One of the figures in black—a big one, with shoulders the size of Kansas, pulled a knife from his belt and, signaling for the others to hold the driver down, pressed its silver blade against the man’s palm.
I heard a scream and didn’t realize it had belonged to me until that same black monster’s head swiveled toward us. Liam jumped at the ten gun barrels that swung our way. The first bullet was close enough to nick his ear as it whistled by. There wasn’t even time to turn and run. The firing stopped long enough for three of the figures to rush forward, screaming, “On your knees!” and “Head to the ground!”
I wanted to run. Liam must have sensed this, because he latched onto my shoulder and forced me down, pressing the side of my face against the cold, rough asphalt. The rain picked up, filling my ear, my nose, my mouth as I tried to bite back another scream.
“We’re not armed!” I heard Liam shout. “Easy—easy!”
“Save it, asshole,” someone hissed.
I was intimately familiar with what it felt like to have a barrel of a gun dig into my skin. Whoever was doing it this time had no qualms about dropping a knee onto my back, along with their entire weight. The gun’s metal mouth was cold against my cheek, and I felt someone weave a hand in my hair and give a sharp twist. That’s when I disconnected from the pain and lifted a hand, trying to twist my body enough to grab whoever was holding me. I was not powerless—we were not going to die here.
“Not those!” I heard Liam say. He was begging. “Please!”
“Awww, don’t want your precious papers to get wet?” The same voice as before. “How about you try being worried about yourself or your girl here, huh? Huh?” He sounded like a jock amped up on too much juice and game adrenaline.
Someone stomped their foot down on the same hand I was trying to maneuver toward my attacker’s skin. I let out a choked cry, wishing I could turn my head to see what was causing Liam to do the same.
“Doctor Charles Meriwether,” the voice read out, “2775 Arlington Court, Alexandria, Virginia. George Fields—”
The letters.
“Stop it,” Liam said. “We didn’t do anything—we didn’t see anything, just—”
“Charles Meriwether?” another voice said. Also male, this one with a heavier Southern accent. I almost didn’t hear him over the rain. “George Fields—like Jack Fields?”
“Yes!” Liam made the connection a full second before I did. This was a tribe—these were kids. “Yes, we’re Psi, please—we’re Psi like you!”
“Lee? Liam Stewart?” There was a shuffle of feet running toward us.
“Mike? That you?” That, from Liam.
“Oh my God…stop, stop!” The gun lifted off my face, but I was still pinned to the ground. “I know him—that’s Liam Stewart! Stop! Hayes, get off of him!”
“He saw; you know the rules!”
“Jesus, are you deaf?” Mike yelled. “The rules apply to adults—they’re kids, you asshole!”
I don’t know if Liam finally managed to throw him off, or if Mike’s words did the trick, but I felt Liam rise next to me, and opened my eyes in time to see Liam drive his shoulder into the black figure on top of me. I gulped in a full chest of air.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He put his hands on either side of my face. “Ruby, look at me—you okay?”
My hands came up to grab his. I nodded.
Of the six guys gathered around us, only two pulled their knit ski caps up off their faces: the big kid—big in a Hercules kind of way—with ruddy skin and black paint under both eyes, and another one with olive coloring, shaggy brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail. The latter was Mike. He reached over and pulled the letters out of Hercules’s hand and pressed them against his own chest.
“Lee, man, I’m so sorry. I never thought—” Mike choked up. Liam let go of one of my hands to clap him on the back. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Liam took the letters back from him, and reached back to draw me forward again. “We’re okay now,” he told me. It seemed to be true enough. The other kids in black had lost interest in us the minute Mike stepped up.
“God, Lee,” he said, wiping the rain off his face. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you actually made it out.”
Liam’s voice was tight. “I thought you were with Josh when…”
“I was, but I got through the fields.” He added, “Thanks to you.”
Another kid, this one with skin as dark as Chubs, jerked his thumb in Liam’s direction. “This is Lee Stewart?” he demanded. “From Caledonia?”
“From North Carolina,” Liam said, with surprising venom.
Mike gripped Liam’s hand, his entire body shaking. “The others—did you see if any of the others made it out?”
Liam hesitated. I knew what he was thinking, and I wondered if he would tell Mike the truth about how many kids actually escaped that night.
Instead, their watches went off at once, a shrill beep.
“That’s time,” Hercules said to the others. “Grab the supplies and head back. The uniforms will be here any second.”
A single gunshot punctuated his order like an exclamation point, thundering across the open road. Liam and I both jumped back, away from them.
The kids at the back of the truck were tossing down the entirety of the truck’s load: boxes and crates of brightly colored fruit. My lips parted at the sight of green bananas, just a few days shy of being ripe.
When they moved off and started back toward the trees, I had a clear view of the truck driver being rolled, unconscious and bound, into the ditch alongside the road.
“So, you’re what?” Liam rubbed the back of his neck. “Raiding anyone stupid enough to drive by?”
“It’s a supply hit,” Mike said. “We’re just trying to bring in a little food to eat, and this is the only way that works for us. We just have to do it fast—in and out before anyone notices us and can follow us back home.”
“Back home?”
“Yeah. Where are you guys headed?” Mike had to shout over the people shouting for him. “You should come with us!”
“We already have our own tribe, thanks,” Liam said.
Mike’s dark brows furrowed. “We’re not a tribe. Not like that, at least. We’re with the Slip Kid. You heard of him?”
TWENTY-ONE
EAST RIVER WAS, after all that speculating, nothing more than a camping ground. A big one, of course, but nothing I hadn’t seen before a dozen times over with my parents. After the buildup that Mike and the others had given it, you would have thought we were walking toward Heaven’s pearly gates, not some old camping spot that had been called Chesapeake Trails in its past life.
Since Mike had been the one to convince the others to take us along, he was the one stuck babysitting us as we hiked up the muddy unpaved road, saddled with boxes of fruit that were as heavy as they were tempting.
“We go on these things—we call them hits—to gather up supplies for the camp. Stuff like food, medicine, you name it. We also raid stores from time to time.”
Liam had given me his jacket to wear to ward off the rain. Though it had turned to a faint drizzle as we walked, the damage had already been done to the flimsy cardboard boxes in our arms. Every now and then, the bottom of a carton would give out completely, and whatever kid was carrying it would be forced to stuff the sodden piles of fruit into their pockets or carry them cupped in their shirts. Kids were doubling back to pick up the scattered, bright trail we were leaving behind us. Every once in a while, I would catch myself from being distracted by the bright trail we were leaving behind.
When Mike had his back turned to us, Liam snuck a hand in the top box and held an orange out in front of my face, a shy smile on his lips. When he dropped it in my jacket’s pocket, he leaned over, his sweatshirt hood slipping off his head, and pressed a light kiss against my bruised cheek. After that, the cold trickle on my skin seemed to evaporate.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” Chubs chanted behind us. “Ow, ow, ow, ow.”
“You know,” Mike said, “it gives me hope that, after everything he’s been through, Chubs is still the same Chubs we all know and love.”
“Aw, that’s not true,” Liam said. “This is Chubs two-point-oh. He hasn’t cried once this entire walk.”