In the Afterlight Page 6

  The Reds at Thurmond had moved strangely; they lurched when others walked, jabbed when others waved. But I’d just assumed the awkward jerks were because of the restraints the PSFs kept them in.

  But Mason...the kids in Nashville, they’d called him Twitch. Twitch, because of the way his whole body spasmed with its strange rhythm. I thought...I don’t know that I’d even really thought about why; I’d just assumed it had something to do with the way he was trained, the way the government had broken his mind trying to mold him into the perfect soldier.

  All of them, all of the Reds—they all must have had some version of this physical tic. And if I was able to recognize it after only being around a few of them, then how could someone who had been there—to make suggestions for and contribute to and witness the training—miss the signs?

  “Clancy...” I started to say.

  “This is too good,” he said with a bark of laughter.

  Cole stiffened, his face turning to stone. The fury burning his pale eyes softened, going out of focus. I knew that look.

  I threw my mind at Clancy’s, but it was like driving into a wall. I was thrown back, with a sting that zipped across my skull and turned into a pounding ache. We didn’t have time for me to break the connection that way, before something would happen—before he’d turn Cole into his little action figure. I drew my elbow up and hit him right where Instructor Johnson had taught me—in the temple. Clancy’s eyes rolled back and he slumped forward, knocking his forehead against the dashboard.

  The wheels spun as I floored the gas pedal, trying to outrun the signal fire Cole had created. The smoke would be hard to miss for any helicopters or patrols. I didn’t need to think about the consequences of Clancy knowing. I just needed to get us the hell out of here.

  My temples were still pounding and my heart was still sputtering at an unnatural speed when I looked over and saw Cole rub his forehead. “What the fuck...” The words grew louder each time he repeated them, until he was roaring them. “What the fuck?”

  I smelled smoke—saw how badly he shook. “Cole, listen to me—you have to calm down, okay? Calm down, it’s okay—”

  He fumbled with the leather case in his lap, ripping out a vial of clear liquid and a syringe. I tried to look between him and the road as he filled it, but missed my opportunity to stop him before he slammed the needle down into the back of Clancy’s neck.

  “Cole!”

  “That’ll keep the little shit under until the urge to beat his ass into next Tuesday passes,” he growled. “Shit. That was nothing like the way you did it at HQ—shit!” He tossed the syringe and bottle back into the pouch and let them slide down the dashboard.

  His hand was steady now, but his anxiety charged the air; it made me feel like I was sitting next to someone who was debating whether or not to light a fuse.

  He turned back toward the window, watching the buildings around us blur—but I could see his face in the reflection there, and it said everything he couldn’t. He hadn’t been in control when the Humvee caught fire—not even remotely.

  “What did he show you?”

  “Myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cole leaned his forehead against the glass and shut his eyes. “It was a Red camp. Somewhere. What they did to the poor kids to train them. I saw how everyone must see us, if that makes any sense...it was just...it felt like I was being smothered with smoke. There was nothing in their expressions, but, for a second, I was scared shitless. It was like I was really there. They had me and I was next.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, unable to keep the tightness out of my voice. “I realized what was happening a second too late. I should have...”

  “It’s my fault he figured it out,” Cole said sharply. “Don’t take that blame, Gem, it’s not yours to shoulder. You told me he was involved with Project Jamboree. I should have checked myself instead of acting like a monster, it’s just—dammit!” He slammed his fist against the door. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I just—it won. For a minute, it won.”

  His words wrapped around my heart like a fist. I knew that feeling. It didn’t matter how much power you possessed, how useful your abilities were. They had a will of their own. If you weren’t constantly on top of them, they found ways to crawl out from under you.

  “Those kids, those Greens and Blues especially, it all comes to them so easily, doesn’t it?” Cole said quietly. “Easier to control, easier to hide. It doesn’t fuck up their lives the way it does for us. We have to be focused, otherwise we slip. And we can’t slip.”

  Liam—and Chubs, and Vida, and all of them—hadn’t been able to understand how much work went into controlling what I could do, so it didn’t control me. Loosening my grip on the leash even for a second could mean hurting someone. Hurting myself.

  “It feels like I’m always at the edge of it, and I can’t...I can’t step in, not without feeling so damn scared I’m going to ruin everything. I want to stop ruining every good thing that comes my way. I couldn’t control it for a really long time—”

  “And you think I can? Jesus. Half the time I feel it boiling me alive under my skin. It simmers and simmers and simmers until I finally release the pressure. It was like that even when I was a kid.” Cole let out a faint, humorless laugh. “It wasn’t...it wasn’t like a voice or anything, not one that whispered to me. It was just this urge, I guess. It was like I was always standing too close to a fire and needed to just stick my hand in once, to see how hot it really was. I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought for sure it was because my dad was actually the devil. Really, truly, the Prince of Darkness himself.”

  “Harry?” I asked, confused.

  “No, bio dad. Harry’s—”

  “Right, forgot,” I said.

  “Lee talks about him a lot, then?” He didn’t wait for me to confirm before continuing. “Yeah, our real dad...that man...dumb as a bag of hammers, mean as a snake. Not a good combination. I still fantasize about looking him up, breaking into the old house, and setting his whole world on fire.”

