The Worlds We Make (16 page)

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for, Chay,” he said. Unlike the other two, his voice rolled with a southern drawl—a local recruit, presumably. “Maybe I should take one of them with me.”

“They’d probably get the drop on you the second you’re out of our sight,” Marissa sneered.

“Go look outside,” Chay said. “And hurry up.”

Muttering to himself, Connor stomped off. I struggled to keep my expression calm as the back door thumped shut behind him. Would he think to look under the dock? I focused on breathing evenly, in and out, as the seconds ticked away.

“Why don’t we shoot them all in the kneecaps, see how brave they’re feeling then?” Marissa said, after we’d been standing there for what felt like an hour.

“And if they don’t talk?” Chay said. “They’d bleed to death, and Michael’ll kill us. Fucking hell.”

“So let him figure out what to do with them, then,” she said. “We did our job; we tracked ’em down. It’s not our fault they’re crazy.”

“You want to call him and explain that?”

“Let’s bring ’em in. Then they’re his problem. One of those useless doctors can probably figure out how to torture them ‘safely.’”

“And he’s really going to like that,” Chay snapped. “Just shut up, all right?”

Despite my fear, a tiny spark of triumph lit inside me. They had the guns, they had the strength, but they hadn’t overpowered us. As long as they didn’t find the cold box, we were the ones in control.

Connor pushed back into the house through the front door, thoroughly soaked.

“There’s no vaccine, there’s no notebooks, there’s no nothing,” he said. “You want to take a look?”

“Maybe I should,” Chay said. “Get over here. And don’t do anything stupid.” As Connor drew out his pistol and took Chay’s place, Chay stalked off. A minute later, furniture started toppling upstairs, the thuds echoing through the ceiling. He marched back down and began ripping everything out of the kitchen cabinets, pots clattering and dishes smashing. Then he too headed out the back door.

When he came back, I knew from the way the door smacked shut that he’d been equally unsuccessful. He stepped into the living room, his expression dark.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to play games, you can come play with Michael. We’ll see how much you enjoy that.”

Every muscle in me balked. Here in this house we might have gotten some slight advantage. On Michael’s home turf, we’d be ten times as screwed.

And leaving the house meant leaving the vaccine too. I thought I’d wedged it under the dock securely, but what if the current jostled it free? What if someone else came by and spotted it?

Our captors were still debating the details.

“Are they all going to fit in the Humvee?” Connor asked.

“They’ve got a car out there we can take,” Marissa said. “A station wagon sounds about your speed, Connor. Who’s got the key?”

She held out her free hand into the midst of our group. None of us moved. I squeezed my fingers into my palms in an effort to stop my arms from trembling.

“Look,” Chay said, “it works like this. You give us the key and you can sit comfortably in the back. You don’t, and we throw you in the trunk of the Humvee. Your choice.”

“What if we want to stay here?” Justin said. “Michael wants to talk, he can come to us.”

Chay’s gaze flicked to Connor. “Go get the cuffs.”

Connor ducked out the front door, and returned a moment later with a canvas bag I guessed they’d left on the porch. I could tell from the light in his eyes that he was probably grinning under his face mask. He pulled a pair of steel handcuffs out of the bag and tossed them to Chay. Before I had time to process what was happening, Chay had already snapped one side around my left wrist.

My body reacted automatically. I yanked away from him, whipping my other arm out of his reach. As he wrenched me around by the shoulder, Leo lunged at him. In that instant, I thought we might have a chance.

Then Chay slammed the butt of his shotgun into Leo’s face. Leo stumbled back, clutching his nose as blood streaked over his lips and chin. Justin made a dash for us, and Connor caught him with a kick to his bad leg, ramming his elbow into Justin’s back as Justin fell. Anika gave a little cry, but as she shifted forward, Marissa yanked her head back.

I swung my foot out at Chay. He dodged, twisting me around and snatching my other wrist. Before I could blink, he’d jammed on the second cuff and shoved me onto the armchair with a painful jolt, my arms locked behind my back.

“You’re all coming one way or another,” Chay said, sounding not even a little out of breath. “Anyone want to reconsider how?”

A stark certainty settled over me. We couldn’t fight them. And if we were going, I wanted to at least be able to see
where
we were going. But I didn’t want to make it even more obvious that I was the leader of the group by speaking up yet again.

I raised my head, trying to catch Anika’s eye. Marissa had spun her sideways, snapping another set of cuffs onto her wrists. My gaze leapt to the others. Connor was crouched over Justin on the floor. Leo, who had raised his sleeve to his face to staunch the blood, caught my desperate glance.

