I went slack immediately, and he let me go.

  “I do, too. I know she’s alive, wherever she is,” I said. “I would feel it if she weren’t.”

  He met my eyes. “I would, too.”

  Later he found another silver disk, but instead of audio, it was video. He messed with it until he got it to play on a blank wall.

  It was a biography about a guy who was in a war and then ran a lot and then had a fishing boat. We were so engrossed in the pre-System world that we forgot to bolt the trapdoor after lunch, and of course that was when Ms. Strepp came up with no warning.

  “I assume this is you two, working hard?” she asked frostily, her lips turning white from being pressed together.

  “Yeah… it’s… showing that some things from the past are the same today,” he said.

  “Such as?” she asked.

  I met her eyes bravely. “‘Shit happens.’”

  37

  BECCA

  AFTER FOOD, SLEEP, AND RELATIVE safety for twenty-four hours, I was much closer to being human. My squad and I set out when it turned dusk, and I was relieved when we were out in the wild. Maybe I couldn’t live in a cell again. Maybe the only people who can stand it are people who don’t know there’s a choice.

  Again we stuck to the edge of the abandoned road. I was more patient, able to explain to Levi that we were going single file because it would hide our numbers, and so on, and other leadery teachable moments.

  Still, this night-silent road was creepy, keeping all of us alert and on guard, scanning the woods and the tall grass for anything that might burst out at us. United soldiers? Crazy locals? Killer robots? Anything felt possible. We hadn’t heard wolves lately, but that didn’t mean that they—or something worse—weren’t there.

  A chilly wind picked up, making wisps of hair fly around my face. Then I held up my hand—Stop. My squad froze and I squinted at the trees, listening.

  “Are those bugs?” I breathed quietly to Nate. “Cicadas or something?”

  Nate shook his head slowly. “At this time of year?”

  I opened my mouth to tell the squad to scatter but a blinding light flooded the area, so bright we winced and shielded our eyes.

  “Run!” I yelled, just as a spray of bullets strafed the leaves around us, shredding them and splintering bark. I dove into the tall grass and lay still, looking upward. I shaded my eyes and saw that it was a United military drone, about eight feet across, loaded with cameras, lights, and weapons. It continued to lay down round after round of gunfire, slicing grass in half, leaving pockmarks in the old road surface. Was there only one of them?

  Slowly I raised to one knee and put my rifle to my shoulder. I adjusted the gunsight, looking through one eye. I didn’t know how well protected the drone was, but I had to stop it, and damn fast.

  Blood pounding in my ears, I aimed. The drone flitted around like a big, ungainly dragonfly, darting high and low, left and right, tilting. I followed it for a minute, adjusting for its movements, and when it skimmed through my crosshairs, I fired. Once, twice, three times, pop pop pop.

  It exploded, raining shards of hot metal and tough plastic down on us. Someone drew in breath with a hiss as if they’d been hurt, and I leaped to my feet. Overhead, the fractured drone whirled crazily like an injured animal, its smooth artificial sound now hiccupping and raspy. It crashed into some low trees across the road, and almost immediately small tongues of flame started curling through the leaves.

  “Freeze!” The voice was loud and mean, shouted through a bullhorn. Suddenly, dark-uniformed soldiers pounded down the road.

  “Sic ’em!” I bellowed, springing out of my hiding place. The rest of the team materialized, weapons raised, assessing the threat like professionals.

  “You’re illegals!” a soldier shouted at me, billy club raised.

  “I don’t recognize your law!” I yelled back, and launched myself at him.

  38

  I ALMOST SMILED WHEN I saw the United soldiers wearing tactical gear—all foolishly brave and overconfident like it was a magical shield. Ooh, body armor! Guess we’ll give up!

  Guess again! I took Billy Club Guy out with a flying tackle and choke hold. Of course Strepp had trained us on tactical gear. She’d trained us on every single thing she could possibly think of. If an irate farmer came at me waving barbecue tongs wrapped with a spitting cobra, I had a plan in place.

