by Tosca Lee
I open my eyes and then I realize: it’s Chase, half on top of me, arm pinning me down.
My response is instant and animalistic. I flail beneath him as someone shouts for him to get off with a voice that sounds possessed. It’s fury and offense and self-righteous wrath all balled up in one from a valve that, once tapped, spews twice as hard the second time.
He’s up on his knees, hands in the air, and I’m swinging free of mylar sheets and sleeping bags to paste him across the jaw.
“Stop—geez—would you stop? I’m not doing anything! I haven’t touched you!”
I’m in the back seat of the Jeep, which has been miraculously cleared of all the crap that was back here earlier. But I can’t stop kicking at Chase, who finally backs out of the door at my feet.
It’s a weird feeling, fury. A crazy, near-euphoric high.
I shove up, fumble around, looking for the carrier case. Find it lying in the front seat. We’re back in the corncrib, though this time we’re facing the entrance.
“It’s there,” Chase says. “It’s fine. And despite what you might think, I wasn’t going to leave you. Meanwhile, you’re still not getting it back until I get some answers.”
“I’m not a terrorist! I am trying . . . to save people,” I say, feeling dangerously like I’m about to crack up and splinter. Or throw up. “To do the right thing. And to do that, I have to get that box”—I point to the carrier with shaking hands—“to someone in Colorado.”
“To someone who isn’t your mom.”
“No. Not my mom. My mom is dead. My sister is sick.” My hand goes to my head.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
I give a brittle laugh. “Now you believe me.”
“I believed you before. Or wanted to. I don’t know many terrorists who are petrified of guns, know nothing about cars, can’t lie, and openly distrust men.”
“I don’t—”
“I get it. Most of us are pigs. But do you have any idea how this looks?” he says, gesturing at the carrier. “So I need some straight answers now or I will dump you off at the first law enforcement station we see.”
“Why don’t you do that, Chase?” I say. “In fact, that’d be just fine.”
“You sure? They’re not going to give you a police escort to Colorado. You stole a car. They’re going to take your cooler there and lock you up. That’s how it works, you know. Oh, wait. You don’t know, do you? Because you just came out of a cult.”
I stare at him, feeling instantly more exposed than if I had come to naked.
He lowers his gaze. “I’m sorry. I went through your phone. Tried to call one of the numbers on your list—the Colorado one.”
“Did you get through?”
“No,” he says, looking surprised I even asked. “There’s no service.”
I wish he had. I’m worried Ashley will think something happened to me. Or that I changed my mind.
“But I did see your emails with that woman. Kestral.”
I look away.
“And I saw your search history about New Earth and that guy, Magnus,” he adds, reluctantly.
“You’re an ass,” I say.
“I just want to know what I’m dealing with,” he says, sounding tired.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “And I won’t until I get to Colorado.”
“Is this . . . what I think it is?” he asks, pointing at the carrier.
“Depends on what you think it is,” I say.
“Is this a cure?”
“There’s no cure. But this could help with a vaccine.” I weigh whether to say more. Magnus was willing to go to great lengths for the samples in that carrier.
“So the disease came from pigs? Where did you get this?”
“I don’t know. My sister got it from Magnus. I don’t know where Magnus got it. I just know he’s a sociopath with a big corporate past and a lot of money. My sister, Jackie, is—was—his wife. She thinks he was trying to sell or trade it to the Russians. Someone came looking for it, he sent it out with her to hand off . . . But instead she drove to the Chicago area where the dad in the family I’ve been staying with is an epidemiologist. But he’s out of town working on the disease. And now he’s sick. And Jackie’s sick.” I feel my calm slipping. “And I’m trying to get it to the only other person we have access to who might know what to do with it!”
“Do the people she was supposed to give this to know where she went?” he says, eyes widening. “Do you even know who they were?”
“It doesn’t matter—no one’s there anymore. I made sure. And no, I don’t know who they were! Just that Jackie thought it might be some Russians.”
Now he’s the one staring at me.
“Well, you can’t exactly go to the CDC,” he says flatly.
“No. I can’t. Not like this. But the man I’m trying to get them to in Colorado can. He’s a veterinarian who works on infectious diseases in animals.”
Chase drops his head back to stare at the ceiling. Draws a long breath through his nose.
“So,” I say more quietly. “Now that you know everything, I am begging you: just get me somewhere I can find a car. And then you can head off to your buddy’s cabin to ice fish your heart out.”
“I can’t do that,” he says at last, looking at me.
“What do you mean?” I demand, wondering if I’ve just made a terrible, terrible mistake, telling him all of this. For an instant, I can feel my remaining faith—in the world, in men, in humans in general—slipping away.
“Because I need to get you to Colorado,” he says quietly.
“You sure?”
He gives me a quizzical look. “If that container can help people, how is there even a choice?”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not if you want to do the right thing. Doesn’t seem like you hesitated.”
“No.”
“All right, then,” he says. “Colorado.”
“Colorado,” I say.
• • •
WE STARE UP at the sky, at the sliver of moon obscured by the snow falling in our hair and eyes. We agree to leave as soon as it lets up and we get some light.
