Gently she said, “Hey, Pearson did say you weren’t supposed to talk to them, her, Terra, anymore.”
“She hasn’t contacted me again,” Anaya said. “Not yet.”
“So you would talk to her again?”
“I’m the only one they’re talking to, Petra. This is important, even if Pearson’s too dim to know it. And I want to do something to help.”
“Geez, we haven’t even been here twenty-four hours,” Petra said. “Do we have to save the world right away? I just gave blood. Doesn’t that count?”
Anaya laughed. “And we did do a lot of exercise in the bunker.”
“Didn’t you set a world record or something?”
“Two, actually.”
“Oh-ho, listen to her!” Petra said, giving her a friendly shove.
“Don’t mean to brag,” said her friend. “But I can jump on more tires than anyone else alive.”
“That is so useful,” said Petra.
“Especially in today’s tough job market.”
“And don’t forget your other world record, for being the hairiest girl on the planet.”
Anaya put on a shocked face and tickled her so hard she fell bum-first into the bathtub. It took them both a good long time to stop laughing.
“Oh, that felt good,” Petra said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Uh-huh,” Anaya said, then gave a sigh. “Doesn’t it feel weird being here, though, just hanging out?”
Doing nothing. Petra knew how her friend felt. Everyone else on Deadman’s Island was already incredibly busy. Mr. Riggs was helping Dr. Weber in the lab, and her own dad was working in the base hospital, which was overflowing with injured soldiers and people from all over Vancouver. Her mom had volunteered to go out on search-and-rescue missions with Pearson’s soldiers, and Mrs. Riggs had offered her services as a pilot to reach coastal communities.
As far as world cities went, Vancouver was lucky. It was in a Spray Zone. But the plants had had plenty of time to creep and grow in small, dark places. There were still a million buildings with vines and pit plants that needed clearing.
Petra knew she should be raring to go, chipping in on the war effort, but right now she wanted to do nothing. She felt guilty having a private bathroom, and a bedroom with a window, and a really nice soft bed—but not guilty enough to give it up and bunk with all the other hybrid kids in the general barracks, four to six in a room.
“We should hang out with the others,” she said to Anaya. “Have dinner in the mess hall tonight, maybe.”
“Good idea,” said Anaya. “It must be so hard, being on their own.”
“Yeah, and it’s not like everyone here’s thrilled to see us.”
She’d caught some hostile looks from the soldiers and overheard a few calling them cryptos and even crypto scum. Despite Pearson’s change of heart, plenty of people still thought of them as freaks or, worse, enemies.
“You smell that?” Anaya asked, sniffing.
“What?”
“Pine needles. Is it the cream?”
Petra shook her head. Then her friend’s eyes got a faraway look. Her hand touched the edge of the sink for support.
“Anaya, you okay?” Anaya’s knees were trembling. She looked like she was having some kind of seizure. Petra helped lower her friend to the floor. “I’m going to get help!”
“No, wait,” Anaya gasped. “She’s talking to me.”
BEFORE, IT HAD ALWAYS been when she was asleep.
Awake, it was much more wrenching—and frightening.
The smell of soil filled her nostrils, and she tasted pine needles. At the edge of her vision pulsed an amber light, and she knew she was being greeted. Instinctively she closed her eyes to focus.
Dimly she heard Petra saying, “Pearson said not to talk to her! Anaya!”
How could she not talk to Terra? The colonel didn’t understand how urgent these mind conversations were, and how personal. Maybe she could block them, like you could block the silent talking. But it would be difficult with Terra, like barring a door against an elephant. And anyway, she didn’t want to. She wanted to talk.
—Hello.
This was new: an actual word greeting.
—Hello, Anaya replied.
—You are in a new location.
—Yes.
She almost told Terra where she was, but Pearson would be furious if she said she was on a military base. Maybe Terra already knew anyway.
—Are you safe? Terra asked.
—Yes. Are you?
—We will come soon.
—The invasion? Anaya asked, thinking of all those strange black wombs filled with cryptogen soldiers.
—No. Three of us only. To collect the substance.
—What substance?
—You.
The word sent an icy surge through her veins. She was a substance? About to be collected like a lab sample?
Terra seemed to sense her alarm and confusion, because right away Anaya started seeing images.
Veined fleshy walls pumped vigorously. A heart! She was inside a heart, and now she was traveling through a tunnel. An artery filled with blood! And it seemed like her attention was being directed at the blood itself, and all the cells and chemicals and proteins contained within it.
—Blood, Anaya said, naming it.
—Blood.
—Blood is the substance?
—Your blood.
So was this the help Terra wanted all along? Her blood?
—Why? she asked.
—To create the weapon.
SETH LED THE WAY across the rail yard, all five of them wearing their protective gear. Work crews unloaded the boxcars with forklifts. The workers were dressed pretty much the same as them, and Seth hoped they wouldn’t attract attention. Siena had a sling, but Seth figured broken bones were nothing unusual these days. And they all had their visors down, so no one would notice the fact that Charles’s face was practically all hair.
In the distance, a worker lifted a hand in greeting. Seth waved back and kept walking. He wanted to get out of here.