  Running up behind one guy, I smashed his knee from the side, and he buckled. One hard blow from the butt of my rifle and he was out. Nate used his knife to slice through the straps of the soldier’s holster, then yanked it free, seizing the pistol. He pistol-whipped the soldier in the temple. Three down, a dozen more to go.

  The smell of fire was strong and thick; coiling smoke had started to weave among the frenzied action. I caught a glimpse of Jolie, her eyes wide and determined, as she shoved her rifle under a helmet, popping its straps. Then it was easy to deliver a knockout kick to the head.

  Mills leaned over a prone body, his fist raised. Bunny was everywhere at once, showing herself a graduate of the Crazy House by her combination of mixed martial arts, street-fighting tricks, and random violence.

  Still the soldiers kept coming. Between the dark of night and the smoke, it was impossible to sweep the area with cover fire from my rifle. I couldn’t avoid hitting my team if I spewed bullets everywhere.

  Someone grabbed my arm and without hesitation I swept my other arm over and brought it down on his wrist, breaking his grip. I had a second’s view of his surprised eyes and then my balled fist hit his throat and my hard, flat palm shot up into his nose, easily breaking it. He went down without a sound.

  I took down two others, wrenching their weapons out of their hands, stomping on their radios, knocking down the ones starting to come around. As I was punching one of the barely conscious soldiers, another got the drop on me, tackling me to the dirt. I heard a crunch and a sharp pain flared in my hip. I flipped to my back and locked my legs around his neck, squeezing until he passed out.

  The fire had spread and was now huge, flames slicing twenty, thirty feet into the air. It had jumped across the road and I realized with a pang of fear that we were surrounded.

  Finally, all I saw was my squad standing among bodies as the heat got closer and the smoke got thicker. It felt like the fight had lasted an hour but it had probably been maybe six to eight minutes.

  “Grab their gear!” I yelled, and we loaded up with as much as we could carry without slowing ourselves down. I snagged an automatic rifle off one soldier that was much nicer than the gun the Resistance had given me. Finally, exhausted and bloody, I found a tiny break in the flames that got closer to us with every second.

  “We just gotta go through,” I said. They nodded grimly.

  I took a breath, then shielded my face with one arm. Of course, I had to go first—I was squad leader. Ducking my head, I plunged into the fire and ran through as fast as I could, wincing at the scorching heat that felt like it would peel my skin off. In seconds I was on the other side and Bunny was close behind me.

  “Drop and roll!” she shouted. “You’re on fire!”

  I dropped and rolled. Nate tore off his jacket and smothered the embers in my hair as the others ran through in my wake. My face felt sunburned and there was a horrible smell of scorched hair, but no one had anything worse than that. We’d been lucky.

  A minute later we were back on the road, sticking tightly to the line of trees, fairly invisible from above.

  “No one’s following us,” Nate reported.

  “All those guys we left there,” Mills said, coming up beside me. “Do you think the fire will get them?

  “I’m counting on it,” I said grimly, and hitched up my new rifle.

  39

  CASSIE

  “YOU’RE SLACKING OFF!” MS. STREPP yelled, and threw my latest reports on the floor. “You should be getting through thousands of items every day! Yesterday was what, three hundred? Today only two-eighty? What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said tersely. “Every single thing needs to be looked at and a decision made about it. Then we have to log it, maybe put it on the time—”

  “Excuses!” she shouted. “You losers are just wasting time! Are you napping up here?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you fooling around up here?”

  “Oh, God, no!” Tim said.

  My face flushed with heat. Did she think the four of us were just interchangeable?

  “No. It just takes time.” I didn’t mention that Tim was still pretty slow at reading and I was doing 98 percent of the logging work.

  Her face was hard and suspicious. “Speed. It. Up.” She kept the glare going all the way down the rope ladder.

  Tim quickly closed the hatch and this time didn’t forget to lock it.

  “I’ll try to get faster at the preliminary sorting,” he said, looking embarrassed.

