The Darkest Minds (14 page)

NINE

T
HE SINGLE BULLET CUT A PATH
straight down the center of the minivan, exiting out through the windshield. For a moment, none of us did anything but stare at the hole and the spreading spiderweb of cracks radiating out from it.

“Holy sh—!” Liam threw the car into forward, slamming his foot down all the way on the gas. He seemed to have forgotten that we were in a Dodge Caravan and not a BMW, because it went from zero to sixty in what felt like thirty minutes. Black Betty’s body began to shake, rattling from more than just the holes and cracks in the road.

I whirled around, searching for Rob’s SUV, but the car behind us was a bright red pickup truck, and the man leaning out of the passenger window of the truck, rifle in hand, was not Rob.

“I told you!” Chubs yelled.
“I told you they were skip tracers!”

“Yes, you were right,” Liam yelled right back. “But could you try to be useful, too?”

He jerked the car left, just as the man fired off another shot. It must have gone wide, because it never hit the car, not that I could tell. He fired again, and that bullet had far better luck; it slammed into Black Betty’s bumper. We felt the hit like a brick to the back; every single one of us let out a sharp gasp. In Chubs’s case, he moaned and crossed himself.

Zu was slouched down in her seat, her chest pressed against her knees. Her hood hid her face, but it couldn’t mask the way her entire body shook. I put a hand on her back, holding her down.

Another bang sounded behind us, but this time, it wasn’t a gunshot.

“What in the…” Liam risked a look back over his shoulder. “Are you kidding me?”

My heart fell like a stone into my stomach. The red truck jolted forward, and I saw the driver—a dark haired woman with glasses—tug the wheel to the side, trying to shake the truck free from the tan SUV that had rammed into it. I didn’t need to see who was driving it to know who
that
vehicle belonged to: Cate and Rob. But, then, who was in the pickup truck?

“It
is
her!” Chubs cried. “I told you! She found us!”

“Then who’s the guy with the gun?” Liam cried. “Her boyfriend?”

The man who had fired at us turned his attention to taking out the SUV behind him, twisting around in the window. He lasted half a breath. A gunshot from the SUV clipped him in the chest and sent an explosive spray of blood into the air. The crack of the next bullet sent the shooter’s lifeless body sliding out of the passenger window of the truck. The driver—the woman—didn’t so much as look back at him.

I watched the red truck finally break away from the SUV’s front bumper. With both of its back tires blown out, it swerved into the other lane, spinning out, until it came to a jolting stop on the shoulder of the highway.

“That’s one,” I heard Liam say. I turned back, fully expecting to see Rob’s gun trained on me through the blown-out back windshield of our van. Only, Rob was behind the wheel.

Cate was the one in the passenger seat, a rifle steady between her hands.

“Please, just let me go,” I said, grabbing Liam’s shoulder. “I’ll go back with them. No one has to get hurt.”

“Yes!” Chubs said. “Pull over, let her out!”

“Both of you shut up!” Liam said, throwing Black Betty into the right lane and then back into the left. The SUV followed us, more than keeping up. I couldn’t tell if we had slowed down, or if they had somehow gunned it harder, because in the next breath, the SUV rammed into us, and not even the seat belts could keep us from jerking forward.

Liam muttered something under his breath, which was lost in the sudden onslaught of heavy rain. He rolled down his window and threw a hand outside, as if to motion for the SUV to go around us.

“Do something!” Chubs shouted, bracing his hands against the steering wheel.

“I’m trying!” he said. “I can’t concentrate!”

He’s trying to use his abilities.
The realization crept up through my terror.

The fat droplets splattering the window blurred the trees around us, but Liam didn’t bother with the wipers. If he had, he might have seen the other car blazing toward us from the opposite direction. Its horn screeched to life and woke Liam from his trance.

The minivan swerved back into the right lane, narrowly missing a head-on collision with the sedan. If that little car hadn’t slammed on its brakes, the SUV would have plowed right into it, too. Both Zu and I whirled around just in time to see the SUV swerve back into the right lane. Rob managed to recover quickly, and they were speeding toward us again before we had a chance to catch our breaths.

“Liam,” I begged. “Please, just pull over. I won’t let them do anything to you!”

I don’t want to go back.

I don’t want to go back.

I don’t want to…

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Green!’ Liam’s voice cut into my thoughts. “Can you drive?”

“No—”

“Can you see better than Chubs?”

“Maybe, but—”

“Great!” he said, reaching back for my arm. “Come on up to the captain’s seat.”

He snorted, even as another bullet pinged against Black Betty’s metal skin. “Come on, it’s just like riding a bike. Right pedal is gas to go, left is brake, steer with wheel. That’s all you need to know.”

“Wait!” But apparently, I didn’t get a say in the matter. He swerved back into the left lane just as the SUV came up for another tap. Instead of speeding up, his foot came down hard on the brake. Black Betty skidded to a halt, and the SUV blew right by us.

It happened too fast for me to put up any kind of fight. He unsnapped his seat belt and pulled me toward the driver’s seat just as he stood from it. The car rolled forward on its own accord and I panicked, slamming my foot down on what I thought was the brake pedal. Black Betty leaped forward, and this time I was the one that screamed.

