Capture (17 page)

Hayden burst into a sprint towards the tail end of our group, yelling,
“Everyone run! Get out of here now!”

Then he started throwing energy orbs
from both his hands at the remaining three guards.

I wanted to run, knew Hayden was right and I should turn and lead everyone through the gates as fast as we could go.
But I was paralyzed. I couldn’t look away from Hayden, his face set with determination and complete focus as he fought the guards single handedly with his magic.

His energy orbs started hitting his targets.
One guard went down. Then another.

A sharp crack rang out, and that’s when I saw the gun raised in the third guard’s hands.
Oh God. They were shooting at Hayden!

Hayden turned and threw two orbs at the shooter, one from each hand, driving the soldier to the ground unconscious.

Hayden lowered his hands, watching the downed guards, probably to make sure they didn’t get back up again. Then he turned towards the tent and tried to raise his hands as if to hit it with energy orbs or another of his spells. But his hands were only halfway up before he groaned and fell to his knees, his right hand darting up to clutch at his left shoulder. Eyebrows pinched, he looked down at his hand as it came away covered in blood.

“
Hayden!” I screamed, finally able to move.

I ran around the stunned group of
prisoners to Hayden, noticing two of our men also take off running towards the tent, hopefully to finish what Hayden had started. My pulse boomed in my ears like a car stereo system's subwoofer turned up too high as I reached Hayden’s side a second before he began to topple over sideways. It took all my strength to hold his weight and ease him the rest of the way to the ground.

I knelt beside him, brushing aside his hand so I could see his shoulder.
Red bloomed through the cotton hoodie, rapidly spreading down the sleeve. “Oh God. Hayden, your arm.”

“
The tent—” he groaned, his eyes rolling wildly.

“
They’re taking care of it.”

I unzipped his hoodie, peeled back the now soaked layers of his jacket and shirt, and the blood
bubbled up to the surface like a natural spring, robbing me of the ability to breathe.

“
We've gotta go,” Hayden choked out. “Are there any military trucks?”

“
What?” Was he insane? He was hurt! How could he still be worrying about getting us out of here?

Dad joined us, crouching at my side to rest a hand on my shoulder.
But he wouldn’t be any help. He was a scientist. Hayden needed a real doctor right now.

The
prisoners had also figured out Hayden was hurt. They gathered around us, muttering. Then Pamela pushed through the crowd and knelt at Hayden’s other side. Immediately she called for someone to find a first aid kit, sending more men scattering.

“
Trucks.” Hayden tried to sit up. I pushed him back down, scared for him to even move until we got the bleeding to stop. “We gotta get these people out of here.”

“
I'm on it,” a man said from somewhere towards my right. He took two guys with him at a jog.

“
Uniforms. For the men,” Hayden muttered as Pamela ripped the bottom two inches off her sweatshirt, using part of the strip as a compress against his wound. She wrapped the rest of the strip around his shoulder to hold the wad of fabric in place.

“
And those…those walkie talkie things. On the necks…” Hayden added.

Two more people, overhearing their new leader’s probably insane ramblings, took it as an order and ran towards the guard building.

I shook my head in disbelief. He was badly wounded, slurring every word, barely able to talk from either shock or the pain, and
still
trying to boss people around. Yep, he was definitely a Shepherd.

“
And food…and water…” Hayden said, his voice growing fainter now.

“
Okay, Hayden,” I said. “Relax now. Everyone's working on it.”

He squinted at the sky and said something that sounded like
“'S it gonna rain?”

“
Rain?” At first, I thought he was delusional. Then I realized what he meant when I heard the thunder-like rumble too. “Oh. No, that's the trucks.” The men were driving two military trucks around from behind the guards’ building where the vehicles must have been parked out of sight.

Pamela partially
lifted Hayden, checked the back of his shoulder and grumbled. “The bullet went straight through.”

“
Is that good?” I asked, thinking,
Please let it be a good thing
.

