Luca (21 page)

Behind Luca stands Zero, shouldering a heavy pack bulging with the camping equipment and the last of the food. He holds an old Geiger counter in his hand. She hears a single tone of fear in his mind. At the back of the group of fifteen girls, Giraffe is waiting with a smaller pack and the same fear.

Between the two men stand the girls, each carrying a small pack of clothing. Their bellies are full of the last meal they will ever eat at the Institution. Stuffed animals peek out from pockets and flaps, contraband recently freed from the stash found behind the broken refrigerator in the Institution’s kitchen.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Zero says.

Luca listens.

Sorting through an ocean of sound and layers of voices, she closes her eyes and reaches upward through the mist, through the clouds, past the heli-ship with its two bickering pilots and cargo of Ice heading to a place called Maui. She reaches past all of it to the stars, searching for the Voice.

It’s closer now. Larger and louder than before.

She tries to make contact, but the Voice is busy, its attention wholly focused on its own search.

What are you looking for?

Luca squeezes her eyes, channeling and focusing the words like a laser beam, pouring her strength into the effort.

What if you don’t find it?

For an instant, the Voice stops its movement, as though lingering over some choice, but then sweeps over and past her. In its wake, Luca senses agitation in the Voice’s movement.

Let me help you.

There is no answer. When she opens her eyes, she discovers herself in a sitting position, hands folded in her lap.

The morning mist and clouds are gone, revealing a clear sky. The sun is hot on her forehead.

She stands. The entire group stands with her.

“Let’s go.” Luca takes a step. Gravel crunches under her feet.

As she passes through the gate, she tries to recall images from the day her mother brought her to the Institution, but the memories are difficult to recall. They appear in disconnected chunks. There’s a hazy picture of her mother’s eyes, red and swollen from crying. A nurse with a smiling face restrains Luca while her mother pulls away, turns and leaves the room.

Luca still remembers her mother’s bowed back. The constant coughing. Her shaking hands.

“Where are we going?” Zero asks, interrupting Luca’s reverie.

Taking the first step that will place her outside the Institution’s grounds, Luca pauses. For as long as she can remember, she has dreamed of this moment. The moment of entering the outside world.

With only enough food for a few days, they need to find people with resources to share. Luca listens carefully, scanning within a full circle around her. The voices are most numerous in the direction that leads straight out the front gate.

“There,” she says, pointing beyond the rolling hills. “Over there.”

She motions for the group to follow her.

For the first few hundred meters, she strides down the middle of the two-track road, bending to run her fingertips along the tops of the tall weeds that brush against her legs. Each stem is a strand of music in the symphony playing in her head. A flock of small birds floats above. She smiles at them as they circle and then move on.

A squirrel rushes to her through the grass. She drops a hand and allows it to sniff her fingers. Its voice is a delicate river of sound.

As the road bends to the right, a sharp pain pierces her skull, dropping her to her knees. Other girls in the group react in the same way.

Luca closes her eyes. In the darkness behind her lids, she sees a field of colors. Off to the right, in the direction the road leads, the colors fade into a fuzzy black. As she turns to the left, the colors are lighter, mostly greens and yellows. The pain falls away.

When she opens her eyes, Zero is staring down at her. He gently pulls her to her feet.

“Are you OK?” he says.

Luca nods, turns and takes another step down the road. The pain returns. Stopping, she closes her eyes and sees a wall of black directly in front. Turning her body and moving slowly to face the opposite direction, the warm colors pull her away from the two-track.

She takes a step off the road. “We have to go this way.”

“Why?” Zero says. “It’s better to stay on the road. There's no telling what we might run into out there. Toxic waste spills. Radiation dumps. The road should be safe.” A slight grimace stretches across his lips.

“I don’t know.” Luca points down the road. “There's something wrong over there. It’s all the wrong color.”

“Color?”

Luca senses a hint of anger rising in Zero’s mind. He tries to push it back, but she can tell it’s growing stronger, pushing into his thoughts. She watches as he takes a few more steps down the road.

The Geiger counter in his hand begins to sing. Another step and the sound grows louder, more persistent.

