Run For Cover (2 page)

Wait. Hiccupping?

I grab Louisa’s arm and click off the flashlight she’s holding. She’s smart; she doesn’t make a sound when she sees the look on my face, just before the light disappears. Behind us, Evelyn opens her mouth to ask one of her loud, yappy questions, but Louisa signals for quiet and Maddie claps her hand over Evelyn’s mouth.

We stand very, very still.

There it is again.

Quiet, but unmistakable: out there in the dark, somebody hiccups. And it isn’t one of us.

We’re not alone.

Someone is following us through the forest.

T
urn on your flashlight and keep walking,” I whisper to Maddie. “Pretend you’re still talking to me.” Louder, I say, “Sorry, guys. I thought I heard something, but I guess I was wrong.”

I tug Louisa behind a tree with me. Maddie switches on her flashlight and walks away with Evelyn close beside her. To her credit, she does a great job of pretending I’m still with them.

“Honestly, Rosie,” she says, “you’re starting to sound crazy like Evelyn.”

“Hey!” Evelyn protests.

“I mean, you’re making me totally nervous,” Maddie goes on. “I’m sure nobody’s even noticed we’re gone yet, so we probably don’t have to worry for a while… .” Her voice trails off into the woods as the little circle of light bobs away. I can feel Louisa tense; she doesn’t love the dark settling around us, or watching her friends disappear up ahead. I fumble for her hand and squeeze it reassuringly. My heart is pounding, and I seriously wish we still had the rifles we used on the camping trip.

With the flashlight gone, my eyes start to adjust to the dark and the dim light from the moon, high above the trees. My ears feel like they’re going to pop off my head, I’m listening so hard. Is that crack a branch being stepped on? Am I hearing someone’s breathing, getting closer and closer?

Louisa sees it first, and she clutches my hand in a death grip.

A dark shadow moves out of the trees behind us and slowly edges past. Whoever it is, they’re definitely
following the sound of Maddie’s voice, stepping lightly where our feet just were.

I crouch quietly and feel for a stick that’s just the right size. My eyes scan the darkness, looking for more shadows. I spot another one a few feet away, flanking the one that’s just gone by. I don’t know if there are more of them out here in the woods. I have to decide whether to risk confronting them, or try sneaking away.

For a moment I think about how far Louisa and I could get on our own — how quickly we’d get back to Chicago, where we could warn our parents about what’s happening. They could send help for Maddie and Evelyn. Nothing really bad will happen to them; I’m sure of it. The Alliance people at CMS would want Evelyn safe so they could get as much money as possible out of her parents.

But Maddie is nobody special; she wouldn’t be valuable to them. Would they even keep her alive, now that she knows their secrets?

As much as I would like to, leaving the other two girls is not an option. I heft a stick in my hands and touch
the end of it — perfect. I place Louisa’s hand against the tree and pat it once:
stay here.
Then I creep out, one foot gently before the other, until I’m right behind the first shadow. His friend is ahead and to the left of us, so I can keep an eye on him, too.

I shove the end of the stick into the guy’s back. “Stop right there.”

He jumps a mile and tries to whirl around, but I’ve grabbed his arm to hold him in place, facing away from me. “Don’t turn around,” I say. “I don’t know how much damage this rifle will do at such close range, but I bet you don’t want to find out. Tell your friends to drop their weapons.”

“W-w-we don’t have any weapons!” he yelps. “I swear!”

I frown. His voice sounds familiar. And now that we’re up close, I’m pretty sure he’s only fourteen or fifteen, not much older than I am.

Louisa clicks on her flashlight, illuminating a head of short reddish-blond hair and a sage-green CMS T-shirt
over stocky shoulders. The guy has his hands up in the air and keeps twisting his head around to try to see us.

“Ryan?” Louisa says from behind me.

“Louisa?” he says, nearly collapsing with relief.

