The ground crunched under my shoes. I would throw myself between Mary and Gabbi while Alden distracted her.
Alden held up a hand. “I’ve been with her everyday for a long time now. She knows me better than anyone at this point. She knows I’ll take care of her.”
Gabbi’s mouth moved, but no words came out. I knew she wanted to deny everything Alden had just said, but she was still pinned to the hood. The manic light in Mary’s eyes shut her up.
Alden bent closer. I held my breath. If Mary bit him, we’d have to give him the Feeb infection from our blood to keep him from turning V.
He inched forward on the hood.
Mary tilted her head like a dog listening closely. He never stopped talking, he never stopped crooning—nonsense about sunrises and song lyrics and gardens and friends.
She pushed her head forward and allowed him to reposition the muzzle over her mouth. Next came the gloves. She held her hands up like a little child being dressed for the snow. He slipped the oven mitts back on. He separated the tape as best he could and re-wrapped it around her wrists.
When he was done, Mary relaxed and backed away. She looked at each of us like she could really see us. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“We should put her in the cab,” Alden said. “She’ll be safe in there.”
For a split second Gabbi faced me and I saw the tears that streamed down her cheeks. All I could think was that even Dr. Ferrad hadn’t figured out to make Mary better yet.
Ricker bustled Hugh out of the cab. Alden led Mary into it. Gabbi volunteered to watch Hugh because she knew nothing about explosives. I knew it was partly because she couldn’t keep herself together and didn’t want us to see it.
Alden and I helped Ricker unload the supplies. Two ANFO bags, detonator rope, a bucket of diesel fuel, a lighter sealed up in a plastic bag and tucked into the coil.
Ricker looked it all over and bit his lip, making it bleed. “I don’t know if this is going to be enough.”
My stomach sank at the thought this all might come to nothing. “It will have to be.”
A grinding noise grew in the air until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I remembered the rest of what Gabbi said.
“Tabitha.”
The trucks and motorcycles barreled into view. They came up ahead of us—a dust cloud hundreds of yards away. More appeared from the buildings and drove to the fence.
Ricker tore into the bags and bucket.
Hugh shouted and tackled Gabbi. She fell toward the bumper. I saw it before it happened, how her head would hit the metal, how it would bounce off. My mouth opened in a silent scream. I held out my hands as if to catch her but she was too far away.
Her head hit the bumper. She fell to the ground and lay still.
Hugh ran down the road to the dust storm of approaching vehicles.
I went to Gabbi and knelt next to her on the ground. My heartbeat overwhelmed my hearing, my ability to breath. She had always watched out for me. She had always believed in me. She had always fought for me.
I couldn’t tell if she was still breathing. I forced my heartbeat to slow down and my breathing to calm. I leaned over her so that my cheek was barely an inch away from her nose and mouth. I tried to remember what I’d seen in all those movies so long ago about how to give CPR.
How to bring her back.
I waited.
There.
She was breathing.
I drew in a sharp breath of my own. She was still alive.
I touched her hair and my hand came away, wet with blood.
Alden appeared. “Is she alive?”
“Help me with her,” I said.
I cradled her bleeding head against my chest and grabbed up her shoulders. Alden held her legs. Every bump, every shift made me want to scream. We dragged her onto the truck bed, laid her out, and closed the bed. I wanted to cry. It hurt so badly to see her helpless like this. “You have to get her and Mary out of here.”
“Come with me,” Alden said.
I shook my head.
Ricker worked on the explosives. He looked like he was digging a hole. I couldn’t leave without him. I would never do that to him.
I pushed Alden into the driver’s seat. “Take them away.” My bloody hands left bright red marks on his shirt. “If this doesn’t work, make sure the machine is destroyed. Promise me, Alden.”
His eyes held mine in a way that made me shiver. He placed his hand over my uninjured hand and pulled it to his heart. “I promise.”
He opened the driver’s door and climbed in.
