Resist (9 page)

Chapter Ten

Tuesday Morning: Day After Escape

Kyle's cheeks and nose are red with the cold by the time we close in on the truck stop. Even I'm having a hard time blocking out the chill, and in the back of my mind, I'm aware I've been attempting to do so for too long. Ignoring the cold is not the same thing as being immune to it. Both Kyle and I need to warm up. The middle of December is no time to be spending a night outdoors without preparation.

Kyle winces with each step, but he thinks I don't notice, so I pretend not to. We've been on our feet for a while. Between the temperature, the exercise and the lack of sleep, I'm impressed he can keep moving forward.

In the dark night, the truck stop glows like a beacon. An otherworldly, depressing beacon with a fuel sign piercing the velvet sky. It's a couple hours before sunrise, but the world stirs. The air is thick with light pollution and the smells of exhaust, gasoline and grease from a fast-food chain.

“Is this the wrong time to mention I'm hungry?” Kyle asks.

I hold out an arm to stop him as we approach the fence that separates the truck stop from the patch of trees next to it. “Nope. You've been burning a lot of energy to stay warm. I'm hungry too.”

“I want coffee.”

“I want coffee and a pile of salty eggs.”

Kyle kicks the blackened snow at our feet. “You and your salt obsession.”

“Implants need sodium. Stay here.”

Sticking to the thin shadows, I creep along the rotting picket fence. Two eighteen-wheelers are parked near the building, and a guy in a pickup truck is fueling. A couple cars are parked some distance away, employees maybe. RedZone also maybe. From here, it's impossible to tell.

More trucks roar by on the highway as I get out my phone and send Cole a text with my numb fingers.
Where are you?

He responds almost immediately, and I'm forced to conclude from the bland message that he's given the all-clear to the area.

I return for Kyle, and he follows me around the back of the building. The roof blocks the sun here, and no one's done a good job of plowing because the slush is thick. Kyle grumbles about frozen toes as we cross behind more fencing, this time blocking off the ripe Dumpsters.

There, in a dimly lit spot out of the eye of the security cameras, is the rest of my unit. Well, the other five who ran with me. The first thing I see is they have coffee. The second is that no one appears to be seriously injured. It would have been nicer of my brain to notice those things in reverse order, but my brain is fixated on the warm caffeine.

Octavia thrusts a cup at me, and Lev hands one to Kyle. He seems surprised by the kindness but accepts it gratefully. The coffee is closer to tepid than hot, but it's warmer than I am, and that's what counts.

“Slow poke,” Jordan says. “We've been waiting ages.”

“You have?” I have to fight my desire to gulp down the coffee.

Cole throws her a wry expression. “No. She only got here a few minutes before you did. Are you both okay?” He says “both”, but he looks only at me.

“We're fine.” I bury my nose in the cup, thinking my friends could have chosen a less stinky spot to regroup. The area is private, and the fence blocks the wind, but the atmosphere was better in the spider-infested storage unit. “Everyone else?”

Everyone chimes in at once, and Gabe has to regale us with his near-death escape at the motel, but aside from cuts and bruises, they're fine. That leaves us with two important questions to consider. The first is: what's the next step?

Kyle asks the second. “How did they find us?”

Our voices fall silent. The six faces before me show the same bewilderment that I feel. Because the undeniable truth is RedZone should not have found us.

No trail is impossible to discover, but a well-hidden one takes time to be teased out of the background noise left covering it. By no means did we cover our tracks perfectly. We had neither the time nor ability—given the weather—to do a better job. But the job we did do was good. RedZone was guaranteed to find us eventually, but eventually was what we were counting on. That they found us in less than a day is inconceivable.

“When we switched vans?” Lev suggests. “It's the only time when I can think they might have—”

“No.” Jordan tosses her empty cup over the fence and into the open trash bin. “We were clean.”

“But—”

“No.” Jordan is emphatic, and I doubt she's wrong. It was a good, clean theft—a textbook example of what we learned at the camp. No cameras and no evidence left behind.

