by B. C. Tweedt
Sam laughed and gave him a wink. “I didn’t sign up for a make-out lesson.”
Calvin laughed so hard he had to cough to stop. “Oh, man! Too much. Too much.”
Sam watched him until he calmed down. “Now what?”
Still shaking off his laughter, Calvin fought hard with his memory. “Math. I need to check your algorithms. How much time do we have?”
“’Til my piano lesson?”
“Yeah.”
Sam began digging for his homework thumb drive. “About twenty minutes.” Still digging in his pocket, he came out with two of them and a few quarters from the vending machine in the hotel’s hallway.
Calvin pointed at the thumb drives. “What’s that black one? Your personal one?”
Sam put the blue one for his homework in the laptop and then held the black one in his fingers. A long while ago it had been in the Pluribus headquarters at the State Fair, then it had been in Jarryd’s underwear, then Jarryd had given it to him. After a thorough disinfectant job, he had kept it.
“Yeah, it’s mine now, I guess.”
“Where you keep your secret stuff, huh?”
Sam gave him a fake glare. “No. It was one of Pluribus’, from before the bomb.”
Calvin’s eyebrows arched halfway up his forehead. “For real?”
“Yeah, but I backed up the files and showed them to my dad already. He said they found nothing in them they could use, so they deleted them. It was all old news.”
Calvin leaned in across the table, awkwardly close. He spoke succinctly. “You said you backed up the files…before giving it to him?”
Sam nodded, unsure of what the big deal was.
“Do you still have them?”
“Yeah. I put them back on the thumb drive when they gave it back. So?”
Calvin and Sam exchanged a long look until Calvin’s demeanor finally softened. “Why? Why’d you copy the files and keep them?”
There was a hint of the adult tone that told Sam he was in trouble. “I…I don’t know. I guess I’m just in the habit of backing up all my files.”
Calvin watched him for a few moments beyond awkward, as if he were studying him – searching for any lies that lay underneath. Uncomfortable, Sam shrugged. “What? Don’t believe me?”
“Of course I don’t. I don’t trust anyone. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I don’t think you trust anyone either. And that’s good, because that’s hard to teach.”
Sam thought hard about what he meant. “Wait. Are you saying I did it because I don’t trust my dad?”
Calvin shrugged.
“That’s stupid. He’s my dad. He’s like the biggest Plurb-hater in the world. He even tried to kill me to stop the Plurbs. Why would he lie about it?”
Calvin shrugged again. “I don’t know. Didn’t say he did. But it’s a possibility. It’s also a possibility that someone told him a lie, and he believed it.”
“Okay?”
“Mind if I check it out for you?”
Sam held the thumb drive loosely, fighting a battle in his head as he traced its outline with his eyes. What if Calvin found something out about his dad’s friends or the computer guys who reviewed it? Would it make his dad look bad? Should he ask his dad about it? But what if Dad got mad? Would that mean…?
“Okay. But…”
“It won’t be traceable to you. I know just what to do little man. Make a quick copy to your homework drive.”
Sam squinted at him and then did what he was told. In a few seconds, the files were on both the black Plurb thumb drive and his blue homework one.
“No more copies,” Calvin said solemnly, holding out his hand. “You can trust me.” Calvin smiled his wide, goofy smile.
Sam handed him the blue thumb drive and said what his tutor wanted to hear. “I don’t trust anyone.”
--------------
Though Greyson’s body was moving at great speed on top of the train, the stars seemed unmoving above him – little specks suspended millions of miles away.
ZOOOOOM!
Another tunnel flashed over Greyson’s head, replacing the stars with streaks of artificial light. The train’s sound echoed inside the tunnel, waking Greyson from his trance and prompting him to grasp even tighter to the metal grating and to Kit’s fur.
When the train emerged from the tunnel, Greyson eyed the new surroundings. The moonlight lay blue over the tops of the rolling trees, like the giant waves of a green ocean. A town glowed with a yellow hue on the distant horizon, and it looked like the train would head straight through its center.
