Doomed

by Tracy Deebs

  Yeah, so then Theo could kill both of us? I don’t think so. “We need someone to stay here and watch the stuff we have left.” Although, now that I think about it, leaving Eli with that job—again—might not be the best idea we’ve ever had.

  He must see the sudden doubt in my eyes, because he says, “I know I screwed up, Pandora. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  If he had just told Theo that, no bravado, no attitude, the last ten minutes would have gone a lot differently. “Look, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk when Theo and I get back.”

  Eli sits up, looks me square in the eyes, and says, “You need to be careful, Pandora. Watch your back. There’s a lot more to Theo than he lets people see.”

  I don’t know how to answer him, am not sure what he means. Especially since Theo doesn’t seem like the only one with hidden depths. Finally, I just say, “I’ll be fine and we’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  I slip out the door, knowing I’ve been gone more like seven or eight minutes instead of the one I promised Theo. I’m afraid he’s gone without me, especially when he’s not standing by the stairs where I left him. But then I look down at the parking lot and see him. He’s leaning against a light pole, one foot resting on its base, and he looks more like a really tall model doing a layout for GQ than he does a teenager contemplating the best way to steal a car.

  For a second, Eli’s warning runs through my mind—that there’s more to Theo than he shows to people. I think of all the different things I see lurking in his eyes sometimes, even when he’s so calm and in control, and decide Eli might be right. I just don’t think it’s a bad thing, at least not the way Eli’s trying to make it out to be.

  I take the steps two at a time but pause at the bottom of the staircase. Theo’s watching me as intently as I was just watching him. I wish I could figure out what he sees.

  “You ready?” he calls.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Instead of walking farther into Albuquerque, like I thought we would, Theo turns us right when we get to the parking lot, heads out of town. I follow along, even though I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Won’t we have a better shot at finding a car in the city than we will outside of it?

  At the same time, Theo seems to know where he’s going, what he’s doing. It makes it hard to do anything but trail along in his wake.

  We don’t speak as we walk, but it’s not as awkward as it sounds. Instead, it’s almost companionable, like we’re two friends out for an early-morning stroll instead of two criminal masterminds bent on breaking the law. Although in my case, I think “mastermind” could be replaced with “bumbling moron” to give a truer version of the situation.

  “I’m sorry you have to do this,” I tell him.

  “I’m sorry I made you open that damn box.” He shrugs. “Sorry doesn’t get the job done.”

  “Why are you doing this? You could be at home, safe right now. Why are you here with me?” I ask him the question that’s been burning inside me all along.

  The look he gives me is inscrutable, but still I feel like I’m missing something big. Something obvious. “Someone has to do it, Pandora. If I can help, if I can try to fix things, why wouldn’t I?”

  Theo’s whole philosophy summed up in less than fifteen words. I can’t help feeling ashamed. I want nothing more than to hide from the mess I made, and Theo is running headlong into it, simply because it’s the right thing to do.

  We’re about three miles out of town when we get to what looks like a decent-size ranch. We climb over the gate, and the whole time I’m hoping we don’t get shot. After all, everywhere we go these days it seems that people have guns.

  Nobody fires on us though, thank God, and we follow the road that leads up to the house, though we’re careful not to actually walk along it. Not that the desert gives us much protection, but still. We don’t need to paint targets on our chests, either.

  When we get closer to the buildings, I realize that the place is pretty run-down. The paint is peeling off the aluminum siding, and more than one window is cracked. But it’s obviously a working ranch of some sort; when we peer into one of the barns, we see five horses in stalls.

  They’re nickering softly, moving restlessly, almost like they know what’s going on. Or like they’re waiting for their morning meal. I lean over to tell Theo this and see that he’s already figured out the same thing. We’ve got a very short window of opportunity here if we’re going to find a car and drive off in it before the ranch owners catch us.

  We walk around the barn and past three other buildings before we see four trucks parked between two of the barns. They’re working vehicles—big, well used, and capable of handling anything. Each truck also has a five-gallon can of gas in its bed. We’ve hit the jackpot. I wonder how Theo knew.

  “Check those two trucks,” Theo says as he opens the door of the one closest to him.

  “For what?”

  “Keys. Most of the time on ranches, they just leave the keys in the working vehicles.”

  I do what he asks, searching the glove compartment, the visor, and under the mat for a key. I don’t find one in the first truck, and neither does Theo, but we get lucky in the last two, each holding up a key.

  “Which one do you want to take?” he asks.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I pick the blue one. It’s less noticeable than the red one. Plus it’s a little smaller—maybe it’ll get better gas mileage.”

  “Good point.” Theo climbs into the cab, inserts the key in the ignition, and cranks it. The engine turns over smoothly.

  “Awesome,” I say. “It starts.” We work quickly, unloading the full gas cans from the other trucks and putting them in the back of ours. Ours. I try not to linger on the irony of that word as I climb into the passenger side of the truck.

  “Get your seat belt on,” says Theo as he puts the truck in drive. “And if anyone comes after us—”

  “If anyone comes after us, we give them the truck back!” I tell him.

