Keystone (29 page)

Garrett and I jump together and even though I land solid, the impact sends a shock wave up each of my legs that rattles my brain.

“You alright?” Garrett asks and before I can answer, he gives me a shove. Zane and Robin and Zaneen land right where we were standing. Zaneen is on Zane’s back and his teeth are clenched as she hangs onto his hair as if he’s an angry pony.

“Dang it, Neener! Let go of my hair!” He dumps her off his back. “I should’ve just let them shoot you off.”

“Hey, that’s the car from the picture!” Deeta shouts, pointing beneath the overhang of the roof. She’s right. It’s the black car from the picture, rusted and dusty now, its tarnished chrome still reaching back to the taillights. My grandfather’s car.

“You got the keys for it?” Garrett calls to Zane. Even if we do, I wonder if it even runs.

“Looks like,” Zane rifles through the keys and pulls up one. “This. Ford Fairlane Victoria.”

He holds up the key on the massive ring as another gun shot sounds. It hits the roof over our heads.

“Let’s get outta here!” Zaneen hollers, pulling on the door handle. The door opens with a creak and we all pile in, climbing over one another to fit. I land in the front seat, between Garrett and Zane. Looking over the dash, there’s no way out. There’s only a wall of garbage in front of us.

Zane plugs the key in the ignition and pumps the gas pedal, but the engine doesn’t turn over.

“C’mon,” he grumbles.

“How are we going to get out of here?” Deeta squeaks. Her hand is on my shoulder, pulling at my shirt.

“C’mon,” Zane grumbles again and gives the key a hard twist.

From overhead, there is shouting and I twist around to see out the back window, just as someone falls into the hole. The man that fell in is still lying on the ground as a woman jumps down on top of them. Twisted until it hurts, I see the woman scurrying toward the back of the car, bringing up a shotgun. She aims right down the center of the seats. She’ll hit Deeta or me or both.

Protect.

The surge in me is immediate. I jump backward, twisting over the seat to shove Deeta’s head down as the engine roars to life. The exhaust blows up a black cloud over the woman.

“HANG ON!” Zane shouts as he stomps the gas. The force of it smashes me against all three girls in the back seat, Deeta trapped below me and howling. We blast through the wall of garbage and the trash rains down over the back window, bouncing off the trunk as we speed away. The fence that bordered the hole on top crashes down, blocking the opening and blotting out the light. The woman that was behind the car fires in the dark.

Zane stomps the gas again and the car bolts forward again, pressing us into the back seat. We roar out onto the road and I see Zane’s car, still parked in the junkyard parking lot, surrounded by other cars and people streaming out of the front of the shop. We speed away down the dirt road, kicking up a huge cloud of dust behind us.

“You can let go of her now,” Garrett says. I climb off of Deeta and back into the front seat. Deeta sits up, red faced, but smiling.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

“I’m fine!” she bubbles. Her hair sticks out from her head, crazier than ever. “Just a little suffocate-y from being under you.”

“Nice reaction,” Robin says. Her one visible eyebrow arcs, like she’s actually impressed with how I bent Deeta in half, like a folding chair. Robin gives me a little grin and a nod of approval. “Good instinct on the Alo.”

Zaneen doesn’t congratulate me. Her head is craned out the back window.

“Zane…” The quiver in her voice pulls my gaze out the window too. Garrett turns on the seat beside me, our bodies bumping together. We watch as cars and trucks and vans stream out of the junkyard. Dozens of them come from the sides and the back of the lot, like a mall letting out at Christmas. The cars just keep coming, aimed for us, gunning their engines to catch up.

“You gotta move this thing a lot faster, brother,” Garrett says. “We’ve got an army coming.”

“Army?” Zane shouts. We hit the curves in the road and Zane nearly runs us off, trying to get a glimpse over his shoulder. “Get your head out of the way, Neener!”

“Don’t worry about what’s back there,” Robin snaps. “Just get us out of here.”

“How did they know we were here?” Zane says. “They couldn’t have just been waiting around Clint’s. And it’s too far to come without knowing.”

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? They’ve got to be tracing our phones!” Robin says. “We should wipe the memories and ditch our cells!”

“It’s better than the Fury catching us with them,” Garrett says.

Zane and Garrett roll down their windows simultaneously and in seconds, the phones are flying out both sides of the car. Garrett twists in the seat beside me, watching out the back window.

“Looks like there’s at least thirty cars back there,” he says, glancing past me to Zane. “You think we can make the farm gate and close it up before they get there?”

“Sure, why not?” Zane says. He laughs as he grips the steering wheel and bears down harder on the gas. The car shoots over the crazy-straw road at full speed, but the gap isn’t getting any wider. At least, with all the twists and turns, the Fury seem to be having just as hard of a time keeping their cars on the road as we are.

“Whoa!” Zaneen squeals from the back. “Did you see that truck? It just flew off the road into the ditch and it took a car with it!”

I start praying that there will be a pile-up behind us.

“Okay, look,” Zane shouts as we pass the little town that is standing in a line on the side of the road. We’re nearly to the farm. “G, I’ve got to open the gate, so you take the wheel and I’ll hop back in on your side, if I can. If I can’t, just go. We’re going to have to make a run for the Free Ball.”

“What do you mean,
if you can
?” Robin hollers from the back. “If you don’t make it in, we get out and fight!”

“Thirty cars full of them, Robin?” Zane’s voice is so fierce Robin actually shuts her mouth. Zane pulls something out of his pocket and passes it back to her. It’s the arrow shaped piece of metal that Garrett bought him at the junkyard. “Take the Hydrohome. Somebody can pick up the signal and bring you guys back down, if the thing even works. If I don’t make it in, get to the barn and kill the controls before you launch the Ball.”

