World After

48

WE WEAVE through the abandoned cars onto I-280 and head south. The further we get from the piers, the worse I feel about the Alcatraz escape plan. Captain Jake looked like he was pretty comfortable with his position as slave captain. Is there any chance he might throw away the one asset that’s been keeping him alive and risk his life to rescue the same people he ferried to their doom?

There’s a small chance that he might. He is human and humans sometimes do things like that.

But it’s more likely that he’ll drink steadily all day until he’s in a guilt-induced stupor when the scorpions take off on their mission.

This is too much. Mom and Paige are too much. The sword and Clara and all those people on Alcatraz…

I shove everything into the vault in my head and mentally lean hard to shut the door. I have a whole world in there now. I can’t afford to open it without the serious risk of being crushed by all the stuff that’ll spill out. Some of my friends had therapists in the World Before. What I have in that vault could take a therapist’s entire career to untangle.

Sitting in the back of the bus, I gaze out the open window without really seeing anything. It’s all a blur of dead cars, junk, broken and burnt buildings.

Until we drive cautiously by two black SUVs.

The SUVs have drivers in them even though they’re parked. They’re keeping watch, and they look ready to move at a moment’s notice. Three men are fiddling with something on the ground by the side of the road. It’s so small I can’t see it clearly.

As we drive by, I get a good look at the drivers. At first, I don’t recognize them because of their newly blond hair. But there’s no mistaking the freckled faces of Dee and Dum.

I remember the letter I wrote to the ferry captain in case I didn’t have enough time to talk to him. I yank it out of my pocket and stare hard at the twins, willing them to see me. They’re watching us carefully as we go by, and their gazes snag on me.

I shift my body to block the guards from seeing what I’m doing. I hold up the letter to make sure Dee and Dum see it and then I slip it out the window.

It falls to the ground, but their eyes don’t follow it. Instead, they keep their cool and continue their surveillance of the rest of the bus. They don’t get out of their cars to pick it up, even though I’m sure they saw the letter drop.

I casually glance at the guards to see if anyone noticed what I did. The only one watching me is my girl look-alike sitting beside me, and she doesn’t look like she’s about to tell anyone. Everyone else is watching the Resistance group with an intensity that borders on paranoia, if anything could be called paranoid any more.

We all watch the guys by the side of the road until they shrink to a dot. My guess is they are setting up cameras of some kind for their surveillance system around the Bay Area. It makes sense that they might want a few cameras along the highways.

It takes a while for my heartbeat to return to its normal pace, and I actually have to suppress a smile. I never thought I’d think good things about the Resistance again. But if anyone is going to risk their necks and pull off a major rescue, it’ll be those guys. No guarantee it’ll happen but it sure beats counting on Look-Out-for-Number-One Captain Jake.