Jan smiled. “We will. But I should go. My mom might wake up and wonder.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
She rose to her feet. I kept her hand. As she turned to go, I pulled her back a little. “Jan, I’m glad you woke me.”
Her long dark hair hid her face, but I heard her fine. “Me too.”
I watched her pick her way around trees to where her sleeping mat was. I couldn’t believe it. All this time, me liking her and thinking I was being stupid and thinking it was totally impossible—all this time, and she liked me too.
I lay back and stared up through the tree branches at the few stars that poked through the cloud cover. I was grinning like an idiot. I wanted to go run and tell someone, but realized there wasn’t anyone I could tell. Bren had been my best friend. Pol and Koner wouldn’t care. And Melisa—she was my best friend now, if I thought about it.
But I couldn’t tell her.
Why not? I mulled that question over. After a few minutes, I really had no answer. I just had the feeling that it might hurt her or something. That’s stupid. She’s my friend. And she liked Bren.
It felt like my pounding heart was going to keep me awake all night, but the next thing I knew, daylight poked my eyelids. All of those questions still floated around in my head, but I ignored them. I met Jan’s gaze and couldn’t stop my grin. She smiled back. I turned to roll my sleeping mat, but every time I tried to grip it, my wrist throbbed so bad I would see spots.
What was it with my hand or arm getting injured, anyway? Those first few days running from Enforsers in New Frisko and the forest had been way harder than they should have been with a broken arm. I needed to stop messing up my limbs.
Jan appeared next to me. “Need help?”
“Yeah, please.” I kept a hand on the roll I’d begun. Jan crouched and took over, easily getting the mat rolled tightly.
She stretched a strap around it and handed it to me. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks.” Our hands touched as I grabbed the mat. The sensation of her lips on mine came back full force. We needed to do that again.
She smiled and went back to where Dyana was working.
We got moving pretty fast, with Dyana’s and James’ssquads leading the way and my squad bringing up the rear. Pol was walking a lot better already. He was using a long, sturdy stick to help hold his weight, and he had a bandage wrapped tightly around his hurt ankle. He and Koner stuck together again.
I left Melisa to lead the squad for a minute and angled myself so I would end up walking next to Jan. Looking around, I did some calculations. “I think we’re only a couple hours from the other camp.”
She nodded. “I think so. I hope they’re okay.”
“They will be. There’s no way the Ranjers found them.” I tried to think of something else to say, but came up empty. “I have to go back with my squad,” I poked my thumb backward.
“Okay.”
I drifted back. I needed to learn to talk better.
We kept a steady pace. Dyana led us in mostly a straight line, but we made sure to stay under cover as much as possible.
Before the morning chill had completely gone, I saw the distinctive V pattern of trees that we used as a landmark.
We sped up.
We’d gone about another half kilometer when I heard Nate’s voice. “Give me the code or you’re about to die!”
I turned; he was off to the left. “Never safe!” I called and we waited for the signal that meant that the group we’d left here hadn’t been captured by Ranjers
Another voice, Rojer’s, came from ahead of us. “Never calm!”
I felt a knot of tension in my neck ease. “They’re okay,” I said under my breath.
Nate appeared first, his tall form breaking through the woods. I didn’t see Rojer, but I heard him talk to Dyana.
“Where is everyone?” Nate asked. He scanned the group, his eyes getting wider as he took us in. We had to look terrible. And a bunch of us were carrying extra weapons. “Bug me. What happened?”
“The Ranjers attacked and—” Lexi started. She had been on rear guard about thirty meters back with Melisa, but they must have caught up.
“We’ll tell everyone when we get into the cavern,” Melisa said. She gave Lexi an angry look.
“Bad news?” Nate asked, falling into step next to me as Dyana and Rojer got the group moving.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What happened to your arm?”
I gave him a grim smile. There were rare moments now and then when I was able to forget about the sticky fire. “Burned it. We’ll tell you more in a minute.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
We walked a little ways up a steep hill.
“We’ve got good news,” Nate said between breaths.
“Really? What?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said. He gave me a ridiculous look, waggling his eyebrows.
“You’re a spammer,” I said.
“Yup.”
At the top of the hill, the group angled toward a tall, wide rock formation that protruded from the tree-covered hill. We walked along the edge of the forest with skinny trees interspersed among wide-trunked trees. The ground turned into gritty, moss-covered stone. Ahead of and a bit above me, the front of the group began to disappear as if they were being swallowed by the rock formation. When I got to the top of the path, I was able to see down into the cavern. I followed the group down, noticing the rope that someone had installed. It was thick and anchored into cracks in the craggy rock wall that lined the way down.
“Rojer?” I asked, yanking on the rope railing.
Nate nodded. “Guy is always fixing stuff. He wanted to put new stairs in over the rock ones, but we convinced him that would make it kind of obvious that someone was in here.”
I walked behind Nate as we descended.
“But I think he’s trying to figure out retractable stairs or something,” Nate finished.
“Not surprised.”
