by J. L. Esplin
I take a deep breath and turn around, my quaking hands in two fists.
Cleverly is standing beside Will, one arm around a sleeping bag. They’re both staring at me, probably wondering what that was about, but they don’t ask. I pass them without a word.
We make quick work of packing up, Cleverly and me hurrying back and forth to the bed of the truck. I run back for my pack last, and Will is still rooted in place.
“C’mon,” I say, taking him by the back of the neck, steering him toward the truck.
“Where’d the truck come from?” he asks.
“We … found it at the reservoir.”
“You stole it?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“That’s cool.”
Through the rear window of the cab, I see Stew slumped against the passenger door, sleeping, or at least pretending to sleep. Getting him into the truck was a small win, I know. But I’m already past it, already worrying about the bigger battle ahead. Because when the time comes, I’ve got to figure out how to get him out.
“Cleverly said there’s not enough gas,” Will says.
That sinking feeling again. But I just say, “How Battle Born would we be if we drove all the way to Brighton Ranch?”
Cleverly’s throwing the last sleeping bag over the side, and Will goes around to the back bumper and climbs in.
Leaning my pack against the rear tire, I get down in front of it, quickly unzipping pockets, trying to remember where I moved that first aid kit.…
“You got a flashlight?” Will calls, thumping around in the bed of the truck. “There’s a lot of stuff back here.”
Nowhere near the amount of stuff Spike had when he stopped this morning.
“There’s one in Stew’s pack. Front left pocket,” I call back. I finally locate the first aid kit and pass it up to Cleverly. “Can you help me with my hand really fast?” I ask, zipping up various pockets before getting to my feet.
“Of course,” she says.
“Found it!” Will says. A soft light bobs around the bed of the truck. “Looks like a lot of junk…”
Cleverly takes out a roll of gauze and a tiny pair of scissors, a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a tube of liquid bandage—superglue, basically—and lines it up along the bed of the truck. She takes my hand.
“Bring that light over here for a minute, Will,” she says.
“Hang on,” he says.
“Will, come on!”
He stomps over and collapses against the side, knocking the gauze to the ground in the process.
“Will!”
“Sorry!”
Cleverly grabs the flashlight from him and crouches down, looking for the gauze.
While all this is going on, I am painfully aware of each passing second. Every so often, the engine sort of lulls before picking up a steady rumble again, and every time that happens, my anxiety level goes up a notch.
We don’t have time for this.
“Just forget it,” I say, but Cleverly’s already on her feet again, gauze in hand.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be quick about it.”
I believe her—she seems nearly as anxious to leave as I am.
Will’s kneeling in the bed of the truck, holding the flashlight for us, and Cleverly’s holding my hand. I uncurl my fingers and we get our first look at the cut. It’s not so deep as I thought it was going to be, but it still needs to be glued shut.
It’s in a really bad spot. Right across my palm where my fingers bend, getting deeper as it reaches the outside of my hand, which is probably why it bled so much. Keeping my hand closed has helped it clot up, but just opening my fingers produces fresh blood.
“Gross. What happened?” Will asks, his nose scrunched up in disgust.
Before I can answer, Cleverly splashes a bunch of rubbing alcohol across my palm, and my eyes fill with tears.
“Ahh!” I suck in a breath, yanking my hand back.
“Sorry!” Cleverly says.
I pace a few feet away, cradle my injured hand against my chest, squat low to the ground.
“Does it hurt?” Will asks.
“Seriously, Will?”
“No, Will,” I snap through clenched teeth. “It feels great.” I stand up, shake out my hand, blow on it. Then force myself to walk back, a sheen of sweat across my brow. “Just glue it shut,” I say to Cleverly. “Hurry.”
She cuts off a few pieces of gauze, hands me one so I can wipe some of the drying blood from my arm, my elbow. She dabs at the fresh blood on my hand, clearing the cut. Then, using her index finger and thumb to hold the wound closed, she squeezes an even bead of glue across my palm.
“Hang on,” she says when I start to pull it away, “it’s still drying.” She raises my hand to her mouth, gently blows back and forth across my palm, the pain magically disappearing …
“There’s a gas can back here,” Will says in a whisper, like he’s trying not to disturb us.
Cleverly looks up at him sharply. “A gas can?”
He nods.
“Does it have the letter L spray-painted on the front?” I ask.
He nods again.
“Is there gas in it?” Cleverly asks.
“I was gonna check, but then you yelled at me to bring you the flashlight.”
“Okay, whatever, go get it!”
Will clomps off to retrieve the gas can.
“That’s one of ours,” I tell Cleverly. “It’s gotta be bone dry.”
“How do you know that?” she says.
I frown for a second, realizing that I don’t actually know. I don’t know if Spike took the can this morning, when for sure all the gas cans at our place were empty. Or if he took it the night we were robbed, when we still had full cans of gas in the shed.
Cleverly climbs up on the back bumper to watch Will. “Hurry up!”
“Just a minute, it’s on here tight,” he says, trying to unhook the can from where Spike had bungeed it into place.
I can’t watch. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I can’t help it.
