“You’re ridiculous.” She scowled at me. “But that’s great. That’ll help a lot.”
I pulled the helmet off and peered out the cockpit window. “Okay, we’ve got to be getting close now. These are the trees and hills, and we have to be far enough south of New Frisko. Find a road.”
We both leaned forward while Melisa guided the pod lower, slowing us down somewhat. “There.” We had just floated over a hill when Melisa pointed. “Is that it?”
We moved closer and I got a good look. I checked north and south, trying to figure out where it ran among the hills and trees. “I think so. Go south, follow it.” After a couple more minutes, I knew we were on the right track. I had seen those rotting cars before.
“Okay, slower.” I plopped into the co-pilot seat.
“What is that?”
“What?” I followed her pointing finger. I’d noticed the dark cloud, but had thought maybe it was going to rain. But rain almost never came from the east. “Is that smoke?”
“Looks like it.”
A wide swath of smoke, the color of a dirty road, spread across the sky. Some wispy columns of darker smoke drifted up from the middle of the forest. Something burned deep inside me. This wasn’t left over from when the Ranjers had caught me.
“Find a place to land,” I said. “A clearing or something. Fast.”
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not good.” A sick feeling settled in me.
She found a clearing maybe a quarter kilometer from where the small columns of smoke still floated upward. As soon as I felt the bump of the struts hitting the ground, I opened the door and jumped out. A sour, heavy stench filled my nose. Was that the smell of trees burning? It smelled like the fire the Wanderers had used, but stronger. Thicker.
“Nik, what’s going on?”
“The Wanderers. It has to be them.” But why would they have such big fires? I took off, worried that I already knew what I would find, but hoping I was wrong. I heard Melisa break into a run behind me. As we ran, we found trees that were blackened and scarred and quite a few trees that lay on the ground, still putting out smoke.
Along the way, I came across some packs and saw other signs of the Wanderers. Some of the packs were nearly unrecognizable, totally destroyed by fire. One or two of them still smoldered. Why would the Wanderers drop their packs? We found one of the rectangular packets that was one of their tents.
Coughing at times against the slight haze and the ashes we kicked up, we kept moving. I could tell by Melisa’s expression that she was worried about what we would find. I knew, although I wished I didn’t, how our search would end.
We found the first body within a hundred meters. She wore the colors of the forest, her hair curly and black. She was on her face, her back a torn mess. I stumbled and almost fell over another body I hadn’t seen, hidden behind some brush. I dropped my left hand to steady myself, and brushed this body somewhat. I stood, breath catching, my stomach squeezing up through my chest, scrubbing my hand against my pants.
Melisa shouted something, then coughed. I spun. Not a Bug cough. I threw up, too, strangely thinking to make sure I didn’t throw up on one of the bodies.
“Nik.” Melisa’s voice was a whisper, hoarse and torn. “What is this?”
“Wanderers.”
Some time later, we found ourselves walking in silence, pointing with our eyes and heads at each body we found. I realized Melisa was squeezing my left hand hard, as if she was trying not to fall. I squeezed back. My legs felt detached, weak, like they were moving without my control.
Dolfo. His nearly white hair looked dull against the leaves and dirt of the forest floor. I forced myself not to look at his blackened chest. His eyes were open, but he was long gone. I thought of his raspy voice. He’d been a spammer to me, but this was wrong.
“Nik? What happened here?”
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to find a way to squeeze the images of all of these people out of my head. I’d recognized a few more faces, especially the boy who’d told me I was eating deer meat. This was wrong. So wrong. “The Ranjers. Or Enforsers. Maybe both.”
“Killed them? The Enforsers? Why would they do that?”
I stared at her, willing her to figure out the answer so I wouldn’t have to say it.
She looked at me for a long moment, then dropped her gaze. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew them?”
“Kind of.” I hadn’t seen Wendy yet. Maybe she’d escaped. “They gave me food. Drugged me.”
“This is bad.”
“Yeah.” I wondered if Gabe was around. I could still hear his soft voice in my head. “We need to check for survivors.”
“Nik,” Melisa backed away, reaching for a nearby scarred tree. Her eyes were wide. “I . . . This . . . I don’t know if I can . . . ”
“It’s okay. I’ll do it.” I turned away. Wait. She can’t? “If you don’t want to go back—”
“No, that’s not it. I’ll help bring them down.” She gestured around us, obviously fighting to not look down. “But this . . . I can’t.”
“Oh. Yeah. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
I turned again, taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment. Was this my fault? As I searched, finding Stan and Mat not far from Dolfo, I knew it wasn’t. The Ranjers were always trying to find the Wanderers. That’s what the Wanderers had said. Not just find them, though. The Wanderers couldn’t be put in the New Chapter; they knew the truth. This had to be what Ranjers did when they found any Wanderers.
Wendy was the last one I found. She was curled over a medium-sized gray rock. I hurried to her and put my good hand on her shoulder. She was cold and didn’t move. “Bug it.” I felt like throwing up again and fought it down. This was wrong. Wendy had been nice. She’d left me medicine, even if it had included a tracker for the Ranjers to find me. She’d helped my arm feel better.
