Madelyn's Mistake

by Ike Hamill

  “Get out of here! They’re right behind me,” Logan shouted.

  He was panicked, and rightly so. He had probably heard a million stories about the pain that was surging towards them. He might have even been chased before. But Madelyn knew what it felt like. She had suffered the kiss of the Roamers before, and she knew that panic wouldn’t serve them well. They had to do everything perfectly if they were going to get away.

  She looked down at the controls and tried to figure out the vehicle. The last truck she had driven was old and simple. This one might as well have been a spaceship. It didn’t even have a pedal for her to stomp.

  “Hit the button!” Logan said.

  “Which button?” Madelyn turned up her hands.

  “There!”

  With her left hand, she slapped at a picture of an arrow rounding a circle. The vehicle swelled into life. It began to roll forward as Madelyn looked down to find a way to make it go faster. The only thing she had a firm grip on was the wheel.

  “Faster,” Logan said. “Intend to go faster. With your legs.”

  What he was saying didn’t make any sense. She looked at the road and reminded herself to not panic. No matter what happened, panic wouldn’t help. As soon as she took an even breath, the vehicle sped up. She begged for more speed and it came.

  “Yes,” Logan said. He pressed his ear against his window. “Good.”

  They passed by a couple of buildings on their left. The structures were what was left of Heritage. A figure appeared from between two buildings. Each hand carried something heavy in white bags.

  Madelyn swerved towards him. The vehicle left the cracked pavement and the tires on her side cut through the brush and mud. She pounded on the wheel but it just gained speed.

  “Run him down,” Logan said.

  The man kept coming. Like it or not, she was going to run him down if he didn’t stop. She jerked the wheel away, but with the sharp movement, she lost traction. The tires churned as the vehicle accelerated even more.

  The man with the bags seemed to realize his peril. He tried to reverse his course.

  Madelyn took a breath and hoped to stop.

  The vehicle ground to a halt.

  “What are you doing?” Logan shouted. His eyes went wide as he pressed his ear to the window again. Meanwhile, the man with the bags tore open the rear door threw himself inside.

  Madelyn breathed and willed the vehicle to go forward again. It didn’t move.

  “Hit the go button,” the man said from the back.

  Madelyn pressed the same button—the one with the arrow pointing around the circle. They began to move. She repeated the process, trying to get the thing moving. They were accelerating, but it was painfully slow. Beside her, Logan was beginning to really lose his cool. He was practically bouncing on the seat, like he had to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Madelyn was trying to stay centered and focused.

  The man in the back leaned over the seat and tweaked some control with the flick of a finger.

  Madelyn was forced back by the sudden speed. She gripped the wheel and tried to keep them on the road. From previous encounters, she knew they had to get to seventy kilometers per hour before they would be safe from the pursuing Roamers, but she couldn’t even tell their current speed from the display in front of her.

  The bumpy road leveled out and Logan fell back into his seat. He panted until he calmed down. Once he did, he unleashed his anger at Madelyn. “Why did you do that? We could have gotten away, and you slow down to pick up this guy?”

  The man in back leaned forward. “You’ll want to veer left up here. The bridges are washed out, but I set up a temporary bridge on the left.”

  Madelyn hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “That’s why.”

  The road to the left was a disaster. At their speed, the vehicle bounced over a crack and then firmed up. She got the sense that the suspension had adjusted to the bad terrain, but even that wasn’t enough to protect them from the condition of the road. They vibrated and jostled. Madelyn found it difficult to maintain her grip on the wheel. Still, she couldn’t slow down. The Roamers would catch up if she slowed.

  “We’re fine,” the man in back said.

  They rolled over a hill and the land fell away. They picked up a lot of speed on the slope. The ride smoothed out. Madelyn had the distinct sense that steering was growing problematic—stopping might be out of the question.

  She could only hope that the road ahead was straight and intact.

  It wasn’t.

  They were rushing toward the washout, where a bridge had crumbled away during a flood. The stream had dried up, revealing the jagged rocks below.

  Logan’s hand shot out to brace himself against the dashboard—whatever good that would do.

  “You see my rails?” the man asked.

  Madelyn shook her head. They were still picking up speed and Madelyn had no idea what to do about it. She was simply trying to keep the vehicle in the center of the road.

  “You’re off course,” he said. “You need to be a little more to the left.”

  She took his word for it, hoping that his desire to stay alive was as strong as her own. She moved her hands to the bottom of the steering wheel and tightened her grip again. If she survived the crash, she didn’t want to break her arms.

  “A little more left. Just half a meter or so,” he said.

  She wanted to scream at the sound of his calm voice. A meter or so to the left of what? They had no frame of reference except the crumbled edge of the unmaintained road. As they bounced over another pothole, she tweaked their angle. It was immaterial. They were going to launch into the gulch in a few seconds anyway.

  The man in back made a noise and raised a finger that Madelyn saw in the corner of her eye. He didn’t finish the thought.

