Halla doesn’t argue; she sets her mouth in a grim line and begins to creep toward the scooter.
“You go with Halla,” Wyck says. “I’ll lead them—”
Before he can finish the thought, a shout sounds. “Hey, a brassiere. Hanging on a tree. Someone’s here.”
My bra! Damn.
Heavy footsteps thud toward us. Halla ignites the scooter and emerges from cover, bent low over the handlebars. The soldier whirls and reaches for the beamer strapped to his back. “Halt!”
Halla keeps going, zigzagging toward the trees. Before the soldier can react, I’m running to his scooter. I leap on it and barrel toward him, thinking of nothing but giving Halla time to get away. The soldier stares at me, eyes rounding as he realizes I’m not going to swerve. He yells something I can’t hear over the blood pounding in my ears, and lowers the beamer to firing position. I’m only three feet from him when he fires.
The pulse strikes the scooter with a crackle and it flips end over end. Time slows. I go flying. The sky, then trees whirl by, and then I crash into the soldier who can’t scramble out of the way fast enough. Smack. We go down in a tangle of limbs. The beamer skitters away. My head hits the ground, hard, and stars swirl. My legs are trapped under the soldier’s torso. The soldier recovers first, shakes his head, and grabs my arm in his gloved hand. His face, behind the helmet’s visor, is young. He’s got sandy-red eyebrows and pale blue eyes. His expression changes from shaken to angry as I watch. He stands and jerks on my arm, hauling me to my feet. Pain rips through my shoulders and I cry out.
Before he can say anything, something tears his hand off me and he flies backwards, as if hit by a train. Uncomprehending, I turn and see Wyck standing, legs braced, the soldier’s beamer leveled. I look over my shoulder and see nothing but bubbles in the quicksand where the soldier landed with enough force to bury him immediately. I feel sick.
“He was already dead,” Wyck says, understanding. “I blew a hole in him.” The weapon he holds quivers.
I swallow hard a couple of time, and say, “There’s another one.”
Wyck nods. “He—or they—must have a bigger ACV. Think about it—if they found us, they’d need to transport us. It’s too big to maneuver easily through the trees.”
“When his buddy doesn’t return, or answer the radio, they’ll find a way to get here.”
“We need to be gone. His scooter?”
Shaking my head, I say, “Too dangerous. That’s how they found us—locators on the scooters. We should get rid of it to confuse the others.”
Wyck runs to the scooter, ignites it, and rides it to the quicksand’s edge. Dismounting without turning it off, he pushes it over the mire, repeating, “Nature’s trash can.” It skims easily over the quicksand, rippling the muck. When it is a good distance out, Wyck hits it with a single pulse from the rifle and it drops. The quicksand absorbs it with a phlegmy glub, glub.
Nature’s graveyard, I think. I turn away before it’s fully gone, retrieve the soggy bra that betrayed us, stuff the blanket into my backpack, and kick at the cold fire to scatter the evidence of our presence. I’m about to toss the charred bits into the quicksand and sink them when we hear the whoosh of an approaching ACV.
Wyck grabs my hand and drags me into the trees. We run.
At first we run blindly, stumbling over hummocks, letting the Okefenokee dictate our path by veering around expanses of water the scooters would have skimmed across without difficulty. The rain continues and I’m glad because it’s washing away our tracks and drowning the sound of our headlong dash. I’m already so wet I can’t get any wetter. Wyck, with his longer legs, is slightly in front of me most of the way. We don’t spot our pursuers, but I think I hear voices once. Finally, he stops, pulling me under a moss-draped tree surrounded by dead brush on three sides; it’s like a small cave. We breathe loudly, trying to catch our breath.
He gasps, “We can’t just run. We need a plan.”
“We can hide. Wait for them to give up. Then find Halla.” I hope she is far from the IPF pursuers and that’s she’s okay.
Wyck shakes his head. “They’re not going to give up. I killed one of them.”
“They don’t know that,” I say quickly. “He could have had an accident, like yesterday’s, and ended up in the quicksand.”
Wyck gives me a look.
