After the End ate-1

by Amy Plum

And then I remember that she is not only the top-priority focus of my father’s manhunt but is dangerous and most likely mentally unstable. I stay on my side of the tent.

  23

  JUNEAU

  MY SLEEP IS PLAGUED BY NIGHTMARES. EVERY night the same image appears: brigands descending on my clan’s encampment. Dressed in torn leather and blood-matted furs, their eyes glowing green with radiation. Using an assortment of handmade weapons as well as high-tech guns, they swarm my village, killing first the dogs, who rush out to protect us, and then my clan. I stand there in the midst of the slaughter, paralyzed. Unable to react. And then I hear my father’s voice calling to me: “Use the Yara, Juneau. Use your gifts.”

  I awake as the sun begins to rise, the stench of burning yurts still stinging my nose until I sit up and breathe in the pure mountain air. Through the mosquito net I see the dew-kissed world around us turn rosy pink in the blush of daybreak. There was no war. There are no brigands. I remind myself that an apocalyptic world war never happened. But that image is such an integral part of me that this new world seems like the tall tale—a fairy-tale world, wrapped loosely like colorful paper around the burned-out husk of a postwar planet.

  I glance over at Miles. His lips are slightly parted, and his breath is slow. I force the scary images out of my mind and remind myself that this is my world now. It’s just me and this boy, who I apparently need in order to complete my quest. Once again, I wonder why Frankie told me to find him. Wouldn’t I be better off on my own?

  His curls tumble across his forehead, and his chin is slightly lifted. I wonder how old he is. Probably the same as me, I guess. Seventeen. Maybe eighteen. I let myself see him as Nome would for a moment: he would definitely rate a 10 in her book. Considering that John F. Kennedy is a 7.5. Oh, Nome, I think. I sure the hell hope you’re safe. I turn my thoughts back from my best friend to the boy sleeping beside me.

  What was he doing following me around? What is it that he needs from me? When I asked him, he wouldn’t answer. My only other option is to Read him, and I’ve never Read anyone against their will. I force that thought away and prepare myself. There are some things I must do before we leave. I slip quietly out of the tent, careful not to wake him.

  Last night after Reading the fire, I consulted the wind. A fresh breeze was blowing. I raised my arms and clutched my opal in one hand. It was a long time before I felt my connection with the Yara, and when I visualized my clan, I received nothing in return.

  My frustration cut sharp, like a knife on flesh. What is wrong with me? Am I losing my connection? I changed my request and whispered, “Whit.” And after a moment, the smoke of a far-off campfire tickled my nostrils. I turned in a circle, trying to figure out which direction it was coming from, but got nothing else. Whit must be outdoors as well. Maybe he is near. Perhaps his captors are transporting him to where our clan is being held. Or maybe he escaped and is looking for me. He should be able to find me by Reading. In fact, if he had been free to, he could have probably found me in the streets of Seattle.

  As I think of him, a feeling of uncertainty—of mistrust—creeps its way into my mind, but I do my best to ignore it. Yes, Whit was probably the one who traveled out into the world as recently as a few years ago—when he bought the book. But all the clan elders had to have been in on the deception. He isn’t any guiltier than the rest of them. They all lied, not just him.

  But he was the one who was supposed to be revealing truth to you, something nags. Revealing truth while simultaneously feeding you lies. The sting of betrayal returns, and I banish it into a far corner of my mind to deal with later.

  The burden of responsibility I used to feel when Whit talked to me about being his successor weighs heavily on me now. I can’t be sidetracked by childish emotions. I am responsible for my clan. Besides Whit, I am the only one who isn’t imprisoned. I must think of him as my ally and not let petty feelings get in the way. I will be strong.

  But how to contact Whit? He must be outside a city if he’s near a campfire. If only I could get a message to him. I wish he had shown me more Conjuring. The few simple tasks he did aren’t going to help me now: camouflage through metamorphosis. Keeping ice from melting so our meat stocks wouldn’t go bad. Creating intense heat to liquefy a solid, like we used to repair our decades-old metal sled runners and wheels. Or to fry a cell phone, I think, and smile.

