I gaze inside. There’s no steering wheel or driver’s seat. It’s clearly automated, like the trams they had at the Scanning Arena in New Providence. The front of the vehicle is just a giant pane of glass.
Liam is leaning down, checking the undercarriage. “It’s still aligned on the rail,” he says.
“Is there any power?” I ask.
“I don’t think so.”
All of us are walking around it, inspecting it.
I pause for a moment when I hear a distant howl. Then I realize it’s just the sound of a hoofer, those genetically modified animals that provide one of the wheel’s main food sources. Loud but harmless. I’d almost forgotten about them. Their screams once scared me so much, but now I barely notice them. I glance around again, looking for any sign of drones, but I find none.
Cass barges inside the tram with a sudden crash. Startled, I move forward, but Liam touches my arm. “Let her be.”
I stand back as Cass moves around in the vehicle, searching in vain for any way to make it move. “There’s nothing in here! There’s no way it’s going anywhere!” She kicks at the metal wall in frustration and anger, and then slumps down on one of the chairs.
I remember her warning me to tell her if she started acting weird or crazy, like a drone. I almost want to say something to her now, but I think this is just normal frustration for Cass. Or at least that’s what I hope it is.
Liam and I climb in through the open door to look around inside with her, while Emma and Alun keep watch outside. The only thing I notice is a series of six buttons on the interior of the tram near the door. They are arranged in vertical lines, divided by color. Each button is an inch in diameter. Three of them are black, two are red, and one is white. “Try those,” I tell Cass.
“I already did,” she says.
Liam reaches over and pushes the buttons himself. Nothing happens. The tram is dead.
I step back. “We better start walking again.”
Cass sighs and gets out of the vehicle. But Liam and I stay inside for a moment longer together. He runs his hands over the surfaces, looking for any way to bring the tram to life. He keeps coming back to the buttons.
I stand near the doorway. Cass is muttering and cursing outside with the others.
“You really think we can get this thing running?” I ask Liam softly. “If not, we should probably forget about it and get going. I don’t want to waste time.”
“Yeah, I think it’s fried,” he murmurs back. “If it’s anything like the trams in the UNA, then it’s powered by an electromagnetic drive. But I can’t find a way to activate it. Even if I could, its batteries might have died a long time ago.”
“How far do you think we are from the gray zone? Or to the border of another sector?”
“A long way.” He glances at me. “We might need to make camp in this sector tonight.”
I nod.
“Let me try,” Emma’s voice rings out, surprising me. She’s appeared behind me in the doorway of the tram. She’s leaning in and staring at the buttons. “In my village, our hunters found something like this once. I mean, not exactly like this, but it had buttons on it.”
I move aside, making room for her to climb on board with us. I can see Alun and Cass talking outside. He’s sitting cross-legged on the concrete, resting with one hand pressed against his neck.
Emma brushes back her blond hair and stands in front of the buttons. Liam is now keeping watch for drones and feelers out the front window.
“So what did you find in your village?” I ask Emma, as she scrutinizes the buttons.
“Some kind of old UNA hovercraft. Just large enough for one person at a time. We kept it hidden, until the drones turned up and destroyed it with fireworks one night.” She reaches out a finger and starts pushing the black buttons. “We didn’t know how to start it at first, but then we figured out that the buttons worked in sequence.” She holds the black ones down. Nothing happens.
“But out of six buttons, it could be any combination,” I point out.
“It wasn’t really a code, or anything like that. It was more like a starter mechanism. I don’t think it was meant to be hard to operate. You just held down all three black buttons, and then pushed the white one.” Her fingers find the white button and hold it down. “And then you let go and push both the red ones.”
She releases the black and white buttons, and then reaches out and touches the red ones.
“Like this,” she says. She pushes the red buttons down hard.
Instantly, a humming noise sizzles out from underneath us, and from around the tram. Liam turns toward me and Emma, startled.
