“But you don’t have your armor,” she warned.
“Doesn’t matter, I need to get this done,” he insisted.
Nat nodded, helped him back up, and steadied him.
They were so close that he could smell her hair, even as his head hurt and he knew he would pass out soon. He lifted the gun and peered through the sight, then jumped back, startled.
The tank’s big gun was trained right at his head. He didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to move; he fired, the gun an extension of his mind. The second shot destroyed enough of the engine to stop the tank. The big white heap of metal spun violently, its gunfire spraying a nearby building, rattling windows. There was a sharp cry from inside the beast, then silence.
Three more white elephants slammed into the faltering tank and the whole convoy came to a stop, just as Daran and Zedric took care of the snow bikes, sending them crashing into the ice walls.
The top of the tank opened suddenly, and its captain appeared, a boy his age, who’d wanted to get a look to see who had grounded their pursuit. He gave Wes the finger.
Wes saluted him with a smile as the LTV sped out of the city toward the fence, an invisible electric barrier that Farouk had just disabled with his handheld.
“Hit it, Shakes,” Wes said, rapping on the roof of the truck. “Time to root through the trash.”
Part the Second
LILACS OUT OF THE DEAD LAND
Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.
—MASON COOLEY
11
NAT HAD NO IDEA HOW WES HAD SURVIVED that hit. She was burning with adrenaline, fear, and excitement. His heroics were no joke, not like the show he’d conjured up at the casino. For the first time, she allowed herself to feel optimistic—maybe there was more to this cocky runner after all.
“Get someone to help you and choose wisely,” Manny had advised grudgingly. “Runners will swear up and down they can take you to where you want to go, but instead most of them end up dumping their passengers or selling them to slavers. Or they’re overtaken by slavers, which is almost the same thing. Or they give up when the food runs out. You want someone who can think on his feet, who’s fast, who’s brave.”
She had chosen Wes, and while she still wouldn’t put it past him to ditch her if a better opportunity came along—and she sure wasn’t ready to trust him with the treasure she carried: the stone she wore on a chain around her neck—she was on her way now, and he had gotten her this far.
But still a long way to go, the monster in her head reminded. Thankfully I am patient.
Her happiness faded a little at that—to know each step led her closer to fulfilling the darkness of her dreams. For a moment, she saw the face of her former commander again. You are not using the extent of your power, he had told her. You do not even try. She wondered how much harder he would have tried to break her, if he had known what her dreams bore, if he knew about the monster in her head.
“You okay?” she asked Wes.
He gave her quick nod, but his face grimaced in pain. “It’ll pass. It’s just the shock. You?”
She shrugged. “How far to the fence?”
“Couple of blocks, we should be clear,” he said, as the truck made its way far from the glittering lights of New Vegas and the snowy terrain became harder to navigate.
“Good.”
Even though there was no physical barrier that kept the city from the borderlands, the fence was as real as the invisible electric volts that killed anyone who breached it. Nat noticed the group in the LTV hold their breath as they crossed silently into the darkness. But Farouk had done his job, and they made it through without incident.
Beyond the fence was a mountain of junk. A century of trash tossed over the border, forgotten and left to rot in the endless cold. “No wonder they call it the Trash Pile,” Nat said, a little awed by all the strange electronic equipment, rusted, burned-out cars, and mountains of plastic, cardboard, and glass.
“My family was from Cali,” Wes said, peering out the window over her shoulder. “My dad said his dad’s dad used to talk about it—how pretty it was, how you could go from the mountains to the desert to the beach. They’d moved after the Flood, of course, and did the March down the Ten. Vegas was the only city left standing. Family legend had it they went straight to the casinos.” He leaned back and gave her a wry smile. She could see that he was still in pain, but trying to make light of it.
“What’s that?” Farouk interrupted suddenly, pointing at the twinkling lights far in the darkness and what looked like distant figures moving through the frozen garbage landscape.
