“Yeah.”
A moment passed. “Nik, I thought you and Jan . . . I mean . . .” Melisa trailed off.
“Me and Jan?” My brain had completely frozen.
“You know. I thought you were together. But now Lily?”
“Me and Jan?”
“Come on. You’ve been hung up on her forever. And I saw you holding hands the other day.”
She hadn’t seen the kiss? Why did that make the panic inside me subside a little? “Oh, well. I mean, I guess we’re . . . uh . . .”
“Together. But now you can’t stop staring at Lily.” Melisa pointed. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s beautiful. Like, I mean, beautiful. But what about Jan?”
“I’m not staring at Lily.” What was all this anyway? Why was it even Melisa’s business? Why did I kind of feel like it was Melisa’s business? “She’s a nice person. That’s all.”
Melisa raised her eyebrows. “A beautiful nice person, you mean.”
Oh come on. “No, it’s not like that. Lily’s great. But yeah, me and Jan are together. Lily’s just . . .” Just what? How to describe it? I had no desire to be with Lily at all. I mean, I wanted to spend time and learn to hunt from her. But romantically? Even thinking that word in relation to Lily felt weird. “Seriously. No, it’s just not like that. I like trees, but I don’t want to hold their hands. Right?
Melisa looked me in the eyes for a long moment. She seemed to come to some kind of decision. “Oh. All right then.”
Wanderers traded off standing at the fire all night, cooking every last chunk of meat. The rest of us got up early and helped wrap the roasted meat in a material I’d never seen. It was foldable like I’d heard paper was, but it didn’t absorb any juices or water. And once a chunk was fully wrapped, a Wanderer passed a wand around the package and the material shrank and sealed, tightening around the meat.
“What is that?” I asked a Wanderer whose name I didn’t know. He was a short guy, probably a full ten centimeters shorter than me. His hair was wiry and black, almost as big as Devera’s.
“Electrolyzer.” The way he spoke made the last part of the word sound like ‘ah.’ “Passes charged molecules through the wrap-seal here.” He indicated the wrapped meat. “Helps keep it fresh longer.” I’d never heard anyone speak like this guy. It was almost like he was singing his sentences.
The Wanderer stuck out a hand. “I’m Bee.”
“Bee?” I shook his hand. “Nik.”
“I know who you are, my frien’.” He smiled big. “And yeah, Bee. Short for Belzenbragah.”
I burst out laughing but choked it off. “Are you serious?”
“As the day the music died,” Bee said.
“What?” Okay, this guy had to be speaking a completely different language. Or he was making a big joke.
“My mum loved her the long names. Said they gave a person distinction. She’s not here, so here I’m Bee.”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
“What do you mean about the day the music died?”
Bee looked me up and down. “You really wanna know?”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
He looked around. “I’ll talk to you later. We got a lot of walking ahead of us.”
“Okay.” I threaded my arms through my pack. “Can I help?”
“Nah, this is the last one.” He lifted three parcels and headed off. “I’ll catch you later, Nik.”
I watched Bee go. He caught up to a woman and they divided the parcels. Scott called out, saying it was time to get going. I fell in step next to Melisa and Pol at the back of the group, enjoying the play of early sunlight on the forest floor. Gentle morning breeze cooled my neck, and I tasted pine in the air. I caught sight of Bee again. What music? And how did it die?
Chapter 13
A few steps into our day’s hike, I finally remembered that I needed to learn how the Wanderers left no trace of themselves at their campsites. I slowed and touched Melissa’s wrist.
“Hey, I want to see how they clean up campsites after a fire.”
“Me too,” she said.
“I don’t think they would appreciate us spying on their secrets.” We kept walking, but got slower.
“You guys keep going and I’ll tell you what I see.”
Pol noticed we were falling behind. “What’s going on?” He dropped back.
“Nik wants to spy on the Wanderers to see how they make it look like they were never there,” Melisa said.
“Good idea.” Pol turned.