I squeeze water out of a hank of sodden hair, trying to think. “Right. Okay, well, we can’t lead them to Halla. How many of them do you think there are?”
"Probably only one. Think about it: How many trained soldiers do you think Fonner would have sent to recover three kids?”
“But I heard voices.” I answer my own objection. “The radio. So, even if there’s only one now, reinforcements might be on the way.”
We contemplate that depressing idea.
I’m wondering if we could fool the soldier by doubling back, when Wyck says, “We need to ambush him.”
My initial response is negative, but as I think about it, I see how it could work. Wyck still has the other soldier’s weapon. “I could scream,” I muse aloud, “to draw him in. I’ll be on the ground, gripping my leg like I’m injured. You’ll be hiding. I’ll tell him that when I twisted my ankle you kept running, leaving me to fend for myself. He’ll get down from the ACV to take me prisoner, and you’ll jump out and hold the weapon on him while I tie him up. I can use the wire.”
“Then we can use the ACV to get out of this effing swamp. When we find Halla, we point the ACV to the east and let it go. With any luck, it’ll be miles away from us by the time they locate it.”
“With any luck,” I echo. “I don’t want the soldier to get hurt, though, not badly.”
“They’ll find him within a day, using his locator,” Wyck says impatiently. “And as long as he does what we say, I won’t have to fire. I didn’t want to shoot the other one, but he had you and . . .” He peters out, looking haunted. “I killed . . . I killed that man. He’s dead, really dead. He was a soldier, but I shouldn’t—”
“You did what you had to do. You saved me,” I say, and lean up to press a quick kiss on his lips.
He shrinks back instinctively, but then leans in and kisses me back. His lips are tentative against mine at first, but then the kiss deepens. We pull apart after a moment, and stand with our foreheads touching, eyes closed, fingers loosely entwined. After a long moment, I pull away and ask, “Where should we set up the ambush?”
“I saw a spot.”
Wyck leads me past a stagnant pool alive with insect larvae to a slight depression on what looks like an old wildlife trail. “You lie here,” Wyck says, pointing, “and I’ll be hiding in there.” He points to a stretch of shallow water where a cypress tree’s “knees” stick up almost to waist height in spots. It’s a good hiding place.
“We’d better check for alligators and snakes,” I say.
Once sure that the hiding place is reptile free, Wyck wades in, crouches behind the knobby roots and disappears from sight. The rain has let up, but the ground is soggy as I arrange myself on the path, take a deep breath, and scream. I try to imagine the worst pain I could be in, and end up releasing my frustration over my parents, my fears for Halla, and my distress over the soldier’s death in one long, trembling howl. “Help,” I cry. “Please help me.”
I stop and listen. Nothing. I try sobbing, interspersing my sobs with pleas for help. “I don’t want to die out here. I’m afraid. Please, I’m sorry.” Pretending to be afraid is making me afraid. I stiffen my shoulders and remind myself that I’m acting, that I’m tough, that Wyck is mere yards away. My throat is raw.
The clacking of dead reeds gives me a moment to hunch over and grab my ankle as if in mortal pain. I peek from behind my hair, expecting to see the soldier approaching in front of me. A footstep sounds behind me and I slew around to find myself facing a soldier, visor down, weapon leveled at me. From my vantage point, he looks ominously tall, burly and alert. He scans the area before focusing on me.
> “AC Westin?” His voice is a bass rumble and he sounds older than the other soldier. His chin, which I can see below the visor, is square, his skin like ebony.
“Jax,” I whisper. “Everly Jax. Halla took the scooter—she’s long gone. Then Wyck left me when I got hurt. He left me alone, ran off and left me to die.” I grab my ankle and find it’s disturbingly easy to force out a few tears. “I don’t want to die out here. I saw an alligator. I’m sorry I left the Kube. I want to go back.” There’s an undercurrent of truth in the words and they seem to convince the soldier.
He steps closer. “What happened to Corporal Heroux?”
I blank my face. “Who?”
“He found your camp! I can’t find any trace of him or his scooter.”
“I never saw him,” I say. “We heard an ACV coming and we ran. Halla took the scooter and Wyck and I just ran.”