Gabe clears his throat, trying to forestall an argument. “I suppose they could have just gotten lucky. I guarantee you someone at the camp is listening to the police scanners. A van that's reported stolen from a Walmart parking lot not far away—that would be a tip-off.”

I drain the last of my coffee, disappointed there wasn't more and that it's not hotter. “Luck doesn't explain how they could have tracked down the stolen van in a snowstorm.”

“Not only that,” Octavia adds, “they shouldn't have had enough time to plan the attack at the motel. They came equipped. They had to have known where we were and that we'd be there a while in order to get those CYs and the knockout gas there as fast as they did.”

I rub the back of my neck, my fingers grazing the scab that had formed when I dug out the tracker RedZone stuck in me. Trackers are SOP before a mission, but it's possible we've always had devices in us that we weren't aware of. I'm met with shaking heads when I suggest it though, and I don't really believe it myself.

“You're all sure?” Kyle asks, tossing his cup. “These people couldn't have stuck something in you without you realizing it?”

“Can't be positive, but it seems like one of us would remember if they did,” Summer says. “Besides, if they did that, they might have done a better job of hunting us down at the camp. Maybe you have one?”

“Not me. If anyone tried to stick a device in me, my body would have rejected it.”

“Huh.” I stuff my hands in my pockets. “When I first arrived at RTC, I wondered if the person I was searching for could wear earrings. It would have been useful to know the answer was no.”

Kyle smiles grimly. “You found me anyway, but no. Piercings are out.”

Jordan raps on the fence to get our attention. “Fascinating as your freaky biology is, if we don't figure out how we were found, continuing to run is pointless. So, any other ideas?”

“Yeah, I've got one,” Kyle mutters. He blows out a heavy breath and traces a sneaker through the slush. Since he doesn't volunteer more, I can only guess what he's thinking, and my guess is likely to start a fight if Kyle confirms it, so I don't press him.

Fortunately, Octavia jumps in with a real theory. “Cole's phone.”

“What?” Cole looks up sharply from where he'd been frowning at Kyle.

Octavia has her arms wrapped around herself, and she seems particularly small, bundled beneath her jacket and a too-big hat. “You have your phone from the camp still. They could be tracking us through that.”

Reluctantly, Cole retrieves the phone from his jacket pocket. I groan. It makes perfect sense.

Cole shuffles the phone around in his hand. “First, it's been off. Second, I was thinking it might be useful to hold on to this. It's got Malone's direct line programmed in it.”

“You must have Malone's number memorized,” Gabe says. “The phone is useless, and Octy's probably right.”

Octavia glares at him. “Did you call me Octy? Don't do that ever again.”

“Destroy it.” Kyle quits playing with the slush. His tone is a challenge, and I know I was right about what he was thinking. He suspects Cole is the problem.

Cole grimaces. “Fine, but not yet. If they're using the phone to track us, we can use it to throw them off our trail.”

Kyle doesn't like this idea, but it makes sense to me and the others. And since we haven't come up with a better explanation for how we were found, we move on to the next concern. Getting the hell away before it happens again. None of us believe RedZone's left town yet, and we can't return to the motel for the rest of our belongings.

Unfortunately, a quiet truck stop off a lazy highway early in the morning is not the best place to steal our next vehicle. We're seven, which means we either need another van, a small truck or two cars. Each option has its drawbacks and risks.

We take turns going inside to use the bathroom and warm up, figuring doing so in pairs is less likely to draw attention. When Cole and Gabe go, they also pick up more coffee and food.

While they're gone, the rest of us stake out a spot around the perimeter, well outside the camera range but with a decent view of the lot and fueling stations. My brief time inside didn't do much to warm me, and my muscles are starting to cramp with the cold. So far, not a single useful vehicle has shown up. The few cars that have stopped have done so right in front of the doors, making it impossible to steal one without being seen.

I'm wiggling my toes to keep them warm when a self-driving delivery truck pulls into the lot. Using the sensors in the asphalt, it pulls up to the back of the building and shuts down while it waits to be unloaded. It's a nice, private spot.