Mary looked at us, wide-eyed, like nothing more than a scared kid at that moment. My heart ached because I knew Gabbi’s own heart was broken over her.
“Take care of them,” I said.
He shut the door and drove away. They disappeared and I felt myself go numb.
The dust cloud from the opposite way grew in size. The noise increased. The people behind the fence left the trucks and began to cut at the links. I swore I saw Tabitha with them.
I looked for Dr. Ferrad. Tabitha had run off to Dr. Ferrad because that was better than letting us destroy a cure that murdered people. They all wanted control and power and they were willing to kill for a cure that only brought more death.
I raced to Ricker’s side. “How can I help?”
Ricker placed the bucket in the hole and strung out the cord. He shook his head. “Just get back, Maibe.”
“Will it work?”
“We’ll find out in about a minute.”
He bent down to light the fuse. It caught and flared. A shot rang out.
Ricker fell over onto his side. Blood sprayed my face.
I shouted. The world spun but I forced it back into focus. Ricker had been shot. I couldn’t let him die like this. Not like this.
A part of me whispered traitorous words to myself. All of us would die soon enough without a cure. Maybe this was a better way to go than to have him become a V.
I pushed those thoughts down into the pit of grief deep inside me. I dragged Ricker away from the spark that crept along the ground and into the bucket. When we reached the road’s shoulder, I searched his body for the wound.
“Ricker, wake up! Get up!”
A motorcycle roared by. Next a truck swerved at us. Its side mirror punched me in the shoulder, pushing me into Ricker. We went flying down the slope. The world spun. I hit the water with a splash. The cold soaked me to the bone. I breathed in the brackish water and began coughing. I stumbled out, searching the mud and water for Ricker.
I found him, face up, eyes closed. Something inside me broke. I had always brushed him off, made him take back his words, denied the truth that had sat between us for so long. I had never told him—
The explosion threw me on top of him—a boom that made the earth tremble and the water bounce.
A cloud of orange flame spread into the air above us. Pebbles stung my cheeks. I struggled up from that orange darkness, screaming at myself to get up, get up, don’t run. But the very thought of running made my legs take on a life of their own. Instead of my aunt I thought of that family of four and their girl with the braids. The memory hovered on the edge and I untangled it and set it down in the middle of my brain and lived it again. But this time I shaped it to my will.
I began to run.
I ran up the slope. I ran across the road.
I would get Ricker out of this somehow. I would steal one of their trucks and drag him up the slope—a sob caught in my throat. My brain whirled along at light speed trying to think of a way out of this. A way that would keep Ricker safe because he couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be.
I ran to a truck that had tipped onto its side, and then ran to the next truck, its front mangled and pushed into the ground. The uninfected groaned inside and tried to pull themselves out. People were trying to help. Others sat on the ground stunned, bloody. Some of them didn’t move. I ran to the edge of the blast zone, to the deep crevice that had formed where t
he bucket had been. It was mud, all mud. It was filling up with water—slowly. Too slow. My ears rang, my shoulder ached, my ankle hurt, my wrist burned. Dirt loosened from the edge and trickled down into the hole.
Something hard poked me in the back of the head.
“I should kill you,” Sergeant Bennings said. “I should have killed you in that prison long ago. You want to destroy our one chance at the cure? You’re insane.”
I turned around. He was geared up again like a normal uninfected—mask, gloves, long sleeves and pants.
Tabitha stood beside him.
They looked at me like I was an annoying insect.
These last days working together meant nothing to him. I should have known that. I was a tool to find his son. I was a tool to get him and Tabitha to the cure.
They were both the kind of people who made sure to dispose of their trash. I was trash now.
I stood tall and didn’t say a word. I would not give them the satisfaction. In my mind I told Gabbi I was sorry, I told Ricker things I should have said ages ago, I told Alden to run far away from his father and to take Gabbi and Mary with him. I told Corrina and Jimmy and Ano goodbye.
