Sarah pulls away from me and, in one fluid motion, not wanting to drag this painful moment out any longer, she opens the door and hops out of the van. She shoulders her backpack and whistles. ‘Come on, Bernie Kosar!’
BK clambers into the front seat, head cocked at me, as if wondering why I’m not getting out of the van, too. I scratch him behind his good ear and he lets out a little whine.
Keep her safe, I tell him telepathically.
Bernie Kosar puts both his front paws on my leg and sloppily licks the side of my face. Sarah laughs.
‘So many good-bye kisses,’ she says as BK jumps down from the van. Sarah clips on his leash.
‘This isn’t good-bye,’ I say. ‘Not really.’
‘You’re right,’ Sarah replies, her smile getting shaky, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice. ‘I’ll see you soon, John Smith. Stay safe.’
‘See you soon. I love you, Sarah Hart.’
‘I love you, too.’
Sarah turns away, hurrying towards the sliding doors of the bus station, Bernie Kosar trotting along at her heels. She looks back at me only once, right before she disappears through the doors, and I wave. Then, she’s gone – into the bus station and eventually off to some secret location in Alabama, searching for a way to help us win this war.
I have to stop myself from running after her, so I clutch the steering wheel until my knuckles are white. Too white – my Lumen kicks in unexpectedly, my hands glowing. I haven’t lost control of that since … well, since back in Paradise. I take a deep breath and calm myself down, glancing around, making sure no one outside the bus station noticed. I turn the key in the ignition, feel the van rumble to life and pull away from the bus station.
I miss her. I already miss her.
I head back towards one of Baltimore’s rougher neighborhoods, where Sam, Malcolm and Adam are waiting for me, planning an assault. I know where I’m going and what I’m doing, but I still feel adrift. I remember my brief scuffle with Adam in the destroyed John Hancock penthouse, how I almost fell out the window. That feeling of emptiness behind me, of teetering right next to the edge, that’s how I feel now.
But then I imagine Sarah’s hands pulling me away from that empty space. I imagine what it will be like when we meet again, what it will be like with Setrákus Ra vanquished and the Mogadorians beaten back into the cold emptiness of space. I imagine the future and I smile grimly. There’s only one way to make that happen.
It’s time to fight.
4
We hike through the darkness, down a muddy road carved out of the swampland, the rhythmic sucking noises from our waterlogged sneakers and the incessant chirping of bugs the only sounds. We pass by a solitary wooden pole, slanted and close to being totally uprooted, the streetlight out, power lines sagging under the overgrown trees, disappearing into them. It’s a welcome sign of society after two days spent in the swamps, hardly sleeping, turning invisible at the slightest noise, plodding our way through muck.
It was Five who led us into the swampland. He knew the way, of course. It was his ambush. We didn’t have an easy time finding our way out. It’s not like we could’ve gone back to the car we drove down here, anyway. The Mogs would definitely be watching that.
A few steps ahead, Nine slaps the back of his neck, squashing a mosquito. At the noise, Marina flinches, and the field of cold she’s been giving off since the fight with Five momentarily intensifies. I’m not sure if Marina’s having trouble getting control of her new Legacy or if she’s intentionally cooling the air around us. Considering how humid the Florida swamps have been, I guess it hasn’t been so bad trekking around with a portable air conditioner.
‘You all right?’ I ask her quietly, not wanting Nine to overhear and yet knowing that’s impossible with his heightened hearing. She hasn’t spoken to Nine since Eight was killed, has barely said anything to me.
Marina looks over at me, but in the dark I can’t get a read on her. ‘What do you think, Six?’ she asks.
I squeeze her arm and find her skin cool to the touch.
‘We’ll get them,’ I tell her. I’m not much for these leader-style speeches – that’s what John does – so I keep it blunt. ‘We’ll kill them all. He won’t have died in vain.’
‘He shouldn’t have died at all,’ she replies. ‘We shouldn’t have left him out there. Now they have him, doing Lord knows what to his body.’
‘We didn’t have a choice,’ I counter, knowing it’s true. After the beating we endured at the hands of Five, we were in no shape to fight off a battalion of Mogadorians backed up by one of their ships.