“I think she did it,” I say in amazement, staring at Emma. She looks just as surprised as I feel. Out the window, I see Cass and Alun staring at us.
“I guess this is more useful than knowing Japanese,” Emma muses.
The tram starts to vibrate. The walls rattle as the noise gets louder. I smell the odor of burning dust, as though old electric coils are coming to life again. Giving the vehicle power.
“How can this thing still be working?” Liam wonders out loud.
“Maybe it’s like the machines in the gray zone,” I tell him. “It just keeps running forever, even after the people are gone. Or maybe it’s solar powered.”
We stand there for a second, looking at each other. Then the tram starts to move forward. Slowly at first, just inching along the rail in a hesitant, jerky manner, nearly making me lose my balance. Then the vehicle starts to glide faster. Sliding along the rail, making a loud buzzing noise.
I can’t believe it. I feel jubilant.
Then I suddenly realize that Cass and Alun are stuck outside.
“Wait!” I call out.
Emma quickly presses the buttons again, trying to make the vehicle stop or slow down. But it keeps moving even faster. Now that it’s been activated, it’s going to keep heading forward until it reaches its destination. Wherever that is.
Liam leans out the open door. “C’mon!” he yells to Cass and Alun.
We’re picking up speed with every passing second. I’m startled by how quickly the landscape is now moving past. I lean out behind Liam, and I see that Cass and Alun are both racing after the tram.
“Faster!” I yell at them. Soon we’re going to be moving too rapidly for them to even have a chance to catch up. We’re already going about fifteen miles per hour.
From somewhere, Cass summons up a hidden reserve of energy. She manages to reach the door. Alun is right behind her, but he’s struggling. Liam and I crouch down, gripping thick metal handles on either side of the doorway. We throw out our arms, trying to grab Cass.
She finds my fingers. “Help me!” she yells.
“That’s what I’m doing!” I yell right back at her. I grip her hand as hard as I can. She’s now running and being half-dragged along.
I lean back, pulling even harder. For a moment, my grasp on her hand almost slips, but then it catches. She lunges forward and topples into the vehicle. We both fall back onto the metal floor with a painful crash.
I stare past her to see Liam leaning all the way out the doorway, trying to save Alun. Cass rolls to one side and I struggle up, grabbing at Liam’s legs. I’m terrified that he’s going to fall out. More of his body is outside the vehicle than in. And we’re moving even faster.
He nearly has Alun’s hand in his. “Run!” he’s yelling at Alun. “You can make it!”
I grab on to Liam tightly, trying to support him. He stretches out even farther. I can feel his taut muscles. I hold him as hard as I can. Cass and Emma are behind me, screaming at Alun to run. If he doesn’t go faster, he’s going to get left behind. All by himself, out here on the open road.
Then, suddenly, Liam has him and is gripping his wrist. Alun’s torso slams hard against the side of the tram. But then he gets yanked inside. We fall back into the metal space. I stagger up, clutching the back of one of the seats.
“That was way too close,” I say, s
truggling to catch my breath. My legs feel shaky. Liam picks himself up and puts his arm around me. Emma is helping Alun to his feet. He looks as though he’s going to throw up. The gash on his neck is bleeding again.
Then the noises from outside cut out. I look over and see that Cass has swung the tram door shut.
“Thanks for helping me,” she says, noticing my gaze.
I nod. “No problem.”
Alun is rubbing his side from where he hit the tram. I can tell that he’s in a lot of pain.
“You okay?” Liam asks him.
Alun nods. “Bruised.”
“Bruised ego, probably,” Cass says, joking, but also with an edge of concern. “Why’d you run so slowly? You could have been killed.”
“You try taking an arrow in your neck and see how fast you run,” he snaps back, annoyed. He readjusts his homemade eye patch.
Emma shushes him and tries to tend to the wound on his neck.
“So how’d you get this thing to start up?” Cass asks me and Liam.
“We didn’t,” I say. “Emma did.” I gesture at the buttons. “She figured it out.”