  “What?” she yelled. Then, she saw it. There were two mesh scaffolds traversing the washout. Because of the color, they blended right into the deepening shadows. Madelyn was roughly aligned with the tracks, but their angle was all wrong. The vehicle’s momentum would take them right over the edge before they got halfway across.

  She steered left. Logan screamed something unintelligible. Apparently he had spotted the tracks too and saw that Madelyn was no longer on course. As they rushed towards the gulch, she steered back to the right and hoped that the tires would cooperate.

  In a sense, they did.

  Their grip didn’t hold to the road’s surface, but that actually helped. The vehicle slipped to the side as Madelyn aimed it once again for the tracks. Once the front tires hit the mesh, she was on-target and the vehicle was aligned.

  Madelyn exhaled. She hadn’t realized how tense she was. Relief flowed through her as they traversed the temporary bridge. When they were halfway across, Madelyn’s relief faded as she sensed a new problem. The vehicle responded to her calm desire to get out of there. It began to accelerate again and one of the rear tires spun freely with the new torque. The steering wheel tried to jerk from her grip and the vehicle drifted dangerously close to the edge of the tracks.

  It straightened out when the front tires hit the pavement on the far side.

  The vehicle roared up the hill and Madelyn leaned forward, determined to not lose her focus again. When she concentrated, the speed remained constant.

  Logan flopped back down in his seat and exhaled.

  “That was tight,” he said.

  The man in back leaned forward again. “The road curves to the right up here I think. Keep watch for another left turn. That will take us back to the highway.”

  “No,” Logan said. “Stay on this road. We’ll go pick up the others.”

  “Now you’re concerned about them?” Madelyn asked. “You seemed pretty quick to abandon them earlier.”

  Logan looked at her with a scowl. “You always split up. Everyone knows that. Big groups never get away. If you split up, you have a chance. Besides, once the Hunters turn in the direction of Scarlett and Wyatt, they won’t stand a chance.”
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br />   “That’s absurd,” Madelyn said. She didn’t take her eyes from the road.

  Logan turned in his seat to cast a suspicious eye to the back seat. “What’s absurd is picking up some stranger when we’re on the run from Hunters. He could be a maniac.”

  # # # # #

  They drove in awkward silence for a stretch. The sky was still light enough, but the woods grew dark around them.

  Logan split his attention. Half the time, he studied their passenger. The other half he spent with his ear to the window. Madelyn wondered if the young man could actually hear anything over the sound of the road.

  “Slow down,” Logan said eventually.

  “Can’t,” she said. “Not safe.”

  “You have to slow down so I can go grab those guys,” Logan said. “I’ll jump out and get them. You drive over that hill and wait next to the big rocks. I’m trusting you.”

  Madelyn clenched her jaw rather than make a sarcastic response. She glanced down at the dashboard and thought about slowing. Controlling the vehicle’s speed was strange and imprecise. Eventually, as Logan began to lose his patience, they got down to a walking speed. He leapt from the vehicle and the door bounced shut behind him.

  Madelyn let the vehicle accelerate a bit as they rolled up the hill. On the other side, they picked up even more speed. She saw the rocks approaching.

  “How do I stop this thing?” she asked the man in back.

  “You just do. You’ve done it before.”

  She realized that he was right. She remembered scraping to a halt to pick him up. Just like that, the vehicle ground to another stop. Her control wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. She reminded herself that she would have to hit the button to make it go again. Madelyn found the control to lower the windows. She tried to hear past the engine for the noise of any approach.

  The man in back sat still with his hands in his lap. He seemed about as threatening as a librarian.

  “You can get out here,” she said. “You’re not in any danger. If you don’t want to go down to town, I suggest you get lost.”

  “It’s my vehicle.”

  Madelyn spun to regard him. She narrowed her eyes and spoke softly. “We’re taking it to town. You can have it back after we’re safe.”

  He shrugged. When he reached for Logan’s backpack, Madelyn drew her weapon.

  “Don’t touch that,” she said.

  “I’m guessing your friend is going to return with more people? Don’t they want a place to sit?”

  Madelyn nodded. The man pushed the bag over the seat, ducking under the bow saw as it went. The thing landed with a rattle in the cargo area.

  “What were you doing in Heritage?” she asked.

  He pointed to the bags at his feet. “Gathering,” he said. “Supplies.”

  “Show me.”

  He blinked slowly and looked down at her gun.

  “Would you mind not pointing that at me?”

  Madelyn lowered the barrel.

  The man lifted one of the white canvas bags from the floor and set it on the seat next to himself. He opened the top, spreading the sides down so she could see the first object as he lifted it.

  “What is it?”

  “An EM pump made by Claville. Pretty rare. Only a few manufacturers used them because they weren’t as efficient as the GE ones. Whenever I see one, I grab it.”

  She looked at the soot crusted on the metal and the clean spots where the man had removed the mounting bolts. It looked like it had been buried deep in some machine. “Why would you leave your engine running while you took the time to…”

  She didn’t finish her question and he didn’t get a chance to answer. Three people emerged from behind the rocks. Madelyn’s hand hovered near the button to start them rolling again.

