by Tosca Lee
I slide my fingers to the ignition button, wondering if I can start the engine and get it into gear before he shoots me in the head.
“Let me see it!” the man shouts, banging on the window with the butt of the gun. “Show me your skin!”
I have no idea what he means or what qualifies as skin on his planet. I hold up shaking hands.
“No! Your skin!” he screeches, then levels the gun against the glass.
That’s when I see the figure crouched low in front of the hood of the car beside me. He lifts a latex-gloved finger to his lips over his surgical mask. I don’t know what he plans to do, but I do know one thing: I cannot die. Not now. Not like this.
I rip off my mask. The crazy stares right at me. I hate, somehow, that he sees my face. “I’m immune!” I shout.
“What?” Crazy Man says.
“Look!” I unsnap the neck of my coat and turn my head slightly. Point to the birthmark I know is there. He cranes against the window hard enough to leave nostril prints. “Do you see it?”
“Yes! What is th—”
A rush of motion. A blur of red. Hard crack against the window.
The man drops, gun clattering to the ground.
I sit back, breathing hard as a second face peers at me through the window. Cropped hair. Good eyebrows.
“You okay?” he asks from behind his mask.
I swallow and nod.
“Hold on.”
He bends down and I hear him set the gas can on the pavement. A few seconds later, he’s dragged the man to the sidewalk. I put my mask back on, quickly get out, stepping over the gun.
“Careful!” I say. “He’s sick.”
“Kinda figured that,” the guy says before retrieving the gun and emptying it. “By the way,” he says, gesturing to the grill sticking out of the SUV. “I don’t remember that being there when you passed me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
* * *
We couldn’t go over the walls. At twelve feet high they weren’t insurmountable and I knew where the ladders were stashed in the barn. But the electrified wires at the top meant to keep the unbelieving world from storming Heaven’s gates at the start of the apocalypse posed a problem. A year before we arrived at the Enclave, some teenager had tried to escape over them and only ended up (not) meeting his Maker early.
It took two days for me to get her alone. Two days in which I’d run through dozens of scenarios in my head.
The game I’d play with Truly as we hid in the back of the van. The distraction Jackie would have to provide when we got to the counseling center in Ames. The story she’d tell about needing help with the lock or something inside. The way we’d tumble out the back and rush around the corner of the block—I imagined the center was in the middle of a block, but I didn’t know. The way we’d wait for her to come get us.
We used to play hide-and-seek, Jackie and I. Used to know how to hide, especially, very well.
We had to.
We could do it again. We could survive together. The three of us.
I knew where Magnolia kept the petty cash. I was certain Jackie knew people in town after having been in charge of the center all these years. That there were people who helped women and children—I’d heard a neighbor talk to Mom about such a place. We could find one, I was sure, if we had to. Long enough to get away.
To be safe.
I finally caught up to her on her way to the storehouse just before lunch. Found her inside, an open bin of clothes from our last initiates on the ground beside her where she sat, fists curled in some garment of clothing or another, staring at nothing.
“Jackie,” I said softly.
She jumped up at my arrival and started pulling things from the bin. “What do you want?” she said, not looking at me.
I glanced around and hurried toward her. “I want to leave,” I whispered.
“What do you mean, ‘leave’?” She glanced up as though I were out of my mind.
“The three of us, together. You, me, Truly.” She laughed and shook her head. I grabbed her by the elbows. “Jackie, this isn’t right anymore. None of it makes sense—”
“Then leave,” she said simply.
“Not without you. Not without Truly.”
“Truly is my daughter,” she said, glaring at me. “She stays with me. And I’m not leaving. Not the Enclave, not my husband.”
“Jackie, he isn’t what he seems. To any of us, including you. Do you know he all but insinuated to me that you’re not yourself? That you’re somehow off?”
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie? I don’t have to. And his so-called revelation?” I chuffed out a breath. “You know why he suddenly had that!”
She wheeled around. “You know what I think? You’re jealous. You’ve always wanted what was mine. My daughter and now my husband. Ever since I had Truly!”
“What? I love Truly!” I wasn’t jealous about her . . . was I?
It was no secret that I’d spent more time with her than Jaclyn herself, especially in the last year. Jaclyn worked at the center. She spent her evenings in the barrow she shared with Magnus and had a dozen other responsibilities across the Enclave as his wife.
I was the closest thing to a mother Truly had. The closest thing the Enclave would allow.
“Truly’s your daughter,” I said quietly. “But Magnus—”
“Is God’s voice,” she said shrilly. “And if he asks for you, who am I to gainsay him? And who are you?”
I blinked. “You can’t possibly want that!”
She dropped the T-shirt and grabbed my hands. “No. I don’t,” she said, staring at me, fingers digging into my wrists. “But God never asked me what I wanted or what I liked. And He never asked you. This is all we have. All I have. The world is a terrifying place. I know that firsthand. I see it three days a week. Magnus is right. The end is coming.”
“What if it’s not?” I asked softly.
“How can you say that? Why would you say that?” she demanded.
