State of Emergency (Book) (20 page)

“Right,” Blondie laughs, and it annoys me because she sounds a little like Tinkerbell right before she tried to kill Wendy. “You were just
hiking
. Nobody’s just “hiking” up here anymore. We’re not that stupid.”

“That’s a debatable point.” I say.

Blondie gives me a death stare.

“Were you planning on stealing our food?” she asks, her lip curling. “Maybe killing us in our sleep and taking all our supplies?”

“Um…” I roll my eyes. “Yeah. That was definitely my plan. You got me.”

The dark haired boy opens his mouth to speak for the first time.

“Maybe she’s okay,” he says softly. “Maybe she’s telling the truth.”

“Please.” Blondie’s hands tighten into fists. “I’m keeping my eye on her. We
all
are.”

I sigh dramatically.

“So now what? You’re going to tie me up and cook me for dinner?” I ask. “Because I don’t really have a lot of meat on my bones.”

Blondie kicks me in the shins.

It doesn’t hurt, it just makes me mad.

“Try to reign in your random violent urges, will you?” I say, kicking back. She cries out, completely falsifying the amount of pain she feels.

“See?” she gasps. “She’s dangerous. Take her stuff. Tie her up. There’s no way we can trust her.”
            “Ditto, darling,” I mumble, relaxing into my predicament.

Even though Choker is aiming the rifle at my head, and even though his finger is on the trigger (didn’t anybody teach him firearms safety techniques?), his hands are shaking. He doesn’t look like he wants to kill me. He looks likes he’s afraid of me.

Good.

The dark haired boy moves quickly beside me, pulling out a pair of plastic ties from his daypack. He cinches up my wrists too tight, drawing blood. He doesn’t apologize. He only stares straight ahead, his eyes empty, his face emotionless.

“You move, redhead, and he’ll kill you,” Blondie warns, crouching over the fire. “Got that?”

“Right,” I reply, wondering if any of them are actually capable of killing someone. “Is there a reason you’re making a campfire in the middle of the day, by the way?”

“None of your business,” Choker growls, sitting down. He keeps the rifle in his lap, watching me out of the corner of his eye. Blondie nods, apparently proud that he’s being rude to me.

“Look,” I say, “here’s the thing: I need to find my dad. We got separated and I’m going to be seriously late if I have to hang around with you guys while you do your afternoon marshmallow roast.”

“She’s lying,” Blondie replies, spitting out the words. “Why would she be spying on us if she was really trying to find her dad?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe because the world has gone insane and I don’t know who I can trust?” I look around at them. “Exhibit A.”

Blondie stalks across the small camp area and smacks me across the face. I blink back tears, a stinging sensation crawling across my cheek.

Talk about anger issues.

“That was ladylike,” I remark. “Thanks for that.”

She turns around and starts rifling through my backpack.

“Thanks for respecting my privacy,” I say.

“Shut up.” She pulls out some of my food, the knife Jeff gave me. “Junk.”

She shoves it back inside and walks over to me again. She zips open my coat, patting me down like I’m some kind of criminal. “This is insanely awkward,” I say, shoving away from her. “Knock it off.”

“Hold
still
, ginger,” she sneers.

She searches my pockets, discarding my waterproof matches, Kleenex, and a random piece of quartz shaped like a heart. Her fingers pause at my neck, where the gold chain that Chris gave me catches the sunlight.

“Don’t even think about it,” I warn.

She smiles – seriously reminding me of an evil pixie – and snaps the gold chain right off my neck. She holds it in front of her face, the tiny shield with Chris’s name in silver glimmering against the gold.

“Pretty,” she says. “Thanks.”

“Give that back,” I say, and this time, I’m not playing Mr. Nice Guy, er,
Girl
. My cheeks get hot as the blood rushes to my face – I’m angry. No, furious.
Chris
gave that to me. “Don’t make me remove that from your neck.”

 Blondie holds up the snapped chain and drops it in her pocket.

“We can use this later.”

Choker looks a little disturbed but the dark haired boy – I’m calling him
Spot
, now – doesn’t look like he cares.

“Give. It. Back,” I say, trying to reign in my temper. I don’t want to explode.

“Come. And. Get. It,” Blondie replies, grinning.

I shift my position, but as soon as I move, Choker aims the rifle at my head again. “Don’t move,” he warns. Spot also places his hand on my forearm.

Great. Blondie’s guard dogs are acting up.

“This is going to be a long day,” I complain.

“Totally.” Blondie pats her pocket and proceeds to pull all of her supplies out of their own packs. They’ve got a quite a bit of food – how they got it, I don’t know – and first aid stuff. Sleeping bags, even. Maybe they were camping out here when the pulse hit.

I also notice a NYC keychain on one of the backpacks.

“You’re from New York,” I say.

Blondie looks up at me, startled.

“How did you know that?” she demands.

“I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes books when I was a kid,” I reply.

“What does
that
mean?”

“Forget it,” I sigh. “Look. Give me my chain and my stuff and I’ll get out of here.”

“No.” Blondie sets to work making some kind of stew. “I don’t trust you.”

“If this is how you treat all the people you meet, you’re never going to be very popular,” I comment.

She makes a charming remark about my intelligence before returning to their lunch. I scoot down on the ground and lean against the log, tired. Blondie and her cohorts treat themselves to a meal when she’s done preparing it, but they never invite me to join in.  After an hour or so, my lips are chapped and I’m dying for water, but when I bring it up, Blondie just tells me to, “suck it up and deal with it.”

I am
so
going to stick her head in a hole.