I finish taking care of my wound, hands shaking with nervous energy as I wrap the gauze around my palm a bunch of times, tucking the end under. I get down in front of my pack to put away my first aid kit, find my black Sharpie—I’m gonna need it to keep track of miles again. I’m just lifting my pack into the darkened truck bed when Will’s shadowy form comes toward us in a crouch, five-gallon gas can in his hand.
He passes it over. “There’s gas in it.”
It’s not until I take the can and feel the liquid sloshing around inside that his words register in my mind.
“He’s right,” I say, grinning.
Cleverly breathes out a relieved laugh. “Will!” she says, leaning over the side to grab him in a quick hug. She twists back to look at me. “How much is in there?”
I test the weight. “Maybe half full?”
Still, we all have the biggest smiles on our faces.
I turn toward the cab. “Hey, Stew!” I call, but my smile fades when I see him slumped against that window. Resting. Exhausted.
I look back at Cleverly and Will, force my smile back in place. “I think the tank’s on the other side.”
I go around the back bumper and Cleverly hops down and trails after me. Will tromps across the bed of the truck to meet us on the other side.
“Can you put gas in the tank without turning off the engine?” he asks, one hand planted on the side of the truck, the other shining the flashlight at the gas cap for me. “Won’t it, like, explode or something?”
“That kind of stuff only happens in movies,” Cleverly says. “Right, John?”
“Um…” I hesitate, my hand on the gas cap. “Yeah, I’m like eighty-five percent sure we won’t die in a fiery explosion.”
But just then, the engine sort of lulls again, rumbles softly for a few seconds, and then dies.
My heart sinks. Not just because the gas in the truck is gone. But because I’m gonna have to mess with those s
tupid wires and get it started again.
I say to Will, “Good news! Our odds just improved to a one hundred percent chance of not exploding.”
I pull off the nozzle attached to the top of the gas can, screw it in place, and upend the gas into the tank. It doesn’t take long, but then I shake the can for a good thirty seconds, making sure we get every last drop of it.
“Let’s get out of here.”
17
THERE’S A WEIRD buzzing in the cab of the truck. Like a dying fly trapped where the dashboard meets the windshield.
“John.”
I flinch at the sound of my brother’s voice, scrunch my eyelids tighter against the bright light seeping through …
“John.”
I let them crack open. Sunlight glares off the windshield. Clusters of dead bugs splattering the glass like constellations.
“Where are we?” he asks.
A groan comes from deep in my chest. I start to sit up, peeling my sweat-soaked back away from the vinyl bench. My neck cramped from where my head was resting—between the seat and the hard doorframe. Arm stiff, hand throbbing, an ache at my temple—all reminders of last night at the reservoir. Then I try to swallow.
“Oh no,” I rasp out, wincing at the dryness in my throat. “I think I slept with my mouth open.”
“You did,” Stew says matter-of-factly.
I glance over at him on the passenger side. He looks small in this space, for some reason. He’s looking back at me with dark eyes, the cowlick at his hairline fanning his hair back, his dry skin dusted with pale desert dirt. An unreadable expression on his face.
He’s not angry, though—at least, not so angry as he was last night.
“How long you been awake?” I rasp. I try to work up enough saliva to wet my throat.
“A while.”
“Cleverly and Will?” I ask, lifting myself up higher on the bench to look out the back window.
“Still asleep.”
I see them on top of the sleeping bags in the bed of the truck—same place they were when the truck rolled to a stop last night. Will, crowded against Cleverly in the last remaining triangle of shade. Both of them completely out.
“Where are we?” Stew asks again.
I drop back against the bench, getting my first look at where the truck stopped in the light of day. Though, when I pulled apart the power wires at 3:52 in the morning, I was too exhausted to look around anyway. Too exhausted to do anything but shut my heavy eyelids and collapse against this seat.
There’s nothing around us but the same desert landscape. Although ahead, I can see where the mountains stretch to the highway. Where the road curves.
I try to remember the math I did last night, the tally marks on my arm.
“Twenty-three miles from Brighton Ranch,” I tell him, rounding down a mile to make it sound better.
“That far?”
“It’s not that far.”
“Not that far for you,” he says, staring out at the highway.
He’s got something halfway unwrapped in his hand, one of his protein bars. He brings it to his mouth and gnaws off a bite.
“It’s a miracle we got as far as we did on that gas,” I tell him. “I think we rolled for a mile at least after the engine died.”
“We’re not supposed to talk about dying, remember?”
His words stop me short, but I don’t let myself react. “Good one, Stew,” I say with no humor in my voice.
He’s holding something in his other hand. A piece of junk mail. One of those glossy half-sheet ads that had fallen out of the glove box last night.
“What do you have?” I say.
He looks down at it, then gives it to me.
TAKE A DRIVE DOWN THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY! it reads. UFO SIGHTINGS AHEAD. EARTHLINGS WELCOME! AREA 51 SOUVENIRS! ALIEN FRESH JERKY! ICE-COLD DRINKS!
“Ice-cold drinks—I wish. Or wait, are you considering a new theory? Aliens instead of zombies? Or maybe the zombies and aliens are working together—”
“Flip it over.”
