Wake Up Missing (19 page)

“Dr. Ames told you that?” Quentin said. “He told you they'd change you back if you want, when it's over?”

Ben nodded.

“You believe them? They lied before.”

Ben's eyes narrowed. “They lied to
you
. Because they didn't think you were ready to know. They told
me
the truth.” He stood, but he didn't try to run again. Instead, he walked slowly to the
one gnarled cypress tree that grew up out of the brush and ran his hand down its smooth side. “Dr. Ames knew I'd understand.” He looked up at the sky; the sun glowed behind the haze of the fires and humidity. “He knew I'd want to make my dad proud.”

“Your dad would never want this!” I ran to him, grabbed his shoulders as if I could shake him into seeing. “He would want you to live a long, good life. As
you
!”

Ben didn't shove me again, or push away my hands. He looked me in the eye. “He'd want me to serve my country. He'd want me to make my own choices. And I want to do this.”

“Well, we don't.” Quentin stood and brushed his hands together. “You don't get to choose for the rest of us. And we're leaving. We're going back to try and find help. If you want to stay here or run out to the road and wait for the National Guard or whatever, that's—”

“I want to go to the clinic,” Ben said. “Dr. Gunther is there, and he can help us get back to—”

“Not us.
You.
Get
you
back.” Quentin's eyes were threatening.

“Fine.
Me.
”

Trent jerked his head up. “I'm going back as well. I can't continue to make progress under these conditions. I need equipment from the workshop.”

“He doesn't know what he's saying.” Sarah threw her hands in the air. “He's not even—”

“No,” I said. “It's okay.” I turned to Quentin and Sarah and whispered. “We need to go back into the swamp to find Molly. After we find her—after we're safe—then Ben can go on to the clinic if he wants. It won't matter. Until then, we keep him with us.”

Quentin nodded slowly and turned to Ben. “If you want to go back to the clinic, we need to stay together or we'll never make it. We're going back to the dock, and then we're going to find Molly to get help.”

“Fine.” Ben smirked.

“Listen to me.” Quentin got right in his face. “Once we're safe, you can do whatever you want. If you want to go back, we won't stop you. But we have the right to make our own choices, too. So if we see trucks and you try to run again, I'm going to beat the snot out of you.”

Quentin's eyes were like stone. He didn't look anything like the friendly, patient kid I'd met a week ago. He'd never even started Phase Three, but I-CAN had changed him, too.

Ben's jaw twitched as if he might take off running for the National Guard again. We knew we couldn't trust him, but we had to keep going, and we had to take him with us. There was no other choice.

Quentin stared him down, his fists clenched, and finally, Ben nodded. “Fine. Let's go.”

There was too much to think about and nothing left to say. We trudged on and on through the brush, stumbling more often, getting up more slowly, until dark clouds moved across the sun.

“Oh, please rain. Please rain.” Sarah looked at the sky as if she'd climb up herself to get the rain if it didn't hurry.

Trent looked at her thoughtfully, then jogged over to a shrub and picked some fruit that looked like little plums. “Here. They're edible and have significant water content.”

She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

Trent nodded, and Sarah smiled at him. For just a second, he smiled back. He had dimples, and I got a glimpse of the boy she'd told me about. I could imagine him fooling around with his food, laughing in the cafeteria, or cheering at a basketball game. “Thanks,” Sarah said, and passed some fruit to the rest of us. “It tastes like a banana only not as sweet.”

Trent nodded, and his face went serious again. “It's
Chrysobalanus icaco.
Be mindful that you don't swallow the pit.”

She tipped her head and looked at him. “How do
you
know all this stuff?”

He shrugged. “I'm quite familiar with my native flora and fauna.” He glanced around, then reached past Sarah to pluck some long, pointy leaves from a shrub. “
Myrica cerifera
, for example, is an excellent insect repellent.” He crushed the leaves and held them out to us.

Quentin frowned at the crumbled leaves in his hand, then over at Trent. “Have you spent much time studying the animal and plant life here?”

Trent nodded seriously. “Years.” And he started walking again.

