by LS Hawker
She was so thirsty she was tempted to take a drink from the dirty tank herself.
Elias dismounted and helped Gilby down, but the man toppled to the ground.
“Oh, shit,” Elias said, crouching next to him. “He’s out cold. He might be bleeding internally. We need to get him to a hospital.”
Jade seized up in frustration. They didn’t have time for this.
Gilby’s eyes fluttered open.
“We need to find a car,” Jade said.
Jade heard the distinctive sound of Hummer engines rumbling down the main street, two blocks over. The Hummers would no doubt work in a grid.
“Get him up,” Jade said.
Elias did, and Gilby’s limbs were floppy, his head lolling. Elias draped Gilby’s good arm over his shoulder and dragged him along.
They kept to the shadows of the large trees lining the residential streets, but if one of the Hummer’s occupants shone a flashlight on them, they would be caught.
Each car they came to, Jade tried the driver’s side door.
“Do you know how to hot-wire a car?” Elias whispered, panting with the exertion of supporting a nearly delirious Gilby. “Because I don’t.”
“Don’t look at me,” Berko panted beside them.
“I don’t think we’re going to have to—” The door to the blue Camaro opened, the dome light came on, and the bell dinged. “Bingo,” she said. “Get in.”
But now that they were actually faced with stealing a car, Elias and Berko hung back, looking timid. “Guy just left his keys in the car?”
“People leave their keys in the ignition where I come from,” Jade said. “In fact, on weekend nights, if you were out and about, you’d leave your keys in your car on Main Street, and if someone needed it, they’d take it. People always brought them back.”
“Kansas,” Elias said, shaking his head. As gently as he could, he helped Gilby into the front passenger seat. Gilby groaned. “Sorry, buddy.” He closed the door then went around the Camaro, folded the driver's seat forward, and climbed in back with Berko. Jade got behind the wheel, shut her door quietly, and started up the engine. She turned off the lights and slowly pulled away from the curb. Once they were two blocks away, Jade turned on the headlights and hunted for a medical center.
They found one at the south end of town and drove up to the entrance. Elias helped Gilby out of the front seat.
“Can you make it inside by yourself?” Elias said.
“Yes,” Gilby said, steadying himself against the car. “I’ll contact my people, but I’m not going to call the feds until I’m away from here.”
“What if Martin and—”
“I’ve got some false ID,” Gilby said. “Just go. Like Elias said, you’ve got to save the world. Good luck.” And he staggered toward the entrance.
Elias got in the front seat and Jade looked over her shoulder at Berko. “Maybe you ought to go in there too,” she said.
“I’m fine,” Berko said, his face resolute. “I’m not abandoning you now. Let’s go.”
Jade raised her eyebrows at Elias.
“Better do what the man says,” Elias said.
“Should we find a phone and call the cops?” Berko said.
“Haven’t we been over this?” Elias said. “What would we tell them? We just escaped an old missile silo and we’ve been prisoners there. And this shadowy domestic terrorist group is going to upload this AI program, and we thought we were working for the NSA, but . . .”
“All right, all right,” Berko said.
“We have to try to stop them from uploading the program,” Jade said. “That’s all we can do now. It would take more time than we have to explain what’s going on—if they’d even believe us. Which I doubt. Once we’ve hacked into the computer . . .”
Just thinking about the task before them wore Jade out. If it would work. If they could do what they had to do at all.
She drove out of town to the two-lane state highway and pointed the car toward home. Jade put on the cruise control to keep a steady speed on this deserted road. They’d be in Ephesus within forty minutes.
Berko lay down in the back and was soon snoring softly.
Jade had never been in a car so nice or so new, and it had a more powerful engine than she was used to. All she had to do was tap the gas for it to lurch forward, itching to speed. And she was itching to speed too, see how fast it could go, but she couldn’t risk it, even if she’d rarely seen state troopers on this highway.
Elias kept shaking his head, trying to stay awake. It was two o’clock in the morning, and they had five hours and forty-five minutes, Jade guessed, before Clementine would knock out the power around the country. If, as Jade suspected, Martin planned to unleash the power outage at the exact time the first plane hit the north tower, at 8:46 a.m. eastern time.
Elias said, “How long before we—”
They both heard it at the same time. The siren behind them. A ways off yet, but coming up fast.
Jade glanced at Elias and he gave a tiny nod. She punched the gas.
She was gripping the steering wheel so hard her hands were numb. The road was hilly, so the sound of the siren ebbed and flowed. Elias faced backward in his seat, watching for the cop. “Should I find a place to pull off? Hide behind some trees or something?”
“No,” Elias said. “Keep going.”
Jade was afraid she would spastically jerk the wheel and drive them off the road. The speedometer, which topped out at one eighty, said they were going one hundred and ten.
Over the next rise, the lights hit them, the flashing reds and blues, and the cop flashed his brights at them.
“What do I do?” Jade said.
Elias remained silent as the cop car gained on them.
“Can you go faster?”
“Is that the best idea?” Jade said.
“What if the people in the cop car work for Martin?”
“All their goons were in Hummers, not police cars.”