“Don’t mind that,” Wes said curtly. “There’s nothing to see out there. Nothing we want to see, anyway.”
Nat kept silent, staring at the moving lights, wondering how much Wes had told his crew about what they would face out here.
“How’s that second fence coming along?” Wes asked.
The boy turned back to his device, working furiously. The LTV was barreling through the rocky roads and the next barrier was coming up soon. They had to disable it or they would fry.
“There’s some code on it I can’t figure out. It’s got to be one of the German ones—those are the hardest,” grumbled Farouk.
“They must’ve changed it since the last time we did a run,” Shakes said.
“German codes?” Nat asked with a frown.
“The army recycles codes from the old wars. No one can make up new ones. They were lucky to find these,” said Wes.
Nat knew it was the same story for everything. The generation that had come up with the heat suits and discovered cold fusion were long gone: survivors from Before, who remembered a different time, when the world was still green and blue, and who’d marshaled their resources and knowledge to figuring out how to survive the cold. But there were very few scientists these days, and the only books that remained were the physical ones that dated back to the early twenty-first century.
“Can I try?” she asked Farouk.
He handed her the device, a small black phone with a tiny keyboard. “It’s talking to an old Enigma machine, using radio signals. The fence is locked by a certain transmission, but I can’t figure it out. I need to send a message to the machine that’s holding the wall. But this is all it’s giving me,” he said, showing her the screen of numbers.
She stared at the sequence, at the pattern it made, and typed out an answer. “Try it now,” she told Farouk.
He studied her work, then hit the send key. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered.
But a few minutes later, Shakes called excitedly from the driver’s seat. “Fence is down!” he whooped, checking the electromagnetic sensor.
“How’d you do that?” Farouk asked.
“I just saw it.” She shrugged. Numbers came easily to her. Patterns. She’d been able to break the code, and read its simple request. TO OPEN GATE SAY HELLO. She’d simply typed the word “hello” in the code and the fence had opened for her.
“Good work,” Wes said. “You’re almost part of the team.” He smiled. “Hey!” he said, noticing that Daran and Zedric had opened the food packs. “You boys better share.”
Zedric threw him a foil-wrapped object and Wes caught it deftly. “Mmm. Curry pizza burroti.” Wes grinned. “Want a bite?” he offered. “Best McRoti in Vegas. And looks like the boys picked up some McRamen, too.”
“No, thanks.” Nat shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“I’ll leave you a piece if you change your mind,” he said. He offered her his chopsticks. “Pull for luck,” he said.
She took one side and the sticks broke off, leaving her with the bigger half.
“You win.” He grinned. He was such a Vegas boy, superstitious about everything, including the chopsticks-wishbone game. He began to unwrap his food, whistling a melody that sounded familiar.
“What is that?”
“Dunno. My mom used to sing it,” he explained, and his face pinc
hed a little.
“Listen, I know you from somewhere—don’t I? I feel like we’ve met before,” she asked him suddenly. She was certain of it, she just couldn’t place him, but it would come to her soon enough. That tune he was whistling . . . if only she could remember, but her memory was gray like her lenses, cloudy; she could put together bits and pieces but not the whole thing, not her whole life.
“Nah, I don’t gamble.” He smiled, taking a big bite of his burroti.
“Only with his life,” Shakes said, from the front. “Hey! What about me?” he said, holding up his hand, and Farouk tossed him his own multi-cuisine mash-up.
“I swear I’ve met you before, and I don’t just mean from the casino the other day,” she said to Wes. It was suddenly important that she remember why his face was so familiar to her. “But I guess not.”
Wes regarded her thoughtfully as he ate. Nat became worried that maybe he would think she was flirting with him—even if she wasn’t. Besides, she thought with a secret smile, if she was flirting with him, he would know. She was about to say something else when Shakes released a yelp from the front seat that startled everyone, including Nat.