  “Liam only brought him up once,” I said, trying not to pry no matter how much I wanted to. This was the one part of his life Liam wasn’t willing to share, and as horrible as it was, it only made me want to pick at the scab more. “When he lost his temper.”

  “Good, hopefully that means he doesn’t remember the half of it. The guy was—he was a monster. He was the devil himself when he got his temper up. Guess one of us was bound to be a chip off the old block. I used to wonder, you know, if the abilities we have are somehow dependent on something we already have inside us. I thought, this fire—this is his anger. This is my dad’s rage.”

  I knew it wouldn’t do anything, or at least reassurance had never done much when it was delivered to me, but I had to say it. I had to tell him. “You’re not a monster.”

  “Don’t monsters breathe fire? Don’t they burn down kingdoms and countries?” Cole sent me a wry smile. “You call yourself that, too, don’t you? No matter how many times others tell you it’s not true, you’ve seen the proof. You can’t trust yourself.”

  I settled back against my seat, wondering, for the very first time, if he wasn’t just as desperate as the rest of us for a cure.

  “This isn’t about the camps for you...is it?” I asked. “It’s about the cure.”

  His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Got it on the first try. Feel free to think I’m an asshole.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to suffer like this?” I asked sharply. “Because you want to be normal?”

  “What’s ‘normal’?” Cole asked. “Pretty sure none of us remember what that feels like.”

  “Fine,” I pressed, “then because you want a life where you’re free from all of this bullshit. I want the cure more than I want my next breath. I never used to. I never let myself think of the future, and now it’s like a compulsio
n. I want that freedom so badly, and it seems like the more I strain to try and reach it, the further away it gets.”

  Cole rubbed his hand over his face, nodding. “I underestimate it sometimes...you forget, because you function, and each time you get kicked down you manage to pick yourself up. But now, it’s starting to get harder, right?”

  “Yes.” It was the first time I’d admitted it. The word was as hollow as I felt.

  “It’s not that I don’t think I won’t be able to get up. It’s that I’m afraid one day I’ll just...explode. Combust. Take out everyone I care about because I can’t stop myself from feeling so damn angry all the time.” He pulled up his hand, holding it in front of his face, waiting for it to spasm again. When it didn’t happen, his gaze shifted down to Clancy. “They keep them locked in these white rooms. Lights are on the whole time and there are voices. Voices that don’t stop, that are constantly telling them shit like, you’re wrong, admit you’re wrong so we can fix you. They hurt the kids—they really hurt them, over and over. It was...I could barely stand to see it, and I wasn’t the one getting beaten. Was that...real? Can he make stuff up?”

  My hands tightened around the wheel. “He can plant any image he wants in your mind, but I think the truth is bad enough that he doesn’t have to embellish it.”

  “I don’t know what pisses me off more—what they did to the kids, or that they figured out how to contain the fire in them. Shit, Gem. How the hell...” He shook his head as if to clear it. “If he tells any of the others, if he tells Liam, what am I supposed to do? None of the kids will come within a hundred feet of me.”

  “He’s not going to,” I promised. “How much more of that stuff do you have?”

  He unzipped the pouch. “Three more vials.”

  “Then he’ll stay out until we get to the Ranch and we get him secured,” I said. “We’ll keep him separated at all times, and I’ll be the one he interacts with.”

  “Killing him would be simpler.” There was nothing heated or furious about his words, and maybe that was why they were so disarming. Just cold, ruthless pragmatism. It was unsettling how fast the switch flipped.

  “Can’t,” I reminded him, recycling one of his own arguments, “he’s the only one who knows where his mother is. You can’t do anything to him, not until we find out where she is. I need the cure. Whatever it is, I need it. I hate him more than anything in the world, but I hate living this way more. I hate the idea of there not being an end to this.”

  Cole turned back toward the window, watching the buildings around us blur around us. “Then you and me, Gem, we’ll have to figure out a way to stay one step ahead of our monsters.”

  I nodded; my throat was tight with the need to cry, with the surprise of finally having someone who understood—who struggled not just with everything and everyone around them, but with themselves.

  “Are you sure this isn’t a nightmare?” he asked quietly. “And that we won’t just wake up?”

  I stared ahead at the road, the way the dust blowing in from the desert covered it with a faint golden sheen even as gray clouds began to gather over us.

  “Yes,” I said after some time.

  Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind.

  THE RAIN STARTED IN WITH a clap of thunder just outside of Mojave, a small town situated at the base of the nearby mountains’ craggy slopes. In the distance, over their jagged crowns, I could see the first hints of green.

  “That Days Inn,” Cole said, pointing to the small, two-story complex hugging the corner. “Pull in there. We need to get them another car, and we need to switch ours out.”

  The town had been drained of its life some time ago, that much was clear by the complete and total lack of upkeep of its businesses and homes. It was a sight I’d grown used to over the past year, to the point that I didn’t feel the creeping sense of dread that came with seeing empty playgrounds, or fresh dirt in graveyards, or homes that had been chained and boarded up. So not even California, which had run independently from the rest of the nation under the Federal Coalition, had been immune to the new normal of economic strife that the rest of the country had been clawing through.