I put my right hand on her still shoulder, next to my left. I swore. This was too much. Too much. I was so tired. So sick of running. Suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like something was squeezing my chest. My body shook, shivered. This had to stop. They didn’t have to kill everyone. Anger burned. I felt the tears streaming down my face and only slightly registered Melisa approaching and crouching next to me. I wanted to break something. Break the trees. Split the ground open and swallow the whole fragging New Chapter up. I tried to choke back the tears and couldn’t. The whole thing. Break the whole world.
Melisa pulled me close to her. I wanted to hold it back, didn’t want to put this on her, but she was there and I was burning and dissolving with grief and pain and fear and fury.
I don’t know how long she held me like that. When I realized that I was putting nearly all of my weight on her and could feel her soaked sleeve under my cheek, I pulled back, embarrassed. “It’s okay.” Her whisper felt like a soft touch.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
I cleared my throat, trying to ease the pain and tightness. I felt . . . different. Now that it was gone, I realized I’d been holding a knot of something. Or damming it up. In its place . . . I looked around at the still forms of the Wanderers. In its place had settled something else. The only word that came to me was rage. Cold and hot. How was that possible?
I shook the stupid question away.
“Are you okay?”
I forced what had to be an ugly smile onto my face. “Nope. But I will be.”
“What do we do with them?”
I stopped and thought about that. In New Frisko, when people died, they were cremated, their ashes buried in organic boxes in Memorial Park. We couldn’t burn everyone here. How did the people before the Infektion do it?
I had no idea. “Nothing, I guess. I mean, what could we do?” I turned Wendy toward me, wanting to see her face. She rolled slowly my way and I scrabbled backward to avoid her gruesome back. She dropped off the rock an
d rolled over.
Except it wasn’t a rock. It was a little girl.
The girl was alive.
CHAPTER 30
The little girl moaned. Her entire back was covered in blood, but when I looked at Wendy, I wondered if any of the blood was the little girl’s. Wendy had saved the little girl, covered her with her own body.
Rage. That was the right word. I let the feeling settle deep inside me, enjoying the hot taste in my mouth.
The little girl couldn’t have been older than five or six, with long but tightly curled black hair and skin the color of tree bark. She’d been wearing a gray hood which had fallen away when I’d moved Wendy.
Melisa made it to the girl before I could, kneeling next to her and reaching for her shoulder and face. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay.”
The girl’s eyes flickered a little, then opened.
“Are you hurt?” Melisa gently passed her hands over the little girl’s blood soaked shirt, then her arms and legs.
The little girl moaned and squirmed, pushing Melisa’s hands away, her eyes opening suddenly and darting all over the place.
“Hey,” I said. I took a half-step closer, unsure of what I could do. “It’s okay.”
Melisa tossed a glance at me. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. “We’re not gonna hurt you. It’s okay.” She held the girl’s arm with both of her hands, then helped her sit up.
The little girl’s eyes were a brilliant green, so bright they almost glowed in the late-morning light filtering through the trees and leaves. She blinked a couple of times and looked around the forest. “What?” Her voice was high but rough. She yanked her arm out of Melisa’s hand.
“We’re not going to hurt you, I promise,” Melisa said, reaching for her again. “We want to help.” She looked up at me again.
I nodded. “We just want to help.”
The girl looked up at me. “You’re back.”
My heart skipped a beat at her direct tone and expression. I dropped to a crouch. “Yeah. I guess you remember me?” I thought I remembered her big shock of black hair above bright green eyes.
“You came to camp.” The girl looked around the forest again, her eyes widened when she saw Wendy. “They’re all dead?”
I tried to answer, but my voice got caught on something in my throat. I felt like the world was cracking apart—watching her realize what had happened, watching her face crumple. Melisa pulled the girl into a tight hug. “They’re all dead?” the girl repeated.
“I’m so sorry,” Melisa said, tears streaming down her face.
We stayed that way long enough for me to have to sit because my knees started to hurt. The little girl cried for a while, her heartbreaking sobs muffled by Melisa’s zip. I found myself wondering what kind of person could just murder a bunch of other people like this, wondering what the Ranjers were told that made them feel like it was okay to kill all of these people and just leave them here. After thinking about it for a while, I understood that I had no idea what would make people do this.
But I felt like I could do the same to them. If they heard this little girl crying, would they feel bad? I let the anger and grief that the crying girl was causing in me build the rage deep inside me. I was going to use that rage. Soon.
“We’re going to help you,” Melisa said. I didn’t know how we could do anything for her, but I agreed with Melisa. “What’s your name?”
“Devera.” She scrubbed her face on the sleeves of her pullover.
“That’s a pretty name,” Melisa said, helping Devera to her feet.
“My mom’s the midwife,” Devera said. I wondered why. I guessed Devera saw the confusion on our faces. “Devera was the goddess of midwives.”
“What’s a midwife?” I asked.
Devera laughed, surprise shining from her face. “You’re dumb! Everybody knows that!”
I wasn’t dumb. I traded glances with Melisa. She didn’t know either. “No, not everybody. We’re from the city.” I wasn’t dumb.