Cass grins at Emma. “Nice work, girl.”
Emma grins back.
We stand there in the tram, gazing out the front windshield. We’re going about forty miles an hour now, and continuing to move faster.
I know that we’ve put ourselves in danger. We have no clue where this tram actually ends up. And for all we know, the track could be damaged up ahead and we could get derailed. But we’re going too fast to leap off the tram now. If we tried to jump onto the concrete, we might break our legs. The buttons only started it moving—there’s no way to make it stop.
Ahead of us stretches the highway, heading into the horizon. It looks endless as it unspools into the distance. On either side are trees as far as I can see. The fog has almost disappeared now. I wonder if we’ve crossed into another sector already. The trees are taller, and more of them grow up above the road, although most remain below us. The road is even higher now, elevated as much as forty feet above the ground in places.
I squint into the distance, but there’s a slight curve to the road, so I can’t quite see what’s ahead of us. I have no idea where we are on the wheel. Or why this place is deserted.
“We should keep a lookout for feelers,” I say, realizing that one could come down, out of sight, and strike us from above.
I keep staring out the windshield, mesmerized by the view. We’re passing right through the forest untouched. I wonder how many different sectors we’ll end up cutting through. Or perhaps we’re still inside the purple sector. There’s no way to know.
“Where do you think we are right now?” Emma murmurs, giving voice to my thoughts. Nobody has an answer. She leans down to inspect Alun’s bruised rib cage.
Liam takes out the map and holds it up so that we can see. “I think this black line indicates the road that we’re on.”
“So where does it go?” I ask him.
“Off the map.”
“Seriously?” Cass mutters.
I peer at the map more closely. He’s right. This is one of the lines that continues off the page. And there’s nothing on the back of the piece of paper.
“So we have no clue where we’re even going?” Cass asks.
“We had to escape from the drones and the cathedral anyway,” I tell her, staring out into the wilderness. “This will take us far away from them.”
“But also far away from the scientists and Octavio’s men,” Alun speaks up. He has one hand pressed against his side now. “Is that a good idea?”
Liam looks at him. “We would have been captured by drones if we stayed behind.” He pauses. “And my dad will be fine. Maybe by now he’s even taken over the cathedral.” I hear the mixture of hope and worry in Liam’s voice. I take his hand in mine.
“Exactly,” I say, before anyone else can speak. “We want to rescue our friends. This is the only chance we have right now.” I pause. “If we can regroup, maybe others will find us. Eventually we can get to the specimen archive somehow. Inside, there’s a potential army of thousands. They might be our best chance against the new Monk and his drones—or at least the frozen villagers will be.”
“How are we going to rescue anyone anyway?” Alun asks glumly. “We don’t have supplies. And there’s only five of us.”
“Fewer people than that rescued me,” Liam says. “It was only Alenna and Gadya who came and managed to get me out. There’s always hope as long as we keep fighting.”
I glance over at Cass. She’s staring out the window with brooding eyes, like she feels uneasy.
We just keep gliding smoothly down the track. I stare out the window like the others, tightening my grip on Liam’s hand. The trees fly past on either side of us, as we move deeper into the unknown heart of the wheel.
16REUNITED
WE KEEP MOVING FOR another half an hour. Our speed stabilizes at what feels like fifty or sixty miles per hour, but it’s hard to tell. I don’t see any drones or any feelers. Everything remains empty and abandoned.
I sit in one of the seats next to Liam, watching the jungle out the window. I don’t see any familiar landmarks. Only treetops.
Just as I’m wondering where our journey will end, I see something strange up ahead. Not off to the side of the road this time, but laying directly across it, and across our track as well. Liam and I stand up instantly.
Cass notices too. “What the hell is that?” she asks, standing up as well.
“I don’t know.” I’m afraid that we’re going to hit it. If we keep going at this speed, we certainly will.