  “It would help if we had something specific to look for,” I said, settling next to some stuffed garbage bags, thinking I should probably just take crap out of this bag and transfer it right into a new one. “It’s impossible deciding whether a menu is crucial or a postcard some important clue.”

  “Yeah,” he said, sitting on the floor several yards away. The attic had four low windows that began at the floor and came up to his knees. Some of their panes were cracked and all of them were caked with ancient dust and dirt. He rubbed a spot clean and gazed out.

  I bet he was wishing he was out there with Becca. Well, so am I, pal.

  Precious Treasure Bag #702 held crocheted doilies that were stained and fraying, a broken china shepherdess statue, dried-out tins of shoe polish, some half-burned candles, and a cracked jar of candy all melted together and disgusting. I did in fact simply transfer all this to a new garbage bag.

  Last, I pulled out a box of small frosted cakes. By God, yes! Let’s squirrel this away forever! This, this will hold the key to United civilization! I was getting bitter.

  He looked over, saw the box in my hands. “Twuh—” he sounded out, scooching closer. “Tweennn-kye?”

  “I think Twink-ee,” I said, and ripped open the box. Inside, each cake was individually wrapped. I’d never seen anything like this and tossed one to him. “Here, try it,” I joked.

  He held the package up and looked at it from all angles. After a long examination, he tore open the cake package.

  “Not really!” I shrieked. “Don’t eat that!” I stared in horror as he took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “You are gonna die,” I predicted.

  He turned it to show me that it was full of whipped cream. Whipped cream a hundred years old. Older. He took another bite. “It’s not bad.” He finished it and crumpled up the wrapper. “So how old do you think it was?”

  I picked up the torn box. “Best by August 18, 2036,” I read.

  “Whoa. That’s old,” he admitted.

  I picked up Yellowed Newspaper #1,000,000 and skimmed it, wondering when he would suddenly double over and start barfing. Some words caught my eyes and I went back and reread them.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, looking up. “Oh, my God.”

  40

  “WHAT?” HE ASKED, LEANING OVER to see. “What is it?”

  Wordlessly, I held up the paper to show him the headline. His forehead wrinkled as he tried to decipher it, and I took it back.

  “‘CDC Scientists Confirm Use of Biological Weapons,’” I read.

  “What’s the CDC?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But this sounds bad.” I read on: “‘The New World party has released a biological weapon into the water supplies of cities across the US’!”

  “US,” I said. “The United States! What the United used to be, right?” I went on: “‘The vaporized particles, based on organophosphates, dissolve readily in water and are quickly absorbed by plants, animals, and humans.’”

  The cold feeling in my gut told me we’d finally found a real clue.

  “Oh, crap,” he said. “So, don’t drink the water, or eat, or breathe. This must have killed… a ton of people.”

  My heart pounded and adrenaline-fueled alertness woke my brain cells. “Who did this?” I asked out loud. “Who was the New World party? Tim! Look for more newspapers!”

  We tore open boxes, cut bags apart, rifled through piles, but for a good hour we found only more useless junk—grocery store receipts, stacks of paper called Tax Returns, a cookbook that I set to one side to look at later.

  “Here, newspapers!” he said, hauling out a stack from an old trunk.

  He scanned the dates. “This one’s from… 1926,” he said. “It’s pretty much dust.” He tossed it in my lap and I gave it a quick look.

  “‘Ederle Swims the English Channel,’” I read. “That makes no sense—oh, Ederle is a person.” It was from too long ago and I tossed it.

  “Hey, look! A dartboard!” he said, holding up a round target. “The bars in my home cell always had dartboards.” He smiled at it and leaned it against one wall. “Just gotta find some darts,” he muttered.

  I was on fire now, pawing impatiently through stacks as fast as I could, getting filthy. I refused to take a twenty-minute workout break and worked right through lunch, though he put a sandwich on the floor next to me. My arms actually ached toward the end of the day and I’d almost given up when I pried open an old footlocker and found more newspapers.

