by Tarah Benner
But instead of reaching the parking lot, they were standing in a spacious computer lab. Motion-activated lights flickered on row by row, illuminating three tiers of desks that wound around in a semicircle. All the monitors were dark, but across the room, Soren saw the exit he’d been looking for.
He made a beeline for the door, stuffing down a mounting sense of dread. It had been at least fifteen minutes since the drone attack, and they hadn’t seen a single guard.
Soren stopped at the exit and turned to make sure they had everyone. He did a quick head count but stopped halfway through when he saw Bernie standing on the bottom tier of desks. She was staring at one of the computer monitors, which had suddenly come to life.
“What is it?” Lark called.
Bernie shook her head, her eyes wide and unblinking.
Feeling edgy, Soren followed a few feet behind Lark as she jumped down to see what Bernie had found.
When Soren took his place behind her, he wasn’t immediately sure what Bernie was staring at. It looked like some kind of dashboard with a dozen or more columns pulsating like an equalizer. Below the columns, three line graphs trailed across the screen, but it was the image in the upper left-hand corner that caught his eye.
The photo contained a dark-skinned woman in her late thirties with stern eyes and a wild mane of curls.
“It’s Kira,” said Lark, leaning over to get a closer look.
“What do all those charts mean?” asked Soren.
Bernie’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s the data from her sensor — vital signs, nutrient levels, activity . . .”
Bernie squinted harder and then reached for the mouse. She wiggled it over to the bottom right-hand corner, where Soren saw links to different files.
“Possible exposures,” she read. “There’s a whole long list of chemicals.”
“What are those dates?” asked Soren, reading over her shoulder.
“Those are the dates we sprayed and fertilized last year,” said Lark. “I remember because we sprayed on my birthday.”
Suddenly she straightened up, looking deeply disturbed.
“They’ve been experimenting on us,” said Simjay.
Soren jumped. He hadn’t noticed how close he was standing. “What?”
“Why else would they be monitoring our health so closely? They never step in if someone gets injured in a fight. They just want to know how the pesticides and fertilizers are affecting us.”
A loud crash from somewhere in the building made them all jump. The whole time they’d been staring at the computer, the prison’s manhunt had been underway. Who knew how much time they had lost?
“We have to go,” Soren muttered.
The others didn’t say a word. They just flew toward the exit. Axel reached the door first and threw it open.
“Shit!” he yelled. He slammed the door shut, but not before Soren had identified the source of his panic.
The parking lot was aglow with flashing blue lights, which illuminated the silhouettes of at least a dozen men and women in black-and-tan uniforms.
A man’s garbled voice boomed through a megaphone. It was tough to make out what he was saying, but it was definitely along the lines of “turn yourselves in if you want to live.”
“Go!” Soren yelled.
Axel, Lark, and the others were already halfway across the room. They burst through the double doors into the hallway and ran back the way they’d come.
It took them less than a minute to reach the broken window, and as Simjay and the girls clambered out, Axel tossed Soren a revolver.
“Where did you —”
“Had a run-in with the security guard,” he said in a casual voice, smacking the magazine into the end of a Glock 19 and chambering a round. “Yours was in his ankle holster.”
Soren shook his head frantically. “What did you do?”
“Nothin’ that a high-school cheerleader couldn’t do with a two-foot copper pipe,” said Axel casually.
Soren stared down at the weapon in his hands as if Axel had used it to kill the security guard.
“Relax,” said Axel in an exasperated tone. “My mama carries one just like it in her purse.”
But it wasn’t the gun that had Soren worried. Now that Axel had attacked a guard, there was no telling how much time they’d get added to their sentences if they were caught. The felonies were really starting to add up.
“Je-sus,” said Axel. “He was jus’ a rent-a-cop. He’ll live.”
“Fuck,” muttered Soren, tucking the revolver into his waistband and swinging a leg over the window sill. He joined the others kneeling in the bushes, a deep sense of foreboding bubbling in his gut.
The scene on this side of the building wasn’t any better than it had been on the other side. Soren counted nine, maybe ten people milling around the exits, and he could hear the garble of radios in the distance.
Alarming as it was to be surrounded by law enforcement, Soren couldn’t help feeling as though there should have been more of them. All the officers appeared to be the prison’s own guards. There wasn’t an actual police officer in sight.
The men were wearing black pants, beige shirts, and unmarked Kevlar vests. They were all toting M4 carbines, but they looked slightly awkward and uncomfortable.
Before Soren could make sense of things, Axel leapt out from their hiding place and fired off three rounds. It was too dark to tell where he was headed, but in that instant, everything changed.
The officers yelled, someone opened fire, and Soren made a decision.
“Run!” he yelled, grabbing Lark by the arm.
They took off, Bernie, Simjay, and Denali hot on their heels. As he ran, Soren grabbed another set of keys out of his pocket and pressed them into Lark’s hand.
“Take Bernie and Sim,” he panted. “Go to the last row of vehicles and get this Suburban. I’ll go for the 4Runner and distract them.”
“But —” Lark panted. He couldn’t see her face, but Soren knew she was starting to panic.
