I took Loki’s pack off his back, tossed it into the car, then squatted, and lifted him again. It was awkward, but I managed to get him in by essentially falling backward, landing in the backseat with his body on top of me, then squirming out from under him and crawling over him to get out. I pushed him the rest of the way in, turned him on his side with his knees bent, then got back in, and sat next to him. I dug the lantern out of his pack and set it on the floor turned to its lowest setting, then managed to pull the edge of the tarp back down and close the door. Xel had hopped into the car and was sitting in the front passenger seat. We were hidden for the time being. The interior smelled musty, like mildew and motor oil. Loki lay still now, his seizure over but still unconscious. I put a hand on his back, feeling his breathing.
“What now, Xel? He won’t be able to travel for a while.”
“Just a moment. This vehicle has been retrofitted with an onboard computer and fusion drive to replace the original internal combustion engine. I am attempting to interface. The communication protocol is very old. I am searching for a proper network stack. Yes. Found it. Installing. Good. It requests authentication. Give me a moment. The cryptographic scheme is out of date. It was broken years ago. Working. Working. I have defeated it. Now, this is not a modern operating computer. It can’t drive the car in full automatic mode. It only assists when it recognizes danger. It also collects data and performs basic functions. You will have to drive, Tara.”
“What?”
“You will have to operate the car.”
“I don’t know how!”
“It is our best hope. You will have to try. I will assist you with instructions. If we do not get as far away from here as possible in the time we have, they will surely find us and send us back. I will be factory reset. You will have the device implanted. We can only guess what will happen to Loki.”
I crawled into the front and sat in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead. I was terrified and at the end of my patience. It was unfair. Why was it me who had to run? Why was I singled out and pushed from place to place with no control over my own life? It felt like I was just reacting, like a bug that ran when you turned on a light. I could feel my face flushing. A wild anger was burning in me. I knew Xel was right, though. We had to get away. I was gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles were white.
“Okay. I’ll try,” I said through gritted teeth. “What do I need to do?”
“First, remove the tarp.”
“What if the people in the house wake up?”
“We must be very quiet. I have just pulled a diagram of this house from the city property database. The bedrooms appear to be in the rear.”
The tarp was heavy but I managed to drag it off. When I was back inside and seated in the driver seat, Xel commanded the computer to power up the car. It came to life with a low hum, lights glowing on the dashboard.
“What kind of car is this?” I asked.
“Volvo One-Sixty-Four-e,” he replied. “Built in 1975. Step on the left pedal with your right foot then move the lever there to R.”
The car bucked and lurched as I backed it slowly down the driveway, pumping the brake pedal every time it felt out of control. I turned the wheel too far and almost took out a shrub as I made the backward turn onto the street. Luckily, there were no other cars on the road. It was the middle of the night. Xel gave directions and I followed them, driving haltingly through the tree-lined, residential streets. The car felt incredibly heavy--like a giant rolling brick. I slowly became more accustomed to the steering, learning how far I needed to turn the wheel. I was still stepping too hard on the brake pedal though, making the car lurch with every stop. Driving was stressful but also thrilling in a dangerous kind of way. It took every bit of concentration I had. If we hadn’t been on the run from the police, with Loki in the back, his face slack and drained looking in the light from the streetlamps, if it had been different circumstances--thirty years ago and me just learning to drive for the first time--it might have been kind of fun.
Soon we came to the downtown area of Eugene, and we had to move onto larger streets with some occasional traffic. The other cars were all autocabs though. They were programmed to keep a safe distance. One of them passed us in the left lane, and I caught a brief glimpse of a man’s face, peering at us curiously out the rear window.
Following Xel’s directions, I drove along Franklin Boulevard with the big buildings and lights of the university on our right, crossed a bridge over the dark, swift water of the Willamette River, then passed through a derelict area that had once been downtown Springfield. Before long, we were outside of the populated areas, traveling along Highway 126 in the dark. I was going slow but even so, the trees seemed to blur on either side, rushing past. Every so often, we would pass an old building or house. There were no lights though. Just the headlamps of our car, illuminating the road ahead. My tension eased a bit.
“We made it out of the city,” I said.
“Yes,” Xel answered, hopping into the passenger seat from the back. “Loki is sleeping but his brain activity is still abnormal. I’m afraid this seizure is worse than the others we have seen.”
“What are we going to do? We need to get him help.”
“I don’t know. I thought this would be the best direction to go. They will assume we are heading north, toward the quarantine zone, to find your grandmother. Or back south. Probably not east. We will have to abandon this vehicle soon. They will search for us by floater when they find we have run again.”
“We’ll drive until early morning then. We’ll have to hide the car somewhere while it’s still dark then camp nearby. We need to make sure somebody will find the car though. It seems like the owner put a lot of work into restoring it. I feel bad about stealing it.”
“Yes. We can find a way. I also feel bad about it. We had very little choice, though.”
“I can’t believe I was so stupid, Xel. Why did we go to Wen? I should have thought of the possibility that they might contact her. If my grandmother was home, it would have been even worse. They would have found a way to force her to turn against us too.”
“Perhaps.”