“What about that?” I ask. Taking a self-driving truck appeals to me because we won't be stranding a driver.

Summer bounces on her feet, rubbing her healing arm. “There's no way we can hack its computer fast enough without some programs we don't have. We'll be caught.”

“Yeah,” Lev says with a sigh. “But it's got all the frozen hamburger buns and cheese we can eat on it.”

I snort, and Jordan smacks him lightly on the head. “Cole and Gabe are coming this way with breakfast.”

Behind the boys, the first hints of indigo are lighting the sky in the east, and traffic has increased slightly with the rising sun. Two more vehicles enter the lot. The first, an SUV, pulls up to the gasoline station, but the florist van behind it heads to the electric charging stations farther away.

I keep an eye on the van. A vehicle of that size and age is going to take at least thirty minutes to charge. Its driver will probably go inside and have some coffee while he waits, and the building windows won't show him a view of the van. This could work.

I'm not the only who's having these thoughts because Summer gives me a significant nod. We'll have to take out whatever's in the cargo hold, but we'll all fit.

“We won't be able to hold on to it for long,” Octavia points out. “It's not inconspicuous.”

“No, and we're going to have to take it before it's fully charged.” I pull my hat lower over my ears. “We'll just have to dump it at the first likely spot and hope we make it there. We can't wait here forever. RedZone's bound to stake this place out.”

Once the driver wanders inside, Octavia and I hurry over to the van. The charge meter says it's at fifteen percent. To be safe, we should let it get to at least thirty percent before we leave.

“Here.” Octavia pulls a small, square device out of her bag. I hadn't even considered if we'd left it behind at the motel, and I breathe a sigh of relief that we didn't.

I attach the electronic lock pick to the side of the van and let it do its magic. Car manufacturers tout that modern locks make car theft harder than ever, but it's more like the opposite. Though it's true that an unsophisticated criminal can no longer just reach under the dash, cross a few wires and start an engine, those of us with access to specialized equipment don't need anything
but
that equipment to fool most vehicles into acting as if we hold the necessary key fob.

Granted, it takes a bit more time for the electronic pick to spoof the key than it would to use the old-fashioned wire trick, but it's sure easier. Also granted, the picks are highly illegal, but obviously that doesn't bother RedZone, which is where we stole this one from.

The pick is done before we're ready to leave. The van's charge is at twenty-five percent. Stomach growling and toes numb, I wave the others over. Octavia's already gone around the back and opened the delivery doors.

There's very little inside, nothing we need to clear out. After a brief debate about who's driving, which Gabe wins, Cole joins him up front in the passenger seat. The rest of us climb into the back with our food. The van pulls away with a lurch, and we're off again. I just hope we get farther this time.

We switch vehicles twice more, heading southwest. It's nearing noon, and we all need to stretch when Gabe and I—we transferred into two cars the last time—pull into a crowded mall parking lot in a Pittsburgh suburb. Summer's bandages need changing, and since our medical supplies were lost at the motel, I hope we can find a drugstore inside.

Jordan leans over from the backseat as I park. “What are they doing? Giving shit away for free?”

“It's almost Christmas,” Kyle says. “Stores are always madhouses around the holidays.”

“Really?” She opens the door, gazing dumbstruck at the sea of cars between us and the mall.

Kyle looks amused.

“We didn't get out much,” I explain.

“Never would have guessed.”

Holiday music greets my ears as we meet up with the others, and someone's been piping in the scents of evergreens and gingerbread. I take a moment to soak in the experience—the bustle, the strings of lights, the twinkling candy canes and fake snow and wreaths everywhere I turn. It's a bit like a fairy tale.

“It's really just like they show it in the movies, isn't it?” Summer asks.

I drag my eyes away from a storefront with a set of light-up reindeer in it. “I don't understand how people got from a religious holiday to this.” I spread my arms and nearly knock over a woman laden with shopping bags. “You normal humans can be so weird.”