“
Yes and no. There’s no bullet to dig out, and it missed all his organs. But it means twice the holes to lose blood from.”

Hayden tried again to sit up but was so weak I was able to hold him down with a single hand on his good shoulder.

“I found some uniforms and those communication thingies,” someone reported in.

Hayden tried to look in that direction.
“Get everyone…on the…”

“
Hayden, I said we've got it!” I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He seemed determined to die a true Shepherd, still mumbling out orders like a general on the battlefield. Couldn’t he just rest and let us figure out what to do?

“
Don't forget food. And water.” His eyelids began to droop.

“
Hayden, shut up already!” I finally had to say, exasperated beyond measure. “You've been shot, you idiot!”

He made a face that would have been comical if not for the fact that he could be dying from blood loss.
“Well, that sucks.”

And then his eyelids drifted closed and stayed that way.

“Hayden?” I tapped his cheek, getting no response. “Hayden!”

CHAPTER 8

“
H
ayden’s right, we’ve got to go,” Pamela muttered even as she pressed her hands to the front and back of Hayden’s wounded shoulder and closed her eyes.

“
We can’t move him while he’s pouring out blood.” Why did I feel like I was the only sane one around here all of a sudden? Couldn’t this woman see how hurt Hayden was?

“
I’ve slowed the bleeding already. I can heal him more in the back of a truck while we’re putting some miles between us and this place.”

Dad pressed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“She’s right, Tarah. I’m pretty sure that guard had time to send out a request for backup. This place is going to be crawling with a fresh wave of soldiers soon.”

I blew out a long breath through pucke
red lips then nodded. “Fine. Let’s go.”

I
supported the heavy weight of Hayden’s head while Dad, Pamela, and two men carried the rest of his weight over to one of the two trucks they had parked close to us. Getting him up into the high back end was another matter, though, requiring Pamela and me to climb in first and both hold the tent-like flaps open as well as guide Hayden’s head and shoulders in while several men lifted his body from below. I was scared so much movement was going to reopen his wounds, but Pamela didn’t seem concerned at all. Maybe she knew she could reheal him if necessary. Or maybe she didn’t know him, didn’t really care whether he lived or died, and just worried about getting herself and her family out of here.

All I could think about was making sure Hayden was going to be okay.
Thankfully the others had heard Hayden’s orders and were following them, grabbing all the water, meals-ready-to-eat, and blankets in the camp. Four men dressed themselves in soldier uniforms and took over the driving. Mike made a big sacrifice, leaving behind his car he claimed he’d never liked anyway and driving Hayden’s truck instead behind the bigger khaki colored military trucks. I had no clue why Hayden would care about his truck, but Mike insisted he would when he recovered. Maybe it was a guy thing. Or maybe Mike just wanted a chance to drive Hayden’s hot off the line hybrid truck.

I couldn’t care less about the stupid truck. All I cared about was seeing Hayden wake up.

Except he didn’t.

At first, all
the rest of the group cared about was getting as far away from the camp as fast as possible. But once Pamela stabilized Hayden, I was able to calm down enough to start thinking more clearly about a long term solution for our group.

We stopped after an hour at a bus station, where roughly half the
outcasts left us. Apparently they had their own plans for where to hide. But the rest of them didn’t have the money to escape, or else they had nowhere safe to go. Even those who had contacts didn’t want to risk endangering those relatives or friends by asking for their help.

They might be free, but for so many of our group, the
se prisoners were still just as trapped by the situation as they had been before escaping the internment camp. They were lost refugees with no one else to turn to for help or hope. And for some strange reason, they seemed to believe that Hayden had some sort of plan to get them to safety, judging by how they kept whispering and staring at him with a combination of gratitude and desperation. Maybe it was because he'd gotten them out of the internment camp. I was guessing it was because of who his dad was, though. They probably thought he could pull some strings with Senator Shepherd to get all their names cleared.

Considering all that they had been through already, I didn't have the heart to tell them the truth, that Hayden was just as lost and on his own as they were. He was the only hope they had left. How could I take that away from them?

