Strike (37 page)

“Oh God,” I mutter. “Oh no.”

“What?”

I look up through the tears. “They're going to put Matty in one of the boxes. And we won't know which one.”

He stands and shakes his head. “Or at least that's what Leon wants you to think.”

“You're wrong,” I say. “It's just horrible enough to be exactly what he would do.”

“You don't know him like I do,” my dad starts, and I hold up a hand.

“Enough. Whatever. Go play on your darknet and do whatever you do. But I'm going to be in that mall before it blows up, and I'm coming out with my dog. With or without your help.”

He sits down and fiddles with his laptop. “How'd you live this long, charging headlong into trouble?”

I pause at the door on my way out. “I always pull the trigger first.”

Back downstairs, I find my mom resting on a sleeping bag,
reading a fashion magazine. I curl up beside her, and she wordlessly, lovingly strokes my dirty hair until I fall into an uneasy sleep.

As the sun is setting, we gather in what used to be the dining room to eat crappy MRE meals that my mom thoughtfully prepared for us while I napped. The lantern-lit room smells like baby vomit, like all these horrible smells mixed together and blood-warm. I do not want to eat fake food at this last supper. What I really want is a milk shake.

“What day is it?” I ask.

“Tuesday,” Rex says.

I count in my head. “So we've got two days.”

“Two days for what?” my mom asks.

I ignore the question. She doesn't want to know. “Does anybody have any cash?”

“Like, seven bucks,” Rex says.

“Still got my card, or what's left of it after fish drugs,” Gabriela says, tilting her head toward Kevin, who's snarfing up the MRE like it's actual food.

“You had some cash left in your backpack,” Wyatt says.

My dad gives me a measuring look. “What do you need?”

“Tampons and condoms,” I say, because I'm still pretty pissed at him for dozens of reasons.

“Sorry I asked.” He shovels a bite of MRE brownie into his mouth and looks away.

Wyatt looks adorably horrified, which is how I realize that I'm totally thawed toward him.

“Milk shake?” he asks.

“God, yes, milk shake.”

My dad holds out a card with a teddy bear on the front. “This has five hundred bucks on it. I'll give it to you if you promise to never say the word ‘condom' in my presence again.”

“Now, Jack. If she's going to do it, I'd rather she be safe—” my mom starts.

My dad and I both stick our fingers in our ears and say, “LA LA LA LA LA.”

Wyatt takes the card and stands up. When he holds out a hand, I let him pull me up too.

“Uh, did you say milk shakes?” Gabriela glances meaningfully at the MREs, and I hold out my hand to pull her up. Chance stands up too.

“Anybody else want something?” Wyatt asks.

“Ice cream!” Kevin shouts.

“Salad,” Bea mutters, not looking up.

“Coffee,” Rex says wistfully.

“Better painkillers?” my mom asks, only half joking, and Heather puts a concerned hand on her back.

“You sure this card's going to work?” I take it from Wyatt and turn it over, inspecting every detail. It looks ratty and stained, like it's
been in the bottom of someone's purse for a year. Any time I see the Valor logo now, it turns my stomach.

“It'll work,” my dad says. “We haven't had one turned down yet.”

“Just in case”—I look around at my friends—“everybody got your gun?”

Chance holds out his Glock, which matches mine. Wyatt's got my dad's gun, which I hope my dad doesn't recognize or expect to see returned. I know mine is fine, considering I checked the clip in front of my dad just a short while ago to make a point. Gabriela doesn't have a gun, but she still has her knife, and she wears it casually as a regular part of her wardrobe. In our matching black sweatshirts, we look like we're about to go fight zombies and we know exactly how to do it.

“Team Milk Shake, away!” I say, and they follow me out the door.

As we're getting into Wyatt's car, my dad rushes out, waving a burner phone. “We all need each other's numbers,” he says.

I roll my eyes. “God, Dad. Protective much?”

“It's not safe out there.”

“I was being sarcastic. I know exactly how unsafe it is out there.”

The look he gives me is sobering. “If you can't find this place, or if Valor shows up and we have to run, we might never find each other again. You've never lived in a world without the Internet.” I
don't make any more jokes as he puts his number in my phone. “And here's a car charger. Stay charged.”

I hadn't even noticed that my cheap little crap phone was almost out of juice.

“I would make fun of you,” Chance says quietly, “but he's right. This is not a world I want to be alone in.”

I plug my phone into the car and watch the little green light glow. Wyatt, at least, has a good sense of direction, and we're soon back on the highway. The mood is somber, but then again, no one got enough sleep and we're on the run from two sets of high-powered enemies. Wyatt looks like determination alone is driving him, and Gabriela slumps back against her seat and starts snoring softly. Even Chance is pretty quiet, just staring out the window. It so happens that I'm watching him in the rearview mirror when he flinches and looks like he might start crying, and I glance back quick enough to notice that we passed a charred house, still smoking. I remember the night we met, how cocky he was. And here he is, on the verge of tears. As time passes, all of our walls are breaking.

Wyatt knows where my favorite milk shakes are, and he's soon ordering half the damn menu. Number ones and number threes and salads and wraps and sundaes and brownies and, as he says, “The biggest coffee you can give me. Seriously. Just fill the bag with sugar and cream, thanks.”

I've never seen so much fast food at once, and my legs are soon
buried in bags, my lap full of giant drinks. Wyatt hands the girl the card my dad gave us, and I dig my fingers into the seat. What if it doesn't work? What if my dad's wrong? I feel a panic attack creeping in, all the what-ifs.