Zero jumps back to Luca’s side. The anger in his mind is instantly gone. His lips smooth into a smile.

“I’ll follow you,” he says.

Luca turns and steps off the road, moving across the grass and weeds in the direction of the rolling hills.

And the voices.

28

THE DIVIDE

Welcome to the Divide.

A massive sign lies on the ground just to the side of the road, its supporting beams sawed off at waist height, shot through with rusty holes.

Jedd eases his cycle to a stop and glances down at the faded image of a red skull and crossbones above the words: Warning! No Trespassing! Minefield! Seeded with Tactical Nuclear Weapons! Do Not Attempt Crossing!

Nausea rises in his belly. It’s been ten years since he stood at this exact spot. Back then, the sign was still standing.

The landscape ahead of them is potholed and broken, like a massive digging project in the deserts of Egypt. Ten kilometers away, a low ridge of razorback mountains cuts through the ground like the petrified spine of an ancient subterranean lizard. A hundred meters ahead, the pavement is swallowed by a blanket of dirt.

Qaara and Ricky pull up on their gyropods on either side of Jedd, as silent as a light breeze on a summer evening.

“Never thought I’d see this again.” Ricky shakes his head. “Never thought I’d be trying to cross it to get back into the Zone.”

“So it’s true.” Qaara sits up and drops her feet to the ground. “I’d heard rumors that they did this. The government abandoned the whole interior of the country, overnight, and sealed the border with this no-man’s land. Crazy. Is there a way through?”

“Came through when we were kids.” Jedd throws a glance over at Ricky. “Ten of us escaped from the Family.”

“Ten?” Qaara says.

Jedd nods. “Only Ricky and I make it through the minefield. The other eight died trying.” He closes his eyes and see images of a group of children, dressed in rags, running for their lives over the dusty ground. He hears voices, screams, that jolt his eyes open.

“How’d you do it?” Qaara says.

“We spread out.” Ricky points ahead. “Put a hundred meters between each of us and just started going forward. Running as fast as we could. Jedd and I stayed together in the middle where nobody else wanted to be. It didn’t take long.”

“For what?”

“For the first one to step on a mine.” Jedd licks his dry lips. “A girl, couple years older than us. On the right flank. I heard the explosion, but there wasn't any scream.”

“After that, we both kept running, never looking back.” Ricky wipes the dirt out of his eye. “I counted the detonations. All eight of them."

“So how did you two manage to get across?”

“I don’t know,” Jedd says. “Just luck. I kept my eye on this sign here, back when it was standing up and ran straight for it, right on top of the old road. Figured that was the most obvious place to plant a mine and so the least likely. So I guess that’s what we’ll do. Pick a spot on the other side and just ride straight for it."

“What do you mean?” Qaara looks from Ricky to Jedd. “You’re not actually thinking of going through the same minefield again, are you?”

“No choice,” Jedd says. “We can’t stay here near the Divide. Air patrols will find us. Mercer will send his underlings to kill us.”

“Can’t we go around?” Qaara pulls her feet off the ground and rests them on the cycle, balancing on the two big slicks. She wipes sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

Ricky shakes his head. “There is no
around
. The Divide is a thousand miles long. The people of the cities didn’t care about people like Jedd and me. Rather see us die than share their resources. That’s why they created the Zone.” He glares at Qaara.

“Don’t worry about him.” Jedd says. “He has a hard time putting the past behind him. But that’s all ancient history now. Nobody’s fault. It just
is
.” Searching the horizon, he raises his hand and closes one eye, pointing with his index finger. “See where the old road comes out over there, just before it gets to the hills?”

“I see it,” Qaara says. “Barely. And I also see a bunch of potholes on the same line. You sure about this?”

“It worked before. It’s not much of a mark, but it’s all we got.” Jedd settles into the seat of his gyropod. “I’m going to head straight for it. Fast as I can. Let me get about a half a kilometer ahead, then you come, Ricky. Qaara last. Follow my tracks all the way. Don’t wander off.”

“Why me last?” Qaara says.

“Anything happens to me or Ricky—” Jedd stops and forces a smile. “You turn around and head back to the Fringe. Find old Ms. Murphy. There's only one. Tell her you know Jedd and Ricky. She’ll take care of you.”