“What is it?” demanded Wes.
“Drones in the sky; they sent a seeker team out,” Shakes said, pulling out his scanner, which was beeping. He shook his head as he peered out the window at a small black plane circling the distant horizon.
“Where?” Wes asked, sticking his head out the window.
“Not sure. He’s off the radar now.”
“Fine, we’ll take the back roads,” Wes said. “Seekers stick to the main highway. We’ll have to loop around, take us close to MacArthur, but it’ll be okay. We should be able to shake them once we—” Wes never finished his sentence, as a blast of cold air hit and a cloud of silver flakes filled the cabin.
“What now!” Daran yelled, as the flakes flew up his nose. They were everywhere. A second gust of wind sent more snow pouring through the openings.
The boys yelped and Nat batted at the flakes, feeling them fall on her eyelids, her ears. “Burglar alarm,” Wes said tightly. He explained the silver cloud wasn’t smoke or snow. Crossing the fences had released nanos—machines no larger than a grain of dust that sensed and recorded human pheromones. Nanotechnology was old hardware, just like the fusion batteries; it was from the last global war before everything started breaking down. The military didn’t know how to upgrade the system, only how to maintain it.
“They’re like robo-bloodhounds,” Farouk said excitedly. “They catch your scent and then feed it into the defense network.”
Wes cuffed him in the shoulder. “What are you so hopped up about?”
“I’ve never seen one before, is all,” Farouk said. “A nano cloud, I mean.”
Wes gestured out across the garbage-strewn landscape. “The locals call ’em pop-cans. The bombs are usually hidden inside old soda cans, and the Pile is littered with them.”
“What do they do?” Farouk asked.
“They pop,” Shakes said, cutting in. “You get close enough for one of them to sniff you, to make a match for one of the pheromones that just got transmitted into the system, and they blow, taking out whatever part of you is closest to it.”
“We’ve never been in the system before,” Daran complained. “I didn’t sign up for this. I ain’t losing an arm or a leg to a soda can.”
Nat shuddered as Wes stared out at the snow-covered landscape. “Look, I wouldn’t think less of you if you wanted to turn back,” he said. “We snuck you out, we can sneak you back in. You can have your credits back, less a percentage for our trouble, of course.”
“I’m not turning back,” she said, annoyed. Was this his way of trying to scare her out of the trip? Get her to change her mind? Pop-cans didn’t scare her like her nightmares did.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked again, his voice gentle.
She realized then that he wasn’t trying to wriggle out of the job, he was simply being decent; she felt another rush of affection for this impulsive, good-looking boy.
Nat gripped his forearm and nodded. “I’m not scared. I’d rather take my chances with what’s out there than go back.”
“All right then.” Wes sighed. He put a hand on top of hers and held it tightly. “Nothing wrong with being scared, you know. I’ve seen a lot of things that have scared me on this side of the fence.”
She nodded. His hand was warm on hers, and it lingered there for a while before he took it away. She wasn’t sure which one of them was more embarrassed about that tender moment.
He cleared his throat and addressed his team. “I’ll drive. We take the back roads. It’ll be a five-day drive to the coast, but once we hit the Pacific we’ll pick up speed and we’re back by Christmas. Okay?” He waited for anyone to argue.
No one did, but then again, no one looked convinced either.
12
THEY DROVE STRAIGHT THROUGH THE night, moving deeper into the Pile, and as day came, the sky turned a lighter shade of gray. Underneath the snow and twisting through the garbage, Nat could see bursts of color—green vines, improbable tiny white flowers. She blinked and they were gone. She looked to the boys to see if anyone noticed, but half the team was asleep in the back and in front of her, Farouk was driving, while next to him Wes was studying his screen with a concerned look on his face.
