by Teri Terry
CALLIE
KAI AND FREJA RIDE THROUGH THE FIRST HALF of the night, then find a run-down barn in a field to camp out in. They’re so tired they’re asleep almost as soon as they lie down on some straw.
I’m on guard duty and check around the area, then sit on top of the barn.
I’m unsettled, weirded out. Kai thinks Alex—it seems easier to think of him as Alex than as my dad, since I don’t remember him at all—might be a survivor. But Patrick also said he could have been at the trap because he was working for the government. He’s a quantum physicist, whatever that is, and might know stuff about antimatter.
I hope he was working for them. If he knows what the government did, he may know where to find Dr. 1.
CHAPTER 9
SHAY
REACHING OUT INTO THE WOODS to every mouse, bird, even spider we can find, we use their eyes to monitor each of the men and their positions. There are about thirty soldiers, none close enough for a direct visual. If we venture out and try to sneak up on them to influence their auras directly, we’d be in range of their guns before we got close enough. If we can see them, they can see us.
It’s almost like they know how we work, and they’ve positioned themselves just far enough away to stop us.
“We’re going to have to try something from a distance,” I say. “Jump into a mind and see if we can influence it, even though their auras are too far away to get at directly.”
“Can we do that?” Spike says.
“I don’t know. We’ve all been reaching insects and animals in the woods to see with their eyes, but I can’t, say, make a bird swoop in a certain direction to show me what I want to see. But maybe that’s because a bird’s mind is too foreign for mine to influence it? Let’s try it on one of the soldiers.”
We watch, wait for an opportunity—for one of them to be alone—concentrating on the ones behind the house in the woods. A place we can disappear from the easiest.
At last one of them slips off to pee behind some trees.
Let me try, I say.
I slip inside him, see out of his eyes—just like I was doing with the squirrel that was watching him a moment earlier. I tell his feet to move. I make him curious to know what is over there.
It’s actually working! He’s walking away from his position instead of going back to it.
Spike, watching, tries it with another soldier nearby.
Soon the second soldier is walking into the trees behind his companion. If we can move a few groups of them far enough apart, we should be able to slip through them and get away.
But then, all at once, the connection is broken—both the one with the soldier I was influencing and Spike’s too. The two soldiers stop and seem confused; then they step back to their original positions.
“What happened?” Elena says.
“I don’t know.” I frown. “Maybe because they walked away from us, they were just too far to keep hold of the influence over them?”
“Let’s try again, and get them to move more sideways this time,” Spike suggests.
We try again and again but have no luck at all. None. We can’t even look out of their eyes now.
Beatriz tries too, then shakes her head. “Someone must be blocking us,” she says.
“You mean another survivor?”
“Who else could do that?” she says.
“Alex; it must be Alex,” Spike says.
Elena frowns. “He’s not out there; I can’t sense him.”
“But he knows how to hide from us when he wants to—he’s done it before, at the facility when we didn’t know he was a survivor,” Spike says.
I sigh, head in my hands, and shield my thoughts. I still can’t believe that Alex is in with SAR. Why? Is it just because he’s my father that I’m cutting him slack he doesn’t deserve? No. At least, I don’t think so. It just doesn’t feel right, knowing how Alex feels about survivors’ potential, that he would set us up like this.
I cast out again. There’s no sign of Alex anywhere, but that doesn’t mean anything. Spike is right: he knows how to hide from us if he wants to.
The soldiers are alert but holding their positions.
Still they watch. Still they wait.
What for?
I look up at the others. “We’ve got no choice, really, have we? Let’s try to sneak out of here.”
CHAPTER 10
KAI
THE COUNTRYSIDE IS EERIE as we go farther north. There are no cars, no people—no living ones, that is. And we’re not even at the latest zone boundary yet.
Callie checks ahead when we’re nearing it.
“Callie says there’s a roadblock, but nobody is there,” Freja says.
“Is she sure?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s been abandoned?” I say.
We go carefully up to the place just the same—hide the bike a ways back and walk there, staying out of sight in the trees.
“I can’t sense anyone here,” Freja says.
There’s a gate, a sentry hut—empty, but there is a car behind it. Fences with quarantine zone warnings on signs with big red letters.
We walk back to the bike and go up the road this time. I pull in by the car. “Let’s see if we can siphon some fuel,” I say. “We’re getting low.”
I rip out some hose from the engine, work out how to wreck the electronics enough to open the fuel cap.
We top off the bike, open the gate, and go through. And as easy as that, we’re in the quarantine zone.
Not far from the barrier there is a massive fire pit; bones, and a smell that will be hard to forget, from piles of bodies that were waiting to be burned but instead have been left to rot in the sun.
We hurry away, as far and as fast as we can go, but the horrors continue. They’re everywhere.