Back in the Jeep, Chase turns toward me. “Good news is, no one’s going to find us in this storm. Soon as the weather lets up, we get out of here. For now, I’d like to formally start over.” He holds out his hand. It’s not huge, but it’s strong-looking. I wonder if he’s ever killed anyone. “Just think. You and me, we’re probably two of the few people willing to shake hands anymore,” he says with a wry smile.
I hesitate. “I have OCD,” I say, and take his hand.
“Chase Miller,” he says. “I have hand sanitizer.”
“Wynter Roth.”
He gently squeezes my fingers. “It’s nice to meet you, Wynter. I’m gonna make you a promise now, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, not sure where he’s going with this.
“I will do all within my power to get those—and you—to Colorado safely,” he says. “And I’m going to ask for one thing in return.”
I give a small smile . . . and then hesitate.
“Quit trying to punch me. At least until I show you how to make a proper fist.”
He turns my hand over, folds my fingers in. Lays my thumb over my index and middle fingers. Rotates my fist and pushes two fingers against the top knuckles of the same fingers.
“Right here,” he says softly.
I nod.
He lets go of my hand and searches for that second apple, insists that I eat. I do, for the first time since leaving Jackie.
“Did you have a special fight outfit?” I ask after a few minutes. “For your fights.”
He chuckles. “What, like a red leotard? Jack Black in his ‘stretchy pants’?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s covering his mouth with his forearm, he’s laughing so hard.
“Nacho Libre?” he says, eyes crinkling. I lift my brows. Finally he just says, “Y
ou ever even seen an MMA fight?”
“No,” I say. “Cult Girl. Remember?”
“Ah, of course.”
“So do you fight under your own name? If I googled you,” I say, picking up my impotent phone, “what would I find?”
He exhales a long breath. “Hmm. Well, for one, you’d have to look up Cutter Buck.”
“ ‘Cutter Buck.’ ”
“Buck for Buckingham. My mom’s maiden name.”
“So if I googled ‘Cutter Buck . . .’ ”
“You’d find my bio.”
“Which would say?”
He lets out a long breath. “Twenty-six years old, six foot two, 190 pounds . . . maybe 185. Former Marine. National hero, friend to ladies everywhere, devastatingly handsome breaker of hearts.” He grins.
“Show me how to make that fist again. I need to use it.”
He laughs.
“So what are you?” I ask.
His brow furrows. “Is this a trick question?”
“Your ethnicity.”
“Oh well, my dad’s African American, Caucasian, and Native American. My mom’s Middle Eastern and Caucasian.”
“What else?”
“That isn’t enough ingredients for you?”
“On my Google results.”
“Oh.” He thinks a minute. “You’d find a video of a fight you probably wouldn’t want to watch. I mean, I don’t want to watch it.”
“Why’s that?”
“I got my arm broken. Part of the reason I quit fighting.”
“Eww.”
“You’d find a statement I made about the nickname I used to have, which I didn’t like. Something to the effect of ‘I have two sisters, I respect women—I’ve had my ass handed to me too many times by them growing up not to. Being called “The Ripper” isn’t something I want for them or myself. I love my fans, but please, if you love me, come up with something else.’ ”
“They called you ‘The Ripper’? Why?”
“Sent a guy to the ER with thirteen stitches to his mouth and cheek.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, kind of was.”
“Your sisters used to beat you up?”
“Oh, my God.” He rolls his eyes. “All up and down the house. And the yard. And the street.”
I laugh.
“What about you? If I googled Wynter Roth . . . ?”
I shrug. “I’m a nobody. My mom’s mom was Hawaiian.” I pause, wondering if that’s why I long so much to see the ocean.
“Did you grow up in the uh . . . New Earth?”
“No. I was seven. Jackie was twelve. It was a safe place. It had walls.”
“Safe from what?”
“My dad.”
His jaw is working in the darkness.
“What?” I ask.
“Call me old-fashioned, but real men only fight a woman when she’s part of an opposing army. I’m sorry. I’m sure you love your dad . . .”
“He’s dead. I barely remember him.”
“So this cult . . . why’d you leave?”
I’m quiet for a minute. And I realize I don’t have the words to explain it. Or the desire to.
After a while he says, “I could show you some stuff if you ever need to defend yourself . . . if you want. If you’re not going to sleep.”
“I’m not. Show me.”
I spend the next hours learning how to punch, kick, go for the throat, groin, eyes—all in order to get away.
“This is a rear naked choke, also called a sleeper hold,” he says, pulling my arms around his neck, positioning them behind his head. “And when you’re doing it, you hang on like a spider monkey. Here,” he says, showing me where to put my legs.
“I don’t know what a spider monkey is.”
“Just get your hooks in,” he says, planting my hand on my other arm.
Finally, around four in the morning, we’re back in the Jeep. Chase dozes off, his breath a soft, even rumble. But I can’t sleep. I’m staring at the snow outside and thinking of Jaclyn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
* * *
I stood, frozen between two worlds. The walls on either side of me. The wildflowers before me, parted by that perditious road. I took one last look back at Jaclyn where she stood, white-faced, in that crowd.