  I know I’m better than Whit at Reading. Even he admitted that “the student had surpassed the teacher,” and attributed it to my being raised so close to the Yara my entire life. But as far as Conjuring, I don’t even know yet what is possible.

  Just as I am mulling over my options, a raven the size of a large cat alights on the ground in front of me. It cocks its head to one side, regarding me suspiciously, and then walks straight up to me and squawks loudly, ruffling its feathers. Something is tied to its leg. A message from Whit.

  “Thank you,” I say, and detach the piece of paper from the raven’s claw. Unfolding it, I see Whit’s spindly writing.

  Juneau, I can Read you are near and that you are okay. Time is of the essence—help me find you. Write a note saying where you are, and the raven will bring your message back to me. After that, STAY PUT and I will come get you. My fire-Reading showed you camping in woods with a boy. Whatever you do, do not trust him. Your friend, Whit

  Your friend? Those two words trip off every alarm in my body. Whit has never referred to himself as my friend before. My mentor, yes. clan Sage, maybe. Either he suspects I am doubting him and wants to remind me that he is trustworthy, or he was forced to write the note and used those words to alert me.

  I click my tongue in the universal human-to-animal sound for “come here,” and the raven takes a step closer. I relax, slow my breathing, and reach out to touch him, sharing my calmness with him. He allows me to pick him up, adjusting his wings for comfort as I pull him close to my chest to touch my opal and close my eyes. “Show me what you saw,” I whisper. Like last night, I have to wait a while before the connection arrives. But after a moment I feel the tingling buzz as I connect with the Yara, and the raven becomes very still as it lets me sift through its memory.

  I see Whit. He is with the two soldier-like men who I saw him with when I fire-Read in his cave. They hulk over him, watching him write the note. They are making him find me for them, I think. My suspicion is confirmed. Whit’s being forced to act as their pawn.

  I see him hesitate and pat the pocket of his jacket. He takes out a telephone. The two men wander off, leaving him alone as he talks into it. After a moment he puts his fingers to his lips to do the loud whistle I’ve seen him do a million times. And then, tying the note to the raven’s leg, he releases it and it takes flight.

  My view becomes aerial. The bird looks down as it flies away, and I watch as Whit climbs into the driver’s seat of an army-green military-looking vehicle (the word “Jeep” is written in large letters across the back) while the two men jump into the passenger side and backseat. Whit waits until they close the doors and then drives off.

  Stunned, I let go of the bird and our connection is broken. My blood feels like ice in my veins. Whit is no prisoner. Is he working with the men who took my clan? Or could they even be working for him? I am so shocked I don’t know what to think. Nothing makes sense anymore. The pain of the betrayal rushes back, and there is nothing I can do now to dull it.

  Through the open tent flaps, I see Miles sit up. He rubs his hair back to front, causing it to stick up in all directions. Whit says I can’t trust him. That’s not exactly new information: Frankie already warned me he wasn’t trustworthy.

  But it’s clear now that Miles isn’t the only one I have to watch out for. My father deceived me. My very own mentor is out to get me. I am the only person I can trust. I have never felt so alone.

  24

  MILES

  WHEN I WAKE UP, SHE IS TALKING TO A BIRD.

  That shouldn’t faze me, but I’m not quite awake yet, and a wave of alarm rocks me before I
remember that hanging with a crazy person is a means to an end. The end being the look on my father’s face when I finally do something right.

  I take my time crawling out of the tent, hoping that the reality fairy will wave her wand and things will suddenly be normal when I look back up. But no, when I stand, Juneau is staring at me, waiting, as if she’s waiting for me to say something ground shattering.

  “What?” I ask.

  “We have to go,” Juneau says. “Now.”

  “No flame-broiled roadkill for breakfast?” I joke. She acts like she doesn’t hear and starts stuffing her pack with the cooking gear.

  “Someone’s coming after us. We’ll eat on the road,” she says in that I’m-the-boss-of-you way that’s really starting to get under my skin.

