbs shining on their thresholds. There were some cars parked on the side streets in front of the homes, and I kept glancing at Charlie to see if any of them met his criteria.
“Nope,” he’d murmur as we passed one. “Too broken down… probably won’t run… too new, doubt I can jump that one… A-ha!”
I didn’t know cars at all, but he pulled over beside one of the ugliest vehicles I’d ever seen, with a gray body sorely in need of repainting, and a yellow door on the driver’s side. The fender dangled off of it precariously.
“This’ll do,” Charlie announced. “How close are we to the lake, Kate?”
“I think it’s about a quarter mile,” she said.
“Perfect.” Charlie parked, popped the trunk, and grabbed his toolbox. “Dad? Wanna help me?”
Denise had been asleep for the last hour, which was probably good for all of us. Albert gently coaxed her out of the Jaguar and into the backseat of the old clunker Charlie was working on, before he climbed into the front seat to help his son. Kate scooted over to the driver’s side of the Jaguar, which I gathered meant she intended to be the one to drive it into the lake. I climbed in to the passenger side and shut the door. But we couldn’t go anywhere until Charlie finished jumping the other car, since we had to stay no more than ten feet from the signal disruptor. That meant we had a few minutes, all to ourselves.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said back. She glanced at me and gave me a half smile. “Do I really look that bad?”
“Nah,” I lied.
She laughed. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Not a skill I ever practiced,” I grinned back. We both fell silent, and I reached out and squeezed her hand. “You doing okay?”
She didn’t answer for a second, and she looked at our hands, not at me. “About as well as can be expected. You?”