I’d relished leaving these walls before, entranced with the world beyond. But the same walls today were a gate to a foreign and dangerous place that might as well be a hellscape for Truly’s and Jackie’s absence within it.
Then I stepped out, wondering what would happen to me next as gravel crunched beneath my heels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
* * *
By dawn, the snow has let up to a thin flurry. We step outside as Mr. Ingold shows up a few minutes later with two shovels, warm sweet rolls, a Ziploc bag full of dog chow, and two Styrofoam cups full of coffee.
“Thought you might need a little digging out,” he says.
I thank him and grab a shovel, start in on the nearest drift. I’ve shoveled a lot of snow in my life.
“She’s showing you up,” Mr. Ingold says, chuckling and pulling the second shovel from the truck.
“Thank you, sir. I got it,” Chase says. “You hear any news?” he asks.
“Well, they’re saying the cyberattack came from Russia,” the farmer says, leaning against his pickup with a steaming Thermos cup of coffee. “Won’t say how long the electricity’s likely to be out. They’re saying it could be weeks. Months, even.”
“That long?” Chase says, his forehead wrinkling.
“Another substation exploded last night,” the farmer says. “The president’s declared a national state of emergency. You folks have enough gas to get where you’re going? You’re not going to find much at stations after today or tomorrow.”
“We’ll be okay,” Chase says.
“They closed down a section of the interstate north of here due to accidents and the weather,” Mr. Ingold says. “Ambulances in this area have been running all over the place. You’re better off sticking to state highways anyway, assuming you stay out of the ditch.” He takes his cap off and resets it.
“Will do,” Chase says.
A half hour later, we’ve devoured the sweet rolls, fed Buddy, and made good on our promise to be on our way.
We pass houses with smoke rising from chimneys. I can smell the wood burning, even from inside the Jeep. We drive down the mostly quiet main streets of Hoag and Swanton and the equally small hamlet of Western (population 235). No gridlocks, no traffic here. The tiny downtown looks like something from a movie: a row of four buildings on each side—a couple with tall false fronts—and a grain silo right at the end of the street. There are even a few cars parked outside the corner church.
We’ve just turned onto Highway 74—a flat, straight stretch of narrow highway with shallow enough ditches that, were it not for a few fresh sets of tire tracks, it’d be hard to even know where they are.
Chase checks the rearview mirror every few minutes.
“So this Magnus guy . . .”
“They call him the Interpreter. Basically, he’s our prophet. Their prophet.”
“And no one knows he’s a con artist?”
“No. They worship him,” I say, for lack of a better word. “Thing is, I think he actually believes some of what he says. That his human whims are . . . I dunno. Divine edicts.” I tell him how charismatic Magnus was—how perfect he and Kestral were together. How she was driven away and abandoned like an unwanted animal.
“Let me guess. Kestral was . . . what? Forty, when he got rid of her?”
“Around there. We didn’t celebrate birthdays.” Or Christmas or Thanksgiving or Valentine’s Day or Fourth of July, for that matter.
“Dude’s how old?” Chase says.
“In his fifties, I guess?”
We’re just coming to the next town when we see something up ahead, across the road. A yellow school bus, blocking the main thoroughfare th
rough several streets of businesses. Two men stand in front beside one of those portable signs, shotguns in their hands.
NO SERVICES. NO ENTRY.
TURN AROUND.
“That happened fast,” Chase murmurs, pulling far enough right to make a three-point turn. We cut south a mile, go around. There’s another school bus blocking the road to the town’s residential area to our right at the intersection and two more men. One of them signals us to keep going straight. I glance at him as we pass. He stares after us. As I look into the side-view mirror, I see him lower his head to talk into a police-style radio.
“These are public roads, aren’t they?” I say. “Can they do that?”
“I don’t know, but they are.”
We go a few more miles. The next town we come to is the size of Western. No school buses. No armed men on the road. Maybe the town’s too small for any of that. What I do see are a few cars in front of the building every town has even in the absence of a post office: the local bar.
A large sign is posted in the front window:
OPEN FOR BUSINESS (COME IN!)
CASH ONLY. PROPRIETOR IS ARMED.
And then I smell it: the unmistakable smell of a grill in use.
Chase groans from the driver’s seat. “God, I want a burger.”
I’m hungry, too, for the first time since I left.
“C’mon,” I say.
“We don’t know who might be looking for us.”
“Trust me, nobody knows who I am. I wasn’t lying when I said I was a nobody. Come on. We’ll get one to go.”
Two seconds later, he’s swinging around the corner to a side street, parking out back where a generator is running.
I grab the carrier as the dog leaps into Chase’s empty seat. “I can’t leave this,” I say. Chase empties out half his duffle and sets it inside. Offers to carry it and puts the strap over my shoulder when I insist. We both loop on our masks. I can hear Chase’s catching on his whiskers.
“Keep an eye on things, Buddy,” he says, clicking the lock.
We walk around front where Chase gets the door. The first thing I notice as I step in past the ATM is the rumble of a generator from the direction of the dimly lit kitchen. The second is the TV over the bar.