The ground rumbled underneath our feet. Ricker crawled onto the shoulder and my heart leapt. He was dripping wet. He pushed himself up to standing. Blood darkened one pant leg almost to black. He was alive. He had to be alive. A part of my brain whispered that no, he didn’t have to be alive, that maybe he was a ghost-memory.
I didn’t care. I decided to believe.
Sergeant Bennings raised the gun and pointed it between my eyes.
His people were still scrambling over the trucks. The ground shook like it was an earthquake. Sergeant Bennings lost his footing.
I slammed into his chest and drove the air out of his lungs. He fell onto his back, gasping, gun still in his hand. A grunt left his mouth. I grabbed for the gun, but he held onto it with an iron grip. I gave up and went for his eyes. I pressed hard even as everything turned into night again and I screamed for Jen Huey to stop and my throat felt like it had collapsed in on itself. He punched me on the side of the head. I fell over, jumped up and stomped on his hand until he let go of the gun. I grabbed it, but then something hit me and I was suddenly flying through the air.
I landed hard on my side. Tabitha wrestled the gun away. The ground fell from under me. I grabbed at her shirt. The gun tumbled through the air and dropped out of sight. She shouted. My legs dangled in the air and she was the only thing keeping me from falling. The sky behind her was a sick brown. The water beneath me was an even sicker brown.
Tabitha’s shirt ripped. My stomach flipped as I fell through the air. Tabitha came with me, her legs twisting her, end over end, like she was doing acrobatics. I hit water and the mucky wetness closed over my head. Water filled my nose, my eyes, my mouth, my ears. I couldn’t tell which way was up anymore. I struggled but the muck had caught my shoes. The water pushed at me. Red spots appeared in front of my eyes. I kicked out but it did nothing.
I thought about Gabbi and Ricker and how maybe they were dead. I thought about Ano and Jimmy and how maybe it would be better not to see them waste away and die. Maybe it would be easier if this all ended here. I decided if I died because the water took me on its way to the machine, I would be okay with that. I decided if that was the payment demanded of me, so be it.
There was a deep rumbling like the heart of the earth was opening up. Water pounded into me, dislodging me from the mud. I spun in circles. As if driven by instinct, my body kicked in the direction I thought was up.
I settled on something I could move against.
I dug my hands and feet into the ground and felt brittle stalks between my fingers. I pushed up onto my knees and my head broke through to the surface. I gasped for air. My lungs burned, my brain spun with dizziness. The water flowed strongly around me and threatened to take me under. I crawled diagonally against the current. Every few feet the power I fought against lessened until it disappeared altogether. Here, the water lapped up an inch at a time to cover the bone-dry soil. I looked around and saw I was more than a hundred yards away from the trucks and motorcycles that stood in silhouette on the road.
Ricker’s explosion had worked.
Ricker.
I pushed myself to my feet and ran across a dry part of the field, then scrambled up the slope to the road. My shoes squished at each step and felt heavy, so heavy. My legs felt like Jello. A section of road was missing now. There was no getting to the other side. Three trucks were stranded on that side, the people scrambling back from the lip of road that kept crumbling. As I watched, the road took another one of the trucks with it. The remaining people on the other side jumped into the working trucks and drove off.
I ignored the pain that roared in my body. Minutes had gone by, but Ricker was still in the middle of the road, on my side of the gap, sitting up, staring out at the water. I ran to him. The sunlight made his face look ghastly, dangerously white. He pressed both hands over his thigh. Everything there was red, slick with his blood.
I searched the back of the truck left on our side and found rags and rope. I rushed back to Ricker with these tools in my hands.
He closed his eyes when he saw me. “Maibe? I saw you get washed away. Are you a ghost now? Am I seeing you as I would wish to see you?”
I tore the rags into strips. “I’m not a ghost.”
“But you would say that even as a ghost.” A hint of a smile on his lips. “I can’t believe everything I see, you know.”
