by Megan Crewe
“Fuck!” Justin said. “We’re screwed.”
“No,” I said, over the thudding of my pulse. “We’re not screwed unless they catch us. We just won’t let them do that.”
“How the hell are we going to stop them?” Justin demanded.
The engine roared as Anika put her foot to the gas. She took another turn at full speed, skidding, and nearly plowed into a streetlamp. Gav’s head bumped against mine. He coughed faintly and mumbled, but his eyes were drifting shut.
“I don’t know how they figured it out,” Anika said. “I swear, I was so careful.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tobias said. “Maybe we can outrun them. I think there’s only the one vehicle chasing us.”
“If they have a radio, they’ll be telling the others,” Leo said.
I peered out back again. The truck had come around the corner behind us, only a couple of blocks away now. I could make out two figures through the windshield. The one on the passenger side leaned out his window, pointing a narrow shape at us.
“They’ve got a gun!” I said. A shot ran out, painfully loud, with a metallic ding as it hit the back of the SUV. Anika yelped. The four of us in the backseat ducked down, me sliding my arm across Gav’s back to keep him still.
“They’re going to kill us!” Justin said.
They could. Another shot crackled past us, puncturing a stop sign we were whizzing by. They couldn’t aim well, not while driving, but when they got closer they’d start hitting their mark. I doubted they cared about keeping us alive.
“What should I do?” Anika asked, her voice squeaking. “What the hell are we doing?”
I didn’t know. The truck’s engine gunned behind us, and it occurred to me that this was going to come down to us dying, or them. The question was only which of us it’d be. And I knew I didn’t want it to be us. I just couldn’t see how to save us.
As we took another wobbly turn, I hugged Gav close, and remembered. A few days ago we’d evaded one of the Wardens’ cars by playing dead. Dead as a possum.
Dead as a snake that wasn’t really dead.
My breath caught. Tobias had put the rifle in the trunk, but I was sure he had his pistol. He wouldn’t be able to aim any better than the guys in the truck while we were moving. But we could stop, pretending to be giving up, and then, as they came closer, strike when they didn’t expect it.
I could tell him right now to gun down two strangers who, in the end, were just trying to survive. Like we were.
I’d told Anika we weren’t like Michael’s people, but maybe there weren’t so many differences, when it came down to it.
A bullet scraped over the roof, and I winced. I thought of a thumb rubbing the scar on the back of a hand. And something in my brain clicked.
Not every bite has to kill.
“Tobias,” I said, “if we stopped, they’d stop too, and get out. Do you think you could shoot both of them, before they’d have a chance to react?”
“Stop?” Anika said, but Tobias was nodding, his jaw tense.
“I could do it,” he said.
I caught his eyes. “Not to kill them,” I said. “Just . . . Just so they can’t shoot us, or keep coming after us. Can you do that?”
“What?” Justin squawked. “But—” I elbowed him before he could go on. Tobias hesitated, staring back at me. Then a hint of a smile lit in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “I bet I could do that too.” He tipped his head toward the front. “Stop the car.”
“For real?” Anika said.
“Stop the car, Anika,” I said, and she hit the brake.
We slid to a halt, bumping against the snow-covered curb. Tentatively, I raised my head. The flakes were falling thicker now, but I could still easily make out the truck behind us. I hoped Tobias could see clearly enough for what he needed to do.
He rolled down his window, the cold air rushing in. The blue truck ground to a stop about twenty feet back. Tobias shifted, leaning closer to the door.
“Keep the engine running,” he said, drawing out his pistol. “You have to drive as soon as I say so.”
He eased his arm along the edge of the open window. Outside, the two men had gotten out of the truck. One still carried the handgun he’d shot at us with, but they were both grinning.
They thought we’d stopped because they’d scared us. They probably also thought if we wanted to fight back, we would have by now. That was the most important part, if they were going to let their guards down so Tobias got his chance. They had to think we were helpless.
“Please don’t hurt us!” I yelled out the window. “Just tell us what you want, and you can have it.”
“All right,” the one who’d been driving said. They sauntered closer, scanning the car. “Let’s have you all come out, and we’ll talk about this properly.”
The last syllable had hardly reached my ears when Tobias threw himself partway out the window and fired.
The man with the gun jerked back, his arm going limp. The gun dropped from his hand as he clutched at his shoulder. Before the driver could do more than flinch, Tobias’s pistol crackled again. The driver stumbled, blood blooming across the knee of his jeans.
“Drive!” Tobias said, yanking himself back inside. “Drive, fast!”
Anika didn’t need to be told a second time. Her foot slammed on the gas and the SUV lurched forward. I gazed out the back as we raced down the street. The driver fumbled for the pistol, dragging his injured leg, but he hadn’t reached the gun by the time we whipped around another turn and left them behind.
“They won’t be able to follow us like that,” Tobias said. “And if we’re lucky, anyone they called is a good ways off.”
The sound of the shots echoed in my ears. I’d thought it wouldn’t matter nearly as much, knowing we’d left them alive, but my heart was still pounding, nausea curdling in my stomach.
I did the best I could, I told myself.
“Thanks,” I said to Tobias, and the scarf around his face shifted with what looked like a grin.
The SUV thumped over a crumpled cardboard box, and we pulled onto the freeway. The snowflakes fell faster, coating the windshield a second after the wipers brushed them away. Filling our tracks.
“I can hardly see,” Anika said.
“You don’t need to,” Leo pointed out. “There’s no traffic. Just keep going.”
I held Gav’s sleeping form against me, and thanked Mother Nature for working in our favor, just this once.
A small cough broke from Tobias’s lips. He covered it up by clearing his throat, but his face went white. I glanced at Leo in the front seat. He still hadn’t shown a single symptom.
“So we’re heading to Atlanta?” Justin said.
I sagged back, taking stock. We were all alive. Leo could still dance. Justin might still rejoin his mother eventually, and me Meredith. Someday we might even see Nell and everyone else on the island again. Maybe I hadn’t found what I’d hoped for, maybe the world was horribly messed up and would never again be how it used to be. But the people in it were still worth fighting for. We hadn’t lost everything.
“Well, we can’t go back now, can we?” I said.
Leo met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “No,” he said, as if he knew I meant more than just the city. “I don’t think we can.”
“All right,” I said. “Then we go forward.”
Acknowledgements
I owe many thanks: To Cyn Balog, Amanda Coppedge, Saundra Mitchell, Mahtab Narsimhan, and Robin Prehn, for their insightful eyes in pointing out what I was doing wrong in the early drafts, and just as importantly, where I went right.
To my editor, Catherine Onder, for her thoughtful guidance in shaping the later drafts into a story I’m proud to share with the world.
To Deborah Bass, Ann Dye, Tanya Ross-Hughes, Dina Sherman, Hayley R. Wagreich, and the rest of the team at Hyperion, for their skill in turning simple documents into beautiful books, and in getting those books out into the hands
of readers.
To Melanie Storoschuk and the rest of Hachette Book Group Canada, for their perseverance in helping the book reach its audience here in my home country.
To my agent, Josh Adams, for his incredible dedication to seeing this series grow and keeping track of all the important details I’d forget.
To Jacqueline Houtman, for generously offering her time and knowledge so I could verify my science at least mostly made sense.
To the readers of The Way We Fall, for sharing their enthusiasm for the book and making me even more pleased to be able to present the next part of the story.
To my family and friends, for their love and support over the years.
And to my husband Chris, for standing by me through both good times and bad, and never letting me lose sight of why I’m on this journey.