inDIVISIBLE (21 page)

We crouched behind the bushes and watched, waiting for someone to step out though one end lay flattened on the ground.

The front had been left open, a sleeping bag half dragged into the sunlight, also bleached, the stuffing clinging to the surrounding vegetation. The rest lay too far away to inspect and I wanted to rush forward to explore the abandoned campsite. Someone had been here, in this remote wilderness, there’d been another human being.

I put my hand on T’s arm. “What do you think happened here?”

He silenced me and stepped from behind the bushes. He crept toward the tent, circling so he could peer through the opening without getting too close. When he’d gone full circle, he disappeared into the trees, circling larger until he reappeared once more beside the campsite. He motioned me over but my initial curiosity had already dispelled due to the lines that filled his forehead.

“Let’s see if there’s anything we can use, then get out of here,” he whispered.

His face looked pale but he stepped in front of the tent and squatted to inspect the inside. I stepped up behind him but something warned me to stay back.

A backpack lay beside the sleeping bag, the zipper open and the cloth
es half strewn inside the tent. A jacket sprawled inside, half covered by the collapsed end of the tent, a man’s jacket, men’s clothes—one sleeping bag.

A notebook fluttered right outside the door, the pages bleached clean and wrinkled from rain. I picked up the book, looked for a name or any writing that would indicate what had happened, but any writing I found had bled through from page to page to
obscure anything that may have helped. I closed it and set it inside the tent. The warped pages pushed the book open, and the cover flopped sprawling next to the rest of the man’s belongings.

“The jacket?” I asked.

T shook his head. “It’s cold at night but it’ll just slow us down in the daytime heat. We’re better off to wrap in our thermal blankets.”

The foil blankets, he meant, but I had to admit, they reflected my body heat enough to keep me alive. “What about the pack?”

T eased into the tent, taking his time not to touch anything other than one handle of the bag as he scooted it closer to the doorway. “Already scavenged. Clothes are torn, filthy.”

I’d hoped to find some food or … I really didn’t know what else, just something useful …

I turned to walk away when I noticed a second bag peaking from beneath the jacket. “What about that bag?” I asked.             

T ducked back inside and pulled it out of the tent. The bag looked newer than the other, probably because it had been hidden, protected from the elements. The zipper was still closed as well, so whatever lay inside hadn’t been discovered by any other scavengers.
We both stepped back and stared at the navy blue canvas. One handle had been ripped—or cut away—none of it had faded, but then neither had the jacket on top of it. It didn’t move, didn’t look as if it would bite but neither of us wanted to get close enough to find out what it would do when opened.

“Do you want to open it?” I asked T.

He raised one eyebrow as we stared across the bag. “Do you?”

My heart pattered. “I want you to do it.”

“Sacrifice me for the greater good?” he asked.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, feeling guilty anyway.
The wind continued to sway the doorway, the zipper pinking now, metal on metal.

“I don’t get it,” T said. “Everything else looks so old …”

“This was underneath,” I said.

“So there’s nothing to worry about?” he asked, raising on
e eyebrow.

I shoved my hands in my pockets so he wouldn’t see the nervous shake. “Of course not.”

“Then open it.”

I crouched—stared at the zipper—
counted to ten and then recited the Pledge of Citizenship to the Alliance, using my own terminology, silently … then reached for the zipper.

T swatted my hand out of the way. “It’s okay. I’ve got it. It’s not like it’ll explode or anything.”

I stopped him. “It won’t, will it?”

“What?”

“Explode?”

“Only one way to find out,” he said, yanking it open, the buzz of zipper teeth making me jump back.

He paused, his hand still on the bag, a smile taunting me. “Scared, Brynn?”

I eased beside him, so close our thighs touched. “Of course not.”

He placed his hand on my knee, the two of us crouched over a missing man’s bag, and just rested it there a moment before he gave me a slight squeeze. “Of course not. Me neither.”

I felt the trembling in his hand and muttered, “Liar.”

He reached into the bag. “Seems like you’ve called me that before.”

I watched his hand disappear inside, holding my breath as if he were delivering a baby. He glanced up at me, and I exhaled. “Maybe you deserved it.”

I put my fingers on his arm—the one inside the bag ready to deliver our bundle of joy—and asked, “What if it’s a trap?”

“Set by the dead man by the river?”

I dropped to my butt, head swimming. “Dead man?”

“Ah,” he groaned, dropping beside me. “Why do you think I looked so shaken when I came back?”
              I hadn’t wanted to think about it, not really. “What happened to him?”

T cringed. “He’s really too far gone to tell.”

My stomach heaved, and I clenched my teeth. After counting again I asked, “Do you think he was murdered?”

“For what?”

“Food? Terrorism?”

T reached for the bag again and withdrew a can of peaches. “His food is still here.”

“Terrorism?” I asked.

T pulled out a bag of jerky and another can of fruit. “Maybe. Seems like it’s going around.”

“How long do you think he’s been there?”

T brushed his hands on his jeans. “He’s nothing but bones now. I’d say a while.”

So it hadn’t happened yesterday, I reassured myself, but given the condition of the tent, I’d already known whoever had been here had been gone quite some time.

T placed the food in his own pack and pulled out a final object,
an oval device with a large orange button on one end and an orange tab on the other.

“What is it?” I asked
.