So I made the difficult decision to tell everyone the tiniest of lies.

“
Uh, to be honest, I don’t know if Hayden’s going to be able to get his dad to clear our records,” I said, wincing as fear returned to make their already pale faces even paler. Several women hugged their children closer, pressing kisses to the little ones’ heads or turning their faces into their husbands’ shoulders.

“
But, um, I’m sure Hayden does have a place for us to go where we can figure it all out,” I stammered, praying I wasn’t getting us in too deep here. “I’m just…not sure where it is.”

“
He had to have written down the address somewhere,” someone cried out.

“
Uh, right,” I said, mentally scrambling now. This was why I always tried not to tell lies. It was too hard to cover my tracks. The truth was so much easier. “Can someone radio Mike and ask him to check Hayden’s truck? Maybe we can find something there.” He had to have a phone with a list of friends and relatives or something.

“
What about this?” Pamela held out a thin black leather wallet. “One of the guys said it fell out of Hayden’s back pocket while we were loading him.”

Holding my breath, I sent a silen
t apology to Hayden for violating his privacy then dug through the wallet, nearly weeping when I found a credit card wrapped in a piece of paper with the name "Grandma Letty" on it plus an address and phone number. It was worth a shot at least.

“
Anybody got a phone?” I asked.

Dad surprised me by holding up a hot pink phone that looked suspiciously familiar.
“Apparently the soldiers had a huge pile of all our personal belongings stashed in their building. Including your phone. We left the others, assuming they would be traceable by now. But since they just nabbed you tonight…”

I hesitated, weighing the odds and the risk.
But we had to have a place to go to, and no way was I going to tell the drivers to take us across multiple states without first making sure we would be welcome.

Taking a deep breath, I made the call.

A few minutes later, I could breathe a little easier. Smiling, I tapped the screen to end the call and said, “Tell Mike to plot us out a new course. Looks like we’re headed north.”

Our truck full of weary passengars erupted in cheering.

Having heard my entire side of the conversation with Grandma Letty, Dad didn’t need any filling in. While Pamela used the walkie-talkie neck band things to relay the address to our caravan’s lead driver, Dad cleared his throat and leaned in closer at my other side.

“
You have noticed there’s still approximately fifty, or more, people in this group, right?”

I nodded
, focusing on making sure the blanket rolled up beneath Hayden’s head by my hip was still in place to protect him from the hard, cold metal truck bed.

“
Just where do you think his grandma’s going to put all of them?”

“
You mean us.” I hadn’t realized I was going to say that until I actually did.

Dad’s
eyes blinked behind his glasses like an owl’s in the flashlight’s indirect beam for at least twenty seconds. “No. You are not going with them. And neither am I. As soon as we have them headed in a new direction, you and I are getting on a bus and heading straight back home before your mother goes nuclear.” At my raised eyebrows, he added, “I read her text messages that you missed. She’s worried sick about the both of us now.”

“
We can’t go home, Dad. Homeland Security and all those other agencies will be looking for us. But you could arrange to meet her somewhere. You guys are going to have to go into hiding for awhile, unless you want to be dragged right back to that internment camp to start drugging the next batch of lab rats they haul in.”

He grumbled under his breath.
“Fine, I see your point. But you’re coming with us.”

“
No, I’m not.” I took a deep breath. “I’m staying with this group until they’re safe.”

“Tarah, these are not our people!” he hissed, his words lost to the rest of our truck’s passengers thanks to the roar of the road noise the huge wheels made
on the asphalt.

I
winced. Like I needed a reminder of how very unspecial I was. Still, I got the point he was trying to make. Logically, I wasn't from the Clann and I had no special abilities whatsoever, so this wasn't really my fight.

Except in my heart I knew this wasn't about logic or facts.
It was about doing what was right, not what was easy. And I knew if I ran away and abandoned these people now, I would never be able to live with myself. I had to see this through, wherever that path led me.

