After the End

by Amy Plum

  “You’ve got who, Miles?” my dad asks testily.

  “I’ve got the girl. The Alaskan. She broke my phone. That’s why I haven’t been able to call.”

  There is silence on the other end of the line, which is very atypical for my dad. He’s usually all freak-out and immediate action, so this throws me off. “I know it’s her, Dad. She’s got the star thing in her eye. Dark hair, although it’s cut short now. She’s around five foot five and says her name’s Juneau. She lived in this apocalyptic hippie cult out in the Alaskan wilderness.”

  Dad clears his throat. “Has she mentioned Amrit?”

  “What’s Amrit?”

  “Amrit’s a drug I’m trying to acquire,” he says impatiently.

  “No. See, that’s the thing. I know she matches your description, but she can’t be the one you want. If you’re looking for an industrial spy, she’s definitely not involved in something like that.”

  “What makes you think that?” Dad asks, but there’s something in his voice. It’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s teaching me a lesson. His crafty voice, making me figure a problem out for myself. Like . . . Of course she doesn’t work for a drug company, but tell me why.

  My dad is waiting for an answer. I want to tell him that she’s not a spy because she’s a brainwashed cult member, but I’m not going to go into the whole Yara crap. It’ll just provoke him. I sigh. “She’s not working with a pharm company, Dad. Or involved in any espionage. She’s like wilderness survival girl just trying to find her dad. If you want someone to kill and cook a rabbit for you, or tell you what time it is by looking at the sun, she’s your girl. Otherwise . . .”

  “Miles, tell me exactly where you are.” My father had put his business voice on. Succinct. To the point. No arguing.

  “The El Dorado Motel, somewhere in southern Idaho not far from Utah.”

  “Good. You stay right there. My men are still in Seattle. They can be there before sunrise. Make sure you keep her there. Don’t let her get away.”

  “Go ahead and send your guys, Dad. But she’s not going to get away. It’s not like I’m holding her hostage or anything. She can’t even drive. I swear she’ll be here in the morning.”

  “Okay, just hold on, Miles. I’m going to get my men on the other line. Don’t hang up.”

  It’s started to get chilly, and I wish I had worn my jacket. I look up at the moon, just beginning to emerge above the tree line. Juneau could probably look at that and not only tell me what time it is, but what the weather will be like tomorrow. The magic stuff is a load of shit, but it’s true that she could probably survive if she was stranded on the moon. She’s brave, determined and . . . fierce. I’d give anything to have even half her know-how. Why’d she have to go and ruin it all with the Yara crap? I feel a twinge of guilt twist in my gut but remind myself that last night she not only fed me some homemade drugs but diverted my attention from what she was doing by kissing me, and I push the feeling aside.

  I hear a rapping on the glass, and I swing around to see one of the truckers standing inches away from me on the other side of the window. He does a charades thing where he acts like he’s driving a car, manipulating an invisible steering wheel with his hands.

  I shrug at him and think, Stupid drunk redneck, and then notice that he’s pointing toward the parking lot. His buddy behind him is cracking up, pointing in the same direction.

  I look toward where they’re gesturing and see my car backing up slowly, as the brakes pump on, off, on, off. The automatic overhead light is still on inside the car, and I see Juneau’s face illuminated as she pops the headlights on and throws the gear into drive. For a split second our eyes meet, and her stricken expression tells me she must have overheard the entire phone conversation. She witnessed my betrayal.

  With motor revving, wheels spinning, and gravel spraying, she swerves wildly out of the parking lot onto the two-lane road and screeches off in a dust cloud of fury.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  37

  JUNEAU

  I AM NUMB WITH SHOCK. MILES BETRAYED ME. I shouldn’t be surprised. Frankie said he needed me. But I never imagined it was to hand me over to his father, who is for some reason searching for me. What’s that even mean, “working with a farm company”? That must be why Miles asked if I worked for anyone.

  I want to run over every conversation we’ve had in my memory. Pick them all apart. But I need to concentrate on driving. I’ve watched how Miles handles the car for the last four days, and, although backing up was a bit jerky, I’m going forward just fine. I test the pull of the steering wheel to see how much movement it takes to turn the wheels and then press the right-hand pedal down to the ground. I need to get as far away from here as fast as I can because now I am running from not just one pursuer but two. Miles’s father’s “guys” are apparently on their way, and Whit is still out there. And if Miles calls the police to report me stealing his car, there will be even more people for me to escape from.

  For a brief moment, I consider stopping and hiding somewhere close to the motel. It would be like hunting deer. As long as you’re motionless and downwind, the animal won’t see you even if you’re standing right in front of them. That might work for Miles’s father’s men, but if I stay still, Whit will find me easily enough.

  Miles knows we were headed to Salt Lake City. He knows I’ll follow the prophecy. So I just need to get there before him.

  I am hungry and tired and boiling with anger, but there’s a thrill working its way through me as I realize that I am behind the wheel of a car, moving faster than I ever did on the sledge with the huskies. I imagine the car around me disappearing, and me seated in the air shooting forward at—I check the speed—eighty miles an hour.

