“Oh.” The flush of Justin’s anger drained from his face.
“He probably hasn’t gone far yet,” Leo pointed out. “Knowing him, he wouldn’t have left us without someone on watch for very long.”
Which was why he’d set the alarm clock—so we wouldn’t be sleeping for hours unguarded.
“Come on,” I said, hurrying back to the stairs. “We have to find him. Before—”
Before he did something even more stupid. Oh no. I considered the items we’d found on the counter. He’d left behind everything he’d had on him, except his bottle of sedatives. Maybe he didn’t think it was enough just to walk away from us. Maybe he was planning on eliminating the “problem” completely, like the woman in the attic.
I raced to the back door. Several sets of footprints marked a path through the shallow snow across the backyard, down the hill, and into the forest at its foot. The tracks we’d made when we walked here from the other house where we’d parked the SUV. I couldn’t tell if a fresh set had been laid over them. Tobias would be using his military evasive skills against us now.
“Someone check if he went out the front!” I called over my shoulder.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Leo answered. He came through the kitchen, scooping up the flashlight Tobias had left. Anika had hesitated by the counter. Near the pistol. The memory of the violent ringing of shots, the thud of falling bodies, reverberated through me. But someone needed to take it. And if our lives were on the line, I still had the feeling Anika would save herself at the expense of the rest of us, given the chance.
I stepped inside, grabbed the gun, and stuffed it into my coat pocket. Anika turned toward me, her expression hidden behind her scarf. We all headed out into the backyard.
Leo cast the flashlight’s beam over the snow. “Tobi—” Justin started to shout, and I threw out my hand.
“Quiet!” I said, keeping my voice low. “He doesn’t want us to find him. If he knows we’re looking for him, he’ll take off even faster.”
I strode toward the trees. Of course, he had to realize we’d go after him when we saw he was missing.
Or would he? Could he really believe we’d be glad to get rid of him? The way he’d talked before, about the danger he was putting us in, about Justin, and Anika—I should have made sure he understood how much it mattered to me to get him to Atlanta, to help him beat the virus. If he’d known there was no way we were giving up on him, maybe he wouldn’t have done this.
We stepped into the thicker darkness beneath the branches of the oaks and pine trees. The trail of footprints veered to the left, and no new ones split off from them. I walked faster, my breath coming in puffs of mist. The night air stung my cheeks. I hadn’t thought to grab my scarf.
Leo swept the flashlight across the forest around us, and I tracked its light. The surface of the snow between the trees remained smooth and unbroken, other than a faint scattering of rabbit prints and a dimple here and there where a twig must have fallen. We followed the downward slope of the ground to the base of the hill.
My hands balled in my pockets. There had to be a way to track Tobias down. I wasn’t letting him sacrifice himself when we had a chance to save him.
I was trying to think of what our next best move would be, when there was a sharp inhalation behind me. Anika had frozen. She pointed through the trees.
A low mechanical hum reached my ears. An engine. Leo flicked the flashlight off without a word.
My mouth went dry. I took a few steps forward, toward the edge of the forest. There, I could see across the lawns to the road beyond.
Two pale lights glimmered into sight. A Jeep with its running lights on, cruising slowly over the snow.
“Wardens?” Justin said.
“I don’t know,” I murmured. It was possible some other group of survivors was traveling down the same road we’d taken, wasn’t it? But as I watched, the Jeep crept past the house we stood behind, past the two after, and eased to a stop by the fourth. After a pause, it turned down the driveway, toward the spot where the SUV was parked.
Whoever was in the Jeep, they were following our tracks. It could be the Wardens, or other raiders just interested in a new car and supplies to steal. Either way, it was bad.
My mind leapt to the cold box in the corner of the tent, back at the house we’d left undefended, and panic jolted through me. I couldn’t see the Jeep now, but I heard the thud of the doors closing. As soon as our pursuers realized the house we’d parked by was empty, they might start checking the others.
“Go back!” I whispered. “Fast but quiet!”
We rushed along the trail the way we’d come. Without the flashlight, it was harder to avoid the sticks that crackled underfoot and the shrubs that rasped against our clothes. Every noise seemed to echo. By the time we reached the edge of the Victorian’s backyard, my skin was damp with perspiration.
The gleam of a quarter moon showed the way across the yard. I peered behind us to where the Jeep had stopped. Our pursuers hadn’t made any noticeable sound since they’d gotten out. I didn’t know where they were now. They might be able to spot us leaving the forest, even at that distance, if they were watching.
“Run for it,” I said to the others. “Around the far side of the hill and then up. So we’ll stay mostly out of view.”
I waited only long enough to catch their nods, and then I darted onto the open ground. My heart thumped as I dashed across the brief stretch between the forest and the steepening slope of the hill. Then I was around the far side, hidden from anyone south of us. At the top, I ran for the back door. Inside, the cold box was in the tent where I’d left it. Letting out a breath, I grabbed the handle and scrambled up to the second floor. In the smaller bedroom that faced south, I stared out the window.
The people from the Jeep were in the house we’d both parked by. Flickers of what must have been flashlight beams glinted through its darkened windows.