“What?” I say, frowning. But I do what he says.
The other side of the ad is blank, except for a mailing address printed in the center. TO THE RESIDENT OF, followed by a street address in Ely, Nevada.
But that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about what’s handwritten in the upper right corner.
HWY 318, MM 98.
“It’s directions to our place,” Stew says, gnawing off another bite of his protein bar.
He’s right. I’m holding evidence of their plan to rob us in my hand.
I already know the robbery wasn’t something Clayton Presley and the others just decided in the heat of the moment. But seeing the handwriting, seeing proof of what I already know, here in Spike’s truck, sparks that warm feeling in my chest again.
A trickle of sweat runs down the center of my back and I tug at my shirt, tossing the ad on the seat between us.
Then I look over at my brother, suddenly bothered that he’s not as angry as I am. Why isn’t he angry? Why isn’t his pulse pounding and blood burning? Why isn’t he feeling what I’m feeling?
“They knew Dad was on a work trip,” I say, biting the words out. “Clayton Presley knocked on our door just to make sure we were still alone. Just the two of us alone. Then they came back.”
There is still no spark of anger from him. Not even a flicker.
I feel a pinch between my eyes and look out at the road, far ahead, where the asphalt meets the sky in broken waves, like a swimming pool stretched across the highway.
“They were at the reservoir, Stew. All of them. Who would do something like that? Take everything from us, and then set up camp forty miles down the road? It’s like they knew they could take what they wanted, and we couldn’t do anything about it. But they also didn’t expect we’d go south. They didn’t expect us to show up at the reservoir, slash their tires, and take this truck. But we did. I put my knife through the tires of that stupid truck Presley paid cash for—”
I stop myself, take in a few steadying breaths, push them out. Look over at my brother again.
Nothing. I know he was listening. He had to have been listening. But he just looks at the protein bar in his hand and brings it up to his mouth for another bite.
“What is that?” I say, squinting at the wrapper, because now that I think of it, his food pouch is in his pack, and his pack is in the bed of the truck. He doesn’t answer immediately, so I reach over and snatch it out of his hand. He pretty much lets me have it without a fight.
“Where’d you get this?” I say, yanking the wrapper back to see what it is.
“There’s a whole box of them on the floor.”
It takes me a second to remember Cleverly tossing something through the open window of the cab before she got in at the campsite last night—something from Clayton Presley’s stash of stolen food.
I crouch to look under the console, where a bulk-sized, opened box of peanut butter bars is wedged between the floorboard and the underside of the dash. It’s from our food storage, a favorite snack of my dad’s—peanut butter layered with granola and nuts and coated in a shiny glaze of corn syrup.
“I hate nuts,” I snap, pulling the wrapper flat to read the ingredients. “Oh, good. Loaded with sodium, carbs, and sugar.”
“I don’t care what’s in it. I’m hungry.”
He tries to grab it back, but I hold it out of reach. I’m tempted to chuck it out the window.
There are shadows under his eyes. The corners of his mouth are cracked and dry, the skin on his arms chalky with dirt. His shirt is dry, too, I notice. Not wet with perspiration, like mine.
He’s stopped sweating.
“Did you find the canteens?” I ask him, leaning forward and spotting the backpack at his feet, unzipped.
“Yes.”
“You need to drink more water. Grab the bag.”
Stewart hesitates, like he’s thinking about something. Then his words co
me out like a confession. “Before you woke up, I drank a canteen.”
It takes me half a second to get his meaning, and then I can’t stop my eyes from going wide. “A canteen? As in, half a gallon of water?”
He looks back at me with nervous eyes, like he’s waiting for me to freak out, waiting for me to blow up at him.
But I don’t. I can’t. I want to get mad at him, I do. I’d rather my pulse be racing with anger right now than racing with fear.
“John.” He says my name in a rush, and I feel that pinch between my eyes again. “I’m gonna throw up.”
Something he says all the time.
But this time he gags. His shoulders thrust forward, hand clamped over his mouth. He shoves the lever down and the door open in one motion. Feet on the ground, hands braced on his knees, back hunched.
In the dirt on the side of the road, my brother vomits up half a gallon of water.
18
DAD ALWAYS SAID, if you want to have a productive day, get out of the clothes you slept in.
I want to have a productive day. I need to have a productive day.
I stand behind the truck and peel off my bloodstained pants, my underwear that’s still slightly damp with reservoir water and sweat. I change my filthy undershirt and socks. Then I calm my nerves, crouched down on my heels, deep breaths, willing my hands to stop shaking.
I’ve got to focus on one thing, and one thing only. Get my brother to Brighton Ranch.
I’m giving us seven hours to walk it. Twenty-three miles, seven hours.
I stand and heave my pack onto my back, lifting the straps and rolling my shoulders under the weight. Everything we need is in here. The rest we can ditch.
On the shoulder of the road just ahead of the truck, Cleverly’s got Stew sitting with his head between his knees. “Take deep breaths through your nose, Stew,” she says, fanning his neck with that stupid Extraterrestrial Highway ad.
I press my lips hard when I see it. I don’t tell her that she’s cooling my brother down with evidence to the robbery that put us here in the first place.