I passed through a totally nonfunctional metal bar door in an entrance lined with incredibly corroded metal. Inside was almost complete darkness, and I followed the line of my friends deeper into the caves.
A few people pulled out light orbs and activated them. Far ahead, I saw an orb float slowly upward and hover about a meter above our heads. Rojer again. He must have figured out a way to stabilize the propulsion. I wanted to go grab the orb and examine it, see how Rojer had solved the problems we’d been having with wobbling.
Jagged formations clustered the ceiling of the passageway, some of them seeming to glow back at us as we passed through. We took a few turns, going deeper into the cave system. I remembered finding the caverns. It had been a week or two after we’d left New Frisko and we’d been chased by Ranjers almost every day, losing people every time. Melisa, Pol, Koner, and I, along with a few Enforsers, had taken a pod out to scour for a good hiding place. I’d spotted an irregularity in the rocks below us. That had turned out to be an old, collapsed structure outside the caves. Melisa found the path down to the cave opening and then Pol had been the first in.
It was an amazing find. If we could keep the Ranjers far from here until we figured out how to stop Holland, the little kids and babies would be safe.
Voices echoed all around us as we got deeper. The passageway tightened just a little, then it opened up. I immediately felt the difference. Voices didn’t echo so much as dissolve. Clusters of rock and mineral spikes dotted the floor and ceiling. Running along one side of the cavern was a small stream, fed by a spring that was up another passageway. I remembered the water—it was clean and cool and one of the best things I’d ever tasted.
I stretched my good hand back and pulled my water bottle from my pack. “I’ll catch right up.” I dumped my old, flat water and let the light of a bunch of glowing orbs all around the cavern guide me to the stream. I filled my bottle and took a long drink. So much better than the New Frisko stuff.
Voices raise
d in greeting and conversations started up. The voices grew louder fast as the group in the cave realized how many of us were missing.
“Everyone quiet!” Dyana sure could shout when she wanted to.
The huge cavern got silent surprisingly fast. Somebody called out. “What happened? Where is everyone?”
“Where’s Karl?” That was Rojer.
“We will tell it from the start,” Dyana said. A pause. “Nik? You’re up.”
What? Why me? I stayed quiet for a moment. “Go ahead, Dyana, you tell it.”
Another quiet moment. “Fine,” Dyana said. She told the story quickly, not dwelling on things like I probably would have done. But she did list the people who had died. I watched Zavier go stiff as she talked about his wife and daughter. When she got to David being gone, I heard several people gasp. She told about the projector-bomb and what Holland had said.
“Wil?” That was Kristin, Wil’s mother. She was a nurse. “Wil’s gone?” Kristin’s husband hadn’t survived the escape from New Frisko. Wil was all she’d had left. Her sobs made me want to punch Holland so hard he exploded.
We had to find my parents and Holland. We had to hunt Holland down and stop him. And he needed to die. But can I do that? I listened to Kristin’s sobs and the cries of others who had lost loved ones. I didn’t think so earlier, but now? Yes. I could.
Dyana finished and people’s sobs grew softer. Other people moved in to comfort the grieving.
Nate piped up. “Well, we have good news.” He had everyone’s attention. “Kristin and Devera helped Vanesa give birth. It’s a girl and they named her Teresa. Both Vanesa and Teresa are doing great!”
A cheer went up, a little ragged at first, but it got louder.
Nate raised his arms, his fist clenched in triumph. “That’s our first Pusher baby!”
Chapter 8
I jerked in surprise and stared at Nate. “Pusher baby? What does that mean?”
“Pusher, Nik. We’re the Pushers. It was Rojer’s idea.” Nate bobbed his head in Rojer’s general direction.
No, that was my name. I’d come up with that name for my small group of friends that met in the park after school.
Nate kept talking. Which he was good at. “I mean, you’ve got the New Chapter and the Wanderers. So what are we? We’re not the New Friskos or whatever. We’re the Pushers, like you guys were before it all came down. And we pushed back.”
It made sense, but it felt jarring to have my name being used like it was a movement or something. I kicked at a nearby stalagmite. Nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to. To be fair, I hadn’t really thought the whole Pushing thing through. I hadn’t thought through what would happen after I proved the Bug was gone either. So it wasn’t like I should be surprised at anything at this point. But the Pushers—that had been mine and Bren’s and our friends’ thing. Special to us.
“Pretty good, right?” Nate grinned at me. “It’s a good name.”
“Sure.” Feeling totally drained, I walked away. My left arm had started throbbing again. I needed to find Kristin and see if she could help me with it. And maybe she could make sure James’s work on my side was still intact. The Pushers. Better than the Rebels or something like that.
By the time I left Kristin, I was even more drained. She’d worked on my wrist and side in total, broken silence. Honestly, I was kind of surprised she could even function, considering she’d just found out her son was gone. She’d spread some kind of nano-ointment on the burned patch on my wrist. I guessed the nanos were in there to help rebuild my skin a little faster. I hoped they worked. For the trench the bullet had dug in my side, she used more MedGlu and wrapped a bandage so tightly around my middle that it was almost hard to breathe for a second.