“Just do it,” he growled. “Me and Axel will catch up with you.”
Lark didn’t reply. Soren knew she was silently evaluating the plan, but they were running out of time.
“Go!” he yelled, turning to tell Bernie and Simjay to follow Lark.
Just then, a strange taste hit the back of his throat. He choked violently, feeling as though his eyes and throat were on fire. Within seconds, his vision clouded with tears, and snot started to pour from his nose.
They were surrounded by a ring of thick white smoke.
“Lark!” he choked. But Soren couldn’t see anything. Tears were streaming down his face, and his airways were burning.
“Hey!” yelled a voice on Soren’s left. He looked around and saw an Axel-shaped smear running toward them through the haze. “Let’s go!”
Axel’s eyes were red and watery. The lower half of his face was shining with mucus, but he didn’t look at all surprised. He looked . . . proud?
That’s when Soren realized what had happened. The officers hadn’t bombed them with tear gas. Axel must have stolen it from the security guard’s office and set it off as a diversion.
Swearing and sniffling, Soren forced his feet to move and snatched Lark’s hand. A few officers were still shooting, but the majority had been immobilized by the noxious gas. They had a clear shot at the Suburban, but something was wrong.
Lark had stopped dead in her tracks, and she was pulling him back in the opposite direction. A frantic bark broke through the wail of sirens, and someone yelled.
“It’s okay!” Soren choked. “Denali’s right behind us.”
But Lark was still flailing around frantically, searching the darkness through a brutal onslaught of tears.
“Bern —” she called, choking on a cloud of tear gas. “Bernie!”
Her voice was ragged and desperate, and when Soren turned around, he understood why.
Denali was barreling through the cloud of smoke, whining and tossing his head. S
imjay was frantically rubbing his eyes, but Bernie was nowhere in sight.
Soren searched the parking lot frantically, heart hammering against his ribs. He spotted a cluster of shadows moving thirty or forty feet away, but he couldn’t tell if Bernie was among them.
Then a sob pierced the darkness, followed by the crack of a gun. A short figure fell to the ground, and Soren’s blood turned to ice in his veins.
“Bernie!” Lark choked, lunging back in the direction they’d come.
Soren grabbed her on instinct to keep her from running back toward the guards.
His eyes were on fire. He could barely breathe. Lark couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds, but he didn’t have the energy to carry her. All he could do was drag her toward the fleet of vehicles.
“No!” she screeched, fighting every step of the way. “Bernie!”
But Soren didn’t let go. With one arm around her waist, he grabbed her hand and pried the keys out of her grip. He clicked the unlock button, and a flash of orange light blinked in his periphery.
Still struggling for every breath, he dragged Lark to the SUV with one arm, fighting off Denali with the other. Lark was putting up one hell of a fight, but somehow Soren managed to get the door open and toss her into the middle row.
He clambered into the front seat, and three more bodies piled into the Suburban. Denali barked and snapped violently, but Simjay grabbed him around the neck.
Soren jammed the key into the ignition, and the engine roared to life. He threw the gearshift into drive and stomped down on the gas pedal, trying not to think of the people running half-blind around the parking lot.
The engine groaned as the vehicle surged forward, and Soren had to yank the wheel hard to the left to keep from crashing into a pole.
The parking lot was all a blur, but he managed to navigate around the other cars and hit a patch of open dirt. The ride turned tumultuous, and their heads banged against the ceiling. Soren wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but he still couldn’t see the road.
Lark was screaming, Denali was growling, and Simjay and Axel were yelling at the top of their lungs. Soren didn’t hear any of them. He was too focused on finding the highway and getting the hell away from there before he lost anyone else.
Finally they hit smooth pavement, and he jammed the accelerator into the floor. He didn’t know what road they were on. He just knew they were headed south.
As the sound of sirens faded into the distance, Soren wiped his face with his snot-covered sleeve and watched the lights disappear behind them. Somehow they’d done the impossible — they’d escaped San Judas.
twenty-one
Lark
Raw, unchecked panic spilled into Lark’s stomach. Her breaths were coming in sharp gasps, her eyes were burning, and she felt as though her heart might burst out of her chest.
They were blazing down the road at ninety miles an hour, Denali growling and snapping at Soren. The sound of sirens was receding in the distance, but Lark couldn’t bring herself to feel relieved.
Bernie wasn’t with them. She was back at the prison. Lark had heard a gunshot. But whether Bernie’s disappearance and the shot were related, she didn’t know.
Bernie couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t. Bernie was her best friend.
“We have to go back,” Lark croaked.
Nobody answered her right away, but she hardly noticed. Her mind was spinning.
In twenty minutes, there’d be roadblocks on every highway. The police would be looking for them, and they would be stopping any black Suburban on the road.
Within the hour, their pictures would be plastered all over the news. They wouldn’t be able to walk into a gas station without somebody alerting the authorities. Every second was precious, but she couldn’t leave Bernie behind.
“We have to go back,” Lark repeated.
“We can’t,” said Soren, mopping his face with his sleeve.
“We have to!”