I lower my fake rifle and let him go. Of course. Just my luck. It’s those dingbat boys that Louisa dragged back to our campsite during our survival mission over the weekend — the ones from the boys’ school across the lake. The boys who made the other girls so silly that they nearly ruined everything, just for the sake of a couple sandwiches and some flirting.

Nobody cared about what would happen to us if we got in trouble — how we might be sent home, or how the teachers might take a closer look at some of us who’d rather not attract any attention.

The other one comes crashing through the trees toward us. I catch a glimpse of his dark eyes and hair before he raises his hand to block the light. He’s Hispanic, like me, and I wonder, not for the first time, where he’s from.

I put my hands on my hips. “Good grief,” I say, “are you guys
still
lost?”

“No!” says the light-haired one — Ryan. “We made it back to school, but then we were sent out again. This time we’re supposed to survive out here for a week.”

“A week!” Louisa says. “Why didn’t they make us do that? That is totally sexist. Girls can survive in the wild just as well as boys.”

“Yeah, especially if they happen to run into any boys carrying sandwiches,” I point out.

I think she’s about to yell at me, but then her face goes thoughtful and she turns back to Ryan.
“Do
you guys have any sandwiches?” she asks. “I mean, I assume you wouldn’t say no to them this time, Queen Rosie? Now that we’re
actually
trying to survive?”

The boys give her quizzical looks. Before I can answer her, we hear more branches snapping from up ahead of us, and then we see Maddie and Evelyn marching back through the trees. They’re pushing a third boy along in front of them.

“Look what we found!” Evelyn says.

“He practically tripped over us,” Maddie says. “Not very stealth.” Her eyes widen as she spots the guys with us. “Wait — we know you! Ryan! Alonso!”

“Hey,” says Alonso, giving Evelyn a friendly nod.

“This guy’s with us,” Ryan says, punching the new one in the shoulder. “His name is Drew. Drew, meet Louisa, Maddie, Evelyn, and Rosie.” I have to admit I’m a little impressed he remembers our names, especially mine, since we didn’t exactly meet in the friendliest way.

Drew is taller than the others, Asian American, good-looking, and wiry, with short, straight black hair. He’s wearing a pair of sturdy silver-framed glasses and I spot a Swiss Army knife hanging from his belt. There’s something about the way he stands and the way he looks at me that reminds me of Ivan — that same aura of secrets Ivan always had, like he knows more than I do.

Maybe it’s unfair of me, but immediately I don’t trust Drew. Even if he’s just a regular guy, even if he would
never do what Ivan did to my family, I don’t want him around me. Or any of them, actually. Boys are an unwelcome — and dangerous — distraction.

“Are there any more of you?” I ask, scanning the trees. The wind seems to be picking up, and the branches are swaying over our heads so the shadows jump around in all directions. It’s a little spooky.

Ryan shakes his head. He seems to be the unspoken leader of the guys, or at least the chattiest one. “It’s a three-person mission,” he says.

“With sandwiches?” Louisa asks longingly. He grins and nods at her.

“Why were you sneaking after us?” I demand.

“We were curious.” Drew speaks for the first time. “We saw your light and wanted to know who else was out here.” His voice is quiet and deep.

“Actually, we thought it might be Alliance spies,” Alonso says. “Sneaking across the border from Canada and up to no good.” He glances at Evelyn again; they
both have the same bright-eyed, conspiracy-finding expression.

“We figured we’d get a medal or something if we caught you,” Ryan adds with a grin.

I know he’s joking, but his words send a bolt of alarm through me. What if they do decide to turn us in, or tell their teachers they saw us in the woods? I shiver, and it’s not just from the cold breeze that’s starting to whip our hair around.

“What about you?” Drew asks. “Why are you out here?”

“Just hiking,” I say quickly, but, of course, at the same time Evelyn opens her big mouth and cries: “We’re escaping!”

The boys all look startled. Ryan raises his eyebrows at Louisa, and Alonso’s face lights up, but Drew looks straight at me, as if he can tell I’m hiding something.