The others gathered around me. “Do you think they saw us?” Justin asked.
“I don’t think they’d be looking in that house if they had,” I said.
“It’s got to be the Wardens,” Anika said, shifting on her feet. “Who else would be driving around in the dark on random back roads, chasing tire tracks? We’re screwed.”
“We’re not,” I said. “We just have to…figure out what to do.”
“They’re going to find our footprints,” Leo said. “When they see we’re not in that house, they’ll go back to the SUV to check where else we walked, and follow our trail back here. But that was part of the plan, wasn’t it?”
“It was.” I closed my eyes, pushing through the anxious jumble of my thoughts. Tobias had talked us through the whole strategy. If our pursuers followed the path we’d made through the forest, we could head down the road in front of the house without being seen. Get back to the car. Get away from them.
“So we wait until they head into the forest,” I said. “As soon as they do, we go along the road, jump in the SUV, and take off. I’ll keep watching. The rest of you, pack up all our things downstairs, okay?”
They slipped out without argument. I studied the path of the distant flashlights, biting my lip.
It was far from a foolproof plan. What if our pursuers left someone behind to guard their Jeep? And even if they didn’t, as soon as they heard our engine, they’d come running back after us.
The last time the Wardens had been at our heels, we’d only been able to escape thanks to Tobias’s sharpshooting. We didn’t have him now. We didn’t even know where he was.
Unless he came back on his own, and soon, to get out of here safely we’d have to leave him behind.
I swore under my breath, feeling sick. He’d suggested this strategy, and now we were going to use it to abandon him. If only I’d noticed something was off in his attitude earlier—if only I’d said the right thing to stop him from leaving. Now there was no time.
Our pursuers’ lights were wavering past the back of the house. They
glinted off the glossy paint of the Jeep and the SUV. I tensed. The window clouded when I exhaled. As I rubbed the condensation away, the lights wove back and forth, and then bobbed farther from the driveway, toward the forest. Following our tracks, like we’d hoped.
“Come back, Tobias,” I murmured. “We need you here.”
The flashlight beams made slow progress, sweeping over the yard in all directions. The hall floor creaked behind me. “Ready to go,” Justin announced, his voice quivering with what sounded like nervousness as well as excitement. Good. We could count on him as long as he didn’t get cocky.
“It’s not quite time yet,” I said. The glow of the flashlights had just reached the trees. Justin came up beside me and handed me a bundle of scratchy fabric. The scarf I’d forgotten in our frantic rush.
“I figured you’d want this,” he said.
“Thanks.” I felt surprised by his thoughtfulness, and then guilty for being surprised. He might be younger than the rest of us, but he had started pulling his weight all right.
As I wrapped the scarf around my face, Justin lowered his head. “So Tobias took off because he didn’t want to infect the rest of us?”
“I think so,” I said. “That, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to control his own actions soon, and he was worried he’d make it hard for us to get to Atlanta. You remember how tough it was to avoid drawing attention after Gav…got bad. And we weren’t on the move for most of that time.”
“We still could have handled it. I know I complained a lot, but it really wasn’t that bad with Gav, with all the precautions we took.” He scuffed his boot against the rug. “Do you figure…I wasn’t exactly being friendly with Tobias the last few days. I didn’t want to get sick! But I don’t have anything against the guy. Do you think that’s maybe why—”
“I don’t know,” I said. A lump filled my throat. “Maybe it was how all of us acted. Or maybe there wasn’t really anything we could have done to stop him.” He was just trying to protect us, like always. A bunch of teens he hadn’t even known until a month ago.
“And now he’s out there on his own.”
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t mention the sedatives Tobias had taken with him. For all we knew, he was sitting there in the forest less than a mile away, with the entire contents of that bottle in his stomach. I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself. Go away, I thought at the distant flashlights. Go back to wherever you came from. Don’t make us leave him.
They ignored my silent plea. Finishing their sweep of the open ground, the lights dipped between the trees, winking in and out of view. As Justin and I stood there, the glimpses became briefer and less frequent, and then stopped altogether. I counted the seconds in my head. Ten…twenty…thirty…They’d vanished. Which meant they wouldn’t be able to see us either. This was our opportunity.
I turned, squashing down my emotions. I had one person out there and three here, counting on me to get them out of this alive. My hand dipped to brush the pocket that held Gav’s last message. Keep going.
I didn’t have a choice, not really.
“Let’s get moving,” I said.
Leo and Anika were waiting by the front door. They handed bags off to Justin and me wordlessly, Leo stopping for just a moment to press his hand against my shoulder, his mouth slanted unevenly, his expression pained. Then we hurried out into the frigid wind.
“We’ll walk faster in the tire tracks, where the snow’s packed down,” Leo whispered when we reached the road.
Our boots rasped over the gritty treads. I watched the road, and the dark shapes of the trees beyond the houses, as we marched down the hill. Our pursuers were still so deep in the forest that I couldn’t make out their lights. Would they continue to go cautiously, or would they be hurrying too, now that they were sure they’d picked up our trail?
