After the End

by Plum, Amy

She considers that for a second. “I’ve been living in a tiny community outside the major cities. When you described me as ‘back to nature’ before, you pretty much hit it on the head. It was just nature and us.”

  “But I bet you’ve seen on TV—” I begin to say.

  “We didn’t have TV,” she cuts in. “Or electricity, for that matter.”

  “And you lived there for . . .”

  “My whole life,” she replies.

  While I try to wrap my brain around this, it occurs to me that, in this light, she suddenly doesn’t seem quite as crazy. If she was raised in some kind of hippie commune out in the middle of nowhere, no wonder she was freaking out in Seattle. I see her fiddle with the window, trying to fit her fingernails through the top of the glass as if she thinks she can push it down with sheer force.

  “It’s the button next to the door handle,” I say, and she wiggles the control back and forth for a second until her window goes down and she leans her head to the side so the cold morning air hits her in the face.

  “What? You don’t have cars either?” I ask, remembering the way that she leaped out while the car was still moving yesterday and forgot to close the door after she got back in.

  She shakes her head.

  I look at her incredulously. “How did you get around?”

  “Dogsled,” she replies matter-of-factly. “Of course, our sleds were fitted with wheels when there wasn’t snow on the ground.”

  “Of course,” I respond, one eyebrow cocked. She looks at me to see if I’m making fun of her, but I grin my goodwill and she does her lips-closed smile back.

  She actually doesn’t look half-bad when she’s not scowling. I mean, that haircut still makes her look like a deranged pixie. But that’s definitely an improvement from evil elf girl, shoving skewers through dead animals’ body cavities.

  “So why did you leave?” I ask tentatively. “I mean, now that we’ve established that it wasn’t an insatiable craving for Big Macs,” I add to lighten the mood.

  Juneau leans her head back against the headrest, as if speaking more than a few words at a time is exhausting. She talks less than any girl I know. Uncomfortable silences don’t faze her. In fact, I’m not even sure she knows what uncomfortable is. She’s like a robot. Or an old person.

  She sighs deeply. “When I said I was looking for my father, it’s because he went missing. Actually, not just him, but it seems my whole clan was abducted.”

  “What? Why?” I ask, although as I say it I think, Wait a minute, Miles. It’s just more paranoia-speak. But she looks so sincere that I decide to swallow my doubt for just a few minutes. Even if she is spouting a load of crap, it’s obvious that she believes what she’s saying.

  “I honestly have no idea,” she responds. “If I hadn’t been out hunting, I would have been taken too.” Her eyes flit to the backseat, and I see that she has placed the loaded crossbow within arm’s reach. I decide to ignore the fact that I am driving with an oversize crow and a dangerous weapon behind me and take advantage of the fact that she’s actually talking to press her further.

  “And so you think the guys who took your father are the same ones who are following you? And they”—I can’t believe I’m about to say this—“sent the bird to spy on you?” I peer into the rearview mirror and see that the bird is treating my balled-up T-shirt from yesterday like a nest.

  “Them . . . and my old mentor,” she says in almost a whisper.

  “Your mentor?” I say, genuinely surprised, because I have no idea who she’s talking about.

  Her face scrunches up like, if she were the kind of girl who cried, she would be blubbering about now. But she’s not the kind of girl who cries, thank God, so she just grinds her teeth and looks back out the window, focusing on a tiny shack with an enormous American flag in its garden, whipping and snapping in the wind. Cows lie sprawled out underneath, fast asleep like they had been whooping it up all night at some crazy bovine Fourth of July party.

  Juneau’s eyes take in the landscape. Her mind is somewhere else. And all of a sudden it dawns on me. There could actually be people after her. Hell, I was after her. So were Dad’s goons before she shook them. If Dad’s trying to track her down so urgently, his competitors must be after the prize too.

  That realization shakes me. I mean, it’s not like we’re in a Hollywood film where people will do anything for the chance to get their hands on a new drug. We’re not talking international espionage.

  Or are we? Dad said that calling her an industrial spy was close enough to the truth. She’s obviously got valuable information.