  “Ah,” I say, raising an eyebrow purely for my own sake, since she isn’t looking at me anymore. “Would these pursuers happen to be government agents? Or maybe aliens? No, wait. Angry rangers who keep tabs on the park’s bunny population.”

  “You can take the tent down if you want to help,” she states simply. And although I really couldn’t be bothered to join in as a willing partner of her paranoia, the way that she says it—like it’s a challenge she doesn’t think I’m up to—makes me turn around and start yanking tent pins out of the ground.

  “You might want to take the bedding out first,” she says.

  “Yeah, I was about to do that,” I mutter, and pull out the blowup camping pillows and paper-thin thermal blankets. By the time I’ve figured out how to take the folding rods apart, she has everything packed and in the car and comes around to help me. “Have you ever camped before?” she asks, but not in the mean way I was expecting.

  “No,” I admit as I shove the final rod into its bag. “Does it show?”

  She looks up and gives me this quirky little lips-pressed-together smile, and I can’t help but smile back, which makes her laugh through her nose.

  And for one second I am actually enjoying myself, even though my back is paralyzed from sleeping on the hard ground and I am standing in the middle of an illegal campsite, grinning at a paranoid schizophrenic. She actually seems halfway normal. Nice, even. The thought rockets through my mind and ricochets around once or twice before I catch it and twist the life out of it. This girl is a means to an end, I tell myself. All that should matter to you is getting her to California. And forcing the smile off my face, I start the car.

  Juneau throws the tent bag in the back and jumps in beside me. With a squawk, the bird flies in too and settles on the backseat and stares at me, daring me to react.

  “What’s that?” I ask, gesturing at the bird as Juneau pulls her door shut.

  “The raven’s coming with us,” she says.

  My eyes widen in disbelief, and I try to control my voice, reminding myself that she’s the crazy one, not me. “And why, may I ask, is the raven coming with us?”

  “Because if the guy who sent him to spy on us calls him back, it won’t be very hard for them to find us.”

  My brain starts hurting again. I stare at the bird incredulously. It just eyes me for a second and then casually begins picking something out of its wing. I look back at Juneau, and the star-decorated contact lens makes me shudder from its weirdness. I don’t think she even took it out last night.

  I can’t believe I thought she was normal for even a second—I must have Stockholm syndrome or something. I put the car into gear, turn it around, and head back down the dirt road we drove in on.

  “So where to?” I ask in what I hope is a calm tone as we pull up to the paved road. She has me trained now. I watch her check the position of the sun and glance up and down the road in both directions.

  “This road runs north-south,” she says. “Do you think there’s a way for us to get onto something heading southeast?”

  “Well, if you can jump-start my iPhone, I could use the GPS to find the way,” I say. She stares at me like I’m speaking Chinese. I remember the L.A. mix-up and ask, “What part of what I just said did you not understand?”

  “Jump-start. iPhone. GPS,” she responds.

  I pick one. “Global Positioning System,” I explain. She shakes her head. I can tell by this tiny muscle that clenches in her jaw that it’s costing her to admit she doesn’t know what something is. “Where are you from that doesn’t have GPS?” I ask, hoping she’ll say something about Alaska, or tell me more about who she is.

  “No time to talk,” she says. “Take that road. I’ll explain on the way.”

  Joy. I pull the car out onto the pavement and begin driving south. “I guess that means you can’t jump-start my iPhone,” I prod after a few minutes.

  She doesn’t look at me but stares straight out the window and then down at the speedometer, looking anxious. I step on the gas and she relaxes slightly. “Alaska,” she replies.

  It takes me a second to realize that she’s one conversation back, but I catch up and say, “They’ve got to have GPS in Alaska. With all that wide-open wilderness and… tundra, or whatever they have there.”

  She considers that for a second. “I’ve been living in a tiny community outside the major cities. When you described me as ‘back to nature’ before, you pretty much hit it on the head. It was just nature and us.”

  “But I bet you’ve seen on TV—” I begin to say.