“But this could be—”
“I’m pulling over,” Jade said, as she took her foot off the gas and flipped the blinker. Maybe she could explain to the officer.
The cruiser went around them, its speed increasing even more, and soon disappeared from sight.
Jade sat panting, unable to let go of the steering wheel.
“What just happened?” Berko said.
“Guess he was in a hurry,” Elias said.
“Go back to sleep, Berko,” Jade said, and pulled back out on the road.
They hit the city limits of Ephesus at two thirty, and Jade parked the Camaro a block away from the house just in case.
Her ears were ringing, she was so tired, and her vision was fuzzy.
When they reached Jade’s street, Jade beckoned Elias and Berko behind a large elm and peeked out from behind it. The house was dark, as were all the houses on the street.
“Follow me,” she whispered. She scrutinized the cars parked on the street to discern if they actually belonged there or if they were enemy cars, but she didn’t live here anymore, so she didn’t have everyone’s cars memorized. She also needed to be careful. Most people had guns in their houses, and if they thought she and her friends were prowlers, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.
They stalked from tree to tree, to the hedge that surrounded the house, and went to the back door. Jade found the fake rock in the garden with the key inside it, pulled it out, and fitted it in the lock. She turned the knob and was greeted by a mrph from Clementine’s dog, a Lhasa Apso named Fearless. It always took her a few moments to remember Jade, acting timid and afraid, until Jade’s scent registered. She crouched down and the dog scooted toward her a little at a time and then wagged her tail and gave her a lick. Then she mrphed at the guys, and they both crouched to let her smell them.
“Wait here,” Jade whispered. She scratched the dog’s ears, then went upstairs to her old bedroom.
Jade reached under the bed for her box of old Nintendo cartridges. But she
couldn’t feel it. She closed the bedroom door softly and flipped on the light, nearly blinding herself, and got back on her hands and knees and looked under the bed. The box was gone.
She looked in her closet. No box. She tiptoed into Clem’s studio and looked in that closet. Not there.
Her heart stopped. The box and the cartridge were gone.
Now she ran to her parents’ bedroom, threw open the door, and flicked on the overhead light. Her dad sat straight up, glancing around wild-eyed. “What?” he said.
Her mom was still fast asleep.
“Dad,” Jade said. “Where’s my—”
“Jade!” Robert said, rubbing his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. “What time is it?” He picked up his alarm clock and held it close to his face before putting it back again. “What happened to your head?”
Jade’s hand went to her forehead, the dried blood. “I fell,” she said. “Dad, where is my—”
“What are you doing here? In the middle of the night? In the middle of the week?”
“My box of Nintendo—”
“Honey, why are you—”
“DAD! Where’s my box of Nintendo cartridges? And in particular the Super Mario Kart Nintendo cartridge?”
“Shush,” Robert said. “You’ll wake your sister.”
Robert nudged Pauline, who gasped. “What is it?”
“Jade’s home.”
Her mother struggled to a sitting position.
Robert yawned. “Your Nintendo—”
“Yes,” Jade said, her blood seizing with frustration. “It was under my bed. It’s not there.”
Her father looked at her like she was crazy. “You drove sixty miles in the middle of the night to—”
“Dad, there was something very important in there. I need it right now. Where is the box?”
Robert and Pauline looked at each other. “Did we sell them at the garage sale last month?” Pauline said.
Her mother’s painfully slow speech irritated her like never before.
“We must have,” Robert said. “We got rid of a whole bunch of stuff—remember, I told you if you didn’t get your games and stuff out of the house we were going to go ahead and sell them.”
Jade’s stomach cramped up. “You . . . sold it?”
“I told you we were going to,” he said. “I told you.”
“Who did you sell it to? I have to get it back.”
“What’s wrong, Jade?” her dad asked.
“I don’t have time to explain right now, Dad. Just tell me who you sold it to.”
Her parents again looked at each other.
“Please, Dad,” Jade said, nearly crying. “Who bought the box?”
Pauline said, “Honey—”
“MOM!”
“Don’t talk to your mother that—”
“WHO BOUGHT THE CARTRIDGE? TELL ME NOW!”
“I think it was the Jenkins kid, wasn’t it?” her dad said.
“Was it? I thought Mike Dougherty bought it.”
Jade couldn’t speak. Would she have to go to both places?
“That’s right,” Robert said. “It was Mike Dougherty. He said he’d been looking for old Nintendo games. I think he said he wanted to sell them on eBay.”
Jade suppressed a scream. If he’d already sold them, then . . .
“I need to borrow the car,” she said. If the Camaro had been reported stolen, they’d more likely be caught. Better to borrow Dad’s Saturn. “I have to get that box and then I need to—never mind. Can I borrow the car? I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.”
“I guess it’s okay,” Robert said.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said.
“Keys are in it.”
As she descended the stairs, the ghostly appearance of Clementine in her white satin nightie, with Fearless close behind, nearly scared Jade out of her socks.
Clem hadn’t spied the guys standing in the shadows. Jade hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“Jade,” she said.