I saw it then, in her eyes: fear.
I understood fear in all its forms.
Fear of being wrong. Fear of being right. Of the unknown. Of the future and of God.
Fear of oneself. Of one’s own ability to do something so irrevocable that it could damn a soul for eternity. Fear powered the Enclave and every one of Magnus’s impassioned sermons. But now I knew an equal fear: that everything we’d believed and based our entire lives on was a lie.
God, I believed, was real. Jackie, Truly, and my love for both of them were real.
That was all I knew anymore.
“Even if I wanted to, it would never work. Do you really think he’d ever let Truly go? Magnus is a powerful man.” Her hands shook as she let me go. “He’s watching you,” she whispered before grabbing the tote and carrying it out.
She’d been right: despite his avoidance of me the last two days, I knew Magnus was watching, waiting for his answer.
Still, I clung to her last words. Terrified or not, she’d thought about it. I wondered, not for the first time, what her marriage these last five years had been like with an empathy I’d never felt for her before.
She’d come around. I could convince her.
But first I had to buy some time.
• • •
MAGNUS WAS SHUT up in his office on the phone with someone. He had barely looked at me the last two days, during which I’d breathed for the first time in weeks.
Now that was about to end.
When the sound of his voice faded, I got up, walked back, and rapped on his door.
It was against protocol. But so was everything.
“Come in,” he murmured.
I did, quietly shutting the door behind me. I placed my palms together, level with my nose.
I took in the sitting area and three leather chairs. The low coffee table covered with several of New Earth’s seed catalogs. The bookshelves packed with books, some of which I recognized. The Testament, in all
its volumes, of course. Various copies of the Bible. Others with spines too worn to read. The credenza was stacked with folders and a ream’s worth of printed paper held together by a rubber band. The heavy, carved desk sat facing the middle of the room, the throne of an important person set with the largest monitor I’d seen but dominated by the man himself.
He glanced up, annoyed. Gone the rapt fascination.
“Wynter.”
I lowered my hands. “I’ve been thinking.”
His brows lifted just perceptibly over the rims of his glasses. He was the Magnus of Sabbath service, of the coming end. The man I’d once thought looked like a baseball player, with shoulders broad enough beneath the taut cotton of his button-up to carry the burden so uniquely placed upon him. A figure to be revered, perhaps feared—at least a little. Whose even offhand remarks carried the tinge of inspiration.
The one I’d wanted him to be. The one he could never be again.
“I was just admiring the covers in the office . . .”
“Then admire them out there,” he snapped.
“I have a secret I can’t share with anyone,” I blurted. “I can’t talk about it because it’s about you. Should I go to Penitence?”
He tilted his head. “It depends.”
“On what?” I asked, studying him. This was dangerous. He was dangerous.
“On what it is.”
“I was thinking . . .” I leaned back against the door. “About the time we kissed.”
He blinked and gave a slight laugh. “What are you talking about? We’ve never kissed.”
“Really?” I said, giving him a quizzical look as I moved toward his desk.
“I would have remembered that,” he murmured. Now, in this light, I saw that other man and his need of admiration after reverence had gone dry. Who, with one glance, had killed the precepts I had spent years of my life memorizing chapters at a time.
I could never forgive him for that.
“But we have.”
“Wynter, I don’t know what game you’re—”
“The Testament—your Testament—says time is not linear. That it does not exist for God. It happens all at once. All that will happen has happened already. Isn’t it true?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It is.”
“So it’s already done. That and much more.”
He rose and moved from behind his desk, eyes fastened on me even after his phone began to buzz, lit up with a long series of digits. “This . . . kiss. Care to jog my memory?”
He reached back and grabbed the phone, started to turn it over, and then glanced at it. Hesitated.
“I came at a bad time,” I said, moving to the door.
I expected him to say that we would finish this conversation. To demand that we meet somewhere later. Instead, to my surprise, he strode past me to the door, yanked it open, and stepped into the hallway.
“Everyone out.”
My heart stuttered until I realized he was gesturing for me, too, to leave. “Magnolia, tell the Elders I need some privacy.”
I moved past him to the front room where a startled Magnolia had just risen from her chair.
A second later he had locked himself in his office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
* * *
A few of the locals wrestle Lizard Man into a locked closet because no one knows how long it’ll take the sheriff’s department to get here.
“Dispatcher said it could be an hour before the sheriff can come take your statements,” the guy at the counter says after locking the man’s gun in the store safe and donning a fresh pair of gloves.
But that’s exactly fifty-nine minutes longer than I want to stick around.
“I need a mechanic,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Gone.”
“Is there anyone nearby?” I say.
“Closest you’ll find is Council Bluffs.”
But that won’t help me.
I shove out the door to find the hood of the Lexus propped open and Jeep Guy leaning out over the grill to peer down into the guts of the car. He’s switched out the latex for a pair of work gloves that go far better with his thick brown jacket. I wonder if he works on a farm or something, though I’ve never seen a farmer drive a Jeep.
“Straight into the radiator,” he says. “Surprised your engine didn’t shut down.”