  This is getting complicated. When I thought she was a total nut, it was easy—I didn’t believe a word she said. But now that what she’s saying is starting to make sense, I have no clue what to believe.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  25

  JUNEAU

  WE DRIVE MORE THAN AN HOUR, DOWN WINDING mountain roads and past sprawling barns topped with so much moss you can’t tell what color their roofs were originally. Mountains fold in the distance like puffy mounds of rising dough. We pass rusted-out buses and trailers grouped for eternity—or until someone cares enough to tow them away—around a burned-out campfire.

  The landscape is both magical and menacing. For every abandoned grocery store advertising beer and wine, fishing tackle, and “Xmas tree permits,” we pass a crystal lake that looks like it has sat unspoiled by man since the dawn of time. As we drive along white-capped rivers, logging trucks roar by, stacked high with enormous stripped trees.

  I am reminded of Denali, and my heart aches for what once was. For my life shrouded in a fiction. Why did I feel safer in a postapocalyptic world than in this functioning, civilized world?

  Because I knew what to expect, I answer. I don’t know this place where friends are the bad guys and even this boy sitting next to me can’t be trusted. The rules are different. I have faced bears, wolves, snakes, and ice storms. And for the first time in my life, I’m truly scared, I admit.

  Survival. That’s all that’s important. My own survival, and that of my father and clan. I will do anything to guarantee it. And I will use whoever I need to achieve it, I think, glancing at Miles, who is concentrating on the sharp turns. I formulate plans in my mind, but most fall one way or another into the “not allowed by Whit” category. I remember him driving off with those army-looking guys and feel my heart turn to stone. To hell with his rules. I’ll make my own rules now.

  Miles slows down as we approach an old, battered building with a Coke sign hanging out front. MAMA’S DINER AND GROCERY is stenciled in black letters in the space beneath the red swirls. Besides some empty forest ranger stations, this is the first place that’s had its lights on since we came down from our mountain camp.

  “Do you think it’s open?” I ask.

  “There’s a truck parked around back,” Miles says, pointing to a rusted-out pickup truck with a paint job matching the decrepit state of the store. We step out of the car. Miles hesitates before shutting his door. “Is the bird staying in the car?” he asks.

  I lean down to peer in the window. The raven looks pretty content with the pile of dirty clothes it is nestled in. “It should stay with us until we’re farther away,” I respond.

  Miles shuts his door softly, as if the raven is a baby he’s trying not to wake. He clears his throat and looks uncomfortable. “Did it tell you that?”

  I stop walking and stare at him. “Did the bird . . . tell me . . . it wanted to stay?” I clarify, watching him carefully.

  He nods sheepishly. “It’s just that I saw you talking to it this morning, and . . .” He trails off.

  “I don’t know what things are like in L.A.,” I say slowly, “but where I’m from, birds don’t talk.” I walk away from him, shaking my head. I can’t figure this boy out.

  The uneven planks creak loudly
as I step up onto the porch. I open a dirty screen with a big rip in the netting and give a little shove to the wooden door inside. It swings open, ringing a bell that hangs on a hook above the lintel.

  The brightly lit space is spotlessly clean, with groceries stacked on shelves against one wall and one lone table with four chairs in the middle of the room. A woman wearing a red-checked apron matching the tablecloth and napkins bustles in through a door in the back.

  “I’m Mama,” she announces, wiping her hands on a towel that she folds neatly and places on the counter beside an antique cash register. Beside the register sits a large handwritten sign, NO MORE CHARGING GROCERIES UNTIL YOUR TAB IS PAID.

  Planting a fist on one hip, the woman cocks her head to one side and stares curiously at my eyes. Miles steps through the door behind me. She turns to him and says, “You kids are up bright and early this morning.”

  Mama looks exactly like an illustration of Mrs. Santa in one of the books in our library: plump body, rosy cheeks, and snowy hair piled up on top of her head. From the outside of the shop and the pickup truck, I was expecting the owner to be a mountain man with no teeth, but seeing Mama, the cozy interior makes sense.