We go around the outskirts of Newcastle, my home. Is Mum still there? Maybe when we’ve found Shay, we can try to go to her.
In a small village Callie finds us empty houses—ones without dead—and we break into one and then another, finding packaged and canned food, more gas. There is no power and the tap water looks funny, so we stick to bottled.
Finally we reach Hexham. Exhausted, we find another empty house and stop for the night.
CHAPTER 11
CALLIE
THE NEXT MORNING KAI AND FREJA step out into the sunshine.
“What now?” she asks.
“Let’s see. Somewhere a few hours’ drive from here, more or less, there is a house, and we need to find it,” Kai says.
Have I been there? I say, and Freja passes my question along to Kai.
“Yes,” Kai answers. “Actually probably more recently than me.”
“Do you know where it is?” Freja asks me.
I don’t know; I don’t remember.
Freja sighs and looks at Kai. “Can you be any more specific about which way we should go?” she asks. “It sounded like you had more of an idea where it was before.”
“I was hoping as we got closer it’d come back to me, but it hasn’t. To be fair it was a long time ago that I was there. I’m sure we came here to Hexham to go shopping from there once, there and back in a day, so it must be within a few hours at most? But I don’t know which direction.”
Callie, show me what the house looks like, Freja says.
I shrug. I don’t remember.
Freja frowns. “Kai, can you show me what the house looks like? Callie says she doesn’t remember. If you show me then I can show Callie, and that way we can spread out and search.”
“How do I do that?”
“Let me link minds with you, and then you picture what it looks like. I’ll be able to see it.”
I join with Freja. Kai hesitates, and then he is there too. He doesn’t like talking like this. I don’t know why; it’s so much easier. E
specially for me. It’s the closest he can get to hearing me.
He shows us a fancy house—it’s huge. It’s got grounds and fields around it; a summerhouse, greenhouse, a barn, a load of other outbuildings with woods behind. He shows us up a road, but it gets less definite as he doesn’t remember details. There are no neighbors or other buildings around at all.
We break into a gas station and find some maps, and Kai studies them closely.
“I think there are about six directions we can go from here that look reasonable,” Kai says. “We’ve already done one of them on our way here.”
“How about we check two at a time?” Freja says. “Callie can go one way, us another, and then we meet back here and do it again. We can look for the house or anything that seems familiar to you and feel for survivors as we go.”
I study the map, and we head off into the countryside.
CHAPTER 12
SHAY
WE WAIT UNTIL THE SUN IS NEARLY GONE, hoping we will be harder to spot in dusk’s long shadows.
Spike and I slip through a side door that should be blocked from the soldiers’ view by the greenhouse, and then we creep along it slowly, quietly, then beyond it, bent down in long grass as we pass by shrubs and overgrown flowerbeds, heading toward the woods. Everyone agreed I have to go in the first pair: I’m the only one of us that has killed before, who definitely knows how, even as the thought makes acid rise to the back of my throat. Elena and Beatriz wait in the house and stop Chamberlain from following us. They will come behind in a moment if all goes well.
Nothing here, you can’t see me; nothing here, you can’t see me: we play this mantra over and over in our minds, but it’s hard to maintain that and block what I’m really feeling: fear of the soldiers is so strong it’s hard to keep my feet steady, let alone my thoughts, but even stronger is fear and horror of what we might have to do to them to get away.
We’ve picked up on another two soldiers in the woods behind the house—not the same ones we tried to meddle with before, in case it is something about them that stopped us.
Nothing here, you can’t see me; nothing here, you can’t see me…
And then we can see them: the soldiers. They’re vigilant, poised with guns in their hands, scanning the area around them toward the house. Yet they can’t see us, just like we’ve told them. I’m pretty sure that won’t continue to work if we get close enough to go past them, though.
Their auras aren’t the worst I’ve come across. There isn’t hate all through them. There is obedience, strength, and determination in both. One is distracted and thinking of something else, the other more focused.
Nothing here, you can’t see me; nothing here, you can’t see me…
I watch them, and I know how to do this, but I just can’t. The only times I’ve ever hurt somebody were when they’ve been intent on killing me. These two can’t even see us.
Spike’s thoughts are linked with mine, and Elena’s and Beatriz’s too. They would if they knew we were here, he says.
Elena and Beatriz have caught up with us now. I’ll do it, Beatriz says, and without discussion starts to focus on their auras—a child poised to commit murder.
No! I say, and she backs off. Please. Let’s try something else first.
I imagine a noise in the trees off to their left. The soldiers react instantly, their movements controlled and precise even as they hurry to investigate, guns raised.
You two go first, I say to Beatriz and Elena, and they slip into the trees where the soldiers were a moment ago.
Seconds later we follow.
Then there are voices: shouts to our left where we sent the soldiers, and then something completely unexpected—a push, inside us.
Something—someone—is pushing against our minds, trying to get in.
