by Alex Barnett
“Rule thirteen…no dying unless it’s together.”
9
They ran through Eric Grant’s backyard silently, crouching like spies in some old movie. As they reached the other side of the yard, Caleb pulled up short and turned to face her again, pulling a set of keys out of his jeans pocket. One was an old-fashioned metal-toothed key, the kind that some fuse vehicles still used to start the combustion engine. Two others were the thin strip of iridescent silver that Lydia was more familiar with—ID flats that were coded to a person’s DNA and wouldn’t let anyone but an immediate family member access a car or house. Ridiculously, a large, neon-pink rabbit’s foot keychain dangled from the set.
As he started to pass the keys over to her, something caught in the faux fur of the rabbit’s foot caught her attention—a flash of something metallic. A small metal disc, about the size of a quarter, was caught in the fluff. As Caleb jostled the keys, the disc shook loose and fell to the ground. Lydia heard a soft beep as the object hit the grass. A moment later a wavering, blue-tinted holo image shimmered into existence a few inches above the disc, right at their feet. Caleb sucked in a breath with a small, wounded noise.
The disc was a cheap holo—the kind you could buy by the dozen at malls and amusement parks. The image was low-resolution, only a few seconds long, and it glitched every time it looped back to the beginning. The image disc probably didn’t even have an adapter to plug into a picture frame. Even so, it was immediately evident why Caleb was carrying such a thing on his person.
The image was of him and a girl about his own age, obviously taken sometime within the last couple years. Caleb’s hair was longer, worn in fluffy coils rather than his current utilitarian buzz cut. He was smiling, a wide, toothy smile that lit his whole face up. Happiness practically beamed out of him—all of it directed at the girl.
Even in the grainy, cheap image, the girl was the kind of beautiful that belonged in magazines and movies, with smooth, regal features and a generous mouth. Her hair stood out around her face in an ink-black cloud of spiraling, natural curls and there was laughter and light in her eyes. By the angle of the photo, she was sitting in Caleb’s lap and their heads were bent close together, Caleb’s chin hooked over her shoulder.
Caleb was stock-still, not even breathing. For an instant, a stricken look flashed across his face—sadness and loss and pain all rolled up into one. Lydia’s eyes dipped to the bracelet stretched tight around Caleb’s wrist, delicate and feminine. If she could see their hands in the image, she had no doubt that that bracelet would be dangling from the girl’s wrist, a thin sparkle of silver against her ebony skin. Without a word, she bent down and scooped the disc up, tapping the switch in the center to shut off the image.
Caleb took it from her and tucked it back into his pocket with careful, reverent hands. He pressed his lips together, shaking his head a little. “My girlfriend,” he said in explanation. “Jaslyn.”
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, wincing at how lame it sounded.
“You get used to it,” Caleb replied, more to himself than her, before straightening and visibly forcing the thoughts of his girlfriend away. “All right, when we get out there, you gotta move fast, you understand? Don’t hesitate. We make some noise, get their attention, and then we run. Don’t stop, don’t look back, don’t worry about me. Keep. Moving.” They scuttled across the Perry’s yard. “Don’t shoot unless you gotta. Just how strong are you? Will you be able to keep them off of us?” He tapped the side of his head with two fingers for emphasis.
“Strong enough,” Lydia answered grimly. “And yeah, I’ll keep any Burnouts away from us. How far out is your truck? Like, did you see any street signs?”
“Straight up the street, and like two streets over. I think Mountain Brook? Something like that? We’re gonna have to crisscross around the neighborhood a few times to get ‘em off our tails once we lead them away. You up for that?”
Lydia nodded tersely. That wasn’t so bad, she told herself. It was less than five minutes away from Meadowbrook. They could make it. They could. And she knew the streets and roads of the subdivision better than some of the people who had been living here for twenty years. She would be able to wind them around any obstacles or large groups of Burnouts and get them back to the barricade safely. This was going to work.
It had to.