  As if reading my mind, she chirps, “My mother always told me it’s the inside that counts. Plus, if we do up the front of the store, we’ll attract more undesirables.”

  I lift an eyebrow.

  “Tourists, I mean,” she says with a laugh. “Now, what can I get for you?”

  “Breakfast to go. And a map,” I say.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and eat?” she asks, nodding toward the lone table.

  “We’re in a hurry,” I explain.

  “I have some fresh blueberry muffins. Picked the blueberries myself out back,” she says proudly.

  “That sounds great,” Miles pipes in. “And some coffee?”

  While the woman gets our breakfast together, I slide a United States atlas out of the magazine rack and flip to the page showing the Pacific Northwest. Studying it, I find a major road that heads southeast all the way to Utah, and wave Miles over. “We should get on that,” I say, tracing the red line with my finger.

  “Or we could go due south,” he says, drawing a line down the coast to California, “and then head west to hook up with Route 66.”

  “I don’t want to go to California,” I say, giving him a look that I hope will shut him up. “California isn’t southeast, and we’re going southeast.”

  Miles puts his hands up in an “I surrender” gesture. “Fine,” he says, and leans in to look closer. “Highway 82,” he says. “We have to go through a town called Yakima.”

  “You’re about a half hour from Yakima,” the woman says, emerging from the back room with two paper bags. Placing them on the counter, she says, “You taking that atlas?” I nod. She presses a couple of buttons on the cash register, and it springs open with a cha-ching. “That’ll be eighteen ninety-five.”

  Miles is staring at me and I am wondering why, and then I jump as I emerge from this kind of lapse-of-memory daze and remember that I am no longer living in a share-everything extended family, but in a currency-based society where we have to actually pay for what we take.

  Before I can do anything, Miles shakes his head and, digging in his pocket, spills a handful of bills and change on the counter. Sorting through them, he gives some to the woman, shoves the rest into his jeans, and mumbles something about not only having to chauffeur me across the state but foot the bill as well.

  Thanking Mama, we head outside. “You know, your friends were driving in the other direction,” the woman says with a mischievous glint in her eye.

  I freeze halfway out the door. “What friends?” I ask. My words come out in a rasp, since my throat feels like someone has grabbed it and is squeezing hard.

  “The men who stopped by here about a half hour ago. Two in combat fatigues. The third with black sticky-uppy hair. Last guy asked me to call him if his friend with the star-shaped contact lens stopped by. Said you kept missing each other.” She holds up a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

  “Please don’t call him,” I gasp.

  She smiles and, crumpling the piece of paper, tosses it in a white wicker trash can with a red bow on the front. “They didn’t look terribly friendly, to be honest,” she says, crossing her arms. “And besides, who am I to stand in the way of young love?” And with that, she picks up a cloth and begins wiping down the already spotless counter.

  In a flash, we’re back in the car, slamming the doors behind us and pulling on seat belts. As Miles turns the key, he looks at me with the weirdest expression on his face.

  “What?” I ask.

  “There are people after you,” he says.

  My eyes narrow. “Did you think I was making it all up?”

  He suddenly looks defensive. There’s a strange glint in his eye. A scared glint.

  “You think I’m crazy,” I say, unable to stop a grin from spreading across my lips. Miles looks away. “Ha!” I laugh and shake my head in wonder. Tell people the truth and they’ll think you’re crazy. Maybe, with my story, that’s actually better than him believing every word I say, I think.

  Miles thinks I’m laughing at him and in a heartbeat goes from scared to pissed off. Red-faced, he steps on the accelerator and spins out into the road. I am tempted to hold on to the dashboard but know he will make fun of me if I do, so I brace my legs and focus on keeping our coffees from spilling.

  We’re heading at top speed toward Yakima, and I’m hand-feeding the bird crumbs of my blueberry muffin. Miles hasn’t touched his food, although he gulped down the coffee in a couple of swigs. I take a few sips of mine and then, grimacing, stow it under the seat. I’m used to chicory—this drink is too flavorless for me.