“Give them the key, Anika,” he said, his voice ragged with pain. A maroon bruise was already blooming across his right cheekbone, and his nose looked slightly crooked. Rage coursed through me. If Chay had really hurt him—Then what? I was going to kick his ass like I’d completely failed to do a minute ago, when I’d still had the use of my hands? I closed my eyes, my anger deflating as quickly as it had come. We were alive, but we were pretty much helpless. The best we could hope for right now was to avoid provoking them into hurting us even more.

“I can’t,” Anika said, the cuffs clinking as she jiggled them. “It’s in my front pocket.”

Marissa pulled the key out. “You ride with Connor,” Chay told her. “I think I can handle two of these kids on my own.”

Connor hauled Justin to his feet. Justin staggered, trying to keep all his weight on his uninjured leg. His eyes were wild. Dangerously wild. I squirmed around so I was sitting up and tapped his good ankle with my toe.

“Hey,” I said.
Stay cool
, I wanted to add. Or, more to the point,
Don’t get yourself killed.
This wasn’t a moment when attempted heroics would do us any good.

He looked at me, and my expression must have said it for me. His fury faded, as if he was just realizing what I’d already figured out. The only way we could help ourselves right now was to play along.

“If you two are so chummy, why don’t you stick together?” Connor said. He nudged Justin forward and gestured for me to get up. I swayed to my feet without argument. Chay cuffed Leo.

“Take their stuff,” he said to the others, picking up our radio. “Michael will want to see everything.”

They scooped up our bags and ushered us out into the rain. Chay motioned Leo and Anika in front of him with his shotgun, directing them down the drive. Marissa unlocked the doors of the station wagon and pushed Justin and me into the back. Justin winced as his foot hit the floor awkwardly, but he didn’t make a sound.

“Michael’s not going to like this,” Connor commented as he took the wheel. Marissa plopped into the seat beside him, angling herself so she could keep an eye on us in the back.

“That’s their problem,” she said, giving us a sharkish smile.

A short distance around the bend in the driveway, we caught up with the white Humvee. Chay raised his hand in acknowledgment and drove on ahead of us. Connor followed him onto the narrow road Justin and Anika must have walked down less than half an hour ago.

I stared out the window, watching for signs, landmarks. We needed to know how to get back here. When I glanced over at Justin a little while later, he appeared to be doing the same thing.

Good, I thought as I turned back. Two sets of memories to help us find the house and the cold box again. As long as I had something to focus on, it wasn’t as hard to ignore the panic screaming in the back of my head. The imagined possibilities of all the ways Michael might find to pry the information he wanted out of us. Out of me. Because I was the one it would come down to, if the others broke and admitted
I
had hidden everything.

Despite my best efforts, my stomach started to churn. How long did we have before none of this even mattered anymore? The river water had felt freezing cold, but it wouldn’t stay that way as the weather warmed. The samples might be okay for a few days—a week? Could I hope for longer than that?

My arms were aching in their cramped position behind my back. The minutes ticked away from us. Eventually, the forest gave way to a scattering of small towns, one leading into the next with only brief stretches of farmland in between. Connor kept close behind the Humvee. Chay was driving fast. I wondered how Leo was holding up. What kind of complications could result from a broken nose?

We passed a series of untended fields, then another town and two farms. Chay took a left and then a right. The rain eased up, but the sky was still too gray for me to make out the sun.

It felt as though at least a couple hours had gone by before the Humvee finally slowed. It veered onto a winding road off the highway and drove on until it reached a gate in a chain-link fence. Beyond the fence, a lane curved between lawns of patchy grass to a cluster of brick and concrete buildings. A woman with a two-way radio at her hip hopped down from the booth outside the fence and talked to Chay for a moment before opening the gate for us. Connor followed the Humvee inside.

A sleek red convertible, gleaming like it’d just been waxed, roared down the lane toward us. The driver brought the car to a halt when he saw us coming, abruptly but so smoothly the tires didn’t even squeal.

“Nathan,” Marissa grumbled. “Show-off prick.”

Connor rolled down his window to listen in. The guy in the convertible was leaning toward the Humvee, his mahogany-brown hair slicked to one side and a smirk stretched across his boyish face.

“Coming in with your tail between your legs again?” he said to Chay. “You’re early—are you sure you even tried?”

The edge in Chay’s voice suggested he didn’t like Nathan any more than Marissa did. “More than tried,” he said. “We caught the little fugitives. Bringing them to Michael right now.”