“Escaping from our camping group,” I say, jabbing Evelyn in the ribs. “They’re so boring, yakking away
about, uh —” I can’t even think of anything believable. “Girl stuff. We needed a break, so we’re taking a walk. That’s all.”

“Oh, come on, Rosie,” Evelyn starts.

“But we should get back to them!” I say fast. I seize Evelyn’s elbow in a way that I hope says,
Shut up shut up shut up now.
“Good luck with your survival mission. See you around.” I try to pull Evelyn away, but she wrestles free of my grip.

“We should tell them the truth!” she insists.

“I think so, too,” Louisa agrees. Some loyalty! I thought she trusted me to make decisions for the group. But I guess when it comes to boys, she can’t even think straight. I should have learned that on our weekend trip when she sided with them over me. I glare at her.

“What do you mean?” Ryan says, looking from Louisa to me and back again. “What truth? What’s going on?”

Louisa hesitates, glancing at me. To my surprise, it’s Maddie who answers him. “It’s not safe to stay at CMS,” she says. “We heard something tonight. Well, Louisa did.
The school is an Alliance sleeper cell. They were going to use us as hostages to control our parents. Now that Canada has surrendered to the Alliance, we’d all be in danger if we didn’t escape.”

I notice that she doesn’t mention what happened with her ID bracelet, or that Mrs. Brewster figured out she wasn’t a Ballinger and put her in isolation. Even if Maddie trusts the boys more than I do, she still knows not to tell them all her secrets.

“Canada’s fallen to the Alliance?” Ryan echoes. “Wow. That is — that is really not good.” He crouches and runs his hands through his short hair, taking a couple of deep breaths.

“I knew it!” Alonso says. “I knew there was something weird about CMS! I told you!” He punches Drew in the arm and Drew rubs the spot, looking pained. For a moment I catch a glimmer on his face of the same frustration I feel whenever Evelyn is acting like a nut. Then it’s gone, and he looks thoughtful again.

“Are you sure?” he asks us.

“I thought you liked CMS,” Ryan says, standing up and turning to Louisa.

“I do! I mean, I did,” she says. “That’s why you have to believe me. I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true. I’m not —” She pauses, and I think she nearly said “crazy like Evelyn.” “I’m not happy about it,” she says instead. “I wanted CMS to be as great as I thought it was. But I know what I heard. If you’re smart, you’ll run away with us, too, for your parents’ sakes.”

“What?” My voice bursts out of my mouth before I can think. “Louisa! You can’t just invite them along! We don’t know these guys, we can’t trust them, and we don’t need them! We’d be better off on our own.”

“I
do
know them,” Louisa says hotly. “I know at least they wouldn’t leave their roommates behind in the woods with no compass, like some people!”

“No, all you really know about them is that they’ll give you sandwiches,” I say. “But if that’s all it takes to make you trust them more than you trust me, then maybe
you should go with them and I’ll find my own way back to Chicago. I bet I’d be safer that way anyhow!”

“Uh-oh,” Evelyn interrupts, holding out her hands. A fat raindrop splatters on her palm. We all look up and realize that while we were arguing, the moonlight has been eaten by dark clouds, which have rolled in out of nowhere.

“Oh
no
!” Maddie yelps, and the skies open up.

T
here’s no way to keep arguing; the thunder drowns out our voices and the wind blows them away. It’s one of those terrible storms that have gotten so much worse in the last twenty years, so every bit of rain is practically a hurricane. In moments, the storm is so strong that we can barely even stand under the deluge. I’m soaked to the skin and my backpack is a sodden weight on my back. I can hardly see the others in the dark and through the downpour.

I’m flipping through survival skills in my mind, trying to remember anything about what to do when a busload of rain is suddenly dumped on your head.
Lightning crackles above the trees and I think of flash floods and mudslides and worse. Suddenly I have the clearest memory of Wren’s face, the way it changed when she saw the tidal wave coming. I hear her screaming at me to run all over again.