  “We didn’t have TV,” she cuts in. “Or electricity, for that matter.”

  “And you lived there for…”

  “My whole life,” she replies.

  While I try to wrap my brain around this, it occurs to me that, in this light, she suddenly doesn’t seem quite as crazy. If she was raised in some kind of hippie commune out in the middle of nowhere, no wonder she was freaking out in Seattle. I see her fiddle with the window, trying to fit her fingernails through the top of the glass as if she thinks she can push it down with sheer force.

  “It’s the button next to the door handle,” I say, and she wiggles the control back and forth for a second until her window goes down and she leans her head to the side so the cold morning air hits her in the face.

  “What? You don’t have cars either?” I ask, remembering the way that she leaped out while the car was still moving yesterday and forgot to close the door after she got back in.

  She shakes her head.

  I look at her incredulously. “How did you get around?”

  “Dogsled,” she replies matter-of-factly. “Of course, our sleds were fitted with wheels when there wasn’t snow on the ground.”

  “Of course,” I respond, one eyebrow cocked. She looks at me to see if I’m making fun of her, but I grin my goodwill and she does her lips-closed smile back.

  She actually doesn’t look half-bad when she’s not scowling. I mean, that haircut still makes her look like a deranged pixie. But that’s definitely an improvement from evil elf girl, shoving skewers through dead animals’ body cavities.

  “So why did you leave?” I ask tentatively. “I mean, now that we’ve established that it wasn’t an insatiable craving for Big Macs,” I add to lighten the mood.

  Juneau leans her head back against the headrest, as if speaking more than a few words at a time is exhausting. She talks less than any girl I know. Uncomfortable silences don’t faze her. In fact, I’m not even sure she knows what uncomfortable is. She’s like a robot. Or an old person.

  She sighs deeply. “When I said I was looking for my father, it’s because he went missing. Actually, not just him, but it seems my whole clan was abducted.”

  “What? Why?” I ask, although as I say it I think, Wait a minute, Miles. It’s just more paranoia-speak. But she looks so sincere that I decide to swallow my doubt for just a few minutes. Even if she is spouting a load of crap, it’s obvious that she believes what she’s saying.

  “I honestly have no idea,” she responds. “If I hadn’t been out hunting, I would have been taken too.” Her eyes flit to the backseat, and I see that she has placed the loaded crossbow within arm’s reach. I decide to i
gnore the fact that I am driving with an oversize crow and a dangerous weapon behind me and take advantage of the fact that she’s actually talking to press her further.

  “And so you think the guys who took your father are the same ones who are following you? And they”—I can’t believe I’m about to say this—“sent the bird to spy on you?” I peer into the rearview mirror and see that the bird is treating my balled-up T-shirt from yesterday like a nest.

  “Them… and my old mentor,” she says in almost a whisper.

  “Your mentor?” I say, genuinely surprised, because I have no idea who she’s talking about.

  Her face scrunches up like, if she were the kind of girl who cried, she would be blubbering about now. But she’s not the kind of girl who cries, thank God, so she just grinds her teeth and looks back out the window, focusing on a tiny shack with an enormous American flag in its garden, whipping and snapping in the wind. Cows lie sprawled out underneath, fast asleep like they had been whooping it up all night at some crazy bovine Fourth of July party.

  Juneau’s eyes take in the landscape. Her mind is somewhere else. And all of a sudden it dawns on me. There could actually be people after her. Hell, I was after her. So were Dad’s goons before she shook them. If Dad’s trying to track her down so urgently, his competitors must be after the prize too.

  That realization shakes me. I mean, it’s not like we’re in a Hollywood film where people will do anything for the chance to get their hands on a new drug. We’re not talking international espionage.

  Or are we? Dad said that calling her an industrial spy was close enough to the truth. She’s obviously got valuable information.

  This is getting complicated. When I thought she was a total nut, it was easy—I didn’t believe a word she said. But now that what she’s saying is starting to make sense, I have no clue what to believe.

  25

  JUNEAU