It doesn’t take me long to realize after hanging around these guys that they’re not big on being stealthy. They camp out in the middle of the day, light a fire, and make all kinds of noise. Choker decides to get in some target practice with his rifle, making two idiotic mistakes. One, he’s wasting precious ammunition. Two, he’s making an enormous amount of noise and practically setting up a giant neon arrow over our heads that says, “OMEGA: COME FIND US.”

The afternoon passes without any incident. Nighttime comes and Blondie keeps the fire going at a pretty good size blaze. The size of the fire and the amount of smoke makes me uneasy. We’re too close to the road to be lighting up the night sky with flames.

“Where are you guys headed?” I ask. The three of them are bent over their dinner – a dinner nobody shared with me yet again. My stomach can’t take much more of this.

“We’re not headed anywhere,” Choker replies. “We’re just wandering.”

“Shut
up
,” Blondie snaps, slapping his knee. “Don’t tell her anything.”

“That’s too bad,” I shrug. “Because I’m familiar with these mountains, and you’re not…and we could probably help each other if you’d just get off your ego trip and admit that I’m not here to assassinate you.”

Blondie doesn’t respond, but I can see the wheels turning in her head from here. Choker almost smiles. Spot…well, he just gazes into the fire, like he’s been doing all day.

I wonder what these messed up kids have been through.

“Look, you’re making some big mistakes here,” I say. “First of all, you shouldn’t have a fire this big, this close to the road, or in the same place for so long. Omega troopscould see it and find you. Who knows how widespread their forces are? You need to quit wasting ammo and firing shots when you don’t need to. Save the bullets for the bad guys.”
            Choker looks at me like I’m the most amazing thing since spilt milk.

“You know a lot about survival?” he asks.

“Enough.”

“How much?’ Spot says suddenly, his brown eyes searching my face.

“Come on, guys,” Blondie whines. “Are you seriously going to believe this chick?”

“Don’t get jealous, city girl,” I reply, my tone sharp. “I don’t think growing up in New York taught
you
very much about survival.”

She frowns, looking away.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

“Bree, maybe we should listen to her,” Spot says, using Blondie’s real name for the first time. “Look at her. She looks like she knows what she’s doing.”
            “No
freaking
way,” Blondie snarls, and when she turns back to us, I can see tears shining in her eyes. “I know what I’m doing. We don’t need anybody’s help.
Especially
some random girl’s.”

“You lost your parents, didn’t you?” I say, realization dawning. “I’m sorry.”

Choker looks down. Blondie glares at me, her lower lip trembling.

“None of your business,” she replies, standing up. “I’m getting some more firewood.”

As she crashes through the undergrowth, Spot looks at me from his spot beside me. “Yes,” he whispers. “We lost them.”

“When did this happen?” I ask, the sadness in his expression so deep I can’t even imagine it.

“The day everything died,” he said. “They were driving the car in front of us. Went off a cliff.”

A lead weight settles in the bottom of my stomach. Horrified, I say the only thing I can say. “I’m sorry.”

And I am. I really am.

The next day is exactly the same. Blondie – aka Bree – is an absolute witch to me while Choker guards me like a faithful St. Bernard. Spot hangs out around the fire, doing nothing. Apparently his depression runs a lot deeper than his siblings.

The three of them make me sit near the eternal campfire all day, never offering to cut the tight plastic cord around my wrists. Choker gives me a little food and water when Blondie’s not around, but that’s about it. I can’t really run off without my stuff, so I have to wait for an opportunity to get my gear and Chris’s graduation chain.

“Aren’t you guys ever going to
move
?” I say.

While my sympathy for their loss is real, I can’t believe that anybody would be so stupid as to camp out next to the road with a campfire for days at a time. Sheer dumb luck is the only reason they haven’t been found by unsavory characters.

“We’re fine right here,” Blondie replies.

“It’s winter. You can’t go very long without running into a huge storm.”

“Mind your own business.”

“I will when you tell me what you plan on doing with me,” I say. “Because I can’t just sit here forever, and since you won’t take my advice, I’m thinking that I want to get out of here beforeOmega swoops in and kills us all.”

Blondie rolls her eyes.

“Seriously?” she laughs. “Omega? What the hell isOmega? You’re insane.”

I blink a few times before the truth hits me: Of course. Who would know about the whole OMEGA thing except for Chris and me? I mean, we had a
teacher
sit down and explain it to us…and even he could have been wrong. So I try to explain the basics of it to her. Blondie, however, just thinks I’m making it all up as an excuse to escape and disregards everything I say.

Genius.

I really
do
need to get out of here. But I have to patient. My best bet is during the night. At least two of them are asleep at once, while one of the boys stays up to keep guard. I’ll just have to come up with something.

Until then, it’s boredom central. I take advantage of the opportunity to nap and rest. I anxiously scan the skies when I’m awake, noting the approach of heavy, dark clouds over the higher mountains. A storm is coming. And these dingbats are probably foolish enough to stay in the open and ignore a search for shelter.

When I make mention of the storm, Blondie just shrugs and pretends I never said anything. I eventually figure out that all three of them are in a state of denial over their situation, and they don’t intend to break a sweat over staying alive.

Screw
that
approach. I want to live.

When it gets dark at last, Blondie and Spot go to sleep around the fire while Choker stays up to watch me. I lean against the backpack, puzzling out how I’m going to escape. I could ask to go to the bathroom and sneak off into the night…but I don’t want to leave without Chris’s chain and my backpack.

So what’s my game plan?

The distant roll of thunder over Kings Canyon startles me. Great. There’s probably a flood washing down the hill at this moment. But will they care? No. I sit upright, listening to the thunder roll again. And again.

And…

I stop moving, a chill crawling up my spine. The thunder is steady, getting louder. Getting…closer. Oh, my god. I stand up, more noise joining the first chorus of what I thought was thunder.