Panicking, I reach out blindly and grab the nearest person, thinking it’s Louisa.

“Shelter!” I yell. “We have to find shelter!”

The person leans closer, touching my other arm, and I realize it’s not Louisa, but Drew. I start to recoil, but he’s pointing and waving something in his hand. I aim my flashlight at it and squint, realizing it’s a compass. He pokes it with a finger and points again, off into the trees.

Someone blunders into us and clutches me with thin hands. Before I turn my flashlight on her, I can tell it’s Maddie.

“We have to stay together!” I shout in her ear. I can’t tell if she’s heard me, but when I tug the gold cord out of my hair and twine it around my wrist and hers, she nods vigorously. A light flickers behind her and I see
Louisa and Alonso huddling close to us. I lift our linked hands and wave to Louisa to do the same.

Rain batters us relentlessly. It seems to take Louisa forever to work the elastic band out of her hair and loop it around her wrist and Maddie’s. Alonso puts the flashlight between his teeth and reaches to help her.

I squint into the dark, searching for Evelyn and Ryan. Drew is still standing too close to me, holding the compass, waiting. I spot another weak circle of light and see Evelyn crouching beside a large boulder with her flashlight, trying to shield her backpack with her body. I point to her and Drew goes over to bring her back to us.

When I look around, blinking in the driving rain, Alonso has tied himself to Louisa’s free hand and is working on wrapping something around his wrist and Ryan’s. I guess we’re stuck with the boys, at least for now.

Drew’s hand slips into mine just as a peal of thunder rolls overhead, and I jump. He waves the compass and points again. I nod. I have no choice. If he knows where
we can find shelter, we have to follow him, although every cell in my body is screaming not to trust him.

Evelyn joins the end of the line, holding Ryan’s hand, although she’s still clutching her backpack to her chest with her other hand. I want to tell her that whatever’s in there isn’t worth it — I guess she’s worried about her maps — but there’s no way she’ll hear me through the screaming wind.

Mud sloshes over our shoes as we slog forward, heads down. The world shrinks down to Drew’s warm hand on one side and Maddie’s cold, thin hand on the other. The rest of me is wet through and through, freezing and soaked and heavy, so moving is difficult. We slip on waterlogged leaves, stumble through giant puddles. My feet have never been this cold before.

The most annoying part is my hair. Without the cord tying it back, the long dark strands whip mercilessly around my head, stick to my face, and nearly blind me. But I can’t reach up to shove it back because both of my hands are occupied. I keep shaking my
head, but all that does is plaster more long tendrils to my face.

Suddenly Maddie lets out a shriek and I feel her hand jerk away. There’s a wrenching pain in my wrist as the gold cord tightens and my shoulder is nearly yanked out of its socket. I try to let go of Drew, but his grip on my hand is too strong.

“Maddie!” Louisa screams. We both lean over, grabbing for her hands. The ground below Maddie has turned into a river of mud, dropping out from under her so that she nearly slid away down a hill that wasn’t there a moment ago. If we hadn’t been tied together, she’d have vanished into the dark.

Without letting go of me, Drew helps us and Alonso drag Maddie back onto solid ground. She leans on Louisa’s shoulder, and I’m pretty sure she’s crying, although it’s hard to tell in the rain. I pat her arm awkwardly, her hand hanging limply from the cord tying us together.

“Not much farther,” Drew shouts in my ear. I don’t
know where he could be taking us. Surely the only shelter nearby is back at CMS — our school or theirs. Is he going to turn us in? I can’t help thinking of Evelyn’s last theory, that maybe some of the students were really working for the Alliance all along. What if she’s right, and what if Drew is one of them?

But there’s not much I can do now except follow him.

The rain pours down on us, harder and harder, each droplet like an exploding ice bomb on my bare neck and hands, slithering down into my sleeves. I can’t even figure out which direction we’re going. Back toward CMS? South, like we were before? I’m totally discombobulated, and I hate it.