Nathan’s narrowed eyes cut along the side of the Humvee to the station wagon. I shifted out of view behind the driver’s seat, the iciness of his gaze making my skin crawl. Suddenly I knew there were worse ways we could have been caught. Worse people we could have been caught by.

“You’ve got the kids,” Nathan said, turning back to Chay. “How about the vaccine?”

“They’re going to lead us to it, one way or another,” Chay said. “What have you brought Michael lately?”

He rolled up his window before Nathan could respond, and gunned the engine. As we drove on toward the buildings, the convertible whipped into reverse, spun around, and raced past us, cutting Chay off to pull into the parking lot. We turned in after Nathan, coming to a stop amid an assortment of vehicles that included three transport trucks and, oddly, several police cars.

“What the hell is this place?” Justin said. He didn’t sound as if he expected an answer, but Connor obliged him anyway.

“Regional police training center,” he said. “Michael knows how to pick good digs.”

“Shut up, Connor,” Marissa said. His shoulders tensed, and he shut off the engine and pocketed the key in silence.

They prodded Justin and me out at gunpoint while Chay did the same with Leo and Anika. Leo sidled next to me.

They hustled us toward the nearest building, a wide two-story structure of dun concrete. Nathan slipped in ahead of us. In his slim navy suit, he looked like he should be arriving for a business meeting, not to consult with the continent’s new warlord.

“We do all the work, and he runs to tell Michael first,” Marissa muttered as soon as the door had closed behind him.

“Michael’s not going to care who tells him,” Chay said. “He’s going to care that we found them while Nate was busy polishing his hubcaps.”

“Would have been better if we’d gotten the vaccine too,” Connor said.

“Thank you,” Chay replied in a voice laced with acid. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

A man and a woman, both with rifles slung across their backs, looked up from their conversation when we came into the foyer. “Hey, whatcha got there, Chay?” the woman said, raising her eyebrows at us.

“First-class delivery for the boss,” Chay replied. “You’ll want to come see this, I think. He in the usual place?”

“As far as I know.”

The two of them tagged along as we continued into a wide hall. The woman ducked into a few of the rooms that branched off from it. Beyond the doors, I glimpsed a row of tables scattered with ammunition in the process of being sorted, the glint of hanging pans in what looked like a kitchen, a line of shelves stuffed with fabric that could have been clothes or bedding. Each time the woman emerged, a couple more figures joined our group, murmuring to one another. A few of them looked to be around our age, but they all eyed us as if we were some alien species. One said something that must have been a joke, because the others laughed, with a warm sort of camaraderie that would have reassured me if I hadn’t known that we
were
the joke.

An odd, salty-slick smell hung in the air, like gravy laced with machine oil. As we were marched deeper into the building, I noticed artificial light gleaming in the panels on the ceiling. They had electricity here. And they were smart enough to conserve it. Only one out of every three panels shone, dimly.

From what Anika had said, Michael couldn’t have settled in here very long ago. He clearly knew how to get things organized fast. I wondered how many of these people had traveled from up north with him, and how many he’d recruited from nearby areas in just the last few weeks.

Chay pushed ahead of the group to shove open a set of double doors. “In you go,” he said.

The sound of our boots hitting the wooden floor echoed through the huge room, almost as loud as the pounding of my heart. We’d come into a gymnasium. In the corner, a pair of guys was dodging each other as they sparred. Pipes crisscrossed the high ceiling around motionless fans. And at the far end of the room, beneath the blank scoreboard mounted high on the wall, stood a broad oak desk. A man sat in the leather chair behind it, bent over to study something spread on its varnished surface.

This had to be Michael.

Chay propelled us toward the desk. Justin stumbled, and Marissa grabbed his arm, dragging him onward. As we drew closer, the man in the leather chair looked up from what I could now see was a map.

If Nathan had run ahead to share the news, Michael must have known who we were, but his manner was blandly casual. It chilled me. What was a life-or-death situation seemed to be no more than a momentary distraction to him. As his dark eyes contemplated us, he rubbed his thumb over the trim beard covering his jaw, the hair there the same gray-speckled sandy-brown as the waves that curled across his forehead. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his lap. The sports jacket he wore obscured the shape of his upper body, but I could tell from the way he held himself that any bulk on him was muscle. He moved like a lion.

I hadn’t expected the desk. I hadn’t expected that detached control. But after seeing the disciplined and coordinated operation he’d been orchestrating all the way across this country and ours, maybe I should have.