My sister’s muffled shouts penetrate my helmet, stopping my musings. “The trees have changed! We must be in Colorado.”
She points to the forest of pine trees whipping past us on our left. Turning my head, I realize how stiff my shoulders and lower back have become. Make sure to take breaks and stretch. If you push too hard, fatigue will just slow ya’ll down, Kipling warned in his old-fashioned twang.
I carefully steer the bike off road, and Mira and I switch places. It’s her turn for the driver’s seat—I’ve driven double Kipling’s recommended time. Clasping my hands together, I reach into the sky to stretch the muscles between my shoulder blades before I saddle up behind her.
“Remember to lean in to the corners,” I remind her, receiving an irritated scowl in response.
An hour later a full moon shines bright above. Its bluish light allows me to scan the night for any new dangers, but I find only the trees taking note of our passage.
Mira steers in a zigzag, avoiding potholes on the unkempt pavement. My stomach clenches with the twisting motions, and I focus on the back of Mira’s neck to calm the nettlesome motion sickness, keeping my head still.
“The charge is running low,” Mira shouts into the wind.
Even in the dark, I can make out the Rocky Mountains miles ahead on the horizon. We’ll be in Denver soon—the charge will last.
Somewhere close to the metropolis, we see another pair of transients walking down the middle of the road, tired shoulders hunched. With their entire lives strapped to their backs, their pace is slow and arduous. As Mira zooms past the couple, careful to keep a wide berth to avoid a collision, the man drops his left arm at a low angle, two fingers extended toward the pavement. A greeting, a passing connection, between fellow travelers. I extend my own arm in acknowledgment and catch a glimpse of the road-weary wanderers in the rearview mirror.
That is not our fate, I tell myself. We are not racing aimlessly down a road with no final destination. Father is leading us to Denver for a reason. The last safe house on the map will be our answer. Our discovery. We will not always have to keep running. And hiding.
And hurting.
Denver will be the end, and maybe the final name on Father’s map will help make it all stop.
MIRA
Beep. Beep! Beep! The motorcycle lags, then altogether dies.
“Battery’s dead,” I shout behind me. The bike keels over, and Ava and I catch its weight with our legs.
“Let’s drag it from the road,” Ava says, pulling off her helmet.
The headlight shuts off, and the world around us goes black. I’m surprised how unsettled I feel. Surprised by how the steady beam of light made me feel safe. To have it taken from me is unexpectedly jarring. It shakes my confidence, enticing me to keep my helmet on until we find another light.
Ava slides off the back of the bike, but I remain seated, twisting my hands on the sticky black grips of the handlebars.
“We’ll come back for it,” Ava says, sensing my hesitancy. Kipling didn’t have an extra battery for the motorcycle, and we thought this one would last. And it would be too risky to enter a charging station, even if we both did have microchips.
I remove my helmet with a quick jerk before I can use it as my crutch, swing my leg over the leather seat, and together we push the bike toward a dense grove of aspen trees. Their white wood soars above us like nature’s own skyscrapers, guiding Ava and me through their ancient colony until we find ourselves knee-deep in foliage and a quarter mile from the road.
We rest the motorcycle under a bed of leaves and overgrown weeds and use fallen branches to conceal a handlebar and mirror that poke out from the woodland floor. Ava buries our helmets inside the lush vegetation beside a ghostly aspen, its chalky bark riddled with the scars that come from living in the wild.
Bending down, I let my fingers be my eyes as I search the ground for something sharp. My hand finally wraps around a small branch with a sharpened tip, and I move back toward the white tree that guards our hard-earned valuables. I choose a spot above a blackened stub from a missing limb and mark the letter X. I wonder if we will ever find this place again.
Ava nods at our quick work and hands me a bottled water, then turns back for the road. I linger a few moments longer beside the Triumph, my eyes acclimating to the darkness.
We keep leaving things behind.
As I sit on a lopsided tree stump stretching out my right ankle, I watch Ava paint her brows with a coffee-colored powder. The lights of Denver extend for miles behind her, outshining even the brightest of stars.
“The last stop on Father’s map,” Ava says, turning toward the skyline.
I think of the millions of people, the thousands of cameras, and the hundreds of soldiers that wait for us inside that concrete maze. I wonder if Ava and I will be able to locate one specific woman before all those enemies are able to locate us.
Ava turns back to me, her crimson lips raised in an encouraging smile. She tosses me the small bag, and her russet eyes pop with intensity beneath her strong defined brows. There’s fearlessness there. A single-minded purpose toward this one last push, one last stop on this purgatory road until we reach our terminus. And then we can rest and breathe and maybe even live.
I hold the palm-sized mirror up to my face and outline my eyes with a charcoal powder until they are rimmed and shadowed and mask me with my own intensity, like one who is ready to face battle. War paint, I think.
“Are you ready?” Ava asks.
I rise, throw up my hood, and narrow my eyes on the broad cityscape that dazzles the night sky as far as I can see.
“I have to be.”
We blend in easily with the huddled masses that march along the congested path headed north.
Just like in Dallas, the people of Denver walk the nighttime streets cloaked beneath hats, glasses, and the ever-popular umbrellas. But unlike in the urban sprawl of my home metroplex, a constant cloud of smog does not veil this city. The clean air offers me a clear view of every skyrise for several blocks, and I see with my own eyes what I’ve only witnessed in videos: the first great American attempt at sustainable urbanism.
Soaring thousand-foot skyscrapers boast foliage on every terrace, like giant trunks of steel wrapped in vibrant green moss. I peer out from my umbrella canopy as we pass a block of food towers, buildings dedicated solely to feeding the citizens of Denver. Hints of massive vegetable gardens line their roofs, and the tips of immense glass terraces, stacked one hundred stories high, house acres’ worth of organic crops and free-range livestock.
The familiar uproar of a bustling city pulls my focus back to the ground as the infinite flow of bicyclists and autonomous buses zip past in a blur. The crowd pushes Ava and me down the street and pulls us to a stop beside the zebra-striped lines of a crosswalk. The solar traffic light turns red, and the commanding orange hand signals all northbound pedestrians to wait. I scan the other side of the avenue and immediately spot our first objective.
“Two o’clock,” I whisper in Ava’s ear.
A light-rail station. I glimpse the blue-and-yellow glow of a hologram between the crush of arms, torsos, and parasol canopies. A map of downtown. A guide through the city’s wilderness.
The pedestrians press tight around us, elbows sharp and businesslike, jostling against Ava and me for a closer space beside the street. Ava’s fingers grip the bottom of my shirt, anchoring me to her side within this swell of a hundred strangers. A few rogue walkers slip through the horde in front of me and sprint across the crosswalk just as the first wave of oncoming bicycles and autos gain speed.