“Get up.” He motions with the particle beam rifle and frees a pair of cuffs from his belt with one hand.
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
He’s clearly not going to come closer, not going to give me a chance to pull a hidden weapon and attack him. I bite my lip, roll onto my hands and knees and make a show of shoving myself to a standing position. I balance on my “good” leg, holding my hands out to the side to show I’m unarmed. I put my other foot down gingerly, as if testing it to see if it will hold my weight, let out a shriek and crumple forward toward the soldier.
Taken off guard, he stumbles back a step, but I knock him off balance and latch onto the beamer’s muzzle. Before he can recover, Wyck pops up from his hiding place, dripping, and points his weapon at the soldier’s chest. “Freeze.”
Realizing I’m between Wyck and the soldier, I drop and roll to my right before clambering to my feet.
“Drop your weapon and raise your hands,” Wyck commands, “or I will shoot.”
The soldier and I both hear the grim intent in his voice. Slowly, slowly, the soldier lowers his beamer and I grab it away. He raises his hands to shoulder height. “You don’t want to make things worse for yourselves, kids,” he says.
“Put the cuffs on him.” Wyck’s weapon never wavers.
“Hands behind your back,” I tell the soldier.
Keeping a wary eye on Wyck, who has come closer, he complies. I figure out the magnet cuffs, loop them around his wrists, and activate them.
“Sit.”
“You must be the deserter,” the soldier says, facing Wyck. “Coward.”
Wyck kicks his feet out from under him. Not able to use his hands to break his fall, he sits hard, letting out a pained oof. Pulling wire from my backpack, I bind his booted ankles. Wyck pulls off the soldier’s helmet and communicator. He’s bald, his head a shiny black dome. He glares at us. “You’re being stupid. Running away was one thing, but now you’ve attacked an IPF soldier. Do you know what the penalties are for armed attack on a military member or facility? It’s treason.”
“Shut up.” Wyck slugs him behind the ear with the rifle’s butt.
The soldier slumps sideways.
“You didn’t need to hit him.”
“He’s done worse.”
“How do you know?” I kneel beside the soldier and check for a pulse. Still strong. Relieved, I stand.
“He’s IPF. Like my dad.”
Wyck stands rigid, beamer ready, like he’d appreciate another opportunity to clock the soldier, so I say, “We need to find his ACV and get away from here. ”
“It can’t be far.” Wyck hunts to the left and I choose the right. The ACV is only a short distance away, an enclosed six-seater with IPF insignia on the armored hull. With its padded seats, it looks like the height of luxury after two days of slogging in the open air on the stand-up scooters. The guns mounted on either side remind me it’s more than comfy transport. “Over here,” I call to Wyck.
Wyck breaks into a smile when he sees it. “Twink.” He leans into the driver’s compartment and runs a hand over the seat. “I wish we could keep this. Ever driven one of these?”
“Nope.”
“Me, neither.” He climbs in, clearly prepared to give it a try. When he ignites it, a head’s up display provides controls and firing mechanisms for the weapons. Wyck’s hand lingers over them and I can tell he’s itching to shoot something.
“Wait.” I check the cooler unit tucked under the dashboard. There are several water bladders, food pods, and tangerines. My mouth waters at the site of the fruit. “I’m going to leave him some water.”
Before Wyck can object, I take a bladder and carry it back to the soldier. He’s conscious, and sitting up.
“Water,” I tell him, placing the bladder on his lap so he can bend to reach the suction tube. “They’ll find you before too long.”
“We’ll find you,” he says, meeting my gaze without flinching. “Never doubt it.”
Letting him have the last word—he was the one tied up and helpless in a swamp, after all—I hurry back to the ACV. Wyck barely waits until the door seals before skimming forward. Branches scrape the vehicle’s sides until he gets used to compensating for its wider width. While he steers, I help myself to a tangerine. The fruit’s brightness in my mouth is heaven. I close my eyes for a moment, savoring it, then offer a section to Wyck.
Barely chewing it, he swallows and says, “We should be there in a couple of hours, not long after Halla, assuming she doesn’t run into any trouble.”