“Believe this, Ricker. I’m not a ghost.” I tied the strips around his leg and cinched them tight.
He screamed out in pain.
“See? Not a ghost.”
“You must be real. This makes me want to cut off my leg. In my ghost-dreams you always kiss me.”
I kissed him. I thought I was going to die. I thought we were all going to die and that it would be my fault because I always got people killed. But he was alive.
When I let go I held my face only a few inches away from his. He cupped his hand around my cheek. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch.
“Did it work?” He whispered.
I opened my eyes. The water spread across the fields. People raced between the buildings like rats. The road continued to drop into the gap, widening it. There was no one left on this side with us. No Tabitha. No Sergeant Bennings. Only the one truck that looked like it might still run.
“I think so.”
I helped Ricker stand. He kept weight off the leg and used my help to hop himself to the truck. When he entered the cab he collapsed. His face flushed and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
“Ricker!”
I slapped his cheeks because I didn’t know what else to do. I needed him to stay with me. I needed him to tell me what to do.
I needed him.
His head lolled on his shoulders. “Maibe, you don’t know how to drive.”
“Sure I do.” I said this like he was being ridiculous and it was no big deal. I stretched his wounded leg out onto the seat bench. The keys were still in the ignition. My hands shook as I turned them. The engine coughed, grated, shuddered.
“Stop. It’s already on. They must not have shut it off.”
“Right,” I said, my voice unsteady.
“Put the gear shift in reverse, you can’t turn around here, it’s too narrow.” Ricker forced his eyes open. “You’re going to have to drive out of here backwards.”
“Right,” I said. Less sure now. I knew what driving was supposed to involve.
Theoretically.
I pressed down on the gas. The truck lurched backward and fishtailed. One tire left the ground and edged over the shoulder into the air.
“Forward, drive it forward.”
I changed the gear and slammed on the gas. The tires spun, caught, and flew the truck back up onto the road. I slammed on the brakes. The truck slid to a stop inches from the gap Ricker’s explosion had created. The water rushed by li
ke a river. Another foot forward and we would nose-dive into the pit. I imagined the truck going over and the way the cold water would flow into the cab and fill it up. Maybe I could swim out and save myself, but Ricker wouldn’t be able to—not with his leg. We would drown in the water together because I would not let him die alone.
I would not let him die.
Not like this.
This moment was all there was. I couldn’t let myself think about what would come after. I couldn’t think about the future in store for Ano, for Jimmy—for all of us. We had to survive this first. We had to make sure the machine was destroyed.
Ricker held onto his leg with one hand and braced himself against the dashboard with the other. His skin was pale and shined with sweat. He kept blinking like he was trying to hold on to consciousness. I had to get us to a safe enough place to stop Ricker from bleeding to death.
“You can do this, Maibe. Just slow down. Ease into reverse, keep looking backward but keep one hand on the wheel.”
Panic made my fingers slippery on the wheel. My soaked wrist bandage dripped pink water all over. Alden and Gabbi and Mary needed us. We had to find them. They would help me save Ricker. I shifted into reverse and pressed my foot down like the pedal was a soft pillow. The truck inched backward at an angle. I adjusted the steering wheel and the truck angled even further in the wrong direction.
“Other way,” Ricker said, his voice full of pain.
I turned the wheel, wincing as I did it, fearing I would overcorrect and send the truck tumbling off the other side.
The truck straightened out. I pressed my foot down to pick up speed.
It seemed like an eternity, the truck bouncing in reverse, Ricker holding on, but fading, the landscape roiling with smoke and water. We hit an intersection and I used it to flip the truck around so I could drive forward.
“You made it,” Ricker said. Blood had puddled on the bench.
He fell unconscious.
Alden
Truck lights appeared. The sun was at the horizon. They were outside the truck, hiding against it. He waited next to Mary. Gabbi was on the other side of him. She had a monster of a headache, but he thought her injury couldn’t be that bad if she was already awake.
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