In the Afterlight - Bracken Alexandra (онлайн книги бесплатно полные TXT) 📗
“Brace yourself,” he warned, relaying the message to me and the whole team in the back. The truck lurched forward and barreled through the gate, sending pieces flying as if they’d been made of Styrofoam. A section caught on the front hubcap and sparked against the ground, but was knocked away as we veered onto the highway, and we sped away before the sun had the chance to start rising at our backs.
16
WE DROVE A FULL FOUR hours before ditching the semi-trailer truck in Reno. In an ideal world, we would have taken it straight to Lodi, only stopping once to let the kids relieve their bladders and stretch their legs, but it was marked with military insignias. Someone was bound to notice it if we kept going.
Senator Cruz had arranged for an old Greyhound bus to be brought down from Oregon and left at Reno’s city limits, warning it was the only time she’d be able to put this particular contact into play as the former state governor, her college classmate, had been careful to never entangle himself too deeply in matters of the Federal Coalition and had been rewarded by Gray with the right to keep his job.
Zach and I helped each kid down, and I couldn’t stop the small smile on my face at seeing the way they all seemed to want to spin around in the warm sunlight. Rosa was one of the last off, bypassing Zach’s hands for mine.
“Okay?” I asked her. “How are you doing?”
She stretched her arms back and forth, swinging them around. I made sure that I kept the smile on my face so she’d know it was okay to let herself believe this would work out. Something I’d learned from Cate.
I wondered what she’d think of all this as we lifted the boxes of food and medical supplies off the truck, putting them in the undercarriage of the Greyhound bus. When I saw her again, I would make sure she knew the full magnitude of what she had done for me. I wanted to believe that if I felt all of these things, if I brought her face to mind and focused on it, she’d somehow be able to tell I was thinking about her—that I hadn’t forgotten her.
That I was coming for her.
Liam walked Alice to the bus, ignoring the glances the team shared as they passed by them. After exchanging a few last quiet words with her, he got back on his motorcycle, explaining to Zach he was going to ride behind us.
I held a hand out to Rosa, who took it gratefully. Zach jumped into the driver’s seat and craned his neck back, counting to make sure that everyone was on. The kids squeezed into the seats and onto the floor; after a moment of petrified uncertainty, the older kids began to play with the vents, fiddling with the lights.
“Pull your curtains all the way closed,” I told them. “It’s going to be another three or four hours to where we’re going.”
“Where is that?” one of the kids asked.
“Cali-for-nia!” Gav sang out, pounding his meaty hands down on the seat in front of him. “Let’s go, already!”
“Seat belts,” Zach called as he started the bus. Then, realizing there was a speaker system, repeated the order through that. “Seat belts. Welcome to Psi Bus Services. I’m Zach and I’ll be your driver on this epic quest to freedom. If you look out your windows—but, obviously, don’t, because Ruby just told you not to—you can give Nevada the finger as we pull away.”
That, at least, made a few of them crack a smile. I gave Zach a thumbs-up and he returned it. The bus lurched forward and we were off again, really cruising. I smiled despite myself, winging along on my own cloud of happiness. I didn’t come down, not for a second, until I glanced at Rosa.
She had taken the window seat, drawn her legs up to her chest to tuck under her shirt, and pressed her face into her knees.
“Rosa,” I said, putting a hand on her back. The number on her shirt pocket, 9229, had been her whole identity in that place. I wanted her to hear her name. To feel human.
“You shouldn’t have come, we’re not ready yet. We’re still broken.”
“No,” I said quickly, “no you’re not. You’re different, that’s all.”
“They said the good ones were the ones that died,” she said, and I noticed a faint scar running down her left cheek, a narrow, spiraling pink line. What could have left a mark like that, other than someone intentionally scratching it into her skin? “That we were all wrong and we’d—we’d never get out. But they never did anything to help us. I want—I want to be fixed, we all did, we did everything they asked, but it wasn’t enough.”
“If they made you feel that way, then they were the ones who were wrong,” I said. It took me a moment to realize why the words came so easily. Clancy. How was this any different from what he kept trying to tell me? I shifted uncomfortably, trying to think of Cate instead, how she had talked me down after I escaped Thurmond. “The most important thing you ever did was learn how to survive. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you shouldn’t have, or that you deserved to be in that camp.”
“You were in one, too?” Rosa asked. “You got out and things got better?”
“They’re getting there,” I told her. “Your mom is helping us.”
There. One small, trembling smile. “Has she been wearing her red suit?”
“Red suit?” I repeated.
Rosa nodded, finally sitting back against the seat. “Mom had this dark red suit she always wore when she had to go in for a big vote or debate. She said it scared the old white dudes who kept trying to shut her up or make her sit down.”
“No,” I said, “but you know what? I don’t think she really needs it anymore.”
The girl spread her fingers over her blue uniform shorts. “And you’re totally...you’re sure she wants to...I mean, I would understand if she didn’t want to see me. I was with my Gran when they came. Mom never saw me after I got damaged—changed, I mean.”
“She wants you,” I said, the words spilling out from some place I hadn’t dared to touch since I’d left Thurmond. “More than anything. It doesn’t matter what you can do, or what any of the people at that camp told you. She’s there and she’s waiting for you.”
They were the right words. I knew it by the pain that came with wrenching them up from where I’d buried them.
I knew it, because they were the exact words I’d fantasized about someone saying to me, just before Grams would arrive to rescue me.
She turned toward me. “Thank you for coming to get us.”
I wasn’t sure I could trust my voice, but I said, “You’re very welcome.”
“You’re going to get more kids out, right?” she asked. “Not just us?”
“Everyone,” I reassured her, leaning my head back against the seat and closing my eyes. It was the only way I knew of to keep from crying. It was more than just a possibility. We had done this. We could do it again at Thurmond. We could make this moment everyone’s reality. Every single kid.
Zach brought the bus into the garage as Cole had instructed. The kids who’d stayed behind were there, opening the large, rolling door we’d kept shut and locked the whole time we’d used the space. Senator Cruz and Cole stood a way inside; the woman had her hands folded in front of her, and while she seemed otherwise serene, even from a distance, I could see the white-knuckled hold she had on herself. I pulled back the curtain and leaned away, so Rosa could see her as well. The senator must have spotted her at that exact moment, because she lost the fight she’d been waging to control herself and ran for the bus’s doors, just as I stood to let Rosa pass. The girl launched herself at her mother from the top step, and nearly took them both to the ground.
The other kids looked away. We’d explained, on the drive back to California, what had happened in Los Angeles. And knowing that many of their parents had been involved in the Federal Coalition, or had simply lived in the area, hadn’t sugarcoated the harsh reality.
“But we’ll help you find them,” I’d promised. “If Senator Cruz doesn’t know for certain where they are, we’ll try searching the different networks for clues.”