I headed toward the spot I hung out in and slept in when I was here. It wasn’t that far into the afternoon yet, but I felt like I could sleep for days. The big space had quieted down substantially. I knew some families had found smaller caves down some of the tunnels and had made homes there. The nursery was now in a big cave down a ways from the main cavern, although it was much different now. Kids stayed with their parents, and the nursery was just where medicines and supplies were kept. And it was where babies were born now, it turned out.
I pulled up short as Devera stepped in front of me. I wished I had one of Rojer’s floating orbs; it would have had a better illumination radius. With just my chest light and Devera’s, the light pointed directly in our eyes while the space to our sides was still dark.
“I heard about Pol’s brother,” Devera said. Even in the strange light, her big hair and dramatically green eyes stood out.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
I nodded. She stepped closer and threw her arms around me, squeezing tight. I hugged her back.
She stepped back and gave me one of her penetrating looks. “Did you kill many of them? The Ranjers?”
How could such a beautiful, innocent young kid be so bloodthirsty? It had to be because she’d been raised as a Wanderer.
“Enough.” A picture of that destroyed campsite returned to me. We needed to find a way to stop this. It just . . . Why couldn’t Holland leave us alone?
“So we’re done?” Devera asked.
“Done?”
“You killed enough. That means we’re done—we won.” She had one eyebrow raised.
I rolled my eyes. “No, we didn’t win. We’re not done.”
If Devera were any good with a keeper, she would probably be the most brutal fighter we had. Luckily, she was no Annie. I’d seen her miss a tree trunk from five meters away.
“Then you didn’t kill enough,” Devera said.
She had a point. Considering how we’d found her, surrounded by her murdered Wanderer triune, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore at how furious she was about the New Chapter. The Ranjers in particular.
A shout rang out. It sounded like it came from the direction of the cavern entrance.
“Someone’s out there! Fighters to your stations!”
Bugging drek.
I turned to go, adjusting the keeper slung across my chest. Devera grabbed my wrist. “He won’t stop until we’re all dead. The only way we win is if we do the same.”
She was right. But just killing all the Ranjers wasn’t going to end this. We had to find Holland and stop him directly, right after we rescued my parents and the other captives.
I ran through the cavern passageways, my chest light bouncing off the walls, floor, and ceiling. Jagged spikes of rock stretched up and down all over, my light reflecting off sharp crystals on the walls.
More shouting. “They don’t know the codes! Fighters, be ready!” That was Dyana’s voice.
“Wait!” I shouted. We had to be sure. Devera was right; we had to fight and maybe even be brutal. But we couldn’t just kill anyone that came near. We had to make sure they were enemies first. “Don’t shoot until you know they’re Ranjers!”
I got to the steep, rough stairs cut into the rock tunnel at the same time as Melisa. We heard shouting above. “Ranjers?” Melisa asked.
I shook my head. “Don’t think so. They would have attacked right away.”
“Yeah. Maybe another group from Frisko,” Melisa said. She ran up the stairs.
“Maybe.” A few weeks ago, we’d found a wandering group of people who had made it out of New Frisko on their own, avoiding the gas that Holland had released all over the city. There had to be more people like that out there. I followed. “But they shouldn’t be good enough to find us.”
The light above turned Melissa into an indistinct dark shape. I focused on the daylight beyond the doorway, trying to get my eyes to adjust faster. Please don’t be Ranjers.
I got to the top right after Melisa. We both stayed low, not wanting to give away the entrance to the caverns. She looked right. I looked left. I scanned the rough rock surface and the trees beyond it. Nothing.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Melisa and I exchanged a look. The people wore forest-colored clothes and the men had thick beards. Wanderers.
“Who are you to challenge us?” One of the men stepped forward. He was tall. Judging by his size relative to the rest of the Wanderers, he had to be taller than me, and thick in the chest. His beard was shaped so that it framed his mouth. What hair he had left fringed his head and hung low, nearly to his shoulders.
Our guard looked confused. “What?”
“We’re simply passing through the forest. Yet as we begin to traverse this rocky hill, you command us to stay away.” The man, who I assumed was the leader, took a few more steps. “What are you guarding?”
Our guard lifted his keeper. “Don’t come any closer!”
The Wanderer leader bent closer, as if he was getting a better look. “And now you point a weapon of death and tyranny at us!”
Bug me, this guy talked strangely. Were all the leaders of the Wanderer triunes like this? I remembered Gabe, the leader of Devera’s triune—he had talked funny too. This was getting ridiculous. I grabbed Melisa’s arm and pulled her up with me.
“It’s okay,” I called out. Our guard caught sight of me and lowered his keeper. “They’re not going to hurt us.”
I thought fast. We didn’t want to let the Wanderers know we were here, especially in such numbers. My last experience with these guys had not ended well.
“We can’t tell them we’re all here,” Melisa said.
“I know.” We walked down the rocky hill toward the group of Wanderers. There were over twenty of them. One of the women had a baby wrapped tightly against her chest. “I have an idea.”
Push (Beat series Book 2) Page 5