“No, not all of us,” I said. “I think they’ve been deliberately cleaning up the site after all of the Pushers are gone. I’ll go back quietly and fill you guys in. You cover for me.”
“Cover for you?” Pol’s voice was already getting too loud.
I pleaded silently with Melisa. She got the picture. “Come on, Pol. Keep walking.”
I slowed more and let the group start angling to follow the faint path around a rock pile. I didn’t see Lexi or James; they must have gotten ahead. I slipped into the forest and backtracked as fast and quietly as I could. It only took me a few seconds to see the campsite and the three Wanderers who’d remained behind on cleanup duty.
Two of them bent over the fire ring and picked up a couple rocks each. They carried the rocks to different parts of the forest. One of the Wanderers came my way.
I ducked and hid behind the nearest tree.
“No need to hide, Nik.”
Bug me. These guys are way better at this than me. I stood. I knew the woman’s face, but had never learned her name. She had straight black hair and deep brown eyes shaped like small, delicate leaves.
“I’m Jenny.” She gestured with her head. “Come on, I’ll show you how we make sure nobody can track where we’ve been.”
I stood and stepped out from the thick forest, my face burning with embarrassment. “Really? I thought you were hiding how you did it.”
Her thin eyebrows drew down. She laughed quietly. “No. That’s silly. We just clean up after everyone’s gone. We can’t take any chances.”
Ah. Maybe I should stop being suspicious of everyone. “Got it.”
“Okay, so the two biggest things we have to deal with are evidence of the fire pit and any broken vegetation. The Ranjers are really good at seeing pretty much any clue we leave behind, so we have to be better.” Jenny lifted two more rocks.
I grabbed a couple. They were still hot from the fire burning all night, but not so bad that I couldn’t touch them. “So do I just hide them somewhere in the forest?”
“Bury them, usually under or between roots of a tree is best.” She walked away. “Or if you can find a convenient stream.”
I poked around and found a big tree with nothing near its base. Wide roots formed mossy craters in a diameter of maybe five meters around it. I knelt carefully and set the rocks down. Using my new knife, I dug through the moss and soft dirt around the roots. It took a little while, but I finally got two holes big enough to fit the rocks.
I was just finishing covering the rocks with dirt when Jenny showed up next to me. She crouched. “Not bad, but stand up and look at it.”
I stood and tried to see what she was talking about. My rocks were completely covered by dark, rich dirt. I’d mixed a few pine needles in to make the dirt look more normal. A complex pattern of roots wove around the rest of the tree, moss filling the space between some of the roots and painting the forest floor in patches of deep green.
“What?”
“See a pattern in the moss?”
I looked closer, then took a step back. What was she getting at? “Uh, no?”
“Okay, do you see anywhere that maybe moss should be that it isn’t now?” I caught a hint of laughter in her voice.
It hit me. I’d scraped the moss away when I was digging the holes for the rocks. Now there were consistent patches of moss between most of the roots, and two moss-less patches where my rocks were. My heart sank.
; “Spam. I’m an idiot.”
The Ranjers were going to see that for sure.
“No, just a greenie,” Jenny said. “We can fix it if we’re careful.” She bent and pulled a thin blade out of a sheath hidden under her long shirt. I stood there, totally useless, as she selected a moss patch at the outskirts of the area that the fuzzy green covered. Working fast but carefully, she sliced the moss free from the dirt, peeling it back. Next, she divided her moss and draped it into the patches I’d scraped clean. She waved me closer. “Come on, help me pat it down. Don’t break it.”
I crouched and gingerly pushed the patch in, watching her carefully. She took extra care to smooth the edges as they touched the protruding roots. When she was done, she helped me with my patch and we both stood.
“Now look again,” Jenny said.
I did. It looked like it had never been touched by a person. “That’s blaze.”
“Yup, we know what we’re doing.” She led the way back to the campsite. “Let’s see what else there is to do.”