Maybe Mom was right. Maybe I was crazy after all.

“You could die,” Dad said. “You understand that, don’t you? You could have died last night. We all could have.”

I nodded. “If not for Hayden.”

Dad groaned. “Please tell me you’re not doing this for that boy.”

“
I’m not.” At least, not entirely. Hayden was only part of it. Even if he woke up in an hour and drove away from this group in his truck, I would stay with these people.

“Then tell me
why
.”

Pressing my hands against my temples, I struggled to explain
my decision to myself as much as my dad. “I..I need to know, okay? I need to know what happens to these people. And not through some news article or book someone else writes years from now. I need to see it with my own eyes, to be a part of it. To...”

“Is this some late bloom
ing teenage need to fit in somewhere?” Dad’s face scrunched up, as if channeling even a few seconds of Mom’s therapist line of thinking hurt his brain.

I swallowed a laugh. “No. I’ve known
for awhile now that I’m not an outcast and will never truly fit in with them, at least not in that way. It’s more about...” I tried again to understand, to put it into words. “Jeremy sees it all, you know? He sees the true world around us, not just the sanitized or safe parts, and not the lies told by the governments. He’s right there in the middle of it all, doing something important just by being there, by witnessing it and then writing it down as best he can so others can experience it too. He makes his readers see it and feel it and smell it just like he did just by reading one of his articles. He gives a voice to people who have none.”

“And he could get seriously hurt or die in the process. Is that what you want? Are you jealous that his life is more exciting than yours?”

I did laugh at that. “Dad, there is no way his life is more exciting than mine right now.” I shook my head. “This isn’t some thrill ride for me. I think...” I remembered how I felt every weekend, watching Gary and Aimee and the others as they experimented with their growing powers, how it had felt to see that process taking shape right before me even when my own attempts to do magic failed. “I think maybe this is what I was always destined to do. I want to be a part of the real world, not just watch it safely from my couch at home. And I want...”

I hesitated then finally said out loud the words I’d hardly even dared to think to myself in secret. “I want to live it, and then I want to write about it so others can live it too.
I want to be a voice for people who have none. Like Jeremy.”

Dad groaned. “
That’s what this is about? You want to be a journalist like your big brother?”

I smiled tiredly, my free hand absently stroking the side of Hayden’s forehead where my fingertips found his reassuringly steady heartbeat pulsing just beneath the skin at his temple. “I don’t know if I want to write for a newspaper or magazine, or if I just want to write a book someday. I guess I haven’t quite got it all figured out yet. But I’m working on it. Promise I’ll let you know when I
know?”

“And just how long do you plan on...embedding yourself with these
people before you’ve seen enough to write your story?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “No idea. I guess I’ll know the ending to their story when I see it.”

Dad sighed and shook his head. “Even if you do get the story written and out there someday, just how long do you think you’ll be able to hide before the government comes after you for writing it? You’re going to be in enough trouble as it is just for breaking out of an internment camp. The government’s sure to believe you’re from the Clann now. If you write a story revealing what’s really going on, and they find you—”

“
If
they find me.”

“
When
they find you, they’re not going to let you escape again. They’ll throw you right back into another internment camp. How am I and your mother and brother supposed to save you then? Especially if we don’t even know where you are?”

Again h
e had a good point. “Maybe I’m turning into a rebel, but Jeremy’s not. You know he’s smart enough to always dance on the right side of the law. So we’ll just use him as our go between. When I change locations, I’ll post a message on this forum he likes to use all the time to find new sources. I’ll use that nickname he always used to call me by.”

“Worm?” Dad said with a half smile.

I nodded, remembering how Jeremy used to love to sneak up behind me, grab my ankles, and yank me into the air upside down while saying “look, Ma, I hooked a worm!” So stupid of him, and yet now I’d give anything for him to do it again. But it had been years since I was small enough for him to pick me up. And now there was no telling when I’d even see my big brother again.