  I let go of the wheel with one hand and ease it over toward the door. I touch the window control and immediately feel the rush of cold wind through my hair. Mountain-pure, cold wind whipping my face, blowing away that kicked-in-the-stomach feeling I had when I walked up behind Miles and heard what he was saying on the phone.

  Which must have been how he felt when he discovered how you used him. The thought comes unwelcome, but I ignore it. Let it flow with the wind. I don’t know what I believe anymore. What’s right and what’s wrong. For me, there are no more rules. I will do anything I need to rescue my clan, no matter who it hurts.

  I drive down the two-lane road over the border of Idaho into Utah. Though I’m tempted by every sign that points to junctions with the highway, I am determined to stay on the small roads. Miles-as-oracle told me that Whit knew where the clan was. And that he was on my tail. And that our paths would cross again at some point. I want to get as close to my clan as possible before that happens.

  I follow the dual yellow beam of my headlights, which from time to time reflect from eyes of animals on the side of the road. My thoughts flash back to Miles, and I feel a sharp sting of regret remembering the look on his face when he realized what I had done. I push that thought away, but another takes its place. The empty look on his face when he told me about his mother’s mental illness and abandonment.

  I don’t understand how mankind can watch their loved ones get sick, when following the Yara ensures health and longevity. I remember asking my father how men could willfully destroy the earth and destroy themselves. How something as precious as life could be treated with such disdain.

  “The answer was right there in front of them,” my father said. “But they chose to be blind. They chose temporary ease over long-term stability.” And now that I am out in the very world he was talking about, seeing the effects of not being one with nature, I understand what he meant.

  I used all my free time in Seattle reading about current events, catching up with what happened to the world since the 1984 EB left off. The world is as my parents had described its condition leading up to the war. That part was
true. Whole species of animals becoming extinct. Natural disasters becoming commonplace. Diseases running rampant . . . diseases that could be avoided in a healthy setting, following the Yara, treating nature as it should be treated and receiving the reward. Why, when offered practical immortality, would man turn his back on it?

  Then it hits me. Miles acted so weird when I insisted that my father hadn’t aged that I didn’t press the point. He treated his mother’s illness as normal. He thinks of disease and death as unavoidable. Reading and Conjuring seem like magic tricks to him. They don’t know. . . .

  From the way my parents and Whit described the world, it sounded like a choice mankind had made—when presented with the Yara, they rejected it. But what if they had never known about it at all?

  In that case, our “escape” from the nonexistent World War III was like abandoning ship when things were at their most dire. But why would they do that? Why couldn’t they live among “nonbelievers” and try to change things for the better with their knowledge?

  Why not work from inside the machine to change it instead of running away and waiting for end times to destroy it so they could rebuild it pure and new? It just doesn’t make sense. I know deep down that my parents and the elders are good people, even if they lied to us. So why would they sit by on the sidelines and watch the earth destroy itself? It almost seems like they hold a secret they don’t want anyone to know.

  The gas-pump light on the dashboard flashes red. The dial underneath it is on the E. “E for empty,” I remember Miles quipping as he pulled over to get gas. I wonder how far I can drive before the car stops working.

  The only buildings in sight are barns set way off the road. I drive for another fifteen minutes, keeping my eye on the gas needle, and begin to worry that I won’t make it to a gas station in time and will be stranded in the middle of the Utah wilderness. I have no doubt that I could survive until I made it to a town. But if I strike out on foot, I will be a sitting duck for my pursuers—especially Whit, who could find me in mere hours.

  I see yet another sign for the main highway, and this time I follow it. My heart is in my throat as I turn onto the entrance ramp. I’ve been so worried about running across Whit that when I don’t see the big green vehicle from when I Read Poe the moment I pull onto the highway, I feel a surge of relief. And I feel even better when I see a sign indicating that there is a gas station ahead.

  In five minutes I’m pulling off into a Shell station lit up from the inside, and the only person there is the girl behind the cash register. I have watched Miles fill the car with gas enough times to figure it out myself, and in no time I am standing at the counter, handing the cashier a hundred-dollar bill. I left the sunglasses Miles bought me in the car, so I stare downward to hide my eyes, but the girl behind the register doesn’t even look at me.

  I’m feeling so jittery that when a car turns into the station, I’m ready to make a dash for the bathrooms. But when I see that it’s a small red car and a woman in a cowboy hat steps out, I breathe easy and walk back to Miles’s car.

  I don’t want to stay here, out in the open, any longer than I need to, but I’ve been driving for two hours and was already starving when Miles and I arrived at the motel. One minute is all I need to dig through the trunk and pull out a couple of apples, a bag of walnuts, and a bottle of water. I toss them into the passenger side and go back to close the trunk when I hear a familiar squawk. I look up to see a black shape hurtling down into the fluorescent-lit station toward me.

  Poe lands on the ground and ruffles his feathers once before squawking again. There’s only one reason that Poe would search me out, and that is if Whit directed him to. Panicking, I pick up the bird and close my eyes. I feel nothing. No connection.