  “People could be staying here,” I said. “They would stake it as their territory—”

  “Look at the cars here,” Cole said, “the amount of dirt on them. They’ve been sitting here awhile. I haven’t seen any movement through the hotel’s windows or around the perimeter, have you? Park. Pull up right there, next to that gray Toyota.”

  I turned off the engine as he double-checked that Clancy was still out and still secured with zip ties. He went to inspect the other cars to find a working one with gas, and I jumped down from the driver’s seat and all but ran around to the back to untie the tarp. The three of them sat up in unison, blinking against the dull light.

  Cool rain streaked down my face and neck as I helped the others down from the back. The air was thick with that strange, wonderful, indescribable smell that was unique to storms in the desert.

  “Hey,” I said, my hands closing around Liam’s arms to steady him as he slid down off the bed. “Are you all right?”

  Liam nodded and squeezed my shoulder as he passed by. “Chubs—wait—dammit, buddy—” Without his glasses, the kid couldn’t see a thing. Chubs caught his toe on a pothole in the pavement and went down before Liam could reach him. After he used his good arm to get his friend back on his feet, he led Chubs toward the edge of the motel’s parking lot and they disappeared around the corner. By the lack of explanation and how quickly they were moving, I took a guess about what kind of business they were conducting.

  “Was it as special up front as it was in the back?” Vida asked, hopping down next to me. Her joints popped as she stretched her arms and back.

  “No one’s killed each other,” I said. “Was it terrible back there?”

  “Nah,” Vida said with a shrug. “A little uncomfortable and cold at some points. You took a sharp turn somewhere and Grannie copped a feel by mistake. He looks like he wants to die of shame each time I bring it up. Basically, I’m going to milk that shit for all it’s worth.”

  “Do you have to?” I asked pointedly.

  “Whatever. He was more pissed off by us playing a game of who could think up the worst nickname for him.”

  “Let me guess, you won?”

  “It was Boy Scout, actually. I mean, come on. Even I couldn’t top Chubby Chubby Choo Choo. I almost pissed my pants laughing.”

  I made a mental note to give Chubs a good, long hug before we set off again.

  Glancing over to make sure the boys were making their way back toward us, a pop of color caught my eye. Shielding my eyes against the rain, I took a step toward the two small cement homes that were oddly positioned a short distance from the corner of the street. A crude array of graffiti marred the cracked cement wall that separated the side of the house from the nearby parking spaces.

  “What?” Vida asked. “What’s with that face?”

  Most of the art wasn’t really art at all, and a good portion hadn’t been spray-painted. I wiped the rain from my face, tucking my wet hair out of the way. There were names scrawled there in permanent marker—a Henry, a Jayden, a Piper, and a Lizzy all written in great looping letters under a large, black, outlined circle with what looked like a crescent moon inside of it. Vida trailed me as I walked over to it to get a better look.

  My eyes skimmed over the wall, vaguely aware of the steps coming up behind us. One of the tags, this one done in blue spray paint, was fresh enough that the letters there—what looked like a K, L, Z, and H—were running, drooping down to the ground. I pressed my fingers against it, unsurprised that they came away sticky and stained.

  “Oh. Wow.” Liam let out a startled laugh, stepping up next to me to get a better look.

  “Oh, wow, what?” Chubs asked.

  �
�It’s road code. Remember? At East River?”

  I glanced at Chubs as his brow furrowed, clearly as confused as I felt. Liam had dived into camp life headfirst, befriending anyone and everyone, but I had kept mostly to Clancy, and Chubs had kept mostly to himself.

  “Well,” Liam said, undaunted, “it was the system they worked out for safe travel. We used it to mark how to get back after going out on supply runs, and it was taught to all of the kids who left and went out on their own.”

  He flattened his palm against the crescent moon. “I remember this one. This means that this is a safe place. To sleep. To rest. That kind of thing.”

  “And the names are what, kids who have passed through?” Vida asked.

  “Yeah. They were supposed to do that in case they had to split up, or they were trying to leave a trail for another group to follow.” The rain was coming down harder, forcing him to stop and wipe it off his face. “There are different ones for places to pick up food, where you can find supplies, a house of friendly people who might be willing to help you, and so on and so forth.”

  “Clancy thought of this?” I asked.

  “Amazing, right?” Liam said. “I didn’t know he was capable of thinking of anyone other than himself for two seconds without killing himself in disgust.”

  “Huh.” Chubs held up one of his broken lenses and peered through it like a magnifying lens, ignoring Vida’s snicker. “Kids actually made it all the way out here from Virginia?”

  We did, I almost said. But our circumstances had been...different, to say the least.

  “I bet...” He took my arm, leading me away from the others, walking to the corner where the house’s fence met the fence running along the end of the parking lot. Down the street on the opposite corner was some kind of church. Painted there in bold, black strokes were two inverted Vs, one on top of the other like arrows, surrounded by a circle. “That’s a directional marker to show them which road to take.”