Devera gasped and stepped back, obviously afraid.
“No, it’s okay,” Melisa said. “We’re not like the Enforsers—”
“Or the Ranjers,” I said. “They don’t like us either.”
Devera didn’t move, but the fear left her posture. “Okay.” Only her eyes moved; she was probably looking for her family. “But what are you doing here?”
“Trying to end all of this,” I said.
“Figuring out how to stop them,” Melisa said.
“Who?”
“What?” I asked.
“Stop who?” Devera’s face, her wide cheekbones and round chin, seemed to deflate as her eyes settled on something. She started slowly, but was running after a few steps.
I ran after her. “Stop the city. The Enforsers and Ranjers.” I had to raise my voice as I tried to keep up with her.
“Stop her, Nik!” Melisa had reacted slower, but she guessed what Devera had seen.
Devera was way too fast for me. By the time I got to her, she was kneeling next to a dark-skinned woman who lay crumpled against a still-smoking tree. The woman’s body was so covered in burn marks and blood that I had to force myself to keep looking. I grabbed Devera, who was screaming, “Mom!” over and over again.
“Devera, come on, let’s go, come on,” I said, repeating it a few times and trying to drag her away. Melisa had to help me. When we got her about a meter away from her mother’s body, it was like a cable had broken and Devera collapsed against Melisa again.
I had to force myself to tune the little girl’s cries out. I felt like they were cutting me in half, then in half again. I couldn’t take it and found myself crying too. Embarrassed, I stepped around a tree and had to lean on it, gasping to catch my breath. When was this going to end? When would my heart stop feeling stomped on and shattered?
I got control of myself and helped Melisa guide Devera away from the body of her mother. The sights around me felt like fuel that I could use to add to the fire in my gut. This couldn’t stand. This couldn’t go on.
I wanted to do something for them. It didn’t seem right to just leave all the bodies here, untouched on the forest floor. I wondered what the Wanderers did when somebody died. I glanced down at Devera, whose sobs had subsided and was mostly sniffing now, as we kept walking toward the Pod. I could ask her, but that might make it worse for her. She seemed so little; her head didn’t even come up to my elbow. She was so young, but she was going to have to spend the rest of her life without her family, knowing who killed them.
Melisa and I exchanged a look above Devera’s head. I indicated the area around us with my head and mouthed, “What do we do?”
She shrugged and shook her head.
We had to leave them. There was nothing else we could do.
A few minutes later we came to the Pod; Melisa had to reassure Devera that we weren’t Enforsers, that we had stolen the Pod. I told Melisa the plan that had crystallized even more as we had walked. “We ditch the Pod and take my CyJet back to town, staying off the grid. We get Pol and Koner, see if they want to help, and find a way back into Prime One. Probably we use the uniforms.”
“Pol’s too small. You, Koner, and me could probably get away with that.”
“Okay, fine. We’ll figure that out.”
“What about Devera?” Melisa gave the girl a squeeze. Devera was clinging to Melisa as if she wouldn’t ever let go.
Melisa and I spoke at the same time. “We have to take her.”
“We’ll find somewhere safe,” I said.
“And when we’re back into Prime One?”
I stepped up the ramp into the Enforser Pod. “We’ll split up. One person does the analysis of the knockout, gets proof of what it really is, then sends it to your IM-box. Another person sends that and the video clips out to the whole city.”
“Do you know how to use broadcasting equipment?”
“No, but it can’t be that hard. Maybe Pol can do it.”
Melisa guided Devera to a be
nch. “It’s okay. Just strap in. You’re safe now.” She turned to me. “He probably can. Then we destroy the knockout, right?”
“Yes. I’m not sure how, but we’ll find a way.”
“We have to destroy it without getting anyone infected.”
“Of course.” I closed the ramp.
“And we do all this without getting caught.”
“Yeah.”
“What are the guards like in there?”
“Just Enforsers. Although there are some robots too. Creepy ones.” I described the machines that rolled on nearly silent treads and had attachments that unfolded from their arms.
“We should find a way to cut off Prime One from the outside. You know, so they can’t call for back-up.” Melisa made her way to the pilot’s chair.
“Great idea. Maybe we can bring Prime One’s power grid down.”
“That might even get rid of the robots.”
“Maybe.”
In a few moments, we were in the air. “Where’s the CyJet?”
I guided her, leaning on her seat and glancing back toward Devera now and again. What were we going to do with the little girl? We had to keep her safe. We had to succeed and get out alive so we could take Devera somewhere she could be safe from the New Chapter. Maybe we could find other Wanderers.
I checked the time on my Papa. No wonder I was hungry; I hadn’t eaten since some time the day before, even before being locked in that room, and it was nearly 12:00.
I could hardly believe I’d escaped Prime One twice in one morning. I looked through the glass on the Pod’s cockpit and found the road and the stream. The tree had to be somewhere near.
It took another half hour to find the tree, and we had to go back and forth a few times, but I finally spotted the dark fir tree. As Melisa landed the Pod, I headed into the back.
“Devera? I’m Nik. She’s Melisa. We’re so sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
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