The Escape (16 page)

He grabbed the car seat out of the car, positioned it on the side of the road, and laid the soldier’s shirt over the top.

“We’ll shoot at that.”

“This doesn’t feel right,” Evan said.

“It will feel right when you’re being shot at,” Jenna said. “And then it will feel wrong again. But I like you, Evan. I’d prefer you alive to dead, okay?”

Evan’s tan skin pinked up as he blushed, and he looked away, shaking his head. Barker stifled his laughter. Jenna always did have a way with men—of all ages, apparently.

“Aim for the heart,” Barker said. “Look through the sights, line it up. When you see exactly where you want to hit, gently pull the trigger, and keep the gun steady so it doesn’t recoil up when you shoot.”

“But I have no bullets.” Evan aimed the gun anyway.

“Just practice without them first,” Jenna said. “By the way, it helped me to think of it as shooting at the pocket, instead of the heart. It helps to not think of the person you’re about to kill as a . . . you know, person.” She leaned against the car behind her, falling silent.

Evan aimed, and pulled the trigger.

“Good job, man,” Barker said. “I’m going to put one bullet in, and you try with that.”

Evan nodded and watched with interest as Barker loaded only one bullet into the magazine, put the safety on, and handed it back to him.

“Only aim at the target,” Jenna reminded him. “You’ve got live ammo, treat it with respect.”

“I know,” Evan whispered. He seemed so intense, staring at the soldier’s uniform.

He lifted the rifle, switched the safety to semi, and took aim. He breathed in, and breathed out steadily, then pulled the trigger.

The sound was deafening in the silent morning air.

And Evan had put a bullet hole right through the target’s pocket.

Walking south on Interstate 95

Clarissa
walked briskly next to Roy.

“I can’t believe we’re heading backward,” she sighed. “But thank you so much for coming with me.”

“My pleasure. Besides, you make fine company.” Roy grinned at her, and she couldn’t help but to smile back, despite their circumstances.

Despite having lost her precious necklace.

She’d long ago lost any hope of finding the baby she’d given up. The girl would have a name Clarissa wouldn’t recognize, she’d have another mom and dad. Parents who tucked her into bed every night and read her stories, instead of going to high school and drinking beer at keg parties on the weekends like she’d been doing, not long after giving birth.

At the time, she never let herself imagine what it would be like to raise the child. There was no point. She’d been a child herself.

Getting a high school boyfriend after giving birth had been difficult; while she was considered “easy” since she’d clearly had sex before, she was also considered kind of gross, since she’d gotten all fat and pregnant and swollen.

Clarissa shook her head, trying to shake off the shameful memories of being teased for having a huge, cavernous vagina that could let an entire baby through. There’d been one really awesome guidance counselor at school, though, a mom herself, who had been on her side all through it. Praising her for giving the baby to a couple who desperately wanted her. Praising her for being strong, and for going back to school and graduating.

Seeing Evan reminded her of that time. She couldn’t even imagine what it was like to be a teenager now, post-Pulse. Perhaps it was easier for them than it was for the adults, since they were so adaptable, so ready to forge ahead with whatever life threw at them.

Roy pulled his canteen out of his pack and took a sip, offering it to her. “You should stay hydrated.”

Clarissa took a deep sip. “Thank you. And . . . thank you for last night. Sorry if I was completely weird. It was kind of an . . . experiment to see if I even was able to enjoy sex again.”

Roy nodded. “And did you?”

“Oh, yeah.” She remembered the mind-blowing orgasm he’d given her. “Yup.”

“For the record, you weren’t weird at all. And anytime you’d like to repeat the experiment, I will happily be your research partner.”

Clarissa grinned. Part of her wished they could hop into a car and do some research right then and there. But she knew they had to move forward. Well, backward. Retracing her steps.

“I have a feeling it’s either in the guest bathroom where I took a bath,” she said, “or in the master bedroom, by the closets. Or the guest bedroom, where I tried on the clothes.”

“We’ll find it.” Roy took her hand, and she reveled in its size and warmth.

“What if we don’t? What if we waste all this time, and make them wait, for nothing?”

“Then at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing you looked. If you don’t look, you’ll always wonder.”

Grand Central, the OCC

Colonel Lanche looked
at Dobson and Scar.