  It is only then that I see the tiny flashing light coming from Poe. I lift him above my head to get a better look and see a metal ring clamped around his leg with something electronic attached to it. It must be a device used to locate the bird. Whit sent Poe to find me and will follow this machine’s signals straight to me.

  I try to crush the metallic tag between my fingers. No use. I remember the way I broke Miles’s phone—the fire that I Conjured to melt the insides—and try to repeat it. Nothing happens. My heart seizes with despair. I am no longer connected to the Yara. I feel naked. Powerless.

  The sound of screeching tires comes from the highway. I turn to see an army-green Jeep with three passengers swerve across the highway from the left lane in order to catch the exit to the gas station.

  I take a split second to assess my strength against theirs. I have no doubt Whit’s companions are armed. It’s three against one, and I have only a crossbow and a knife. The odds are against me.

  I drop Poe, scoop up my pack from where I had set it on the ground next to the car, and leaping over the gas station’s cement barrier, run at full speed into the pitch-black night.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  38

  MILES

  DAD’S SECURITY DETAIL TAKES A PRIVATE JET TO Twin Falls and arrives at the hotel in less than two hours. They introduce themselves as Redding and Portman but don’t need to say much more—I see them standing around security-guarding every time I visit Dad’s office. “Do you have any idea where she was headed?” Portman asks me, leaning over the seat as we speed away from the El Dorado.

  I pause. “She was heading toward Salt Lake City,” I admit, feeling a pang of guilt when I think of the expression on Juneau’s face as she drove off in my car. Is this just another betrayal? No, I decide. I’m helping her. Once she talks to Dad, this manhunt will be called off and he’ll go after the people who actually do have the information he needs.

  While Redding drives, Portman flips between trucker CB ham radio stations and the police scanner. We’re on the road less than fifteen minutes when a blue BMW is identified as abandoned at an interstate highway gas station about an hour away in the direction of Salt Lake. The plate number matches my own.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  39

  JUNEAU

  MY EYES HAVEN’T ADJUSTED TO THE DARKNESS. I am running blind through low scrub, with my pack thrown over one shoulder and my hands stretched in front of me in case I run into anything. But there is nothing to run into, just knee-high grasses slapping my jeans with a hissing swish, and occasional bushes crackling under my shoes.

  I don’t dare look back. I’m certain they saw me under the bright lights of the Shell station, and this pastureland offers nowhere to hide. I see a dark wall rising slowly to meet me, and after a few minutes realize that I’m headed toward a tree line.

  I hear shouts behind me and am glad for the waist-high barrier around the gas station’s parking lot. If it weren’t for that, Whit and his men could have driven off-road right after me. But from the sounds of it, they decided to follow on foot. The trees get closer, and my vision is clearer now that the fluorescent glare has worn off.

  As I reach the first of the trees, I allow myself a split second to look back, and see two bulky forms lumbering across the pasture, vaguely in my direction, flashlight gleams bobbing up and down as they run. They haven’t seen me, or they would be headed directly my way. I take off through the trees, leaping over broken branches and bushes, headed in no particular direction besides away from them.

  The trees turn out not to be woods, but rather clumps of evergreens separated by stretches of barren grassland. There is no good cover—I am exposed.

  And then it happens: I step into some kind of hole, and my trapped foot remains stationary while the rest of me keeps going. I am blinded by a white blaze of pain.

  Crouching, I use my fingers to pull the dirt away from my foot until it is free. Although I can barely see, I can feel that the hole is
a big one. Fox or badger den, I think. Making a split-second decision, I grope around until my fingers touch a fallen branch, and I use it to dig out the tunnel. Driven by fear, I uncover the empty animal den in less than a minute and, dragging my injured foot behind me, gather the nearest sticks and branches.

  I throw my pack in the three-foot hole and then lower myself down into it, lying on my side with my pack at my stomach, curling up fetal-style around it. Reaching up to my pile of evergreen branches, I sweep the stack over and around me until I—and the hole—am completely covered. And then I wait.

  Now that I am motionless, my ankle throbs with pain. I want to touch it, to feel if something is broken, but I’m afraid that any movement will shift the branches and uncover my hiding spot. I bite my lip until I taste blood. Every crackle of leaves, every creaking branch is amplified in my ears as I listen for my pursuers. And what seems a mere moment after I am hidden, they arrive. One is close by—I hear the plodding of heavy boots. From a distance I hear the other one yell, “There’s no one out here. Like I said, she went the other way.”

  The nearby footsteps stop, then shuffle around as the man sweeps the area with his flashlight. A ray of it pierces down through the pine needles into my den. But I am hidden well enough that he sees nothing, because his footsteps get fainter as he moves farther away.

  I wonder where Whit is. Probably back at the car, letting his henchmen do his dirty work. Where did he even meet these people? What happened to the peace-loving dependable man I’ve known my whole life? For what possible reason would he have my entire clan kidnapped and imprisoned? And why can’t he just leave it at that? Why does he need me?

  Acid rage burns inside my chest. I want to scream but clench my fists instead, so hard that my fingernails dig painfully into my palms.