Marina shakes her head and falls silent.
‘You know, I used to always want Sandor to take me camping,’ Nine butts in out of nowhere, looking at us over his shoulder. ‘I hated living in that cushy-ass penthouse. But man, after this? I sort of miss it.’
Marina and I don’t respond. That’s the way Nine’s been talking since our battle with Five – these forced anecdotes about nothing, weirdly upbeat, like nothing serious happened out here. When he wasn’t rambling, Nine made it a habit to hike ahead of us, using his speed to put some distance between us. When we caught up, he’d have already caught some animal, usually snake, and be cooking it over a small fire he built on a rare dry patch of land. It’s like he wanted to pretend we were just on some fun camping trip. I’m not squeamish; I’d eat whatever Nine caught. Marina never did, though. I don’t think the roasted swamp creatures bothered her so much as the fact it was Nine doing the hunting. She must be running on empty by now, even more so than me and Nine.
After another mile, I notice the road getting a little more packed down and well traveled. I can see light up ahead. Soon, the nonstop buzzing of the local insect life gives way to something equally annoying.
Country music.
I wouldn’t exactly call this place a town. I’m sure it doesn’t show up on even the most detailed map. It looks more like a campground that people forgot to leave. Or maybe this is just a place where the local hunters come to bro around and escape their wives, I think, noticing an overpopulation of pickup trucks in the nearby gravel parking lot.
There are a couple dozen crude huts scattered throughout this cleared stretch of swamp coast, all of them pretty much indistinguishable from an old-school outhouse. The huts basically consist of some pieces of plywood hastily nailed together, and they look like a strong breeze could knock them over. I guess when you’re building at the edge of a Florida swamp, there’s no point in putting too much effort in. Hung between the huts, lighting this grim little vista, are strings of blinking Christmas lights and a few gas-powered lanterns. Beyond the huts, where the solid ground sinks back into the swamp, there’s a rickety dock with a few tied-up pontoon boats.
The source of the music – the center of this ‘town’ – and the only solid structure built here is Trapper’s, a sleezy-looking bar housed in a log cabin, the name proudly displayed along the roof in sizzling green neon. A row of stuffed alligators line the bar’s wooden porch, their jaws open and searching. From inside, above the music, I can hear men shouting and pool balls cracking.
‘All right,’ Nine says, clapping his hands. ‘My kind of place.’
The place does sort of remind me of the off-the-grid spots I used to hit up when I was alone and on the run, places where the tight-knit and gritty locals made it easy to spot out-of-place Mogadorians. Even so, as I notice a scrawny middle-aged guy with a mullet and a tank top staring at us, chain-smoking in the shadows of the porch, I wonder if we should find a safer place for us to poke our heads in.
But Nine is already halfway up the creaky wooden steps, Marina right behind him, and so I go along. Hopefully this place has a phone so we can at least get in touch with the others back in Chicago. Check to see how John and Ella are doing – hopefully better, somehow, especially now that we know the cure-all Five claimed to have in his Chest was a bunch of crap. We have to warn the others about him. Who knows what information he might??
?ve been feeding to the Mogadorians.
When we push through the swinging saloon doors of Trapper’s, the music doesn’t screech to a stop like in the movies, but everyone in the bar does turn their heads to stare at us, almost in unison. The place is cramped, not much to it besides the bar, a pool table and some beat-up lawn furniture. It stinks of sweat, kerosene and alcohol.
‘Hoo boy,’ someone says, then whistles loudly.
I quickly realize that Marina and I are the only two women here. Hell, we might be the first women to ever set foot inside Trapper’s. The drunks staring at us range from tremendously overweight to alarmingly skinny, all of them dressed in halfway-open plaid shirts or sweat-stained wifebeaters, some of them flashing gap-toothed leers, others smoothing down unkempt beards as they size us up.
One guy, in a ripped heavy-metal T-shirt and with a lower lip stuffed with chewing tobacco, breaks away from the pool table to sidle up next to Marina.