“Not now, Clem. I’ll talk to you when I get back. I have to go.”
If I get back.
“Fearless has something for you.” She pushed the dog toward Jade, who dropped something at her feet. Jade stooped to pick it up and began to laugh.
“What is it?” Berko asked.
Jade held it up, and Clementine smiled broadly.
“It’s a potato,” Jade said. She put it in her pocket, while Elias and Berko looked confused. She held out her arms and Clem slid into them, burying her face against Jade’s neck.
“Who are they?” Clem said.
“Elias and Berko.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Clementine said, and shook each of their hands exactly once then wiped her hand on her nightgown. She said to Jade, “Go.”
Jade gave her one last squeeze and led Berko and Elias out the door.
They got in Robert’s silver Saturn and drove toward town.
“What was with the potato?” Berko asked.
“When Clementine was going through puberty, we weren’t sure we’d survive,” Jade said. “She regressed to the point of infancy almost. She destroyed things. We had to wrap her hands in gauze so she couldn’t scratch herself. She ripped her room apart. She was obsessed with YouTube videos of dogs. She loved one in particular about a suicidal girl whose service dog was so upset one day because he somehow knew she was going to hurt herself. So he brought her a potato.”
“Okay, I’m still not getting it,” Elias said.
“Sometimes all you need is to know somebody cares, that somebody knows you’re hurting and wants you to feel better, even if it’s your dog. That dog saved that girl’s life. So I trained our dog to take potatoes to Clementine, and she was just captivated by it. It means ‘everything’s going to be okay.’”
Berko stared out the windshield. “Jade, I don’t know if everything’s going to be okay or not.”
“Me either,” Jade said. “But if we don’t do something, I don’t think there’ll be any room for people like Clementine in the new world order. So we have to try. A guy named Mike Dougherty bought the Nintendo box and he plans to sell them on eBay. We need to go to his house.”
“Should you maybe call him first? Let him know we’re coming?”
“Let’s just go,” Jade said.
She drove four blocks and parked the car on the street in front of the unkempt old house. The weedy lawn surrounded a sagging porch, and the whole place needed a fresh coat of paint.
They all got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Jade pulled back the screen door and knocked. “Mike?” she called softly.
“Try the doorbell,” Elias said. When she didn’t right away, he did.
She knocked again.
A light inside came on, and the curtains drew back from the window. “Who’s that?” came his voice through the door.
“Jade Veverka,” she said. “Robert and Pauline’s girl? You know me.”
She heard the dead bolt draw back and the door opened. Mike stood there with pillow head in his T-shirt and boxers. “Everything okay?” he said. “Folks okay?”
“Yeah, Mike,” Jade said. “Dad told me you bought a box of Nintendo cartridges at their garage sale last month.”
“I did,” he said.
Hope whooshed through her. “I need one of them back,” she said.
“Sold some of them,” he said.
“Super Mario Kart?” she said, holding her breath.
“Nope, still got that one.”
Jade turned around and smiled at Berko and Elias.
“May I have it back, please?” Jade said.
He just stared at her.
“It’s very important to me, and my parents didn’t know—”
“You’ll have to buy it back.”
Jade’s hands went to her front pockets but she had no money on her. She turned. “Guys? Got any cash?”
Both of them pulled out their wallets. Berko had a twenty and Elias had two fives. They
handed them over.
“How about thirty dollars?” Jade said.
Mike stood looking at the money and said, “I don’t think so.”
“How much did you buy the box for?”
He didn’t answer right away. “I’d rather not say.”
“Come on, Mike,” Jade said. “I need it back. How much do you want for it?”
“A hundred dollars.”
“I don’t have a hundred dollars. I’ll get you the rest tomorrow from the ATM.”
“Then I’ll give it to you tomorrow after you get the rest of it from the—”
Elias slammed open the screen and grabbed the neck of Mike’s T-shirt with both hands. “Listen,” he hissed. “We need that cartridge. The lady offered you cash. Now you’re going to show me where that cartridge is right now, or we’re going to have a real problem. Understand?”
“Okay, okay,” Mike said, his voice high and frightened. Elias let go of his shirt but followed him into the house.
“I just hope Mike doesn’t have a gun or something back there,” Jade said.
They returned, the Super Mario Kart cartridge in Elias’s hand. He seized the three bills from Jade and threw them on the floor. “There. Thank you. Good night.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When they returned to Jade’s family home, the house was again dark. Jade led the way in, and they went into the den where Robert kept the family computer.
Jade booted up the computer and gave Elias the chair. Berko lay down on the futon they used as a sofa and a bed when company came.
“Do you want to go upstairs and sleep in my room, Berko?” Jade said.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep,” he said. “I can drift off in here. I want to be available in case you need me.”
“Okay,” Jade said. “I’ll be right back.”
She went to the main floor powder room and found Excedrin Migraine in the medicine cabinet. Thank God. She pulled it out and put it in her pocket and then went to the kitchen and got three bottles of water and some mozzarella sticks from the fridge and took it all into the den.
“Here, Berko,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said, and accepted a water bottle and two mozzarella sticks.