Sarah looked at me, bewildered, as she rubbed the leaves on her arms. “He's from
Queens.
”

“The file on the computer said Edison spent time in Florida,” I whispered, remembering that day in Dr. Gunther's office. “He had an estate in Fort Myers or somewhere. Come on . . . let's catch up.”

It was hard to guess how long we walked. Trucks rumbled by on the road—we didn't get close enough to see if they were National Guard—but Ben didn't try to run again. He seemed intent on getting back to the clinic, where he could reconnect with Dr. Gunther and get himself back to Dr. Ames.

Quentin stopped and looked to the west. “I think that was thunder.”

“Good.” Sarah tipped her head up as soon as the first fat drops plunked down. But the rain never picked up, even though lightning struck not far away, and thunder boomed a second later. The whole swamp shook.

The storm seemed to feed life back into Sarah, even though
not much water made it into our mouths. She started climbing over a fallen tree that crossed our path. “Do you think Molly will have food when we find her? Because those plum things were okay, but I'm—”

“Watch it!” Ben shoved Sarah so hard she flew off the log, into me, and I nearly knocked Quentin into the grass.

“What the—” Quentin began, but stopped. We saw the snake at the same time. It twitched into a tight coil beside the log, right where Sarah would have put her foot down if Ben hadn't pushed her. Its muscles rippled underneath thick, muted bands of copper and black.

“She startled it.” Ben took a step back, broke a branch off a nearby tree, and prodded the snake. Its mouth opened wide and glowed white. “Cottonmouth,” he said.

The snake struck at the stick, its head darting forward quicker than Sarah would have been able to leap out of the way.

“Oh . . .” Sarah bit her lip, blinking fast. “I almost—oh!” She turned toward Trent and reached for his arm, shaking. He looked down at her hand, and again, just for a second, his eyes flickered with something softer and warmer than genius.

But then he pulled away and shook his head a little, as if he were shaking away a cobweb. “
Agkistrodon piscivorus
is a notoriously aggressive variety of pit viper.” He turned to Ben. “You were prudent to forcibly remove her from harm's way.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Ben eased the long stick underneath one of the snake's coils, lifted it from the ground, and flung it into the brush off to our left. We watched it twist away into the weeds.

“Uh . . . thanks.” Sarah's hands were still shaking.

Ben shrugged. “I saw one with Dr. Ames when we were out walking a few days ago. He said you have to watch for them around here.”

I took a deep breath. The smoke seemed stronger, thicker. “Do you smell that? Aren't we heading away from the fires?”

“We were,” Quentin said, “but there's lightning all over. Could be a new strike set off another one.”

We started walking again. Sarah made us go ahead of her, and we all stepped more carefully, our eyes scanning the ground. Twisty, gnarled roots sent my heart into my throat every few steps. But there were no more snakes. Just more smoke.

“My throat's burning,” I said. “Let's get to the road and see where we are.”

We pushed through the trees, and cool water drops fell from their leaves, leftovers from the rain shower. I tipped my head up so they'd wash my face.

“Oh, look!” Huge air plants dotted the branches above us, hung with moss like witches' hair. Quentin shook one of the trees, and water rained down.

“Wait, don't do that!” I searched the bottom of a tree for a foothold, someplace to start climbing, and found a low branch. “They're full of water.” I flung a leg over the branch and pulled myself up. I paused, waiting for the fear to come. I hadn't been in a tree since my fall, but somehow, my brain let my body keep climbing. Maybe because I needed water so badly. Or maybe because I knew now there were things so much worse than falling.

Slowly, branch by branch so I wouldn't shake the plants dry, I climbed, until I could reach the lowest one. The flower was a
brilliant, spiky red. I loosened the plant from its branch, pulled it down, and tipped it to my mouth. The leaves prickled my cheeks, but I didn't care. The water was warm and wet and perfect. “Come up!” I called. “But be careful not to shake everything.”

They all climbed. Trent even abandoned his bag of electronics so he could scramble up into the wet leaves. We drank from every plant that held water—dozens of them—and I sighed and closed my eyes, leaning against a branch, until the sound of a truck engine found its way through the trees.