‘This must be my lucky night,’ the guy drawls, ‘because you gi –’
The rest of the pickup line is lost to the ages because the moment this guy tries to slide his arm around her shoulders, Marina roughly snatches his wrist. I can hear the moisture on his arm crackle as it flash freezes, and a second later the guy is crying out as Marina twists his arm behind his back.
‘Do not come near me,’ she says in a measured tone, loud enough so the whole bar knows that the warning doesn’t go just for the dude whose arm she’s almost breaking.
Now, the room truly does go quiet. I notice one guy let his beer bottle slip down in his hand so he’s holding it by the neck, all the better for swinging. A couple of burly guys at a back table exchange looks and stand up, eyeballing us. For a moment, I think the whole bar might try rushing us. That would end badly for them, and I try to communicate that with my stare. Nine, who with his tangled black hair and dirty face fits right in here, cracks his knuckles and lolls his head back and forth, watching the crowd.
Finally, one of the other hicks at the pool table hoots. ‘Mike, you dumbass, say excuse me and get over here! It’s your shot!’
‘Sorry,’ Mike whimpers to Marina, his arm turning blue where she’s touching him. She shoves him away and he goes to rejoin his friends, rubbing his arm and trying to avoid looking at us.
Just like that, the tension breaks. Everyone goes back to what they were doing, which pretty much means guzzling beer. I figure scenes similar to that – little fights, stare downs, maybe a stabbing or two – must happen in Trapper’s all the time. No big deal. Like I figured, this is one of those places where nobody asks any questions.
‘Keep it under control,’ I tell Marina as we walk to the bar.
‘I am,’ she replies.
‘Didn’t look like it.’
Nine reaches the bar a step ahead of us, clearing a space between two hunchbacked drunks and slapping the chipped wooden surface.
The bartender, who looks just a tad more alert and cleaner than his customers, probably because he’s wearing an apron, looks us over with weary disapproval.
‘You should know I keep a shotgun under the bar. I don’t want any more trouble,’ the bartender warns.
Nine grins at him. ‘It’s cool, old man. You got anything to eat back there? We’re starving.’
‘I could fry you up some burgers,’ the bartender replies after a moment’s thought.
‘It’s not possum meat or something, is it?’ Nine asks, then holds up his hands. ‘Never mind, I don’t want to know. Three of your finest, my man.’
I lean across the bar before the bartender can retreat into the kitchen. ‘You got a phone?’
He jerks his thumb towards the bar’s darkened back corner, where I notice a pay phone hanging cockeyed from the wall. ‘You could try that. It works part of the time.’
‘Looks like everything in here only works part of the time,’ Nine mutters, glancing at the TV mounted above the bar. The reception is bad at the moment, a news report swallowed up by static, the crooked rabbit ears emerging from the set not doing their job.
As the bartender disappears into the kitchen, Marina sits down with a couple of stools buffering her from Nine. She avoids eye contact, engrossed by the popping static on the TV. Meanwhile, Nine drums his hands on the bar, looking around, almost daring one of the drunks to say something to him. I’ve never felt so much like a babysitter.
‘I’m going to try calling Chicago,’ I tell them.
Before I can go, the scrawny chain-smoker from outside squeezes into the space at the bar next to me. He flashes a smirk that’s probably supposed to be charming, except he’s missing a couple of teeth, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which look wild and desperate.
‘Hey, honey,’ he says, obviously having missed Marina’s demonstration about what happens when drunks try flirting with us. ‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you my story. It’s a doozy.’
I stare at him. ‘Get away from me.’
The bartender returns from the kitchen, the smell of cooking meat coming with him and making my stomach growl. He notices the scrawny guy next to me and immediately snaps his fingers in his face.
‘Thought I told you not to come in here if you don’t have any money, Dale,’ the bartender barks. ‘Go on, now.’