Was this Camden, where he would meet Dan’s friends? Would there be a train station, with people waiting to get on the train? If so, he’d have to hide himself well.
But where could he hide? After the first twenty or thirty minutes on the train, he’d tried to walk from one car to the other, but he’d grown tipsy as the train curved through the hills. It had been dangerous for Kit, as well. After a few jumps he had decided that it wasn’t worth the risk when he had a free trip to Nassau waiting for him – that is, if Dan was telling the truth.
What if Dan wasn’t telling the truth?
Greyson suddenly sat up in a panic, looking toward the town.
Is this a deadfall?
Would Dan’s friends promise him one thing, but actually turn him in?
Greyson didn’t trust adults any more, especially ones he’d just met.
The panic pushed him to his feet. The wind blasted at his clothes, whipping them to his sides, but he pushed forward, making sure his hat was pulled tightly down to his ears.
He had to be ready for anything – to get off the train at a moment’s notice, or to fight his way off. But first, he had to know more about this train. Nothing stupid – he’d just explore.
They jumped the first gap without any problem and then gained confidence, clanging across a dozen more roofs before he realized that it would take him half an hour to get to the front of the train. Besides, he was more curious about what was inside than out.
Looking near his feet, he discovered a square hatch underneath the grating. He wrapped his fingers around the edge of the grating and pulled the heavy hatch over to one side with a painfully sharp squeak.
He looked down. The hole was nearly pitch black and perfectly quiet. Maybe the car was empty.
Shrugging at Kit, Greyson kneeled over the hole and dipped his head into the darkness. In an instant he jerked up from the hole, his eyes wide and confused. He didn’t realize he had triggered an alarm, but he was just as scared. He knew what he’d seen, and his heart began pumping as the realization hit him. The military train the Plurbs had been talking about. He was on it.
Military meant government, and the government would end his adventure.
All at once, a metallic bang erupted, Kit growled, and Greyson jerked up.
He jolted – startled at the sight.
A soldier in uniform stood aside a hatch on the car in front of him. His automatic rifle aimed at Greyson’s chest.
“Don’t…move.”
Chapter 41
Kit growled lower and deeper, but awaited a command. The soldier seemed hesitant as well, staring the boy and his dog down, skeptical of what he was seeing.
Greyson was frozen, except for his eyes, which were busy searching for options. As far as he knew, there were three – stay, jump, or dive inside the hole. If he stayed, they would try to take him back to Iowa. If he dove in the hole, they might treat him like an enemy – or a train-hijacker or something. If he jumped…
As he tried to decide, the soldier’s gun was captivating him. He couldn’t stop looking at the end of the barrel. If he made a wrong move, it might be the last thing he saw. His fingers rested close to his slingshot’s snap, but the temptation to draw was dispersed by a glance at the soldier’s trigger finger. There was no way he could even raise the slingshot before being torn down by gunfire.
“It’s just a boy, sir. And a d
og.” The soldier nodded his head, like he was receiving a reply through his earpiece; then he pulled a tiny band with a quarter-sized glass piece over his eye. Greyson wondered at its purpose. A fancy binocular? Infrared? A video camera?
“There are terrorists – Plurbs – lots of them!” Greyson yelled through the wind. “Back at Meyer’s Crossing in a church! They’re chasing me!”
The soldier seemed to ignore him, listening instead to a voice in his ear. “You see him? Positive on the ID?”
That didn’t work. Greyson took the opportunity to slide his feet closer to the hole. He felt his toe reach the gap. All he had to do was take one step and let gravity do the rest.
“What’s your name?” the soldier barked. “How’d you get here?”
The debate started in his mind. He swallowed hard. “Liam. Liam Swank. And they were right behind – ”
“Are you Greyson Gray?”
Greyson’s heart leapt to his throat. “No.”
OOOOOOOT – OOOOOOT!