“Will you shut up?” snapped Axel, his head swiveling around on his thick, fat neck.
“Hey!” barked Soren. “You shut up. Lark — I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Lark screeched. “What do you mean you’re sorry? We have to go back.”
“You wanna git locked up again with time added to your sentence?” Axel snarled. “’Cause that’s what’s gon’ happen f’we try to go back there. Way I see it, ol’ girl knew wha’ she was gittin’ herself into. She coulda said no, but she didn’.”
“Shut up!” Lark yelled, feeling slightly hysterical.
Soren didn’t say anything. He was still staring at the road.
“Soren, please.”
“No,” he said. There was something in his voice that set Lark on edge.
“If you won’t go back, you can at least let me out,” said Lark.
“What? No.”
“Let me out!”
“Why? So you can surrender?” Soren shook his head but kept his eyes fixed on the road. “No. I’m not gonna let you do that.”
“It’s not up to you.”
Soren let out a growl of frustration. “Lark, no! You can’t go back there. There’s nothing you can do for Bernie.”
There was a long, painful silence as Lark tried to work out what he’d just said. Something didn’t add up, but she felt as if she were the only one who didn’t understand the implication of Soren’s words.
“What do you mean I can’t help her anymore?” she asked in a low voice.
Soren let out a pained sigh and pounded his hand against the steering wheel.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice rising in panic. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Axel glanced over at Simjay, who looked as though someone had died.
“What?” Lark demanded.
“Bernie, she’s —” Soren broke off, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I don’t know for sure, but . . . I think Bernie was shot.”
Soren’s words were crystal clear, but Lark could hardly make sense of them. Bernie couldn’t have been shot. She’d been right behind her. Hadn’t she?
Lark sat in silence for several seconds, replaying their frantic dash across the parking lot. She’d heard a shot, but it had sounded very far away. Then again, between the darkness, the tear gas, and all the commotion, Lark had no idea what had really happened to Bernie.
“Are . . . Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure,” said Soren in a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry.”
In that moment, all of Lark’s normal thought processes shut down. Pain, confusion, and searing rage tore through her insides, and she had to swallow down the surge of hateful words she longed to throw at Soren.
Bernie couldn’t be dead. Bernie was the toughest girl she knew.
Hot, painful tears started to rise in Lark’s throat. She let out a choked sob and clenched her jaw so she wouldn’t succumb to the fit of grief that was unraveling inside her.
“I’m so sorry,” Soren repeated, watching Lark in the rearview mirror.
Another sob worked its way out of Lark’s mouth, and she looked down at her hands as if to reassure herself that she was still there.
Bernie couldn’t be gone. Bernie was her rock — her best and only friend.
“You don’t know she’s dead,” mumbled Lark. “She could still be —”
“I heard the gunshot,” said Soren. “I saw her go down.”
Lark shook her head, quickly losing the tenuous grip on her self-control. “No,” she whispered. “You don’t know what you saw!” She kicked the back of his seat as hard as she could, feeling something inside her crack.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Lark could sense Simjay staring at her in alarm, but she didn’t care one bit. Tears were burning tracks down her dusty face, and her hands were trembling in her lap.
Denali was sitting on top of her feet, alternately whining and licking her arm.
Soren fiddled with the radio to find something
to ease the tension, but all he got was static.
Eventually, Denali curled up on the floorboard between the captain’s chairs in the middle row, and they spent the next several hours in silence.
Soren took the back roads to avoid the highway patrol, and they didn’t pass a single car on the winding two-lane road. None of them spoke again for three or four hours, but then Soren said, “We need gas.”
Lark barely heard him. She was still replaying their escape in her mind, stretching every second she could remember for some detail she might have missed. Bernie had been right behind her the entire time. Hadn’t she?
Several minutes later, Lark registered what Soren had said and glanced over at the fuel gauge. The needle had dipped below “E,” but Lark didn’t know where they were going to find gas out there.
They hadn’t passed a town of any substantial size the entire trip. The closest little shit town was probably fifty miles back, but Lark doubted that even that town would have a gas station that was open.
Soren lowered his speed to sixty to conserve fuel, and all four of them squinted through the windows for the gleaming beacon of a gas station on the horizon.
After fifteen minutes, true panic started to edge its way into Lark’s fog of grief. They’d passed a state park and a few private driveways, but they had no way of knowing if the nearest gas station lay five miles up the road or fifty.
It didn’t matter.
“Shit,” Soren muttered. “We’re out.”
Lark glanced over at Simjay, who looked as anxious as she felt. The SUV was still moving, but they were cruising down the road purely on momentum.
“I’m gonna steer us off the road in case the cops pass us,” said Soren, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as they rolled toward the ditch. The Suburban pitched wildly on the uneven ground as if it too were putting up a fight, but their momentum was enough to carry them a good distance from the main road.
Soren steered them around a falling-down barn, and the SUV cruised to a halt. In the narrow beams of light pooling from the headlights, Lark couldn’t make out a single tree or any modern structure for miles. The dusty abyss stretched before them like an endless ocean of dirt and sky.