When we showed up, the other two Wanderers were working where the campfire had been. A small pile of rocks remained, but they were off to the side. The Wanderers were using some kind of thin, flat metal square with a pointed edge to dig under the space where the fire had been.
“Here, use this shovel,” Jenny said. She handed me a tool like the one the other Wanderers were using. “We need to get about a half meter down on the sides and nearly a meter in the middle.”
By the time we were done, I was sweating and covered in dirt. We also had three big piles of dirt and an impressively deep hole. One of the Wanderers pushed a pile of ashes into the bottom of the hole, then poured some water on top from a container clipped to his side. The other Wanderer reappeared. She was carrying a tree.
Okay, it was a small tree, but it was a tree. Roots and everything.
“Where’d that come from?”
Jenny grinned and raised her eyebrows. “It’s a secret.”
I opened my mouth to say how dumb that was, but saw the joke in her eyes. I looked around. “No, really. Where’d you get it?”
“You don’t remember seeing it right here?” The Wanderer with the tree lowered the tree into the hole we had dug. She gestured with her head. “We chose the site because we could dig this tree out and put a fire pit where it was.”
This I had not noticed. But I got it. “You pull the tree out, put your fire pit where it was, then replace the tree.”
“He’s got it, Mark and Jo,” Jenny said. She took some of the nearby rocks and wove them into the roots that Jo, the other lady Wanderer, was holding in place. Mark helped. Then we all scraped dirt and packed it tightly around the roots. “The rocks make it harder to pull the tree out, keep it a little more firm.”
They took turns stomping the dirt around the base of the tree really tight as we refilled the hole.
“Here, give it a yank,” Mark said.
I did. It bent sideways a little, but didn’t budge upward at all.
“Wow, that’s great.”
The amount of planning these guys did to stay safe from the Ranjers was impressive. I guess a lifetime of being on the run did that to you.
“Okay, Nik, let’s have you stand back now. Time to polish it off,” Jenny said.
I watched as Jenny and Jo lifted some old, dry pine branches from near the base of a tree. They swept the branches around to smooth the dirt, starting at one end of the campsite and working back towards me. Their work left the ground looking untouched. Mark was right behind them, his footprints being disguised by their work. He had a big bag of pine needles and was scattering them lightly on top of the dirt the two women were sweeping.
When they got done, the forest floor was completely normal. It looked like nobody had even breathed near the space where about thirty people had been camped a half-hour before.
Jenny led the way back toward the group in a slow jog. Mark and Jo lagged behind, intermittently sweeping the path a little and scattering more pine needles.
“Why are they doing that?”
“Making sure we don’t leave any pattern of traces. They’ll stop in a few minutes.” Jenny glided under a tree branch that hung lower than the rest. She was like Lily; she looked like a part of the forest, like she belonged here and knew it better than anything.
We caught up to the group quickly.
“What took so long?” Pol asked.
“They let me help them,” I said.
“So you know how they do it?” Melisa stepped closer to me. “But they didn’t try to hide it?”
“No, they were nice.” I told my friends what I’d learned.
“Rocks? In the roots?” Admiration was obvious in Pol’s voice. “That’s brilliant.”
“But it’s stuff anyone could have thought of,” I said. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“Because you’re stupid?” Melisa grinned at me.
“He’s not stupid,” Pol said. He was a true friend. “He’s just a little slow in the head.” Pol was a spammer.
“You guys can eat some Bug.” To be honest, it was nice to see Pol get some of his humor back. “I’d like to see you slice moss off the forest floor to fill in patches where you hid rocks.”
“You mean patches you scraped away by mistake,” Melisa said.
“Because you’re slow in the head,” Pol said.
I mock-glared at him. “At least I’m not the size of a four-year-old.”
Melisa burst out laughing. “He’s got a good point.”
Pol shook his head. “It’s not a about how big you are. It’s about what you do with your size.”
We all laughed, but kind of trailed off.
“That’s true, though,” Melisa said.