Shocked, we shield ourselves, and push back.
“There they are!” someone shouts.
Run! Spike says, and we run, full tilt now, the need for speed more than the need for quiet.
A light suddenly shines at us in the darkness, bright in our eyes, making it hard to see.
Get down, Spike yells in my mind, and his body pushes at mine from behind.
There’s a BANG—
Spike’s body arches—
Pain—Spike’s pain—
Shock—both of us—
And he falls, heavy on me, pushing me down to the earth underneath him. His body is covering mine—his thoughts are through my mind in a rush: Save yourself—kill if you have to. Save yourself! And laced through it all is how much he cares for me—his friend.
And then…he stops.
Spike? Spike!
He’s gone?
No. No, this can’t be. No!
His last thoughts are imprinted on me in a way that will never leave me, a mark left inside of me that cannot be forgotten. There is pain, fear; but most of all there is love—not the kind that can come and go, but that of a friend. The sort that should have lasted forever, not ended like this.
There are footsteps running toward us, but still another mind, one I don’t recognize, pushes at mine, and having to shield against it, I am stopped, defenseless.
But then, abruptly, the other mind is gone.
Now there is no holding back.
I strike out, finding the place in their auras that will stop them forever. One soldier falls, then another, but now there are more of them, and more; and still I strike out, and still they fall.
Then, all at once, they pull back. They run away, but not because they run from me—they are called to somewhere else?
They leave me alone.
Now there are voices—shouts, sounds, gunshots—in the distance. Something is happening—but it is all remote from the horror of what is here.
I pull myself to my feet. Spike’s warm blood is all down my back. His body and the bodies of soldiers are all around where I stand.
I vomit on the ground, again and again, shaking and weak; disbelieving.
If only I had done what the others wanted—only a few soldiers would have died. Not Spike and so many of them.
But I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t. And this is the result.
I can hear someone trying to talk to me inside, telling me it isn’t safe, to run, to get away from here—that there is fighting in the woods. It’s Alex?
Then Beatriz is hailing me too. I can sense her and Elena hiding, safe for now, but I can’t go to them with the sounds of men shouting and dying between us.
And how could I go to them at all, after what I’ve done?
I’m shutting down; closed, shielded—blocking everyone, friend or foe, who might try to find me. I don’t answer any of them.
There are more cries and gunshots, the sounds of battle; it’s getting closer.
I stagger the other way, back to the house.
CHAPTER 13
KAI
IT’S ALMOST DUSK NOW, but there is one last direction to check; only one. This time the three of us will go together. My guts are all squeezed and squashed in a knot of despair—if this isn’t the way, then what? Go back over all the other ways, see if we missed something?
Again and again and again.
“Ready?” I say.
Freja nods, and we walk back to the bike. She’s quiet. She’s been reserved since we came into the zone. Is it all the dead, calling out to her everywhere we go? She’s suffering to help me, and I’m sorry, so sorry.
I stop and turn to her when we reach the bike.
“Are you all right?”
Her eyes turn up to mine. She half smiles, shrugs, but doesn’t say anything.
We get on the bike.
An hour or so later it’s starting to get dark. We’re passing some buildings. I glance at them as we go past, and something twinges in my memory. I turn around, pull in, and stop. It’s a farm
shop. There’s something about the building, the windows; something familiar. Hope and excitement tinge the fear and despair with something better.
“Callie, do you remember this place? I think I do,” I say.
I get off the bike, push the door open, and walk in. There’s rotting food everywhere, not pleasant, but a quick look around and I’m sure.
“Yes, I’ve definitely been here before, and Callie too—more than once, I’m sure of it! We came here with Mum for ice cream. We must be going the right way.”
“How far is the house from here, do you think?”
I frown with the effort of trying to remember. “It’s not far, but takes a while. Or maybe that’s just how I saw it when I was younger and wanting ice cream. Single-track roads a lot of the way, I think?”
Freja defocuses—talking to Callie?
“Callie is going to do a fast search of the area and see if she can find anything,” Freja says.
We start back down the road on the bike, this time going more slowly in case I recognize anything else. There are lanes leading off all over the place, and I don’t think I have much hope of remembering which one we should take, especially when it is almost dark, and it could take ages to try each of them.
Freja taps on my shoulder; I pull in. “I think Callie may have found it,” she says. “Look!” She projects an image from the air above of a big house, grounds and buildings all around, into my mind, and I don’t even feel the usual urge to pull away from the touch of her mind. It’s run-down, the normally perfect garden’s overgrown, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it is Alex’s.
“Yes. That’s it, I’m sure of it,” I say.
Freja grips my shoulder. “Callie says there are soldiers surrounding the house, that they’re fighting with another group of people. She doesn’t know who they are.”
“Soldiers? Fighting? No. We can’t be too late—not again.”