  He grins. “That’s not quite what I was going to say—”

  “Yeah, well, it’s what we’re going to do.”

  “I guess we’d better make sure no one comes after us, then.” He opens the window and throws the key for the other truck as far away from the vehicles as he can. And then he’s pulling out from behind the barn, driving leisurely so as not to draw attention to ourselves.

  We get to the gate and I start to climb out, to pull it open, but Theo reaches up to the visor and pulls down what looks like a garage-door opener. He hits the big center button and the gate swings open.

  I settle back, more relaxed than the situation calls for. Theo won’t let anything happen to me—strange how I know that now, when only three days ago I worried that he might strangle me. I guess perspective really is everything.

  We hit the main road and Theo floors it. The engine rumbles and the truck takes off, responding a lot faster than the Odyssey ever did. I smile, glance over, and realize Theo’s doing the same.

  “How many laws do you think we’ve broken since this thing began?” I ask.

  “Seventeen. I’ve been counting.”

  My mouth drops open. “Seriously?”

  “No, not seriously!” he says, laughing. “How anal do you think I am?” Suddenly he doesn’t look so amused, and though he’s concentrating on the road, I can tell my answer matters to him. His knuckles are white where he clutches the steering wheel.

  “Not anal. Just amazingly prepared. I like it.”

  At first he doesn’t respond, but his fingers relax a little and I know it’s going to be okay. Still, I’m racking my brain for something to say to fill the silence when Theo finally speaks. His voice is so low I have to strain to hear it.

  “My dad was big on being prepared. For anything.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that, not sure what Theo wants me to say. I just kn
ow that whatever comes out of my mouth, it can’t be the wrong thing or he’ll clam up forever. I don’t want that to happen, not now that he’s finally sharing something about himself.

  I settle on the truth. “Kind of like my dad seems to be. Except my dad’s psychotic, of course.”

  Theo’s lips twist in the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “I don’t know. I loved him, but sometimes I thought he was pretty psychotic. He was Special Forces, which meant that when I was young, he was in and out of town a lot, depending on what shape the rest of the world was in. Then the war started and he was gone more than he was around. And when he was around … I don’t know. He was different. He had a short fuse and a bad temper—everything used to set him off. It got so that my mom and I were walking on eggshells whenever he was home. It didn’t matter. The only time he was happy was when he was teaching me something new.”

  “Like geocaching.”

  “Yeah. Or how to build a plane. How to skydive. Shoot a gun. Build a fire. It didn’t matter. There was always something else to learn.”

  “Bet you didn’t know how much all that was going to come in handy, did you?”

  “I didn’t have a clue.” He shrugs. “I used to hate all his lessons—except the plane. The plane was cool. But I just wanted to do something normal, you know? Play basketball with him. Go to the movies. Hell, my first driving lesson was all about evasive tactics. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps.”

  “And you don’t want to?”

  He laughs bitterly. “Not at all. He disappeared somewhere in the Middle East about two and a half years ago. It was a classified mission, so the government couldn’t even tell us where he was, just that they were declaring him dead. That there was no chance he could have survived whatever it was that had happened.”

  “I’m sorry.” It’s not enough. I know it isn’t, but I don’t know what else to say.

  “I’m not.” He shakes his head for a second and looks completely devastated. “I think that’s the hardest part. I mean, I miss the dad he used to be. The dad I caught glimpses of every once in a while when things were going well. But I don’t miss the man he was most of the time. I don’t miss how afraid my mom looked or how I used to have to get between them to keep him from beating on her when he was lost in whatever black mood grabbed him.”

  He stops at a red light, keeps his gaze focused on the road in front of us. He looks so tense, so miserable, so ashamed, that I can’t help it. I reach out, start to stroke my hand down his hair. I mean it to be comforting, but he turns his head at the last second and my hand grazes a nasty bump. He winces.

  “I’m sorry.” I apologize again, for a lot more than touching his head.

  His eyes meet mine, and a shiver works its way down my spine. For a second I wonder what caused it—the look in his sapphire eyes when he glances at me or the knowledge that there’s a lot more to Theo than meets the eye.

  “No. I just … wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Oh.” I put my hand back, trace my fingers lightly over the bruise on his high cheekbone, down his strong jaw to the cut on his chin, over the small slices from running through the trees at the farm yesterday. So many different injuries. So many different times he didn’t back down, didn’t back away, when another guy would have.

  “Pandora.” His voice is hoarse, but he doesn’t move to escape my touch. In fact, he moves toward it, turning his head just a little so that his lips are pressed against my fingertips in the lightest of kisses.

  Our eyes lock, at least until the driver behind us leans on his horn. Theo jerks his gaze back to the road—and the light that has obviously been green for a while.

  We ride the rest of the way in silence, but my fingers still tingle from where his lips brushed so softly against them. I don’t know how I feel about what happened, how I feel about him. And I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. Not when I’m on the run in a stolen truck and the world is about to come crashing down around me.

  Theo pulls around the back of the motel, and as we climb out of the truck I tell him, “I know you’re mad at Eli, but we can’t afford to fight. Not right now.”

