“It’s just an old needle.”
“No. It’s a backup for his injector. He told me. If his pencil runs out, he can always use a syringe and a bottle. He was here.”
Will rolled the needle between thumb and forefinger like a valuable piece of silver. “There must be tracks,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, encouraging him.
“But which way?”
He walked backward slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, scanning every inch of surface. I followed, trying to force my vision to see through the sand and dirt. If someone had been here, the wind would have covered the tracks quickly. And although the well looked untouched, half a day’s sandstorm would make anything look ancient.
At first the growl in the distance sounded like a storm. It came with very little warning. But as it got closer, the growl grew deeper, like a wild animal. Will straightened and tensed beside me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Trucks,” he said. “Lots of them.”
“Could it be Kai?”
Our view of the horizon was restricted, because the ground sloped away from where we stood. Several low-slung buildings also blocked our sight line. We could hear the trucks roaring, but we were otherwise blind. The sound morphed into different pitches—some high and whining, others low and rumbling: A convoy of vehicles heading for the front lines, or escaping with kidnap victims? Or maybe both…?
Then the roar ceased. This was unusual, because the vehicles in a convoy would never shut off their engines—even I knew that. In an ambush they would not be able to flee immediately. This was someone who was not afraid of an ambush, for whom fuel mattered more than fleeing. Neither the army nor the Guard would ever take such a risk. Then Will spotted them.
“Run! Vera, run!”
A dozen or so men dressed in tattered black clothing, bearded and large, appeared over the horizon. They walked with guns extended, poised, and ready to shoot. If these were the men who had kidnapped Kai, we didn’t stand a chance.
My legs felt bolted to the earth. I couldn’t move. Will grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the road. Behind us I could hear the men yelling and the machines restarting their engines.
“Who are they?” I shouted as I stumbled to keep up with Will.
“Water pirates!” His voice quavered.
I nearly fell down. Water pirates were the worst kind of vigilantes. They traveled like nomads, stealing water wherever they could find it and selling it to the highest bidder. They owed allegiance to no government and killed all who crossed them.
Will veered off the flattened sands onto rocky terrain, and I followed as fast as I could. We could hear the trucks roaring down upon us and something else in the sky. I looked up and saw a sight I’d seen only once before in my life: a helicopter. Two men with guns squatted in the open hatchway.
“Stop running!” an amplified voice commanded.
Will zigzagged, trying to scamper by the biggest rocks to slow the trucks. He kept one arm out for me, and I grabbed it, feeling the muscle in his forearm throbbing with the effort of the chase. We ran clumsily. I feared each step would be my last. I waited for the bullets to rip the air and wondered what it would feel like to be shot. Painful, like a vaccination, or quick and peaceful? Dust and dirt filled my vision, and it was hard to breathe. My lungs burned, and my feet ached from the rocks. But soon the road was a good half-kilometer behind us, and the sound of the trucks had faded. The helicopter, however, kept pace overhead.
“Why are they chasing us?”
“They don’t want anyone to know they were here,” said Will.
Stealing water was a crime punishable by death. Even wildcatters, like Kai’s father, did their drilling with government licenses. Although the army rarely caught them, pirates were executed or sent to camps from which they never returned. Like other “undesirables,” they threatened the stability of a fragile republic. But this only made pirates more ruthless and determined never to be captured. They trusted no one and killed those who betrayed them. I ran harder.
Then we heard the dogs.
It was a sound I knew only from the wireless. Dogs were too expensive for most people to own. Unlike cats they drank plenty of water and could not hunt their own food. Left alone they were quickly killed by coyotes, one of the few other animals that survived in the wild. But they were still bred for certain purposes—including hunting runaways.
“Will!”
“I know! I heard them!” he said. “Hurry!”
But the two of us were no match for men with dogs, to say nothing of a helicopter that kept a close watch from the sky. The barking got louder, and the blades of the copter beat the air around us. We ran, but the pirates ran faster. I stumbled, and an arm reached out to grab me. But it wasn’t Will’s arm. It was tattooed and covered with scars, twisted and gnarled—a pirate’s arm.
CHAPTER 7