  “Open the back,” Logan shouted, pointing.

  “Shoot,” Madelyn whispered. She should have anticipated this. They still had their packs. She looked down at the confusing controls. The man leaned forward and pointed at the right place. When Madelyn looked back up, she realized that Scarlett was supporting Wyatt. The young man barely looked conscious. Behind her, Logan threw the packs into the back while Scarlett helped Wyatt into the rear seat.

  The parts-collecting man, the owner of the vehicle, scrunched to the side to give Wyatt space. Scarlett slipped in behind him. When Logan found his seat again, Madelyn got them rolling. She let the vehicle come up to speed at an even pace.

  “Where am I going?” she asked.

  “This road until it ends and then a hard right,” Scarlett said.

  “Is he okay?” Madelyn asked.

  Wyatt’s head was tilted back. He seemed to be investigating the ceiling.

  “He will be,” Logan said. “Scarlett patched him up. Just drive fast.”

  Madelyn let their speed increase.

  # # # # #

  “What do we do with him?” Scarlett asked.

  Madelyn had a good sense of where they were now. She could stop the vehicle at any time and they would be close enough to walk. It was dark out, but they could get to safety pretty fast.

  “I have a name,” the man said.

  “We don’t care,” Logan said. “As soon as we’re out, you need to clear out of here. We’ve got snipers positioned everywhere. One signal from any of us, and you’re done.”

  “Wait,” Madelyn said. “Come on. That’s not protocol.”

  “Forget standard protocol,” Logan said. “We have to get Wyatt to the meds, and we’re not letting this guy learn our layout. This is emergency protocol.”

  In the mirror, Madelyn saw Scarlett nodding.

  “I’ll drop you off, and then take him to a safe house,” Madelyn said. “We’re supposed to offer him overnight accommodations.”

  “That would be helpful,” the man said.

  “Fine,” Logan said.

  Madelyn followed Logan’s instructions. He directed her right down the main drag. The young people piled out next to the old police station. Madelyn steered around in a big loop so they could move into the darkness without giving away anything about the community’s layout. She wondered how many eyes were on the tall red vehicle as she steered towards the safe house. People must have been tracking them by now. She hoped that some of them recognized her.

  “I’ll take you to a place where you can stay the night. Our community is invitation-only, but we’re generally kind to strangers. You get one night and then we expect you to leave in the morning.”

  “More than hospitable,” the man said.

  She let the vehicle slow and then made the next turn. She felt like she was finally getting a grip on how to pilot the thing.

  “We can have your vehicle refueled. What type of fuel does this take?”

  “Unnecessary,” he said. “But thank you.”

  “The house will be stocked with some basic necessities, and you’ll be safe for the night.”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “You never said your name,” she said.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “I’m Madelyn.”

  He nodded.

  She pulled up in front of the house. He showed her how to shut the vehicle off. She got out first and opened his door for him.

  “If you stay the night, I’ll have to ask you to stay inside the house until morning. If you leave, you’ll be taken into custody.”

  “Oh?” he asked.

  “We don’t allow strangers to sneak around at night.”

  In the glow from the vehicle’s interior lights, she saw his eyes move around skeptically. She knew what he was thinking—she had been in the same position once. He was doubting that anyone was actually keeping watch.

  Madelyn raised her arm above her head to signal the guard. If she was right, they had tracked her to the house and understood that they would be watching a stranger overnight. She hoped she was right.

  Sure enough, a red light jumped out of the darkness and illuminated the man’s chest. He flinched when he
saw the beam.

  “Relax,” she said. “Just stay inside until you hear the klaxon. You’ll know it when you hear it. With that signal, it will be safe to run your engine.” She repeated the standard line—it was protocol.

  “Where will you be?”

  “We don’t have permanent encampments. We move around,” she said. She directed him down the path to the door of the place. The house looked abandoned. In what used to be the lawn, a tree had grown so close to the building that one of the branches extended through a broken window. Madelyn led the man inside to the safe room. The walls were steel and it was dry and clean inside.

  “Chemical toilet, water, dried foods,” she pointed. “Help yourself and when the light is full, you’ll hear the klaxon. Anything else?”

  “David,” he said.

  Madelyn grabbed his arm and shoved him against the wall. The man had mass, but seemed to have no strength to resist her.

  “What did you say?”

  “My name is David.”

  She held him for another second and saw the truth in his eyes. It was a common name. Or, at least, it had been. Madelyn let him go.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Like I said—don’t leave. Wait for the klaxon.”

  David nodded.

  Chapter 4

  {Structure}

  “NO,” JACOB SAID. HE shook his head. “It’s not that direct. You have to shift the way you think.”

  “But why?” Caleb asked. “You established a near real-time communications link. I don’t see why we can’t replicate that.”

  “You can’t think of it that way,” Jacob said. “It’s hard to explain. I can post information about what I saw or accomplished, but you can’t know that it’s the definitive information. As far as you’re concerned, you’re just seeing a single point in a cloud of data.”

  “So you average it?” Brook asked.