             
T stood and stepped back. “Says it’s a safety beacon.” He touched his ear and pointed toward the device in his hand
, with a listening device,
he meant to imply.

I nodded.
Time to be careful because if it had a tracking device in it too, they’d know exactly where to find us as well as what we said. “What’s it for?”

“
Signaling your location for a rescue crew.”

“That’s what our sensors are for.”

“What if you’re missing your sensor?”

I nodded. He had a point. “Why didn’t the other guy use it then? He might still be alive.”

“Maybe whatever happened to him happened too quickly—he couldn’t get back in time for help.”

He put it in his backpack along with the food and I raised my eyebrows in question. Why would he want a safety be
acon? It could already be active, transmitting our location as we spoke.

His eyes crinkled at th
e corners when he smiled—he winked. He had some kind of plan he’d have to explain later. I rolled my eyes. “What else is in there?” I dug in beside him and pulled out another bag of jerky and a small, soft blanket. “I could definitely use this,” I said, rubbing the fleece across my cheek.

T added the other bag of jerky to the backpack and I pointed to my belly.

“We’ve still got a long walk ahead of us,” he explained. “We’ve got to ration the food. We eat the rest of what we brought tonight and begin on this in the morning.”

             
Something must be wrong with the food too.
“I’m just hungry,” I lied.

T zipped his backpack and left the other bag open and empty in front of the tent.
“Knowing there’s a dead guy over there kind of creeps me out,” he said. “Let’s go.”

We moved in closer to the river again, the tinkle a comfort
to my stomach if not my mind. But the campsite still bothered me, the dead man with a safety beacon waiting in his tent—the bag that hadn’t weathered even though his other belongings had been torn apart?

             
I clutched the blanket to my chest and rushed to catch up to T. He stopped, leaned down in the sand and with a stick wrote simply,
You were right. A trap.

My stomach fell and I wondered why we’d taken any of the supplies. If the Alliance was setting us up, we had to fight against it, not fall for it. I dropped the blanket.

“Are you tired?” T asked, obliterating the message.

I nodded.

He picked up the blanket. “If we can make it another mile we should be safe to stop for the night, then we’re going to look for our first marker. It’ll tell us which direction to go from there.”

I didn’t want to play this game anymore—code-talk to throw them off, heading in the wrong direction to confuse them while we grew weak …

I sat. “I can’t go any farther, T. I really can’t.”

He took my hand and hauled me to my feet, dragging me beside him. “One more mile, Brynn. We’ve got to make it a mile, okay?”

I fell into step beside him but he still kept hold of my hand, tugging me along each time I slowed. He sure had strength, determination, persistence.

             
He had value to the Alliance. What did I have
? I slowed to a walk again, breathing heavily. They wanted him for more than what he knew about the Freemen, and I wondered how they’d dispose of me once they had my father’s research and their athlete back.

CHAPTER 25

We lay under separate blankets that night, warm under the cloudless sky. We spoke little but when we did talk we directed it toward the “colony” we’d created in the desert, the one we’d eventually veer off to find when we were certain the Alliance had tired of us.

As my eyelids grew heavy, I asked, “You don’t think they’re listening to us, do you?”

T smirked. “How would they listen to us out here?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I just want to be careful, you know?”

T grabbed my hand, interlaced his fingers with mine and squeezed. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

I wanted to believe him, but my gut still clenched and my head swam. How could everything be okay when the forces of the Alliance were trained on you and you had nobody to turn to? “Thanks,” I whispered instead.

The fitful night ended before dawn when we heard footsteps just beyond camp—human footsteps. T placed his hand over my mouth and pointed in the direction we needed to flee but we didn’t make it a single step before the sound of fist meeting flesh thunked through the trees. A man grunted and scuffling followed. I gathered my blanket and flung it over my shoulder while T threw our supplies in his pack. He slung it over his shoulder and headed out before me, his footsteps muted by careful footing. I tried to follow exactly and breathed a sigh of relief when I made less noise than usual. The scuffling stopped or faded, I wasn’t sure which—followed by goose bumps up and down my arms. A thick chill hung in the air, and I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders wondering who fought and how they’d found us so fast.

We knew the bag had been a trap, but were there people actually waiting arou
nd the tent for us to grab it? And how would they have known we’d go that way—unless they’d been watching us the entire time … so we could lead them to the Freemen.

I shivered and
glanced over my shoulder to see who followed. No doubt one of the Alliance men who’d been chasing us had crept in on us but who had attacked him?

My hands too
k up trembling, and I clenched them together just beneath my chin, the blanket in a death grip between them. I had to stay focused.

The river gurgled to our left
, and T made a sudden cut toward it, ducking branches and leaping from stone to stone as he rushed forward. The sound grew louder and even as I relished the idea of the tumbling water, I feared not hearing the men who trailed us.

T
stopped. He dropped his pack on the ground in a heap and took the blanket from around my shoulders, adding it to his pile. The cold struck my arms like needles, and I wanted to pick the blanket up again to hold it around me until the sun came up and warmed the air.

T grabbed my hand and dragged me away from the pile, close to the river, to the noise that blocked out any sound of our stalker
s.  When we’d traveled several minutes, he sat me on a rock and paced.

“The safety beacon is sending out a signal, the blanket is bugged, the food—
,” he whispered, “I don’t know but I don’t dare eat it.”