They paused at the fence that separated Mr. Perry’s yard from Eric’s. Caleb laid a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. His eyes were grim, the lines of his mouth hardening. “Last chance,” he said.
Lydia met his eyes with a steady calm she tried very hard to convince herself was real. “Let’s get moving, before Grandpa sees us.”
Caleb squeezed her shoulder briefly, before holding the keys up again. He gave the rabbit’s foot a quick kiss. “Luck ain’t failed us yet. Can’t hurt, right?” He started to pass the keys over, but hesitated, his eyes suddenly going wide. “Crap…you do know how to drive, right? Like manually?”
“You’re asking now? Oh my God, of course I know how to drive!”
“Sorry, sorry! Some schools don’t teach you how to drive a fuse anymore. And you never said how old you are!” he grumbled.
“Well don’t worry. I’m sixteen.”
And teaching manual driving (as opposed to just basic safety and emergency measures with more standard electronically guided vehicles) had been approved by school board vote two years ago. Some of the larger cities like New York and Los Angeles had switched entirely to guidance system-driven cars within city limits, but it was not unusual in Columbus to see fuse vehicles that combined clean burn and combustion technologies. There was even a fairly large market for classic cars that had been built before Invasion technology was adapted to the auto industry in the late sixties and early seventies.
“Well okay, then,” he said with forced brightness. “Great.” He flexed his fingers as he stared at the top of the fence. “Okay, just…just be careful with the ignition. Sometimes you gotta jiggle it a little.”
“Right, okay. Anything else?”
“The brakes can be a little sticky…don’t, like, stomp on them.”
“Okay.”
“And the steering wheel’s got some play in it—”
“Holy crap, how old is this truck?!”
Caleb looked offended. “Not like I’ve been able to run her into Triple A! Depending on how close the Burnouts get, I might have to just jump in the bed. There’s a camper top over it, so just go if I tell you to. Nothing’s gonna get to me.”
He bent down, cupping his hands for her step into for a boost up. She accepted this time, balancing herself carefully with one hand on his shoulder. He lifted her with surprising ease, holding steady while she swung a leg over the fence top and dropped down into Mr. Grant’s yard as quietly as she could. He followed a moment later, landing beside her with a grunt. They stuck to the shadows, creeping along the perimeter of Mr. Grant’s yard while Lydia kept one wary eye on the house, expecting Grandpa to come storming out at any moment. There was no movement from the back door or the windows, though.
Eric Grant’s home was on the very edge of the semi-circle of houses that formed Meadowbrook Court, the court itself sticking out at the end of the street like a spur. A grassy expanse about thirty feet across separated his backyard fence from the next-closest neighbor’s. Once they went over Mr. Grant’s fence there would be nothing between them and the Burnouts.
They’d be sitting ducks. Worse, even. They stopped again at the fence on the far side of Eric’s yard.
As soon as they did, Lydia realized their risky plan had just gotten infinitely riskier.
Caleb halted, one hand snapping out to grab her wrist, though she had already stopped as well. Eric’s privacy fence was as tall and solid as all the others on Meadowbrook Court, but it was topped with a decorative element of thin strips of wood woven in a lattice pattern. Though the resulting gaps in the top of the fence weren’t large enough to cause much of a security risk, they were
large enough to be seen through. And on the other side, Lydia could see the shadowed outlines of multiple heads. The Burnouts had wandered into the side lot between houses.
They still weren’t moving, standing still as statues the way they’d been doing all day. Nonsensically, Lydia wondered if she would be able to hear them breathing if she got close enough to the fence. Oh God, she was going to have to get closer to the fence…
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Caleb hissed. He raked one hand back over his head, glaring at the dark-stained wood of the fence. “Okay, we gotta…we just...” He stopped, looking a little sick as he came to the same conclusion Lydia was reaching.
“You’re absolutely sure we can’t wait?” she asked, her stomach tightening as she listened to the dry rustle of grass in the breeze. The Burnouts weren’t even shifting their weight from foot to foot.