  His shoulders are tense, his spine so straight that I fear he’ll break in half, but eventually Theo nods. “I know. I’ll apologize.” He says the last like he’s choking on the word.

  “I don’t think you need to go that far. Just don’t slam him against any more walls. Sound fair?”

  “Sounds fair. Provided he didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep.”

  The first thing I notice when we open the door is that Eli hasn’t been sleeping. Everything we brought into the hotel room is packed and resting in a line next to the door, ready to go. Eli has set a few granola bars and some bottles of water on the table for breakfast, and he’s sitting on the bed, hunched over the radio like it’s his last friend in the world.

  “Hey, thanks,” I say, gesturing to the food, but he shushes me, his green eyes wide and wild in his very pale face.

  We’re across the room in the space of a heartbeat, differences forgotten. “What’s wrong?” Theo demands.

  “I think we just found out what Pandora’s dad means by total annihilation. The worm has worked its way into the control systems of every nuclear plant in the world. If someone doesn’t find a solution to this in the next couple of days, it’s going to be too late.”

  “Too late?” I echo weakly, my knees turning to Jell-O beneath me.

  “To stop the leaks. To shore the plants back up. In seven days, we’ll be in the middle of a nuclear holocaust. Game over.”

  27

  For long seconds, what Eli has said is simply too horrible for my brain to comprehend. It can’t be possible. It just can’t be possible. “No one would do that. You’d have to be insane to even contemplate it.”

  “Well, there was Stuxnet,” Theo says, sounding like a professor. “It attacked a nuclear power plant.”

  “One,” I tell Theo. “We read about it in history last year. It attacked one nuclear program, and it didn’t even cause that much damage.”

  “Because the program wasn’t fully operational. Not like the places this thing attacked.”

  “That’s the point. Stuxnet didn’t come close to doing this.”

  “No. It just proved this could be done. Which is the problem with cyberwarfare. Once you open the box—excuse the metaphor—you can’t ever close it again. Things spiral out of control until we end up exactly where we are right now.”

  “No offense, but can we talk ethics later?” Eli asks, getting up from the bed and tossing each of us a granola bar. “I think the urgency level on this just shot through the stratosphere, so if you don’t mind …”

  He’s right. Suddenly, his falling asleep last night and losing the van doesn’t seem so terrible. Not in the grand scheme of things, anyway. Yeah, we’re going to be hurt without those supplies, but if nothing else, it’s only seven days until the whole world blows up and we no longer have to worry about anything. Especially trying to save it.

  We climb into the truck and pull out onto the main streets. I’m driving and I switch on the radio as we try to figure out which way to go. According to the phone book, Orinoco is located on Los Alamos Boulevard, but we don’t have a clue where that is. And with no GPS, no MapQuest, nothing, we could be wandering around for hours unless we find a map.

  “Pull over here,” Eli tells me when we get to a corner with a convenience store.

  The place looks like it’s been ransacked—shattered windows, broken bottles, ripped-up magazines, and newspapers litter the sidewalk in front of the store. “You don’t actually think they’re open, do you?” I ask.

  “It’s worth a shot, even if they aren’t.”

  Of course. What does stealing one more thing matter? I close my eyes for a second, try not to be a baby.

  When Eli climbs out of the truck, I go with him. Theo looks like he’s going to protest, but I shoot him a look that basically says to stay out of it. Things a
re still rough and disjointed with us—someone needs to start patching things up, and I’m smart enough to know it isn’t going to be either of the guys.

  “Stay behind me,” Eli says as we approach the door. As we get closer, I realize it’s hanging off-kilter, having been almost ripped off the hinges.

  “Why? Are you bulletproof?”

  He grins. “I might be.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll take my chances.” I take a deep breath and then push through the door, Eli right at my heels.

  I stop dead as soon as I see what a wreck the store really is. It hasn’t just been looted. It’s been systematically destroyed. Everything that couldn’t be stolen has been smashed or ripped, as if stealing wasn’t enough for whoever did this. It looks like they wanted to rip the store apart at the seams.

  If so, they succeeded.

  As I stand there, tears threaten, but I beat them back using sheer will this time. The same will that got me through all those days with my mother, when I wanted to beg for her attention. To plead with her to tell me why she didn’t love me, so that I could fix it. Fix me.

  A wave of longing rushes over me, so overwhelming, so intense, that I feel it deep inside myself in that place I never even acknowledge exists. I want a do-over. Me, the queen of owning your actions, of moving forward, of never looking back. I want to go back to three days ago, when I was fumbling into my dirty clothes, super late for school.

  I want to go back to the Amnesty International meeting at lunch, when I didn’t have a clue just how important the rights I was fighting for were suddenly going to be to me.

  I want to go back to my conversation with my mother, to the moment I saw the e-mail from my father, to the click of the mouse as I went to that stupid blog.

  I just want to go back, to get as far from here—as far from the fugitive me that I’ve become—as I can get.

  But I don’t own a time machine, and while this stupid worm can do a lot of things, I don’t think it can completely reset the clock, reset me. Even if I’d kind of like it to try.