Underfoot crackled the yellowed stalks of dead cryptogenic grass and vines.
—We must be in one of those Spray Zones, he silently told the others. Look.
Up ahead was a parking lot where a couple of semitrailers were being loaded. Trucks meant roads. Roads safe enough to drive on. As they passed closer, he looked at the license plates on the trucks.
—Washington State, Charles said. We know where we are now.
—But where? Darren asked. It’s a pretty big state.
—Near a city, Seth said. He’d lived in enough crappy neighborhoods to know that rail yards were usually on the outskirts.
The road led to a high fenced gate. Beside it was a security booth. With dismay Seth saw there was someone manning it.
—What do we do? Siena asked.
—Keep walking, or it looks suspicious.
Would the guard buzz the gate open, or would they need to talk to him? Seth didn’t want to talk to anyone.
—I could stun him, Esta said.
—Wait.
Behind them a truck honked, and they moved to the side as it rumbled past.
—Maybe we can get out with him, Seth said.
The truck stopped at the guard booth. Seth saw the driver lean out and speak to the guard, and then the gate slid open.
—Keep walking, Seth said, following the truck as it began to pull slowly through the gate.
The guard stepped out of the security booth. There was a gun holstered in his belt and a walkie-talkie with a shoulder mic. Seth’s pulse beat hard in his throat.
—I’ll stun him, Esta said.
“You guys need transport?” the guard asked.
Seth was still trying to think of the best reply when Darren said, “Nah. They’re picking us up on the other side.”
“Okay. Watch out for the birds.”
Darren tapped his helmet. “We’re good.”
The
guard retreated inside his booth, and Seth kept walking, forcing himself not to look back. He heard the gate clang shut behind him.
—Good one, he told Darren.
They came out on the highway. Off to the right, Seth saw the truck driving away. It was the only vehicle in sight. To the left, the highway was completely blocked with fencing and concrete barriers and a huge sign that said:
DANGER
YOU ARE LEAVING THE SPRAY ZONE
Beyond the fencing, it was like another world. Black grass soared high. Golden pollen glittered in the air. Vines snaked through defeated trees and climbed power poles, the lines snapped under their weight. The road itself was a cratered mess. Snarled vines grew through the windows of abandoned cars and over a jackknifed semi.
Seth sensed a restless, relentless hunger to all of it. Already, a few vines had twined through the fence and started to obscure the warning sign itself.
“Holy crap,” said Darren, staring out at the cryptogenic jungle. “So we’ve got out there or in here. This is not a hard choice to make, is it?”
No one said anything, not even Esta.
“There might be something good in those cars, though,” Seth said.
“I’m not going in there,” Darren said.
“Stay here, then,” Seth said. They could use a phone, money, food. He grabbed a long piece of rebar and squeezed through a gap in the fencing. Esta and Siena followed. Esta rolled back her sleeves to expose the feathers on her forearms. Seth did the same.
He banged the ground ahead of him with the rebar, checking for pit plants. The vines across the asphalt were mostly still, and he tried to avoid stepping on them, but it was hard because there were so many.
The first car they came to didn’t have anything interesting inside, so they moved on to a minivan with its sliding door wide open. Through the driver’s window, Seth spotted a portable GPS unit, still suctioned to the windshield. Gingerly he opened the door, leaned in, and snapped it off.
“There’s a knapsack,” he heard Siena say as she climbed into the back.
The knapsack was on the back seat, and Siena grabbed the strap. Only it wasn’t a strap but a black vine, and immediately it coiled around her wrist and tugged. She was pulled deeper into the minivan, crying out as she fell on her broken collarbone.
With a bang it was suddenly darker, and Seth realized the vines had somehow pulled the rear door shut. The entire back seat flipped down, revealing a pit plant in the cargo area. Its lips trembled open as more of its vines twined around Siena to pull her in.
Seth dropped the GPS and plunged between the front seats, slashing with his feathers at the tangle of vines. He severed one after the other, but still Siena was getting dragged closer to the pit plant. Light poured in as Esta wrenched open the rear door and grabbed Siena, pulling hard. Seth slashed a few more vines, and Esta hauled Siena out of the van. Amazingly, Siena managed to snatch the knapsack on her way out. Seth scrambled to the driver’s seat, got the GPS, and then threw himself out the door.
“What happened?” Charles asked when the three of them pushed back through the fencing and joined the others on the safe side of the road.
“Pit plant,” Seth said.
“Hope it was worth it,” Darren said.
Siena was paler than ever and winced with every step. As Charles adjusted her sling, she clutched the knapsack with her good arm like she never planned to let go.
“Can we check what’s inside?” Seth asked her gently.
Reluctantly she handed it over. “Maybe there’s some painkillers.”
From the main pouch Seth pulled out a couple of bottles of water and a ham sandwich in a ziplock bag. It made him sad suddenly, imagining someone going to the trouble of making a sandwich and cutting off the crusts. Darren opened the bag hungrily, took a sniff, and winced.
“Rotten,” he said, and tossed it on the ground.
“There’s some granola bars,” Seth said, rummaging some more.