Caleb’s jaw clenched, and she shook his head in a short, sharp motion. “This is our only chance,” he said, a thread of steel in the words.
Lydia swallowed, the dry click of her throat loud in her ears. “We’ve got to go through them, then. We’re going to have to come out right by the barricade.” She was irrationally proud of how steady her voice was. Lydia didn’t give herself time to think twice, or consider what she was really suggesting. The sense of urgency that had driven her to agree to go with Caleb in the first place was pounding like a drumbeat in her head.
They had intended to go through a few neighbors’ yards and then come out about halfway up the street to give themselves some distance from the worst of the throng…but that was out, now, too. They couldn’t risk causing a lot of noise that would start drawing more of the Burnouts into the space between Mr. Grant’s house and the next. They needed to get the things chasing them away from Meadowbrook. There was only one choice.
“Yeah,” Caleb muttered, his shoulders slumping in defeat, “yeah, we do.”
Lydia took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders up. “All right, boost me up and I’ll…I’ll clear us a path,” she said determinedly.
Burnouts. They were just Burnouts, now. Not human, not people, not neighbors and acquaintances and friends. There was nothing she could do for any of them now, and everyone she had left to love was in danger.
“It’ll be fine. We got this.” Caleb smiled at her encouragingly. She just hoped his confidence wasn’t as faked as hers was. Once again, he bent down and cupped his hands to give her a leg up. Lydia breathed again, pulled the blaster out of the holster and stepped into them.
Though first, she took the keychain out of her pocket and pressed her own quick kiss to the brightly painted rabbit’s foot.
Couldn’t hurt, right?
#
She hesitated.
For a single, solitary instant, she hesitated.
There were only four Burnouts in the grassy space just outside Mr. Grant’s fence—the grass grown knee-high and weed-choked over the summer—standing at odd intervals along the fence with their heads bowed. A woman in a torn and tattered bathrobe, and three men in jeans and t-shirts advertising a weekend baseball league that met in the park near the subdivision. They weren’t moving, weren’t even twitching…and then they were.
As soon as she cleared the top of the fence, the things jerked in eerie unison, their gazes all snapping to her in the same instant. In the deepening twilight, the featureless, white eyes seemed to glow brighter than usual. The thick veins of silver trailed over every inch of exposed skin and this close there was a metallic sheen to them, a pattern that looked almost geometric, and for a moment, Lydia
Could.
Not.
Move.
She forced herself, though. Forced herself to look at the things and see only large targets. She forced her eyes to skip over them, and raised one hand.
She called up her power, the heat of it racing through her chest. Adrenaline spiking in her veins, she reached out and pushed, flinging her free hand outward in a gesture meant to help her focus the energy. It hit the Burnouts like a wave, slamming into them before they could do more than raise their hands towards her. She flung them up and away from her, tossing them to the ground like broken toys.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
They lay sprawled on the ground, and Lydia couldn’t let herself look at that, either. She lunged forward to brace her hands on the top of the fence and leap over. She dropped onto the grass, stumbling and almost stepping on one of the things. Suddenly everything was real. She gasped out loud, her hand tightening on the blaster. She was outside the barricades that had kept her safe for three months…outside without Grandpa, without Ava. Outside with the Burnouts. Her blood rushed in her ears and her heart hammered against her ribs like a frightened bird. Dimly, she heard a soft grunt as Caleb pulled himself over the fence and dropped down beside her.
“Run!” he shouted, grabbing her hand and pulling her along a few steps. He was clutching his own weapon so hard his knuckles looked like they might split the skin.
Lydia ran.
They burst out onto the sidewalk to find the entire horde turning towards them. Caleb fired at a Burnout within arm’s reach of him—God, it had been a teenager, barely older than Lydia—and then they were sprinting up the street.