Drew stops suddenly and I crash into him. He reaches over with his free hand and pushes my hair out of my eyes, then gestures at a clearing up ahead of us. In a flash of lightning, I spot a dark shape that could be a small cabin.

Everyone moves faster as we cover the last stretch of muddy ground, energized by the sight of shelter. All at
once there’s a blue door right in front of us: wooden, solid, real. I notice that Drew doesn’t knock. He tries the handle, and my heart sinks when I see that it’s locked.

But then he crouches and starts picking up large rocks next to the door. I watch him, confused, until he finds a small cavity on the underside of one of them and pulls out a key.

How did he know that would be there?

He unlocks the door, and we all pile inside so fast you’d think it was tigers chasing us instead of a storm. I suck in a breath of dry air and lean against the nearest wall. A wave of exhaustion hits me hard.

The door clicks shut behind us. The howling noise of the storm is instantly muffled. Finally we can hear ourselves think again.

Unfortunately, that also means we can hear one another talk.

“I thought we were going to die,” Maddie gasps. She doesn’t help as Louisa and I untie the cords around our wrists. As soon as I’m done, she slides down the wall
and rests her head on her knees, making little sniffly noises.

Part of me is irritated — she wasn’t the only one out there, after all — but part of me realizes that she’s never been outside in a storm like that before. I’m probably the only one here who’s ever lived through a superhurricane. I glance at Alonso, wondering again if he might have a secret like mine.

A light flickers on overhead and we all turn to Drew, who’s found a switch on the wall. We’re standing in a kind of vestibule, a small space with an open archway ahead of us into a bigger room. We’re all dripping onto a red terra-cotta tile floor. There are neat brass shoe racks on either side of us and a coatrack in the corner. I’m relieved to see that they’re empty, although I could probably guess that we’re the only people here by the dark rooms beyond the vestibule.

Where
is
here, anyway?

“What is this place?” I ask Drew.

He shrugs. “I’m not sure. I found it on one of my first
solo survival missions, a couple of weeks ago. There wasn’t anyone here then, either.”

I squint at him. “So how’d you know where the key was?”

His smile is a little condescending, like he thinks it’s cute how suspicious I am. I wonder if he’d also find it cute if I punched that smile off his face.

“Lucky guess,” he says. “My parents have a rock like that.”

Liar,
I think. Outside of CMS I don’t know anyone who uses real keys anymore.

“I don’t care what it is,” Louisa says. She’s already dumped her backpack on the floor and she’s taking her shoes and socks off. “There must be towels here. That’s all I want in the world. A dry towel. And some dry clothes. And maybe a hair dryer. And some food. Hot chocolate. And a bed with lots of pillows.”

I can’t help laughing. “But that’s all, right?”

She smiles at me, and I remember why I like her. Nothing ever seems so bad to Louisa. I know that’s just
because nothing bad has actually ever happened to her, but it’s still kind of nice to be around someone who thinks everything will be okay, no matter what. She’s like the opposite of my parents, who worry that something terrible is coming around every corner, and they’re usually right.

“Whoa,” Ryan says, peering into the next room. “Guys, check this out.”

The others crowd around him, but I take a minute to put down my backpack, take off my shoes, and wring out my socks and my hooded sweatshirt. I wish I could take off more of my dripping-wet clothes, especially my jeans, but of course I can’t, because of the stupid boys. If it were just me, Louisa, Maddie, and Evelyn, we wouldn’t have to worry and I’d be able to get dry a lot faster.

By the time I join the others in the main central room of the cabin, which is up two small steps from the vestibule, Ryan has found another light switch and turned on the low-hanging lamp in the center of the room.

I guess I expected couches and a coffee table and a fireplace and maybe a moose head on the wall, like a regular cabin in the woods where people went to fish or whatever in the old days, before the War. Instead there’s an enormous oval conference table taking up almost the entire room. The polished mahogany surface gleams in the lamplight. Dark blue swivel chairs are arranged neatly around the oval, with a sort of uncanny precision that gives me goose bumps. The light barely reaches the edges of the table, but under my feet I can feel a textured carpet like the one in my dad’s office at home, solid and businesslike.