Ricky nods. “Been good knowing you.”

“See you on the other side.” Jedd doesn’t wait for another word from Qaara.

He wonders if she’ll follow him.

Fingers find the throttle, and he jams it forward. The gyropod jumps ahead, silent except for the sound of dirt and rocks crunching under the tires.

More than once, he finds himself jumping across deep pits, holding his breath, listening for the sound of his own death.

Two minutes in, he slows to 80 and takes a quick peek behind. There she is, behind Ricky, a beautiful black dot raising a rooster tail of dust to the sky.

Long minutes later, he eases his cycle onto the old pavement that grows out of the sand just as the slope turns steep on its way into the hills. Pulling in a deep breath, he turns in his seat, staring out over the plain, resolved not to breathe again until Qaara eases her cycle onto the road beside him.

She’ll be OK as long as she stays on the line laid down by Jedd.

And then, inexplicably, she veers off at a sharp angle, less than a kilometer away.

“No!” Jedd yells, waving his hands, but it’s too late.

The concussion of an explosion behind Ricky lifts him and his cycle off the ground. The whole area behind him is a churning cloud of dust.

The shockwave hits Jedd, lifting his dark hair off his shoulders. Turning his back to the killing field, he is speechless, unable to comprehend the reality of Qaara’s death.

Why did she leave the path?

A lump forms in his throat. Sobs rack his chest. He slips off the pod, knees dropping to the dust, and then his body collapses, face down.

Not knowing if he will ever take another.

A minute later, Ricky pulls up, silent, his pod tires rolling over rocks and weeds. “We were almost here. I don’t know what—”

A torrent of rage explodes from Jedd’s mouth. Fists beating into the dirt, legs kicking, he yells until it feels like there’s nothing left of his soul.

“I’m sorry,” Ricky says. “We all knew the risks."

Elbows on the ground, Jedd shakes his head. “It’s over. All I ever had. All I ever wanted. Everything.” From deep inside, another wail fills his throat, reaching to the clouds.

The crunch of tires approaches, from the south. Jedd and Ricky freeze.

“Wow. Somehow, I thought you guys would be happy I made it.”

Jedd jumps to his feet at the sound of Qaara’s voice. He rushes to her side, throwing his arms around her, pulling her from the gyropod. An untapped well of emotion pours out.

“It’s OK.” Her hands come up to his neck.

Jedd nods, unable to speak or respond in any other way.

Ricky approaches the two of them. “Mind telling us what happened?”

Pulling away from Jedd enough to speak, Qaara looks back at the valley. “We were almost to the end of the line. I was staring at the ground, only about a hundred feet behind you, trying to follow your tracks. And then it happened. A circle of dirt suddenly dropped just behind your tires. It looked mechanical.”

“A mine?” Jedd says.

Qaara nods. “That’s what I thought.”

“So you veered off the path?” Jedd nods.

“It was just a gut reaction. What else was I supposed to do?” Qaara takes a step back, hands coming down to her waist, a half grin hanging on her lips. “I'd be dead now, Jedd, if I had listened to you and stayed on the path.”

“The mines are almost a century old.” Ricky strokes his chin. “That might explain the delay in detonation.”

“I’ll never know how you got through the rest of the field unscathed.” Jedd wipes his eyes, gaze going to the ground.

“You’re not the only lucky one around her.” Qaara straddles her gyropod. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

*******

“Just do it!”

Jedd leans into his g-pod and adjusts the throttle.

The big bike jumps forward as its pillow-soft tires roll over broken pavement and scattered rocks. At the top of the rise, the jagged edge of the road drops away, and he is airborne, floating ten meters above a foamy river choked with clouds of green and gray. He hugs the pod as its gyro-sensors buzz and hum, keeping it stable and upright in the air.

It touches down on the other side of the river, just beyond where the pavement begins, and rolls to a stop.

Stepping off the pod, Jedd leaves it standing upright and walks to the edge of the road to peer down the bank into the river. A caustic stench of chemical filth rises up to sting his nostrils, forcing him back.