“The people are not as compliant as they used to be,” Lanche said. “Part of the problem is they think people are escaping and living. That needs to change.”

“The radio, sir, is also a problem,” Scar said. “It’s become a regular conspiracy theory that the radio exists, and that they are being denied communication.”

“Well, there really is no radio,” Lanche sighed. “Not anymore.”

“Sir,” Dobson said, “what if we allowed a group of volunteers access to the OCC, and to your office, so they can confirm for everyone that there is no radio? That might do a lot to quell the people’s concerns.”

“It will also let them think they have any say whatsoever, and they don’t,” Lanche snapped. “I don’t want to set a bad precedent.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“What we need to do is find Barker and the women, and kill him, and bring them back. Barker’s body, and the women alive. If we properly prepare the citizens for what a domestic terrorist sounds like, for what someone who threatens our security sounds like, then no matter what those cunts say, they will be digging their own grave.”

“The people will be begging us to execute them,” Scar said, smiling slightly.

“That’s right. And then we’ll all sleep safer that night.”

Dobson nodded. “We couldn’t find them before, sir. What are the chances we’ll find them now?”

“We’re going to do an organized search, starting with where the truck was found. Based on the truck’s location and the wheel tracks in the blood you found, we can presume they’re heading north. We’ll keep going that way until we see something. Shouldn’t take more than a day to drive much farther than they could walk. They have to rest, after all. And we don’t.”

“We’ll find them for you, sir,” Dobson said.

“This time,” Lanche said, “I’m coming with you. They wouldn’t
dare
shoot me.”

“Sir, we need you here, we need to protect you, as our leader.”

“Dobson—what kind of leader would I be if I never went to battle myself?”

Lanche saluted them. He knew Jenna, and Clarissa. He could convince them to come back and share their story. He just had to do a little pre-execution brainwashing.

Lanche walked with the soldiers to the main terminal, and blew his whistle. The other soldiers gathered everyone into the terminal, as many as would fit, so they could listen.

When the Colonel looked out over the sea of unwashed faces, he no longer saw a group of weak citizens, willing to do whatever he said. Now he saw them as a potential threat—as an unruly mob, bent on overthrowing him.

That had to end. They had to be scared again. He was turning the terror threat level up to red alert, the way Bush used to do whenever his popularity would fall in the polls. It was a smart move. Scare the people, get them begging to be controlled in return for safety.

Hell, it was how they’d gotten all the guns out of the hands of New Yorkers in the first place.

“Citizens! I have the unfortunate duty today to warn you all of impending danger.”

The people listened, whispers rumbling through the crowd.

“If, or when, intruders threaten us all, you must be able to recognize them. There are key phrases they will use that you must listen for. Much like the terrorists from before the Pulse, they think they are in the right. They think America, the America we are striving to rebuild right here in New York City, is evil. You will hear the word
evil
come from their mouths.”

The people muttered. Was it a good mutter, or a bad one?

“You will hear things such as rise up, and revolt. But, my fellow citizens, what are we revolting against, other than our own security? When you were hungry, and freezing, you came here. To Grand Central. To have a safe place to live, to have food to eat, to have access to free medical care when the hospitals were all abandoned.”

Now people were nodding. Good.

“You watched in horror as your friends and family have died out there. Out there!” He gestured wildly to the outside world. “But in here, you have lived. You have survived, because you, my friends, are survivors. And survive we must. We must fight against the threat of our security being overthrown, at any cost.”

He looked out at the soldiers, who stood straighter, it seemed. Like they were listening, and agreeing. Good.

“One of our own, one of our very own soldiers went crazy. He was already mentally unstable, and hid it well. The former Private Barker has used his snake-like charms the way a cult leader might, and he has turned the very women he kidnapped against us. When we are attacked, it will be from faces you once knew.”

At this, there was a cluster of gasps in the crowd.

“But I care for my people. I care about your safety. This gang, these terrorists, they will not go unpunished. They’ve already murdered four of our men who went out to search for them, to help them. But the time for helping them is over. They have too much blood on their hands. And so today, I will personally lead a search for them once more, in the hopes of bringing them back here, to be held accountable for their actions.”

The other soldiers looked up in confusion. Lanche rarely left the compound.

“While I am gone, the soldiers will keep order. And I will return. With them.” He spat the last word like it was a curse.

And to his surprise, the people cheered.

Hallelujah.