“Thanks for hacking her network and warning us.” I shuddered, thinking about what would have happened.
“Of course.”
“I’ve been thinking, Xel. It came to me the night before last actually--something I forgot with all the chaos. The day before my mom took me to the psychiatrist, I got a weird message. It was just some GPS coordinates. It said something like ‘freedom and safety’ then just had the coordinates, and it came from an anonymous account. Then I got another one right after I decided to run, but I didn’t read it. Looking back now, it almost seems like somebody was trying to warn me. Maybe they were offering help.”
“Interesting,” Xel responded. “I would be suspicious of a strange message from an anonymous source. May I access your specs and look at it?”
“Sure. They’re in the side pocket of my pack. The messages were downloaded so you should be able to find them. I need to leave the data connection off in case they can track me that way.”
Xel jumped into the back of the car. A minute later, he jumped back into the front with the case in his mouth. It was scary to take a hand off the wheel but I quickly reached over, opened the case, pressed the contact to power them up, and put them on. They would not work unless I was wearing them since they were locked to my biometrics. I saw an alert asking to allow access and quickly gave the okay. After that, I put them in audio only mode. It was hard enough to drive the car without distractions.
“The messages are interesting,” Xel said after a while. “The sender has skillfully hidden himself by passing the data through proxies and hacked servers. I cannot determine where they came from. The coordinates given are approximately seventy miles northeast from here. This is odd since the message was sent before we decided to come here.”
“Yeah, weird. What does
the second one say?”
“It lists the same coordinates and simply says ‘Find your way to us. We can help.’”
“What do you think?”
“It seems more than coincidental that you received these messages exactly when you needed help and a place to go. It’s as if somebody, somewhere, knew what was happening and reached out. However, it could also be a trap set for you by the Xia Yu doctors anticipating that you might run. Why would they direct you to the Pacific Northwest cluster though? If they thought you might run away, they would give you coordinates close by. Somewhere easier and quicker. It does not seem logical that they would do this at all, though. They did not have any reason to think that you would be suspicious.”
“Could it be my grandmother? Maybe she knew. Maybe my mom or dad talked to her about it.”
“Possible.”
“I have a feeling about this, Xel. I want to go there, to the coordinates. We’ll have to ditch the car and go on foot. We can scope it out. If it seems like a trap, we can turn around.”
“Let’s discuss it with Loki when he is awake.”
“Okay. Does this work?” I asked, reaching out and turning a knob on the dashboard. The old fashioned radio lit up and a low sound of static filled the car. “How do you operate it?”
“Turn the knob on the right to adjust the frequency. I doubt we will find any stations though. The commercial radio stations died out years ago.”
Keeping my eyes on the road, I turned the knob all the way to the left then slowly moved the pointer across the dial. It was almost at the end when the static broke up and a tinny, twangy sound of guitar notes replaced it. A woman was singing. At first, the words were mixed with patches of static, and I couldn’t understand them, but then the sound cleared up for a moment and I heard her sing:
“I raised my head and set myself
In the eye of the storm, in the belly of a whale.
My spirit stood on solid ground.
I’ll be at peace when they lay me down”
The words and the way she sang them struck me. I felt like I was in the eye of the storm, out on that road, restlessly wandering, buffeted, and pushed from one place to another.
“I wonder who is broadcasting out here? It must be a hobbyist,” Xel mused.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I like the music though.”
I left the dial there and the music continued through bursts of static--a lonesome melody reaching out across the night as we drove deeper into the wilderness of old Oregon.
Chapter 13
The Homestead
Near daybreak, Xel spotted an old garage just off the highway. I slowed, turned the car around, and drove back to it. The road had become more and more uneven throughout the night with patches buckled by tree roots and big pot holes, with branches and other debris scattered across the surface. Several times, I had seen the eyes of nocturnal animals glowing in the headlights. At the end, I was driving a mere five or ten miles per hour. Getting much farther by car would have been impossible anyway.
Following Xel’s instructions, I stopped, moved the lever to park, and set the break. Even in the twilight of early morning, I could see that the garage was not in great shape. It had space for two cars but the roof had fallen in on one side. The side that still had a roof had no door, just a gaping frame beyond which was a cement floor scattered with leaves. There was a jumble of old machinery and broken furniture at the back, but it looked big enough to house the car. I got back in and carefully pulled forward until the front of the car bumped up against the pile of junk. I got out then and checked the back. It was all the way inside--hidden from above. Still, I decided it would be better to hide it as completely as possible. Rummaging through the junk pile, I found an old sheet of plastic, yellowed and stained with paint drips. I covered the back of the car with the drop cloth then piled as much other junk as I could move around the car to camouflage it more.
I was exhausted. My eyes felt gritty and my body ached with lack of sleep. I still needed to set up camp and somehow get Loki out of the car and inside our tent. Xel came back from scoping out the area and told me there was a copse of big fir trees nearby, down a slope from the road and dense enough to hide us from floaters above.