And then I realize—the worst thing that could happen is that we drive away, tires squealing, and disappear into the night. If we can't call 911 when we need help, they can't call 911 when we break what used to be laws. But the card goes through, and she hands it back with plenty of cash left on it and a super-long receipt. The look she gives Wyatt tells me she'd shove me out of this car and take my place in a heartbeat. Not everything has changed—although the recently installed safety glass on the drive-through window suggests that regular businesses are catching on to new dangers.

Gabriela wakes up, sniffing the air. “Hey, can you park a minute? I bet they have toilet paper.”

“God, yes. I need to make a deposit,” Chance says, and Wyatt obliges them, although he's careful to park in the darker edges of the lot instead of right under a light.

“You need to go?” he asks me.

I shake my head. “You?”

“I'm good. But there's your milk shake. Uh, milk shakes.”

He's got a four-pack of large shakes in his lap, and it's got to be freezing. I take the chocolate one and sip, feeling some amount of tension unspool. The last thing I ate was that M&M, and it wasn't
even good. I dig in a bag for some fries and barely taste anything as I gulp them down. This feeling is eerily familiar. Food is just fuel to keep me running now.

“I worry about you getting dehydrated, but I worry more about you biting my head off,” he says. “You can't drive on an empty gas tank.”

“The anger keeps me going.”

He pulls out a sandwich and swallows half of it. My belly feels comfortably sloshy. If I weren't so nervous about waiting in the parking lot, I'd be getting sleepy. Through the brightly lit windows, I don't see the usual families, Little League teams, or old people. The seating area inside is empty, although the drive-through has a hell of a line. All the cars are expensive, shiny, new. I've never even been in a car as fancy as the Infiniti SUV that's pulling up to the speaker box and rolling down a black-tinted window.

The world's falling apart? Don't worry. Daddy will get you a deluxe Happy Meal.

“I hate this place,” I say.

“So leave your mark,” Wyatt says.

That makes me smile. It's nighttime, after all, which means I'm harder to see. I dig my backpack out from beneath all the food bags and yank out my red and green paint cans. The air outside has gone full-on November, dry with a cold, crisp wind that lashes my bangs into my face. The parking lot behind us is empty, the strip mall mostly gone
bankrupt in the last few years. And there's no cover at all. I open Wyatt's door and hunch behind it to scrawl
VALOR $UCKS
. I get spray paint on my shoes, but who cares? Everyone who parks here will have to see it.

I'm back in the car by the time Chance and Gabriela return to paw through bags. I get Wyatt to stop at a drugstore so I can buy some shampoo and conditioner, and Gabriela promises to help me wash my hair in the sink back at the empty house. I grab a few gallons of water, too, because I bet the cistern water is full of larvae or spores or something. The card goes through, and back outside, I sneak around to the side of the store and leave my mark on the unlit brick wall. With every spray of paint, I feel more powerful, take back some measure of control.

And as we drive, I see evidence that other people are getting in on the graffiti too.
FREEDOM AIN'T FREE. GREED KILLS. FIGHT BACK. THANKS, OBAMA. SCREW VALOR, THE BANKS ARE THE ENEMY.
They're scrawled with varying levels of skill on the sides of buildings, in parking lots, and in the middle of the road. Someone made a stencil of the Valor Savings Bank logo and spray-painted it on every stop sign we pass so that they now read
STOP VALOR
. It's beautiful. And it makes me feel giddy to see people waking up to what's happening.

On the way back, we're about to pass Wyatt's high school, which has this huge boulder out front that anyone's allowed to paint. Every few days, there's something new,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATE!
or
GO, TROJANS!
Or
CLASS OF 2016.
And now it's my turn.

“Pull over at the boulder, okay?”

Wyatt grimaces. “Uh, are you sure? Just on the side of the road like that?”

“It'll only take a second. Block me with the car.” I shake my paint can as he slows and the tires crunch gravel on the shoulder. “Besides, at least this time, it's totally legal.”

I leap out before the car stops and start spraying.

“Hurry up,” Gabriela calls. “This is freaking me out.”

I'm done with
VALOR $UCKS
and the red anarchy symbol and into the green dollar sign when lights come around the corner.

“Come on!” Wyatt calls.

I add the last green slash and jump into the car, and Wyatt squeals back onto the road before the encroaching car sees me.

“At least we know it's not a police car, right?” I'm breathless and high on adrenaline, and it feels good. I did this. I chose to do this. Suck it, Valor.

But then our car fills with headlights, too bright, too big, too fast. The car behind us honks. I look in the rearview mirror and see that it's a shiny black SUV.

“Jesus, girl. What have you done?” Gabriela moans.

I strap on my seat belt. “The rock is there for painting!” I shout. “People do it every day!”

“ ‘Class of 2016' is not the same as ‘Valor Sucks,' ” Chance says. “I mean, full points for brass balls, but let's keep the antigovernment graffiti a little more quiet next time.” If I didn't know him as well as I do now, I would think he was totally blasé, but he's scared to death.

The SUV is so close now that I can't even see its lights in the rearview mirror. Wyatt floors it, and the SUV speeds up and swerves to pace us in the other lane of the four-lane highway.

I pull my gun and aim as the SUV's passenger-side window rolls down to reveal . . .

“Tuck?”

The big Crane goon points at the window with one hand while shoving his AR-15 out his window to suggest that if we don't roll our window down, he'll shoot it out.

“Goddammit.” Wyatt rolls down the window and leans his head back against the driver's headrest as if he's ready to avoid a gunfight. Or maybe he just doesn't trust me not to start one.

“Slow down, dumbass!” Tuck yells.

“You're the ones chasing us!” I shout back, waving my Glock.

Wyatt slows down to almost the speed limit, and the SUV keeps pace. I don't put down my gun, and Tuck's rifle barrel is staring at me like the little black hole to hell. My heart's hammering, and Gabriela is on the floorboards, and the scent of grease and chicken and pickles in the air is making me want to barf.