Deliberately not thinking about the kinds of trouble Halla might have encountered, I begin to search the ACV for supplies that we can take with us when we abandon it. The back is configured with a storage locker running lengthwise between two rows of seats. I crawl into the rear and unlatch it, finding two beamers and an ESD, flashlights, twelve packets of dehydrated meals, a first aid kit, bio-chem gear, night vision binoculars, a pop-up intelli-textile shelter, and a duffel.
“Lots of good stuff here,” I say, listing it for Wyck.
“Great. We can replace some of the stuff I lost.”
We’re both quiet, remembering the stupidity that led to the loss of most of our supplies.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Wyck says finally, shooting me a look. “I was an asshole. Irresponsible. Stupid. Selfish. All the things the proctors always called me. But not anymore. Not since yesterday. You risked your life to save me. I probably can’t ever be worthy of that, but I want to be.”
Tears prick my eyelids and I blink them back. The silence feels freighted with meaning, and I feel compelled to break it, to offer up my own faults. “Well, I can be too bossy, too controlling, too single-minded.”
“Yeah you can.”
He grins, and I grin back and the moment passes.
“Let’s go find Halla,” I say, relaxing against the seat.
Chapter Fourteen
We reach the Okefenokee’s northwest corner without incident. Wyck even resists the temptation to put a few rounds into five alligators lazing on a mud bank. I’m very grateful for the ACV since getting through the swamp without it would have meant either long detours to avoid water, or taking our chances with the alligators. We see two lean-to huts camouflaged with moss and branches, not together, but no people, and I wonder if people live in the swamp or if the huts are long abandoned. Wyck wants to stop and check them out, but we’ve got enough supplies and I say it's not worth the risk. For the moment, he’s willing to go along. I don’t expect that to last much longer than it takes him to semi-forget the terror of the quicksand. I don’t suppose he’ll ever totally forget it. I certainly won’t.
Gradually, the gleam of dark water beneath us gives way to firmer ground. Maple and oak trees, crowned with the neon kudzu but no leaves of their own, begin to replace the brooding cypress trees, and I can glimpse open space in the distance: brown and tan, lifeless, empty. Like so much of Amerada.
“Halla wouldn’t be out there,” Wyck says, echoing my thoughts. He slows the ACV. “She’d stay under cover.”
“We need to get out. Sh
e’s going to think we’re the IPF in this thing.” I pat my armrest.
“Wait.” Wyck studies an icon on the display. “I think this might be a loudspeaker.” He presses it and says, “Can you hear me?”
His voice booms out, tinny and distorted.
“I think they heard you in Atlanta.”
He ignores me. “Halla. Halla Westin. It’s me—Wyck. Everly’s with me. Everything’s okay. Come on out.”
The way we’re announcing our presence makes me vaguely uneasy. Maybe it’s the memory of those lean-tos. We cruise back and forth on a north-south line with no reaction. I scan to either side, hoping to spot Halla, but see nothing.
“You try,” Wyck says.
I lean toward the microphone. “Halla, please come out.” When there’s no response after another ten minutes, I say, “I’m getting worried. She should be around here somewhere by now, unless something’s happened to her. Maybe the baby . . .” I have visions of her miscarrying in the swamp, of her bleeding to death, alone and helpless. “We need to set this thing down and look for her. It’s time to get rid of it anyway.”
Reluctantly, Wyck cuts the power and the ACV settles on the ground, clear of the trees. We spend twenty minutes sorting through the supplies and fill an IPF rucksack with essentials. It’s heavy, but Wyck insists on stuffing it as full as possible. I get the feeling he’s trying to atone for losing our supplies in the quicksand.
“It’s not going to help if you die of exhaustion,” I point out.
“I’ve got this.”
His tone makes me throw my hands up in a surrender gesture. “Fine.”
Wyck leans into the driver’s compartment, and fiddles with the gauges and controls to override safety protocols so it will continue pilotless on the course he sets. He ignites the ACV and backs out of the cockpit. “There. This puppy’s headed for the beach.”
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