Judgment (16 page)

Peers saw it all because the truck was barreling toward them as rapidly as they were racing forward. They’d meet in the middle in a quarter minute at most, right into the thick of killer oncoming traffic.
 

Across the wall of vehicles, weapons were raised by shouting men.

“They want us to stop,” Peers said.
 

“Don’t stop.”
 

“They’ve got guns! They’ll cut us in half!”
 

“They won’t shoot.”
 

“Of course they’ll shoot!”
 

“They want us alive.”
 

“Why do they give a fuck if we’re—”
 

Kindred cut him off. “They want Jeanine.”
 

Peers looked up as if he could see through the roof. Jeanine, up top with her femininity in plain view.
 

“Aubrey,” Peers said, “stop the bus.”
 

“Don’t stop the bus, Aubrey.”
 

The gap closed.
 

Closer.
 

Closer.
 

“There’s no possible way to get through that cluster of—”

At that moment, what looked like a large black bird slammed into the windshield of the truck where Kindred had focused Aubrey’s aim. But it wasn’t a bird. It was the drone, which Meyer was piloting with his tablet.
 

The glass turned white with spiderweb cracks, the large plane knocking the folding windshield off its adhesive seal and in toward the cab’s occupants. The truck screeched hard sideways and rolled forward like tumbling dice. The others tried to compensate in both directions at once, and metal screamed as a chain reaction of crashes made its way down the spine of closely grouped vehicles.
 

“Floor it!”
 

Aubrey saw the gap made by the crashed vehicle and rammed the bus down its throat. The armored sides, supercharged engine, and Permaflate tires all did their jobs as the heavy bus widened the gap. Sparks flew along the bus’s length, and Cameron gasped as his mounted weapon was ripped free, leaving an undefended hole. Feet hit the floor as the three snipers up top jumped inside.
 

For a few seconds there was only noise and darkness and fury. Then Peers felt a fresh draft at the driver’s window and saw two brutes of different paint colors clamoring to climb in at the same time, both armed with pistols.
 

Lila managed to shoot one, and Christopher, down from the roof, shot the other.
 

But not before one of the intruders shot Aubrey dead, and the bus began to lurch out of control.
 

Christopher fought to clear his head. But Charlie reacted before he could leap into the driver’s seat, jumping atop Aubrey’s body and shoving it aside without any sentimentality. He jammed his foot onto the accelerator and slammed the bus through the onrushing traffic, but the bulldozer strategy was already faltering. Only seconds had passed since they’d struck the oncoming mass, but those near the rear were figuring it out, trying to close the gap, steering natural panic at the ensuing pileup into their mission’s more rational thought. Only the fact that the clans didn’t work as a unit (purple fought blue fought green fought black as they all grasped for the prize) kept the effort disjointed, and Charlie’s path more or less true.

Openings widened. Openings closed. They were in the middle, surrounded by ten colors of warring factions charging toward them, with them, alongside them, distractedly away from them. Only confusion held their favor.
 

Christopher felt a hand tap his shoulder. Clara and Piper were on his sides, holding on as the bus bounced and swayed, neither paying him any attention. Christopher looked forward again, but the moment he did he felt another tap.
 

He moved back, looking around, curious.

And that’s when he saw the final passenger. The one who hadn’t boarded the bus, though Christopher had seen him on the roadside.
 

“Trevor?”
 

Trevor smiled.
 

But of course, it wasn’t Trevor.
 

Shouting. Clanging metal. Gunshots. But somehow, time had stopped for Christopher, and all was quiet.
 

Trevor’s sides puffed. His facial features became indistinct. Even his clothing seemed to dissolve. For a second, Trevor became half-human, half-smoke, then solid again.
 

The Pall, wearing its Trevor mask, raised its hands and turned them as if around a wheel, in a driving motion.

Then it made both hands into a tight ball and whipped them rapidly apart, like something exploding.
 

It made the driving motion.
 

It made the exploding motion.
 

And Christopher understood.

Lila watched the crowd. She heard the shots and the screaming. Smelled the reek of fear in the air as Jeanine said to Kindred, “Time to use the car.”
 

“No. It’s pointless.”
 

“We’re getting flattened!” She looked back at Cameron. “Open the emergency hatch in the middle of the floor. Climb down into the—”

“I said no!” Kindred barked.
 

The bus lurched. Was kicked sideways. Lila’s eyes fell on the huge knife switch that had electrified the bus earlier, but Peers was right beside it, shaking his head. That either meant
It won’t work a second time
or
It’ll burn us alive if we use it again,
but the simple gesture made Lila’s gut sink as time ticked away. It was over. They weren’t going to make it. They’d be enslaved at best, and likely eaten alive. She suddenly felt all girl as if her body wrapping fooled no one. Suddenly Jeanine’s grenade strategy made a lot of sense. Lila only hoped she’d been polite enough to bring suicide for them all.