Pol and I nodded. We settled into silence. I thought back to when I’d first met Wanderers, somewhere north of here. I looked around. The world was completely different. Which was good in some ways. But it was much more dangerous, too.
We had to fix that.
“Do you think they’ll be able to stay ahead of the Ranjers?” Melisa kicked a dried brown branch.
Pol went after it and carefully set it back on the path behind us. “Remember, leave no trace.”
“Sure,” Melisa said. “They will, right?”
I had no idea. I hoped so. “Koner, Annie, Zavier, Krista, and Dyana are leading them. They’re fast and smart. They’ll keep the Ranjers’ attention on them and away from the caverns.” That sounded confident, right?
“It’s a good plan,” Pol said. “Holland has no way of knowing that we know who he is, so he shouldn’t know where we’re going—or even that we’re gone. As far as he and the Ranjers are concerned, nothing’s changed. They’re still hunting us and we’re still on the run.”
“It is a good plan,” Melisa said. “It will work.”
“We just have to move fast,” I said. “Holland’s going to get tired of sending the Ranjers chasing after us, and he’ll think of some way to make things worse.”
“Besides that,” Pol said. “The longer Koner and Annie and the others are on the run, the higher the chance they’ll be caught.”
“Shut up. It will work,” Melisa said.
“If, like Nik said, we’re fast.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And just like that, I’m smart again.”
Melisa gave me a confused look. “That’s what dumb people say.”
Pol burst out laughing. Melisa joined in. They were both Bug-eaters.
“Hush!” Tasha had slipped up behind us. “I know you’re children, but you must still learn to keep quiet.”
“Oh, sorry,” Melisa said.
“Spam, sorry,” Pol echoed.
“Yeah, same,” I said. We’re not children.
Tasha’s lips parted in a small smile. “Remember: people who laugh loud tend to be hiding slowness in the brain.”
I stared. My mouth dropped open. Did she just— I caught Melisa and Pol’s gaze. They looked stunned.
Tasha broke into laughter, muffling the sound with one arm as she dropped to the back of the group.
A loud snort broke free from the laughter I was trying really hard to hold in. “That was blaze,” I said.
Melisa and Pol exchanged a glance.
“I can’t believe she said that!” Melisa’s voice dripped with surprise.
“Hey, she’s a smart lady,” I said.
Melisa punched me on the shoulder. “Look who needs a Wanderer to bail him out.”
“At least people like me,” I said.
“Maybe it’s more like pity,” Pol said. He hopped away from me as I lunged at him. My glued-together side pulled painfully with the movement.
Don’t break the MedGlu, dummy. Don’t want to bleed to death before you even get to San Francisco.
Chapter 14
We kept a fast pace for two days, walking at first through thick forest, but then crossing rocky terrain dotted here and there by trees of all shapes and sizes. Soon after, we were walking through wide-open fields of tall grass and other plants.
On the third day, after crossing through an open space and watching the sky for Ranjer pods the whole time, the ground under my feet felt suddenly different. I looked down. Flat, gray rock stretched left and right, broken up all over by wild grass, trees, and bushes.
This was a road. A hundred-plus-year-old road. Cars, those ungainly boxes with rubber wheels, used to dr—
And that was a car right there. Or it had been.
“Melisa, look at that.” I led the way to the drooping, mangled shape.
All that was left of it was corroded, soft-looking, light brown metal. I remembered the first time I’d seen one of these. That night running from the Enforsers after Bren died—flying as fast as I could on the SyJet. I’d had to dodge their dark shapes more than a few times. And then the next day I’d seen some going back to New Frisko, but I’d never been able to stop and inspect one.
“It looks like it’s melting,” Melisa said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been here for over a hundred years.” I dusted my fingers across some exposed metal. It felt rough and scaly.
“Careful,” Pol said. He bent to look through what had to have been a window. “If it cuts you, it could make you sick.”
Push (Beat series Book 2) Page 9