Ignoring the bartender, Dale fixes me with one last pleading look. Seeing that I won’t be budged, he slinks down the bar to beg one of the other patrons for a drink. I shake my head and take a deep breath; I need to get out of this place, I need a shower and I need to hit something. I’m trying to keep it cool, to be rational about things, especially considering my two companions aren’t acting all that stable, but I’m angry. Furious, really. Five knocked me out, practically took my head clean off. In that time I was unconscious, the whole world changed. I know I couldn’t have seen it coming – I never expected one of our own would turn traitor, even a freak like Five. Still, I can’t help but feel it would’ve been different if I’d had my guard up. If I’d been fast enough to dodge that first punch, Eight might still be alive. I didn’t even get a chance to fight, and it makes me feel cheated and useless. I bottle that rage up, saving it for the next time I see a Mogadorian.
‘Six,’ Marina says, her voice suddenly fragile, not so distant and cold. ‘Look at this.’
The TV over the bar has started coming in, a rolling band of static disrupting the picture now and then, but a news broadcast is otherwise clearly visible. On it, a windblown reporter stands in front of a line of police tape, the John Hancock Center looming in the background.
‘What the hell?’ I say under my breath. The roof shakes from a sudden peal of thunder outside. That was me, letting some of that rage slip.
The newscast switches over from the reporter to taped footage of the top floors of the John Hancock Center in flames.
‘This can’t be happening,’ Marina says, her eyes wide, looking to me for confirmation that this is just some sick joke. I’ve been trying to be the stable one, but I can’t find anything reassuring to say.
The bartender clicks his tongue, watching the TV, too. ‘Crazy, right? Freakin’ terrorists.’
I lunge across the bar and grab him by the front of his apron before he can even think of reaching for his hidden shotgun. ‘When did this happen?’ I snap.
‘Damn, girl,’ the bartender says, sensing something in my eyes that makes him decide not to struggle. ‘I dunno. Like, two days ago? It’s been all over the news. Where the hell you been?’
‘Getting our asses handed to us,’ I mutter, and shove him away. I try to pull myself together, to beat back the panic. Nine’s been completely silent since the report came on. When I look over at him, his expression is completely blank. He stares at the television, watching footage of our penthouse headquarters and his former home burning, his mouth open just a little, his body completely still, almost rigid. He looks like he’s shutting down, as if his brain isn’t capable of processing this latest blow.
‘Nine …,’ I start, and my voice breaks his tra
nce. Without a word to me or Marina, without so much as a look, he spins around and heads for the door. One of the pool players isn’t quick enough to get out of Nine’s way and gets shouldered to the floor.
Trusting that Marina won’t freeze anyone to death in my absence, I chase after Nine. By the time I’m out on Trapper’s porch, Nine has already made it into the parking lot, stalking intently towards the gravel road.
‘Where are you going?’ I shout after him, hopping the porch railing and jogging to catch up.
‘Chicago,’ he answers bluntly.
‘You’re going to walk to Chicago?’ I ask him. ‘That’s your plan?’
‘Good point,’ he replies, not slowing down. ‘I’ll steal a car. You guys coming or what?’
‘Stop being an idiot,’ I snap, and when that doesn’t slow him down, I reach out with my telekinesis and grab him. I turn him around so he’s facing me, his heels digging divots in the gravel as he tries to fight.
‘Let me go, Six,’ Nine growls. ‘Let me go right now.’
‘Stop and think for a second,’ I insist, realizing as I start that I’m not just trying to convince Nine but also myself. My fingernails dig into my palms – not sure if that’s from the concentration required to hold Nine with my telekinesis or from me straining to keep it together. Back on the roof of the John Hancock Center, I’d told Sam that we were at war and that there would be casualties. I’d thought I was prepared for that, but losing Eight – and now maybe losing the others in Chicago – no, I can’t handle that. That can’t have been my last conversation with Sam. It can’t.
‘They wouldn’t be in Chicago anymore,’ I continue. ‘They’d run. That’s what we’d do. And we know John is still alive or we’d have another scar. He’s got the tablet; he’s got his Chest. They’ve got a better chance of finding us than we have of finding them.’
‘Uh, last time I saw John he was comatose. He’s not up for finding anyone.’
‘An exploding building tends to wake a person up,’ I counter. ‘He got out. We’d know if he didn’t.’