Lydia caught a glimpse of the old blue van and realized there were more Burnouts clustered in front of it than she’d thought. How many could it hold against? She dodged around a few slow-moving stragglers, biting back a scream as they lunged for her, emaciated hands outstretched. She didn’t try to take any more out, concentrating instead on lengthening her stride to keep up with Caleb, her eyes flicking all over the street to try and spot anything coming at them from an unexpected direction.
She thought she heard voices behind them, over the sounds of their feet on the pavement. Surely someone would have seen her and Caleb run out onto the street. Ava had agreed to give them a five-minute head start before going to Grandpa, but someone had to have been watching the barricade from the houses.
She thought she heard her grandfather’s voice, but she refused to turn and look.
10
Ava Velasquez watched as her best friend vanished through the improvised gate into Jim and Iris’s yard with a guy they had known a little less than twenty-four hours, intent on jumping the barricades that had kept them safe for three months. She knew that she could still stop Lydia. One word. That was all it would take. If she said she had changed her mind about trusting the Reeds, Lydia would listen to her without question. She kept silent.
She didn’t know exactly what had happened in Lydia’s kitchen. She had known about Lydia’s powers since they were eleven years old, but she still didn’t really understand them. Lydia and her family were so far outside what she had been taught about Psios, there wasn’t much to compare. What she knew was this: whatever Zack had shown her, it had shaken Lydia to her core. And whatever else was going on, she couldn’t find it in her heart to believe that Caleb and Zack Reed wanted to hurt them.
People were easy to read—no matter how deep they hid it; she could always tell when someone was rotten. Her own grandfather, who had owned a jewelry shop in Tucson most of his life, used to laugh and say Ava was the only one who inherited her abuelito’s eye for quality. The Reeds? Didn’t trip any of her alarms. That was the only reason she hadn’t tried harder to talk Lydia out of going with Caleb…if Lydia truly believed that what Zack had shown her was worth the risk, then it was the only choice.
That did not help to quell the fear.
It writhed in her belly like a living thing—grasping, gasping, choking terror that threatened to steal her breath. Lydia was going over the wall. Her best friend, her sister in every way that counted, was going out into a neighborhood filled with Burnouts. Ava clenched her hands in an effort to keep them from shaking.
Everyone. She had lost everyone when the Burnouts came. Her mom and dad. Her brother and sister. Her aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends, her tea
mmates. The world outside the barricade had swallowed everyone she loved whole. Lydia and Mike were the only ones she had left. She knew, she knew that Lydia was probably safest out of all of them going against the Burnouts. She’d seen what her friend could do when pressed.
It didn’t help.
“How long we gonna give them?” Zack asked as she finally stepped back inside the kitchen and closed the door.
“Lyds said five minutes,” she said. She looked Zack up and down, silently considering. “C’mon.” She walked up to Zack and touched his arm lightly, then guided his hand her elbow the way she’d seen Caleb do when he was leading his brother through Jill and Andrew’s house. One of Zack’s eyebrows shot up.
“We going somewhere?” He slipped his hand around her arm, gently pushing her so that she was a little ahead of him, rather than directly by his side.
“Yup.”
The other eyebrow climbed his forehead. “You’re not giving Lydia five minutes, are you?” he asked with a wry half-smile.
“Nope.” She headed for the front door, Zack trailing an awkward half-step behind her. It took her a moment to figure out the right pace, but Zack patted her arm and followed until they exited the house before letting go to take out his cane.
“Why aren’t we giving them five minutes?” he asked as the shimmering field extended in front of him and his steps became more confident.
Ava shrugged one shoulder. “You want to just sit and wait for them to come back?”
“Point taken.”
Ava swallowed hard against the terror beating through her, trying to focus on what she had to do. Mike. She had to explain what had happened to Lydia’s grandfather, the man who had been as much a part of her life as her own grandparents since she was seven years old. He was going to lose his mind when he found out what Lydia had done. Almost of its own accord, her hand crept up to her neck, pulling at the delicate chain she wore until she could grasp the silver cross Aunt Sofia had given her for her First Communion. She breathed out a silent prayer to God, Jesus, and all the saints that they would watch over her friend.