“But if we bust the controls, how are we going to control the launch?” Zaneen says. “And what if nobody gets the signal?”

“I don’t know!” Zane explodes. “Just do it!”

The car twists around the last turn and the fortress gate of the farm looms ahead of us. With the bends in the road, we won’t be able to see the Fury until they’re right on top of us.

Zane stomps the brake at the gate and jumps out the driver’s side door. Garrett pulls the handle on the passenger side, but the door won’t budge. Zane gets the gate unlocked and Robin starts screaming from the backseat.

“ZANE, GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR! THEY’RE COMING!”

I glimpse out the open side door and see the first truck peeling around the bend. It’s coming right at us. The muffler roars as the driver gases it on.

There’s no time.

“Get the window down!” I shout, sliding into the driver’s seat. I yank the car into Drive and stomp the gas. Garrett leans back and kicks the door, as the car bolts forward. The door swings free, but the momentum slams it shut again just as the Fury truck sails past our bumper. The truck tries to brake and skids on the gravel instead. It slides a few more feet and rolls sideways into the ditch across the street.

“THEY’RE COMING!” Robin shouts and this time, Garrett gets the window down. Zane throws himself through the opening, like a super-skinny Superman, landing across Garrett’s lap.

“GO! GO! GO!” he screams at me.

I go. The back end fishtails on the loose gravel, but the car shoots off down the twisty, clumpy drive toward the barn. Another Fury truck loops around and crashes into a car that tries to turn into the drive at the same time.

Zaneen hoots from the back seat, “They’re stuck! They locked up their bumpers and jammed the entrance! They can’t get past the gate unless they’re on foot!”

I won’t look. I stay hunched over the steering wheel and keep my eyes straight on the barn and nothing else. If anything crosses our path, it’ll become part of our wheels.

The sirens on the house and barn suddenly explode in howls. No, more than that. They are louder than any sirens I’ve ever heard. Startled, my hands jump from the wheel to cover my ears and the tires catch on a clump along the side of the road. The car slides sideways and something under the hood buckles up with a crunch. The car lurches to a halt.

“RUN!” Zane shouts, scrambling for the door. “They set off the sensors! They’re coming on foot! Get to the barn!”

The Fury swarm on foot over the jammed gate. They flood over the cars and they rise up from the eastern edge of the field. I have no idea what setting off the sensors will do, other than blow out our eardrums with the alarms.

“It’s an ambush.” Deeta’s voice quivers as Robin pulls her from the car, but once her feet hit the dirt, Deeta bolts like a rabbit up the road toward the barn. She’s a quarter mile ahead of us before we even start running.

But it’s not any better that The Fury mob is about a mile behind us. Some of them were once Alo or Contego, so the distance that’s between us now is going to close up fast.

Garrett dodges a glance at Zane. “We can’t take this many all at once,” he shouts.

“Gonna have to break the bat cave, G.” Zane shouts back. Still, the only way I can hear him over the wailing alarms is to focus the way Garrett’s taught me and even then, the blaring sirens just about drown out every other word.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Zaneen shouts from Zane’s back. “It’s the only way out, isn’t it?”

Garrett grabs my wrist and we pick up speed together.

One glance over my shoulder and I see the Fury closing in on us, like a puddle. Garrett’s hand is like an iron cuff as he pulls me toward the barn. Another glance and I spot a former Alo- it must be, since they’re the only ones faster than us- pulling ahead of the rest and gaining speed.

“The Alo!” I shout, as if Garrett doesn’t know it all ready. But I hope he understands what I mean. And he does. Without breaking stride, he scoops down and lifts a rock off the ground. Still dragging me along with him, he twists and whips the rock. It shoots by my nose, so close that another millimeter would’ve shaved off skin. I watch Garrett’s rock as it whistles a hard, straight line past Zane and Robin, and through the distance separating us from the Fury. It keeps going, like a heat-seeking missile, until it finally smashes into the Alo that was pulling ahead. It gets the guy in the face and he goes down like bricks.

Seeing what Garrett did, Robin drops down and scoop up rocks in mid-stride too. On both sides of me, rocks start flying and when I focus on the sound, I hear thud after thud after thud as they hit their targets. I join in too and maybe it’s just that there’s so many of them, but it’s surprisingly easy to hit them.

The Fury’s Alo buckle and drop behind us, widening the gap. The Fury Contego don’t try to protect them. Instead, they trample the Alo that aren’t useful as human shields anymore.

Deeta reaches the barn doors first and Zane cups his hands around his mouth to shout at her, “Open ‘em Deeta!”

Deeta probably gets the crazy arm gestures that follow, more than the words that are lost under the howl of the sirens. The Alo don’t have our focus, but she figures out what Zane wants and throws her body against the barn doors. They slide open
.

But even if we get to the Free Ball, I don’t know how we’ll make it work. Zane had said before that someone’s got to work the controls on the ground to make that happen. And that means someone’s got to stay behind.

It’s all scrambled up in my head as we hurtle into the barn. There’s no time to stop and ask. Garrett spins me up against one of the harnesses and his hands move at lightening speed, fastening me in. Then he’s gone. Deeta buckles in beside me and I’m hanging there beside her and the empty harness that I assume is Garrett’s.

“It’s only scary the first time!” Deeta shouts to me and she gives me a quivery, unsure smile with a thumbs up before peering back out the door at the advancing Fury.