  “Bingo!” I said, “2037!” I spread one on the ground and skimmed headlines—disturbing headlines. I read slower. This couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be true… I flipped to the next paper and the more I read, the colder my skin got and the more my stomach hurt.

  “You’ve gone white,” he said. “You’re making me nervous.”

  I’d almost forgotten he was here, and now I looked at him as if I’d never seen him before. I blinked a couple times and drew in a breath, feeling like I was about to throw up.

  “How… how much of this stuff do you think is from after 2037?” I asked him weakly.

  He glanced around. “Probably… maybe most of it? Like, it can’t all be ancient. Why?”

  I could hardly say the words. “Because everything, everything after 2037 was infected with a… plague,” I said, looking at all the bags and papers we’d handled. “A fatal plague.”

  41

  BECCA

  WE WALKED MOST OF THE night, taking a couple hours before dawn to rest. It was those cold half-sleeps when I was curled in a shivering ball that made me miss Tim the most. I thought about him, his big, warm body, his strong arms, the scent of his skin, and hot tears came to my eyes. I tried to put him out of my mind.

  Now, close to dawn, I sat up, shivering, and reached for the mobile phone tucked away in a hip pouch. Strepp had given me the precious piece of technology before we left the camp so I could report back to her. I figured the skirmish with the United soldiers last night counted as important enough to risk using an unsecured cell signal. But when I pulled the phone from its holder, pieces of plastic rained from my hand.

  Shit! The phone had been smashed when that United asshole tackled me. Strepp was going to kill me—if I survived long enough to see her again.

  We had to get on the move again. I woke the team and we broke camp, removing all signs that we’d been there. As we walked, I did constant sweeps, remembering to look up as well as all around. Didn’t want any more drones to sneak up on us. I froze suddenly when I saw—in the trees—

  I held up my hand, and the footsteps behind me stopped. They’d seen it, too—I heard gasps from my squad and whirled to give them a silent “shut the eff up” gesture.

  Nate stood next to me.

  “Shit,” I breathed almost soundlessly. Nate nodded.

  The woods were full of… skeletons? Skeletons. Hanging from the trees. Fraying ropes were still looped around the small bones of their necks. I looked around, my eyes peering through the gray half-light of the coming sunrise. Under some trees were small piles of bones—the ones whose ropes had finally given way. Carved into the bark, almost grown over, were the letters O W.

  “Ow?” I said softly.

  “A warning,” Nate whispered. “But an old one. How old? Why? Who?”

  I nodded, triply on alert, and advanced silently, gun drawn. Despite the grisly remains, there seemed to be no other dangers.

  We stayed in the woods for more than an hour, picking our way east. Finally the filtered light got brighter and we could see ten, twenty feet ahead. I was thrilled to see the approaching end of the woods—my skin had crawled the whole time we were in here. There had been no birds, no insects, no animals, just like a couple days ago.

  Near the edge of the woods I surveyed the field we were approaching and I almost jumped when Levi whispered, “Weird.”

  “What?”

  Levi pointed up and I took a step back in surprise. Above us were… boats. Boats stuck in trees.

  42

  CRANING MY NECK, I WANDERED in a circle, staring at the treetops. There were actually boats above us, maybe twenty feet up. One was old and wooden, with the name Jack of All Trades barely visible, painted on the side.

  Jolie took my hand and spelled F-I-S-H-I-N-G. The only fishing boats I’d ever seen were much smaller, used only on Cattail Pond.

  Another boat was much fancier than the fishing boat but had been broken in half, its rear end missing. Its once-white sides were stained gray-green with lichen and age. And right at the edge of the woods was a long, long gray metal thing, like a boat turned on its side and almost completely buried.

  Without speaking, we walked the length of it, unable to believe that there had ever been a ship this big. Toward its pointed bow was painted US NAVY.

  “US?” Nate said. “Like, United Sea something?”

  I shook my head. “No idea.” I wish we still had Jolie’s camera to document the weirdness. Strepp would want to know about this.

 

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