Creepiest of all, up on the large blank wall opposite us is the seal of the Alliance.

This is definitely not a fishing cabin.

And we are definitely, definitely not supposed to be here.

Evelyn’s eyes are huge. “It’s their secret Alliance meeting place,” she whispers. “This must be where they come
to plan their invasion — to meet up with the teachers from your side!” she says to Alonso.

“I bet you’re right!” he says. “I bet after they send us all into the woods on our made-up missions, they come here and plan real ones.”

My instinct is to scoff at them or crack a joke of some kind, but there’s something about the freaky, quiet intensity of this room that makes it too easy to believe what they’re saying. I can absolutely picture Mrs. Brewster sitting at one end of the table, calmly passing around file folders full of notes on all the CMS students … and discussing how much money they can probably get for each of us.

I wonder what their notes on me would say, and how much they know. Do they realize that my parents will pay anything to get me back, because they’re so afraid to lose the only daughter they have left? Is there anything in the CMS files about my missing sister, or is Wren a secret from them, too?

“Well, it’s not an ordinary cabin — that’s for sure,” Ryan says. “I mean, who can afford electricity for a random cabin in the woods these days? It must have its own generator and everything.”

We all glance up at the light, and I shiver again.

Louisa’s voice breaks the tension. “There’s a bathroom back here,” she says from a doorway in the far corner. “Not a lot of towels, though. Whatever they use this place for, I don’t think sleeping or bathing is a big part of it.” She comes out with an armful of lilac-colored hand towels. We each take one and I run mine along my arms, then rub my hair with it. It’s not the most useful thing ever, but it’s better than nothing.

I notice that Louisa gives Maddie two hand towels and then helps her dry her hair with one of them. I can see why most people would believe that they’re sisters. That’s something Wren would have done for me. It’s only because I think about Wren all the time that I noticed the little ways Louisa and Maddie don’t act like sisters.

Thinking about my family sends me on a search for a telephone, but of course there isn’t one anywhere in the cabin, nor a computer or anything useful like that. The other door off the room leads to a tiny kitchen, although the fridge turns out to be woefully understocked. Everything in the cupboards has that NutriCorp logo on it, like the food in the CMS cafeteria. I pull out a box of oatmeal cookies and peek inside. Only half of them are gone.

“Hey, Louisa, guess what?” Ryan says. “I can make one of your dreams come true, at least.” He waggles a packet of cocoa at her. She clasps her hands rapturously, looking like a cartoon-character version of happy.

“Wait,” Evelyn says, closing the refrigerator door in Drew’s face. “Stop! You guys, we shouldn’t take anything. Or else they’ll know we were here! We can’t leave any traces!”

“Ohhh,” Maddie says anxiously. “You’re totally right. She’s totally right! Guys, put everything back exactly
where you found it! We should wipe down everything we touched!”

I roll my eyes. “They’re not going to dust for fingerprints, Maddie.”

“How do you know?” she demands.

“They don’t even
have
our fingerprints to compare them to,” I point out.

“Oh,” she says. “Okay. True. But —”

“But I’m hungry!” Louisa says. “And the Alliance deserves to be stolen from!”

“Maybe they won’t notice
one
cocoa packet,” Ryan suggests. “Or two? Maybe a couple of cookies?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Drew says. “We should take whatever we want. They’ll know we were here, anyway.”

“How?” I ask.
Because you’re going to tell them?

He points down at the floor, then back at the rug behind us. “Even with our shoes off, we’ve really messed up the carpet. It won’t take an enormous brain trust to figure out that someone sheltered in here from the storm.”

He’s right. There are wet patches and bits of grass and mud all across the pale blue carpet. The hem of my jeans is busily creating its own little mud puddle right here in the kitchen.