“The road must be near,” Quentin called up. I was a few branches higher. “Can you see anything?”

I couldn't. But there was another branch above mine. Slowly, I stood, grabbed it with both hands, and pulled myself up. The bark had scraped my palms so one was bleeding, but what I saw made up for that.

“The road's right there,” I said, “and so is the driveway that goes down to the docks.”

Maybe I just felt better because I'd finally had something to drink, but the sight of that gravelly driveway filled me with hope. Still, I had no idea what we'd find when we got down to the water.

We hid in the trees until all the car sounds faded away, until we were sure we could cross the road unseen, and then we ran. It felt so good to fly across flat asphalt with nothing tripping me or scratching at my legs, no shadows that coiled into snakes with bright, gaping mouths.

On the other side of the road, we stopped running, but we walked on the open driveway—not in the brush. If a vehicle turned, we'd hear tires on the gravel long before anyone could see us, and we could dive for cover.

Ben hadn't said anything else about Dr. Ames or the clinic's plan. Somehow, since he pushed Sarah away from the snake, he felt like one of us again. It was better that way, better for us not to talk about what might happen after we found Molly—
if
we found her.

“Do you remember if there was a building or anything down here?” Quentin said. “Maybe there's a phone.”

“I don't think so.” I'd looked around when I was stalling, not
wanting to get in that van. “There might have been bathrooms, but that's about it.”

“What if there's somebody here?” Sarah whispered. We were getting closer. “What if those drug guys are back?”

“I don't know.” Quentin slowed a little.

We'd spent so much of our energy and hope getting back here that I hadn't let my brain fast-forward past this moment. Sarah had a point. What if those guys
were
at the dock? What if Dr. Ames was waiting for us?

And what if there was no one at all? No help. No boats. The river was full of snakes and alligators, and we were exhausted. There was no way we could swim all the way to . . . Where were we even going?

We'd pinned all our hopes on Molly, and we had no idea where she was.

“Let's check around this bend before we go ahead,” Quentin said, pulling us close to the trees. “The parking lot is up here.”

But before we'd taken five steps, gravel crunched behind us—a car or truck speeding down to the lot. Quentin jumped into the bushes and pulled Trent in after him. Ben, Sarah, and I crouched in the high grass as a rusted blue pickup barreled down the driveway, kicking up stones and splashing mud. The back was stacked with crates.

I caught a glimpse of the driver's baseball hat. “It's that Gus guy from the van!” I whispered. “He must have gotten away from the police.”

Quentin hurried along the edge of the road. “We need to see what he's doing.”

We heard the truck engine die. A door slammed. Deep voices.

“What the devil happened to you? And where's the van?”

“That quick fifty bucks you promised led me right into a roadblock. Feds.”

Staying low, we crept around a bend and hid behind the porta potties at the edge of the lot. The sewage-and-chemical smell would have made me puke if I'd eaten. Instead, it made my stomach twist.

The pickup was parked at the dock, next to an airboat.

“That's the guy who took us from the clinic!” Quentin hissed.

The airboat driver with the vine tattoo was perched on his seat, leaning back, swigging down a Gatorade.

Gus opened the truck's tailgate and tugged on one of the crates. It scraped against the metal truck bed, then thunked as he loaded it onto the airboat.

“Help me with this, will ya, Eugene?”

“Eugene?” Sarah mouthed. It would have been funny under different circumstances; he didn't look like a Eugene. Somehow, Eugenes weren't supposed to have scars and tattoos.

Eugene lifted a crate, then eyed the others left in the truck. “Where's the rest?”

“I told you. Feds had a roadblock. They got two prime batches. Almost took me with 'em, no thanks to you.” He lifted a crate and hauled it onto the boat.

The airboat sat lower and lower in the water as the crates piled up.

“Where do you think they're taking it?” Quentin whispered.

“Someplace to hide it.” I didn't know where, but I could guess.
Back into the swamp, to one of those run-down shacks in the mangrove islands. There was only one path into the swamp from here—the one that led back to the clinic. Where we needed to go. It sounded crazy, but I knew their airboat might be our only chance to get there. “We have to go with them.”