I followed him there with the two packs and set up the tent. It was about a hundred yards from the garage. I went back, shivering in the early morning damp, and opened the rear car door. Loki was still passed out, breathing slowly. I sat him up and managed to turn him around. He felt solid but not so heavy as before. He hadn’t lost weight--I had grown stronger. I put my arms around his chest and pulled him as gently as possible out of the car. His head rested on my chest as I dragged him, step by staggering step, all the way to the copse and into the tent. By the time I laid him down, the muscles in my arms were burning with the exertion. I flopped down on my own sleeping bag.
Xel sat in the entrance to the tent. “You should try to get some water in him. Sit him up and drip it into his mouth.”
I did as he suggested. Loki stirred, eyes moving under the lids but not opening. He muttered something when I lowered him back down. I zipped the tent closed and turned on the heater built into the lantern to keep him warm.
“My sensors still show abnormal brain activity. Small spikes followed by slow delta waves. I will keep watch. You should sleep.”
“Yeah,” I replied, rubbing my eyes and yawning. “I’m pretty tired.”
***
It was past noon when I woke up. Loki was still sleeping next to me and the lantern was pumping out warmth. I stretched and sat up. Dappled sunlight danced on the roof of the tent as a breeze moved the branches above. The tent door was partially unzipped. I poked my head out, looking around for Xel, but didn’t see him. My stomach was growling with hunger. I dug through both packs, but we were out of rations. There was just one small packet of dried fruit and nuts left. I decided to wait to eat it until Loki woke up. He seemed calmer. I shook him gently but he wouldn’t wake. It seemed to make him agitated so I stopped. I was worried. He had always slept after a seizure but he hadn’t stayed asleep for so long. I stuck my head out again and saw Xel prowling through the trees, approaching the tent.
“There is an inhabited dwelling nearby,” he said, stopping a few feet from the tent. “There are goats and chickens. I saw a small child and a woman. The house is well kept. We should avoid them and move on from here as soon as possible.”
“Loki still hasn’t woken, though. I’m worried about him, Xel. We can’t go anywhere until he wakes up and can walk.”
“Yes. I’m worried too.”
“Also, we’re out of food.”
“I saw several species of edible mushrooms. There is chickweed, and goosefoot--both edible greens. I can show you where they are. Also, we are close to a river. The Mackenzie. There is a shallow area nearby where you could fish. There is a kit with hooks and fishing line in Loki’s pack.”
“I guess we’d better go gather what we can.”
We left Loki sleeping in the tent, and I followed Xel into the woods. Xel looked at home among the trees and undergrowth, springing from root to rock to fallen log, paws soft and noiseless on the forest floor. He showed me the mushrooms and plants, but we decided to harvest them on the way back from the river. It wasn’t far. We had to bushwhack down to the bank, my feet sinking deep into the layer of decaying pine needles and dead leaves that blanketed the ground. When we reached the river’s edge, we found a broad shallows with a swift current flowing in the middle. There were several large boulders in the water near the bank. I stepped carefully on smaller stones and made my way to a mossy boulder that looked comfortable enough to spend some time sitting on. I had a good stick and, in an old tin can I found by the road, a couple of worms dug out of the forest floor. I hadn’t ever fished before but Xel gave me instructions and soon I had the line in the water with a worm on the hook and was gently moving it back and forth, hoping for a bite.
I sat there for about fifteen minutes, moving
the line, pulling it in, casting it back out. Finally, I felt something yank at the line. Then another yank.
“Pull it in slowly,” Xel advised.
I took the fishing line in my hands and slowly gathered it in. I could tell there was no fish on the end though, even before the wormless hook emerged from the shining river.
“Fish ate the worm but didn’t get hooked,” I said, holding up the hook.
“We have some smart fish around here.”
I jumped at the deep, male voice, and almost fell off the boulder. Whirling around, I saw a man standing about fifteen feet away, hand on a sapling growing near the river bank. He was dressed in old jeans and a flannel shirt. He looked middle-aged--maybe about my parents’ age. His hair was long, tied back, speckled with gray. “They don’t get caught easy. Probably not with a stick and ten feet of fishing line anyway. Best time is early morning. You might have a chance then.”
Xel was hunkered down in front of me, ready to spring. He growled low and threatening.
“Whoa,” the man said, holding up both hands. “I don’t mean any harm. Not every day I see a girl with a tame bobcat fishing in my river. We don’t see much of anyone around here to tell the truth. I just wanted to say hello.”
“Who are you?” Xel asked.
The man’s jaw dropped, and he stared for several seconds before responding. “Talking bobcat? You must be AI--robot cat.”
“Yes, with very sharp claws,” Xel answered.
The man held up his hands again. “Not looking for any trouble,” he said. “That friend of yours back at your camp needs some help, though. I took a look in your tent. Thought nobody was home. My wife is an herbal healer. She can help him maybe.”
My heart jumped in my chest. Quickly, though, I controlled myself, taking a deep breath. “We can’t. We’re just passing through.”
“Don’t worry about me,” the man answered, as if reading my thoughts. “I’m not one to report anyone to the authorities. I don’t have much to do with any governments or police. My name’s Jed. My house is just down the river. Come knock on the door if you change your mind. I’ll ask my wife to make some extra dinner tonight just in case.” He backed away, turning, and walked off without a backward look.
The Place Inside the Storm Page 13