Jeanine said, “Cameron, there’s a low, flat escape vehicle attached to the bottom of the bus just below the hatch. Peers showed me. Take the satchel and—”

“No, goddammit!”
   

Jeanine turned on Meyer like a striking snake.
 

“There’s no way out! Do you hear me! You don’t even have your sky view anymore! You can’t predict your way out of a no-win scenario!”
 

“Jeanine,” Meyer said.
 

“Fuck both of you!”
She shoved Meyer in the chest. Then Kindred. Her face was flushed, furious, eyes brimming. “Strategize this:
We’re fucked!
All we can do now is get Cameron into the city!”
 

The bus was noticeably slowing. Cameron seemed to have shut the pop-ups when Jeanine, Charlie, and Christopher had come down, but up top Lila could now clearly hear —

Wait.
Christopher
. He’d been right beside her a minute ago.
 

“Cameron, take the Ark key, and get into the escape car. Peers said it drives like a go-kart. They’ll be focused on us.” Her features hardened. “Especially when we detonate the bus behind you.”
 

Eyes spun to Peers.
 

“They won’t notice your little car when the whole fucking thing goes up from the C-4 in the luggage compartments.”
 

Lila’s attention snapped. She felt suddenly cold, knowing this was serious, this was real — this was finally over.
 

Jeanine continued, her eyes strained and reddening. “The escape car is really low, only big enough for one person. You can probably get under half of their wheels. The Ember Flats gates are wide open. The clans must know not to enter, but you can! With luck, once we blow it, there’ll be enough confusion that you’ll be able to—”
 

“No,
Jeanine!” Meyer held her arm, which tried to strike him.
 

“Clara,” said Lila, swallowing. “Send Clara.”
 

Cameron nodded. “Yes. That’s it. Send Clara.”
 

Banging from above. Banging from the sides. Charlie shouted from behind the wheel; Lila watched the speedometer drop to 30 kilometers per hour, lower.
 

“It can’t be Clara!” Kindred shouted. “It has to be Cameron. It has to be — !”
 

Jeanine pushed herself away from the others. Drew her sidearm. Pointed it at Cameron’s chest, flicking it toward the others in warning. The jostling bus didn’t falter her aim.

“He’s right, Cameron. It has to be you. Now go.”
 

“Jeanine, I can’t just … ” Lila watched him swallow, noticed his control slip a notch. “Dammit, Jeanine, I can’t. Not after Grace! Not if I have to go into the city and stand in front of that thing and — !”

She cocked the gun as the bus’s front collided with one of the vehicles, slowing its forward march to a crawl.
 

“I’m sorry, Cameron.”

He turned. Slowly. But then he stopped, and Lila realized why when she looked down and saw that the floor hatch had already been popped, and that whatever had been under the bus was gone.

Two of the luggage compartments were open as well, loose wires dangling.

And both were empty.

The explosion sent an earthquake through the bus floor. For what felt like solid seconds, Cameron thought the world beneath him might open to swallow them whole. But the tumult wasn’t ahead or underneath them — a bright flower that was partially orange flame but mostly brown sand. Vehicles seemed to pop up and tip over not far away. Machine parts rained. And Cameron knew that he’d finally shed his old life once and for all. Benjamin had Charlie, but Cameron came into this with Dan, Vincent, Terrence, and Christopher, who was now gone for reasons unknown.
 

The moving clans screeched around them, more distracted than when the drone had crippled the lead truck. Wheels squealed, collisions ignited around them in a circle. The entire jam seemed to pulse and open like a heartbeat, but it was too little, too far. The explosion had probably been big enough to clear a patch beyond their current fix. But the bus’s front was still jammed against a clan vehicle, and they were still sown in.
 

“Floor it, Charlie,” Cameron said.
 

“There’s nowhere to go.”
 

“There’s a hole farther up now. Look at them. They think we have allies.”
 

And it was true. Swarms of cars were suddenly uncertain. Heads in the trucks and other vehicles were looking up, backward, toward the sky. Something kept them out of Ember Flats through those big open gates, and that meant that even the horde feared whatever the capital had inside. There was an uneasy truce, and Christopher’s act of heroism had reminded every clan. This wasn’t just all of them versus one helpless bus. There were other forces in play, with explosives at their disposal.
 

“Come on, Charlie. Floor it.”
 

“There’s nowhere. Look. See?”
 

“Get up,” said a voice at Cameron’s side: Lila.

“Get up, Charlie!”