He looked so serious that she felt a sudden impulse to reach over, sweep her fingers though his hair, and tell him everything was going to be okay. Feeling her gaze on him, he turned around and caught her eye. He smiled and she smiled back, and for a moment they were just an ordinary boy and girl in a car, neither runner and client, nor mercenary and thief, and Nat saw a glimpse of how normal things could be. The voice in her head was quiet, and for once in her life, she felt as if she were just like anyone else.
The truck hit a bump and the moment passed. Wes went back to what he was doing and Nat turned her attention out the window, unsure of what she was feeling. He’s handsome and brave, and any girl with a pulse would be attracted to him, she thought, but he’s nothing to me, a flirtation, maybe, someone to pass the time with, to make the trip more interesting. Remember what the commander said, she told herself. Remember what you are.
The trash was heaped on either side of the road, and it felt as if they were burrowing through a tunnel. The piles were skyscraper-high on either side, but it was a smoother ride, as if the road was newly plowed. “Wait a minute—if the snow’s plowed it means there are people are living out here,” Farouk said with a start.
“Of course there are,” Nat said impatiently. What kind of crew had she hired that he didn’t know that? Then she remembered that Farouk had mentioned he had never been past the fence before.
“Don’t believe everything you hear, ’Rouk,” Wes mocked from the passenger seat, grinning at her. No one was allowed in the wastelands. There was nothing out here but death and decay, or so they had been told. But they knew better. The government lied. They lied about everything.
The piles receded in size as they moved down the road, and they drove in tired silence for a few hours. “What’s that?” Farouk asked suddenly, pointing to a monumental cliff that loomed over the area. “I thought Hoover Dam was the other way.”
“And you thought right,” Wes said.
Nat felt the voice in her head rumble awake, aware of the danger; she had known there was a chance the journey would take her past this place, but was unprepared to see it again so soon. There was an edge to her voice. “That’s not Hoover Dam.”
“No, it sure isn’t,” Wes said, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve been out here before?” he asked lightly.
She frowned and didn’t answer, feeling goose bumps forming all over her body. Had she escaped only to be sent back here? She didn’t know who he was or what his intentions were. Most runners will sell you down the river as soon as you get out of New Vegas, toss their cargo, rob you of your credits. Maybe Wes was one of the good guys, but then aga
in, maybe he wasn’t.
Farouk was right, it did look like the old photos she’d seen of the Hoover Dam, its massive concrete walls towering over the valley, holding back the immense pressure of the river beyond. As they moved closer to the sheer rock face, it became clear it wasn’t stone at all but concrete painted to look like stone, several feet thick, and it wasn’t a barrier, but a building, stretching to the sky, a row of windows at the very top, with one panel, Nat knew, that had recently been replaced. Tall fences topped by razor wire ringed the perimeter.
“Let’s get out of here,” Shakes said. “That place always gives me the creeps. It’s why I hate taking these back roads. Seekers can suck it.”
She exhaled slowly, relieved to find out it was just a coincidence. The truck gained speed when a trail of black smoke flashed across their windshield.
“What was that?” Farouk asked nervously.
“I’ll check it out,” Wes said, and popped through the moon roof, goggles on. “Something’s going down.”
There was another black flash, and puffs of smoke, a crackling sound that rippled across the snow banks, and from afar he saw three figures running. Wes fell back to his seat. “Breakout. Looks like a few convicts are trying to escape tonight.”
“Breakout? It’s a jail?” Farouk asked.
“No, loser, it’s a hospital,” Daran sniggered. “You never heard of MacArthur Med?”
“You mean one of the treatment centers? For the marked?”
“Bingo,” said Zedric with a cruel smile.
Wes stood back up through the open hatch and looked around. “Two patrols chasing, one on either side of us, running parallel. We’re pinned in here.”
Shakes called up to his friend, “Let’s just run between them.”
Wes nodded.
“What are you doing?” Nat asked, twisting her hands in her lap.
“Just pretending we’re one of them. At this distance, we look like another patrol. If they don’t get too close, we’ll be fine. Relax.”
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