The train’s whistle blew as it entered the town, cutting behind rows of homes’ backyards – but it didn’t slow. There was no station.
The soldier paused, listening. A few long moments passed until his eyebrows arched and his eyes registered surprise. Something he was hearing didn’t sit well with him. Finally, he nodded, and his focus turned from his ear to the boy in front of him. “You’re a fugitive. Guilty of treason against your country and supplying terrorists with sensitive information.”
“What?”
The surprise nearly knocked him into the hole. They think what? Why? Now what? They wouldn’t just send a traitor home.
Greyson looked to Kit and then the town beyond. Where is Dan’s friend? Is he in the town?
Along the train, more and more soldiers had peeked up through hatches, their guns leveled in his direction. Trying to count them, he eyed a silver truck rapidly approaching the train far ahead.
“Affirmative.” The soldier took a deep breath and pushed the eye band back into his helmet. His posture and his voice changed suddenly, but his gun remained leveled. “I’m sorry.”
Greyson’s heart skipped a beat. And another.
He’s going to kill me! “No. Don’t!”
The soldier shook his head and flicked the safety.
Greyson’s toe dipped into the hole as the soldier raised the gun and aimed down the scope.
What’s that? Greyson’s attention snapped past the soldier’s gun to the truck in the distance as it darted into the railroad barriers. The wood posts splintered and the truck crumpled into the train.
The explosion’s flash came first, the blasting sound second, and the rippling shake third. Like a horizontal wave, train cars swayed one by one ahead of them.
The soldier turned to see the disturbance and Greyson jerked to action. This time there was only one option.
Two steps and he leapt off, aiming for a leafy tree, and the world seemed to stop in mid-flight. The train screamed metallically as it rocked off the rails – the soldier was jerked from his feet – and Greyson sailed forward, skydiving horizontally, carrying the same speed as the train cars that toppled into the ditch like giant Legos.
As he approached the tree he caught a glimpse of the train cars far ahead bouncing and spinning into the neighborhood – knocking down trees, piercing roofs and blasting through houses like out-of-control battering rams on a warpath. Dirt and wood flung from the impacts – but his impact would be worse. He wasn’t made of steel, but of flesh and bone.
His body snapped through thin branches, slowing his descent, but the grass came on fast; he hit hard. He was like an unconscious downhill skier, flailing and bouncing. His body hit a bush and then a fence, but the fence was already breaking as a train car dashed it to pieces just to his left. The car toppled end over end, swiping a blast of air over his hair as it rolled past.
The ground punched his body – his shoulders, his legs – until he finally rolled to rest, the starry sky spinning above. Eyes still open and on his back, he couldn’t move. The metallic noise had been punched out of his eardrums – replaced with an eerie ringing – but the train cars kept coming.
Not far ahead of him, cars smashed the ground. One seemed to dance, knocking into another container and twirling onward, thumping the ground with a graceful landing. A few others had ripped open, spilling guns and Bradleys into back yards and living rooms.
The ringing buzzed louder and louder as the chaos surrounded him, small explosions sending orange flashes over his sensitive eyes, but he lay still, taking deep breaths. He was afraid – afraid that if he tried to move, he wouldn’t be able to.
As one last car slammed into the grass next to him, he felt his body lift a few inches in the air before jarring the ground again. Then he just lay there, trying to make sense of it all.
He crinked his neck to the side, finding the cargo container that spun in his vision. Its back end was stuck on top of another container, but the front end had crumpled open in front of him, exposing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle inside, only feet from his body.
His vision was still shaky and the pain made him nauseous, but he could swear it moved. And then it moved again, and he saw the strap that had broken loose. There was one more strap over the front of its treads, and it was vibrating.
It would crush him.
Pushing himself up to his elbows, he crawled a few feet, but collapsed. His head was swooning – it felt like a balloon about to pop. But he pulled at the grass and pushed with his feet again and again.
The Bradley’s barrel pointed at him, its front grille meant for smashing through barriers inching forward.