But at the same moment, the tram begins rapidly decelerating. I cling to Liam’s shoulder to steady myself. The others grab on to chairs and handles. A soft warning beep starts sounding, and the two red buttons on the wall begin to flash.
We slow down even more.
“What’s going on?” Emma asks, helping Alun up. He looks even worse than before—kind of groggy.
The object on the road is coming into view more clearly. We’re only a few hundred feet away from it now. It just resembles a mass of rubble. Rotting hoofer carcasses and chunks of concrete are strewn across the highway.
I’m confused for a moment. But then I see that this is a deliberate barrier. Someone has purposefully placed this stuff here. The carcasses and rocks are piled three feet high across the track and the entire road, blocking anyone from passing.
“It’s a trap,” Liam says, as he scans the barricade with his piercing blue eyes.
“Another ambush,” I agree, as my stomach flip-flops.
“We don’t know how long this thing has been here. Maybe it’s really old,” Emma says. “Maybe whoever set it up has moved on. Or died.”
“I don’t want to bet on that,” I reply.
The hoofer carcasses look too fresh. I’m expecting drones to burst out and open fire with arrows at any moment.
“We stick together,” Liam says to everyone. “We fight, if we can.” He’s scanning the road and the forest on either side, just like I am.
The tram slows down even more. The soft alarm keeps pinging and the red lights keep flashing.
Soon we come to a complete stop. We’re just fifteen feet away from the barrier. The lights and the noise abruptly cut off. The tram is silent and still.
“I guess this is where we get off,” Cass says.
We stand there for a moment. There’s still no sign of anyone. I know that there’s no point staying inside the tram—it wouldn’t provide enough protection from an assault, and even worse, we could get trapped inside. And clearly we can’t keep going on it unless we clear the debris off the track.
I reach over and slide open the door.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Liam nods. He takes out his knife and steps off the tram, onto the side of the road. I follow.
“Watch your back,” he says quietly as I step down next to him. “I feel like someone’s watching us, b
ut I’m not sure.”
“Drones?”
“Could be.”
I hear the others disembark from the vehicle behind us. Liam and I keep walking cautiously up to the barricade, our blades raised. I can smell the decaying hoofer meat from here. “Only drones would build something this gross,” I say.
“Maybe we can move it out of the way, if we do it fast.” Liam glances at me. “It’s possible Emma’s right. An ambush should have happened by now.”
I stare at the wall of dead hoofers and rocks. “It’s going to take a while to clear the rail. You think we can get the tram to start up again?”
“I’m guessing it has a laser sensor that tells it if anything’s in its way. If we clear the track, I bet it’ll start running.”
The others reach us. We stand there at the wall of debris. There’s nothing on the other side of the wall—just more road. If we can get this junk out of the way, we can continue our journey. Assuming there aren’t more roadblocks.
“We better get to work,” Liam says, stepping right up to the barricade.
I join him, about to help.
It’s then that I’m struck with a strange feeling. I can’t describe it. I just get the sense all of a sudden that we’re not alone. It’s more than a hunch; it’s a certainty. I just know that someone is watching us. It must be the feeling that Liam was talking about.
“Liam—” I start to say.
And right then, a figure rises up from the center of the barricade, ten feet to our right.
I’m too shocked to move.
Liam stands his ground as the others scatter in horror.
The figure is huge and terrifying.
It’s cloaked in bloody hoofer skins, and holds long thin knives in either hand. It wears the dead, dried skin of a hoofer over its face for camouflage, like it’s half man and half beast. If this is a drone, then it’s a new kind of drone. Scarier than I’ve ever seen.
Before I can scream, I see other sections of the barricade start shaking. More figures start standing up from the rubble.
They’ve hidden themselves in the barricade. They probably knew that the tram was coming, by sensing vibrations in the rail. They’re all wearing hoofer skins, dripping with decayed flesh, and flashing sharp knives. Their exposed flesh is painted dark gray with dried mud.
The Uprising: The Forsaken Trilogy Page 19