He opened one and passed it to Siena, then offered the others around. Charles and Darren took them. He was still full after the insect meat. He opened a bottle of water and had a long drink. He felt good. Strong. Maybe he was just happy to be outside again.
He unzipped the knapsack’s small outer pouch and found a couple of fives and three twenty-dollar bills.
“That’ll buy us some real food,” said Darren. “Not all of us can eat bug.”
“I’m going to need some razors or hair removal cream,” Charles said, touching his face.
“You’re assuming there are stores open,” Siena said.
Darren shrugged. “If they aren’t, we can break in.”
“Siena needs a doctor,” Charles said.
“What can they do?” Esta said. “You said yourself, it heals on its own.”
“She needs medicine at least. For the pain.”
“Would help if we knew where we were exactly,” Darren said.
“I found this.” Seth pulled the GPS from his pocket. When he switched it on, by some miracle it still had power—and a signal. A blue dot pulsed their location on the map. With two fingers Seth zoomed out.
“Tacoma,” he said as the others gathered around.
“Where’s that?” Esta asked.
“Just below Seattle,” Charles told her. “So we’re not too far from the Canadian border.”
Seth zoomed out some more and saw the familiar outlines of southern British Columbia. He found Salt Spring Island, then crossed the strait to the mainland. His gaze settled on Vancouver.
“And Deadman’s Island is right there, huh?” Darren said, leaning in. “What is it? Like two hundred miles?”
“Turn it off,” said Esta. “Save the battery. We should move. We’ll look weird if we keep standing around.”
The road went only one way, and they started walking. The black grass on either side of the highway was dead and yellow, and there were lots of gravel patches in the asphalt where repair crews must’ve dug out pit plants. A truck passed by on its way to the rail yards and honked its horn at them. Seth heard the drone of a propeller plane and looked up to see one flying low in the distance, mist billowing behind it.
“Herbicide,” he said. Maybe over a neighborhood, or fields of crops.
“Are those birds?” Charles asked, pointing to a different spot in the sky.
It was hard to know. It looked like a flock of small birds, but there was something about the way they moved that didn’t look right to him.
“It’s those mosquito things,” Charles said tightly.
“They can’t hurt us,” Esta said.
They soon disappeared from sight. The road climbed, and at the top of the rise, Seth stopped. He could see for miles. Off to the left were fields, all of them clear of black grass. Some of them had crops, mostly low green things. He thought he recognized corn. Another airplane buzzed low and delivered its payload of herbicide.
Off to the right were the curling roads of a subdivision. The houses were cobwebbed with dead vines, and their lawns and backyards were a patchwork of yellow stubble where the black grass had once thrived. Craters of dead pit plants were everywhere, but there were work crews here and there, filling them with gravel. Seth saw hardly any cars on the road, or any people. But he did spot several police motorcycles.
“What’re those things poking out from the handlebars?” Darren asked.
“Oh, wow, I bet they’re some kind of sonar thing,” said Charles. “So they know if there’s pit plants under the road. That’s so smart.”
“They’re really fighting back here,” Siena said.
There was a genuine hopefulness in her voice, and Seth felt it, too. Fields growing food. Safe roads. People living their lives.
“And check that out,” said Darren, tilting his chin.
Past the subdivision was a shopping plaza. The entire thing was tented with see-through mesh. Probably to keep the mosquito birds out. The parking lot was mostly empty, but lots of people pushed grocery carts and pul
led wagons, going in and out of the superstore. Seth picked out a couple of police cars near the main entrance.
A shopping center open at the end of the world.
Esta said, “We stay clear.”
Seth could see the yearning in the others’ faces and the fierce disapproval in Esta’s. They all looked at him, as if he were the leader.
“We’re disguised,” he decided. “We’ll be okay. We go in, get some painkillers, some food, whatever else we need, and get out.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I WAS VERY CLEAR: no more communications with them,” Colonel Pearson said.
Anaya took another sip of water, her hand trembling slightly. She was still shaken after her conversation with Terra, and by the urgency and strangeness of what she’d been told. She was glad to have Dad’s warm arm around her shoulders.
Mom was there, too, in the living room of the apartment, along with Petra, Sergeant Sumner, and Dr. Weber. They hadn’t needed to call Colonel Pearson; his telecommunications team had already picked up the powerful barrage of radio signals during her conversation with Terra, and he’d appeared at the door, wanting answers.
“She contacted me,” Anaya said. “I couldn’t block her!”
“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t? And why are you referring to it as a she?” Pearson demanded irritably.
“Because I can tell. She’s like me.”
“She’s given it a name,” Petra added.
Anaya turned to her friend. “Why would you tell him that?”
“I thought we weren’t doing secrets anymore!”
“This isn’t a secret,” Anaya shot back. “Just personal.”
“She calls it Terra,” Petra informed the colonel.
For the first time Anaya wondered if Petra might be jealous of her contact with Terra. It didn’t really make sense: Why would Petra want to talk to a cryptogen when she hated being a hybrid? But even when they were little, they’d been competitive.
“She.” Pearson’s mouth compressed in distaste. “And did she say when they were coming?”
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