My fingers started to ache from clutching the handle of the cold box. We passed the house at the bottom of the hill, and its neighbor. As the fourth house came into view in the dim moonlight, I sped up, as close as I dared to a jog. The others hustled on behind me.
When I reached the driveway, I pulled off my mitten and fumbled in my coat pocket for the car keys. My hand bumped the cool edge of Tobias’s pistol. I paused, and then held out my arm to slow the others.
If someone was guarding the Jeep, we needed to be ready.
I drew out the gun and fit my forefinger around the trigger. It felt too large and heavy in my hand. Beside me, Leo took out his own gun, one we’d confiscated from the first Wardens we’d tangled with—the people Justin and Tobias had shot with the pistol I held now.
As we crept up the driveway, my heart pounded against my ribs. I’d never fired a gun before. But if it was them or us, I was pretty sure I could.
We hesitated by the side of the house and peeked around back. No figures waited by the back door, or the vehicles. I lowered the gun.
We tossed our belongings into the SUV—I scrambled into the driver’s seat, and Leo climbed in beside me with the road atlas. As Justin got in the back, Anika cocked her head at the Jeep. She walked over to try the doors. They didn’t budge.
“Come on!” Justin said.
“They’re going to come running as soon as they hear us start the car, aren’t they?” Anika murmured.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not over yet.”
Her hand dipped into her coat, and she grinned. “Then let’s buy ourselves a little more time.”
She pulled out a long, sheathed hunting knife. That must have been what she’d taken from the shed the other night. She jammed the blade into the side of a tire. As the air hissed out, she repeated the gesture with the others. I felt a grin tug at my own lips. Suddenly our escape didn’t seem half as impossible.
“I’d like to see them catch up with us now,” Anika said.
“Great thinking,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“Sweet!” Justin whispered to Anika as she hopped in beside him.
“Call it payback,” she said.
I shoved the key into the ignition. “Same rule as before?” Leo asked. “Turn at every intersection?”
“You know what?” I said. “Let’s find a stretch of straight road first, and get as far as we can as fast as we can. We can worry about muddying the trail after we’ve got some distance on them.”
I couldn’t help one last glance toward the forest, as if I might see Tobias running across the yard toward us. It was as still and empty as ever. I set my teeth and turned the key.
The sound of the engine reverberated out into the night. I jerked the wheel, backed up the car, turned, then sped down the driveway. In the distance, I heard something that might have been a shout. And then we were racing along the road, leaving both our enemies and Tobias behind.
We’d been roaring down the road for about fifteen minutes before the panicked thumping of my heart eased off enough for me to think clearly, and it occurred to me that we could use the Wardens’ strategies against them.
“Justin,” I said, “the transceiver’s back there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Why? It didn’t sound like that woman at the CDC is going to be able to bail us out up here.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to listen. If those were Wardens back at the house, they’ll be radioing the others, right? Since they’re close, maybe we can pick up some of their transmissions, get an idea of how much they know, how many of them we have to watch out for.”
“Ha!” Anika said, sounding as amused as after her revenge on our pursuers’ Jeep.
Leo’s eyebrows lifted. “It’d be nice to get the jump on them for once.”
“I’m on it!” Justin said. He pulled the transceiver onto his lap. As I drove on, the flick of the switch and the hum of static carried from the backseat.
“Go through the frequencies quickly,” I said. “We don’t want to use up too much of the battery.”
“Right.” The dial clicked as he scanned the
airwaves. The static popped and fizzed. Leo leaned his head against the side of his seat, his ear cocked toward the back.
“Wait!” he said. “There. Tweak that dial a little.” He pointed, and Justin complied. And a wavering voice emerged from the crackle in fits and starts.
“…headed south…the same SUV they reported…half an hour from…Michael’s looking into the choppers, and…you take Highway Sev—”
After the last incomplete word, the voice disappeared into the static. Justin fiddled with the dials some more, but nothing else came out.
“We lost them,” he said.
“Or they finished talking.” Leo straightened up. “I guess that confirms it. Someone saw the SUV, anyway. But—choppers?”
That word had stood out in my mind too. “I guess there must be helicopters around that they could use, if they found someone who knew how to fly them.” My gaze flickered from the road to the star-speckled sky. “Do you think they could fly around at night, when there aren’t any lights on the ground to navigate by?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to be extra careful about hiding the SUV when we stop in the morning.”
“It figures,” Anika said, her good humor gone.
“Well, we might as well stick to the original plan for now. No highways. Get away from here fast and then lose the trail,” I said, trying to ignore the knot of tension in my chest. We hadn’t heard enough to know how to avoid the Wardens, only to know they were on to us, and that they had even more resources than we’d realized.
But we had something too. We had the certainty of the CDC waiting for us. We just had to make it there.
We drove on in a straight line for two more hours, and then Leo directed me down a winding series of back roads, skirting the mountains that loomed closer as we continued south through Ohio. The Wardens didn’t cross our path, but they were out there, somewhere, searching. The tension inside me tightened into a sharp ache. It pinched every time I breathed.