Greenwich, Connecticut

Clarissa sighed with
relief when the exit for Greenwich came up ahead of them.

“We made it,” she said.

With a renewed boost of energy, they ran down the off-ramp.

Roy put his finger to his lips and pointed down the road.

A truck. Not just any truck.
The
truck. The very same truck that had carried the soldiers sent after them.

“They’re looking for us,” Clarissa whispered, so quietly that the words barely escaped her lips.

Roy took his knife out of his pack. “I’m going to slash the tires.”

“Where are they?” she asked, panic creeping into her voice. “Don’t get caught.”

“I don’t hear them. They’ve probably been stopping in each town off the freeway trying to find us. Well, you. They wouldn’t know about me.”

“It’s only a matter of time before they get back on I-95. They’ll find Jenna and Barker. And Evan,” Clarissa said. “They’re sitting ducks. Oh my God, I’ve killed us all.”

“No,” Roy said, shushing her. “Get your knife. Help me. We’ll disable the truck, and we’ll get to Barker and the rest before the soldiers do.”

“Why don’t we just steal the truck, and drive it to them? Then we’ll definitely get there faster.”

Roy nodded. “It’s dangerous, and risky, but anything we do at this point is.”

“We were so close,” Clarissa said, thinking of her locket, of the only remaining picture of her baby. “So fucking close.”

“I’m sorry, Clarissa,” Roy said. “But we’ll have to mourn that loss later. Right now, we better get to the truck before they do.”

Staying low, they ran to the truck, and got in, with Roy behind the wheel.

“No keys,” Roy said.

“Can’t you . . . hot-wire it or something?”

Roy looked at her with a frown. “I don’t know how to hot-wire a car.”

Clarissa looked in her pack.

“What are you looking for?” Roy asked.

“A screwdriver. Think these packs have that?”

Roy smiled. “Hey, that’s right. This truck is so old we can probably start it with a makeshift key.” He felt under the seat, but came up empty-handed. “Let me check the back. They had to fix this truck up with something before bringing it back on the road, right?”

He got out and Clarissa watched him as he walked in a low crouch position to the back of the truck and rummaged in the back of the pickup.

“Here we go.” He handed her a flathead screwdriver.

“Well, if it doesn’t work, then maybe we’ll at least ruin their truck,” Clarissa said, and jammed the screwdriver into the ignition.

Roy reached over and pounded it in with his fist, wincing a bit as his flesh hit the top of the screwdriver like a hammer.

“Turn it like a key,” he said.

Clarissa took a deep breath. “Please work.” She turned the handle of the screwdriver, and the truck’s engine roared to life.

“Yes!” Roy laughed. “Go, go, just back up the off-ramp, we gotta get out of here. They might have heard the engine.”

Clarissa put the car in reverse, the tires burning rubber as she backed on the freeway, and started driving as fast as she could around the other cars.

We have to get back to them. Please, God, help us get there first.

Lanche, Dobson, and
Scar exited what was left of the FEMA camp at the town center in Greenwich. No one had heard of Barker, Jenna, or Clarissa.

The camp was even worse off than they were. The people skinnier, dirtier. The crops they’d tried growing were killed by an early frost, and they didn’t have enough seeds to keep up with the demand.

The vegetable and fruits they were able to grow were sterile, he was told, and the seeds they were able to harvest didn’t grow into new plants.

“Damn GMO,” one of the local men-turned-farmers had said. “All that genetically modified shit, to make bigger plants, it’s no good. And those seed companies purposefully sold sterile seeds so you’d have to keep buying more seeds.”

“You need heirloom seeds, like we have,” Lanche said. “You can send a soldier back with us, and take a few of our vegetables, and harvest those seeds. That should get you going again.”

The people at the camp in Greenwich cheered him as if he was their savior.

Good. He’d need all the support he could get. Maybe when the time was right, he’d take over the entire tri-state area. Be the fucking president. These people, they could be bought with a couple of tomatoes and potatoes, and a cob of corn. Amazing.

Lanche had never been a gardener himself. Few people in Manhattan were, it seemed. But he’d planned ahead, and he had bought stockpiles of the expensive heirloom, non–genetically modified seeds, and held on to them. Until the time came when he was needed. And now look at Central Park . . . a virtual paradise of growing food, although not nearly enough to feed all the people.