“So . . . what does it need?”
He laughs. “A new radiator.”
“Where do I get one?”
“Well, for this fancy soccer mom model—”
“It isn’t mine,” I say quickly.
“Stolen, huh?”
“No, it’s not stolen!” I say, insulted.
It kind of is.
“No one here’s going to have what you need. Or be able to order it anytime soon.”
“What about Council Bluffs?”
He shakes his head. “You’re not gonna make it that far before your engine shuts down. And nothing’s going to be open anyway.”
I turn away, fingers clasped over my head, as the last twenty-four hours catches up to me. Getting Jaclyn back only to lose her. Leaving Julie and Lauren. Ken. Truly. Having gone so long now without sleep that I can’t think straight. What am I doing?
And I don’t know what I’m in danger of most: crying or laughing in that way people do when they’re on the verge of a breakdown.
I don’t dare do either. Not in public, lest I end up in a truck stop broom closet. Desperation churns the pit of my stomach. I cannot stay here. I have to get to Colorado.
“Can I ride with you?” I blurt.
He gives me a wary, sidelong glance. “You don’t even know where I’m headed.”
“You’ve been going west for the last fifty miles. If you were headed south, you would’ve taken 35 from Des Moines.”
“Maybe I’m going north.”
“Are you going west or not?”
He lowers his head with a sigh.
“I have food,” I say. “Water. A gas can I can fill up here. Money. I can pay you!”
He turns his head to look at me. “I could be a serial killer for all you know.”
“Do serial killers usually point that out?”
He straightens up and drops the hood of the Lexus. Cocking a brow, he asks, “Are you trying to pick me up?”
“What—no!”
“I mean, we did have a moment back there.”
“No, we didn’t. We had no moment. But I still need that ride.”
He blows out a sigh, scratches the back of his neck. “Okay, listen. I can take you as far as the panhandle. But it’s gonna cost you that gas can. That full gas can.”
“Done.”
Ten minutes later, we’ve moved the Lexus to the side of the truck repair shop and shoved my stuff into a Jeep full of camping and fishing gear.
And then we’re pulling out onto I-80 again.
Only then do I question my sanity for jumping into the car of a complete stranger as I start thinking of what a terrible position I’ve just put myself into. He could drive me anywhere. Rape me. Sneeze on me.
“So, um, I didn’t ask how you were feeling,” I say awkwardly. Neither one of us has taken off our masks, and I have yet to remove the latex gloves.
“Great, thanks,” he says.
“No, I mean . . . you’re not sick or seeing things?”
“No more than usual,” he says, looking at me. “How ’bout you—relatively sane?”
“Define ‘sane,’ ” I murmur.
He chuckles and holds out a work-gloved hand. “Chase Miller.”
I glance at his hand without taking it. “Wynter. So where are you headed?”
He quirks a brow at his rebuffed gesture and gives a slight shrug. “Wyoming. Buddy of mine has a cabin there near some good ice fishing. Figure it’s as good a place as any to ride out a few months.”
We’ve already passed several overturned cars—especially across the median, coming from the west, Omaha and Council Bluffs. Makes me
wonder what’s happening in Chicago or even New York.
I glance in the side-view mirror, not having forgotten what Jackie said about being followed. By now there’s dozens of cars behind us.
“What’s in Colorado?” he asks.
“My mom,” I lie. “She’s disabled.”
We ride in awkward silence for a mile before he turns on the radio. The president’s back on. There’s been some kind of attack on a transformer manufacturer.
“Someone’s determined to keep the lights out in America for a looong time,” Chase murmurs.
“Who do you think it is?”
“Probably Russia.”
Reports of crashes, more crazies. Speculation about the crazy flu being bioterror. I think of the carrier in back. Did I imagine it, or did his gaze linger on it as I shoved it beneath a sleeping bag?
“You had enough news for now? How ’bout some music?”
“Anything’s better than this.”
He pulls off his glove and scrolls through the phone plugged into his dash as I rummage in back and offer him a bottle of water.
Classical music floods the Jeep.
“Vivaldi,” he says.
I’ve been stealing glances at him all this time. He’s got dark hair and olive skin, but his eyes are blue. He’s younger than thirty but seems older than me. Then again, a lot of people do, if only because of how sheltered my existence has been until two months ago.
Sheltered. I actually hate that word. It implies safety.
“So who’s going to get the unfortunate news about that SUV you were driving?” he asks.
“My aunt,” I say. “It’s hers. I live at her house. I’m a junior at North Central College outside of Chicago.”
“Doesn’t look like you’ll get to finish out the semester.”
“It closed a few weeks ago like everywhere else.”
By now the initial alarm of Jaclyn’s appearance and recent adrenaline of being confronted by a crazy man with a gun have all worn off. A few minutes later, classical music droning in my ear, I’m fighting to stay awake. I actually feel my head bob once as I jerk it upright.
“Sleep if you want,” he says. “Looks like you could use it.”
“I’m fine,” I say, gazing at the side-view mirror again.