  “The guys who are following you . . . are they dangerous?” Miles asks finally.

  “Well, normally I would say that Whit wouldn’t hurt a flea. But from what Poe here told me—”

  “Poe?” Miles interrupts.

  “The raven,” I say.

  “You named the bird?” Miles asks, his voice tinged with a note of hysteria.

  Yet another reason for him to think I’m crazy, I think, and wonder again if that’s not actually a good thing. “Back in Alaska, we named all our animals after literary figures. It was something our teacher Dennis started, so I was thinking that with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem about the raven—”

  “Yes, thank you . . . I got the reference!” he snaps. His face is flushed red, but he does this deep-breathing thing and calms down a little. “Okay, first of all, we’re not keeping the bird. So don’t name it. I am not driving you to wherever it is we’re going with a wild animal in my backseat.”

  “He’s not wild,” I protest.

  “Has it shit on my shirt yet?” Miles asks, his nose wrinkling like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

  “Birds don’t shit while they’re sitting down. They would be sitting in their excrement, and if you haven’t noticed—which of course you haven’t, you”—I can’t think of an insult that fits the bill—“city boy, birds are clean.” I don’t know why I’m getting all defensive about Poe, but I can’t help correcting Miles’s glaring misconception.

  “Secondly,” Miles continues, ignoring my argument, “a little while ago, you confirmed my long-held belief that birds don’t talk. Yet you just said that Poe”—he pauses—“I can’t believe I just called it that . . . this bird told you something.”

  “I shouldn’t have said ‘told.’ I should have said ‘showed.’”

  “Because that makes a difference?”

  I just sit there for a moment, steaming from Miles’s sarcasm and regretting having followed Frankie’s advice and telling Miles the truth. But the moment passes when he says, “And thirdly, who is Whit?”

  I have to tell him. Oracles are never wrong—only our interpretations of their prophecies, I remember Whit saying.

  “Whittier Graves is my mentor. And I know
that he is after me with these thugs, or whatever they are, because Whit sent me a note tied to Poe’s leg, and I”—how to explain it?—“tapped into Poe’s memory to see what he saw. But this is not Narnia. No talking animals. Poe isn’t sitting back there listening to everything we say and mulling it over in his little raven brain. However, if he flies back to Whit, which he might do if Whit calls him, Whit could use the same technique I did to see where we are.”

  Miles is quiet for a whole three minutes, pressing his lips tightly together and tapping nervously on the steering wheel. “Okay, I get a few things out of what you just told me,” he says finally. “The least troubling of which is that the bird stays with us.”

  “Until we’re farther away from Whit,” I reassure him.

  “Not that that’s not troubling,” Miles corrects himself. “It’s just the least troubling. Because the next item on my list of concerns is that you claim this Whit guy, who was once your mentor but is now chasing you, can control where the bird goes.”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Miles says. “So the raven’s like one of those homing pigeons? I assume it’s Whit’s trained messenger and not some wild bird he snatched out of the woods.”

  “Actually, Whit—”

  Miles holds up his hand to stop me. “But the most troubling thing you said was that you tapped into the memory of the bird to see something. Now, I was not raised in a hippie commune in backwoods Alaska. But most people I know would have a hard time believing that you weren’t . . . I don’t know . . . crazy.”

  He presses his index finger to his temple and opens his eyes wide. Now I’ve done it, I think. He’s scared. “Or on drugs,” he continues. “Wait, no . . . I have another theory. You were brainwashed by your hippie cult into thinking you have magical powers. In your head you’re like a cross between . . . I don’t know . . . Superpower-Flower-Child and Harry Potter.” That’s it. I’m not sure what he’s talking about exactly, but it’s clear he has shifted into sarcasm overdrive.

  I won’t let this boy get to me. Why do I care what he thinks? “So I’m crazy, a druggie, or a cult member?” I ask as we crest a hill to see a sparkling city spread like a starry blanket beneath us in the broad valley below. “Well, you’re free to just drop me off here in Yakima.”