As his hearing slowly returned, he could hear the strap creaking with its weight. And then it snapped.
Finding his last ounce of energy, he pushed at the grass and rolled to the side as the Bradley invaded the yard as if it had landed on a foreign shore, crushing the grass where he had lain.
As he lost consciousness, he stared through the glass doors of the home whose yard he had invaded. A boy about his age was gaping at him, holding an old shotgun at his side.
Chapter 42
Nightmares beat at Greyson’s eyes. His eyelids fluttered and his breath sucked in and gasped out like the air was too thin.
The boy leaned down and poked him with the shotgun’s barrel. “Hey. Hey, kid. Wake up.” The boy rolled his eyes, which had dark circles underneath, and blinked through the smoke at the destruction all around. Fires had erupted in several houses, sending smoke over the starry sky, and the jagged train cars stuck from ground and houses like stalagmites in a cave.
Though the destruction had nearly taken the boy’s house, a smile attempted to break the boy’s steeled frown. “They actually done it.” Then he saw the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. “Dang…” After admiring its turret and missile launcher, he prodded Greyson in the side. “Git’up!”
Greyson jerked from his sleep, though his eyes still rolled in the back of his head. With another prod from the boy’s gun he was fully awake. “Stop!” Greyson yelled, trying to push himself up.
“Can ya walk? Which militia ya in?”
Rolling to his back, Greyson took in deep breaths, trying to assess his pain and the longhaired boy at the same time. Though he felt like he’d fallen down a mountain, there weren’t any visible breaks. Blood trickled down his leg and he felt the warm ooziness behind his ear, but he was afraid of what he’d find if he touched it.
“Git up and tell me who you is!”
Greyson gave him a hard look. A dirty brown mullet hung over his ears and neck and down to his eyes – but it wasn’t well groomed like Jarryd’s. A streak of black hung from each of his grumpy eyes, his cut-off shirt looked nearly as stained as Greyson’s, and his slumped shoulders were spindly, but strong. Though the kid held the double-barreled shotgun, Greyson doubted that he would use it. “I…have…have you seen my dog?” His voice was hoarse and weak.
“Nah. If I had, I’d wanna know who he is, too.”
The boy seemed unfazed by the destruction around him. It was almost as if he was amused, rather than afraid.
Greyson’s head swam as he tried to sort through the boy’s odd behavior, the smoky darkness, and the fatigue swooning in his head. “My hat.” He hadn’t snapped it on his belt. “My backpack. Have you seen my backpack? It’s red. My hat, too.” Greyson staggered to his feet, almost fell, and balanced himself against the armored fighting machine.
“Yeah. I’s seen it. But roadblock’s just down the road; they’s gonna be here ‘fore long an’ ya best not be if you’s militia. Now that we’ve done start the fight, they have their excuse to end it.”
“Roadblock? The military…” Greyson muttered darkly. His memory kicked in, and another shot of adrenaline shot through his veins. The soldier had been about to kill him. He had no idea why, but for now it didn’t matter. He had to get out of there. “I need my backpack. And my dog. Kit! Kiii-it!”
The mulleted boy had had enough. “Don’t be bringing ‘em to us!” He marched to Greyson, grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him across the debris-ridden yard. Greyson complained and groaned, the bruises and scrapes making their voices heard, but the boy marched on. Greyson didn’t like being thrown around. They made it to a toppled picket fence when Greyson made his move.
Grabbing the boy’s gun arm, Greyson yanked it backwards and shoved him onto the fallen fence. Just as the boy rose to his feet with the gun aimed, Greyson drew his own weapon, pulled back to its full and loaded. He almost grinned, happy with himself for the holster’s work. It had been fast. And he had needed it to be.
The two boys glared at each other as the sound of car alarms continued to blare down the street. Men’s shouts were faint over the din and a few screams peeked out over the rustling fires.
“I need my backpack. And a place to hide – quick! They’ll be looking for me.”