“Brake is on the left!” Liam flew against the dashboard as the SUV recovered. I heard its tires scream as Rob turned the truck around and kicked up the speed. “Hit the gas!”

“Why can’t he drive?” I asked in a strangled voice.

Chubs pushed the passenger’s seat back far enough for him to climb over it into the back, and Liam took Chubs’s seat.

“Because,” he said, rolling down the window, “he can barely see five feet in front of him. Trust me, you don’t want him to drive, darlin’. Now—
hit the gas
!”

I did as I was told. The car sprung forward again, sending my heart up into my throat. The wheels spun against the wet asphalt.

Liam was half hanging out of the window, half sitting on it. “Faster!” he said.

The rain fell thick and heavy, but the SUV’s headlights pierced the mist as I drove the van straight toward them. We were going so fast that the steering wheel shook in my hands, jerking around like it had a life of its own. I bit back a frustrated scream and tried to let up on the gas, but Liam wasn’t having it.

“No, keep going!”

“Lee,” Chubs was hunched over in his seat. “This is insane—what are you doing?”

He had been so quiet that I’d almost forgotten he was in the van. With the speedometer creeping past eighty, ninety, ninety-five, I wasn’t remembering much at all.

And that’s when it went to hell.

There was a horrible bang—a thousand times worse than the sound of a balloon exploding—and the van was spinning, the wheel dancing right out of my hands.

“Straight!” Liam was shouting, “Straighten out!”

“Sh—!” The wind was knocked out of my chest by my seat belt, but I fought against the natural turn of the wheel long enough to get us heading straight again. The car tilted back, leaving a trail of sparks on the road behind us. We were staring the SUV down again, making a second head-on pass at them.

“Keep going toward them—don’t stop!” Liam yelled.

But the tire
, I thought, my hands strangling the steering wheel,
the tire
…

Chubs had reached for Liam’s legs, steadying him before he could go flying out the window. “Let go!” he snapped. “I’m fine, I’ve got it now!”

I didn’t know what Liam had meant by “it,” not until I looked up into the rearview mirror and saw the dark body of a tree come hurtling out of the woods, guided in front of the SUV, by nothing other than a flick of Liam’s hand.

With his attention focused on the minivan barreling toward them, Rob didn’t have time to jerk the car out of the tree’s path. I spun my hands around the wheel blindly, until we were facing away from the wreckage. I heard the sound of shattering glass and crunching metal as Rob tried to veer, only to overcorrect. When I looked back in the side mirror, the SUV was on its side in a smoking heap. Beside it was the splintered body of a tree, still rolling to a stop after the collision.

“What did you do?” I had to yell over the chatter of the wind and road. “I thought—”

Chubs was the one to answer, his face ashen. “Now do you get it? They weren’t going to stop.”

Liam slid back inside of the window, plopping down with a long sigh. His hair was standing up on all ends, dusted with leaves and little twigs.

“Okay, Green,” he said, keeping his voice steady, “they blew the back tire out, so you’re driving on the rim. Just keep heading straight and start to slow down. Get off on the next ramp.”

I clenched my jaw so hard that it ached.

“You all right, Zu?” he asked. The girl gave him two thumbs-up, her yellow gloves the only bright spot of color in the van.

“Well, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Chubs said. His little glasses were crooked on his face as he smoothed his blue button-down shirt. For good measure, he leaned forward and smacked the back of Liam’s head. “And by the way, are you out of your freaking mind? Do you know what happens when a body is thrown from a car at high velocity?”

“No,” Liam interrupted, “but I imagine it’s not pretty or appropriate for an eleven-year-old’s ears.”

I glanced back at Zu. Eleven? That couldn’t be right.…

“Oh, so you can throw her in the path of bullets, but she can’t hear a scary story?” Chubs crossed his arms over his chest.

Liam reached down and pulled his seat back upright. When he sat back, it was with a grimace and clenched fists. There was a fresh cut above his eye. Blood dripped from his chin.

I saw the green highway sign through the haze of rain. It didn’t matter what town or exit number it said. I just wanted to get off the road and out of the driver’s seat.

My entire body was numb, exhausted, as I took my foot off the gas. The minivan followed the curve of the ramp with only the slightest nudging, and by the time we reached the road, it came to a natural stop. I pressed a hand to my chest to make sure my heart hadn’t given out on me.

Liam reached over and put the parking brake on.

“You did a good job,” he began. His voice was quieter than I expected. Unfortunately, it did nothing to calm the pissed off snake that was coiled tight around my stomach.

I reached over and punched him in the arm.
Hard
.

“Ow!” he cried, pulling away from me with wide eyes. “What was that for?”

“That was
not
like riding a bike, you asshole!”

He stared at me a moment, his lips twitching. It was Suzume who burst out into a fit of silent laughter, an endless stream of gasping and shaking that turned her face bright pink and left her breathless. Seconds passed with her laughter as the only sound able to float up above the rain—at least until Chubs put his face in his hands and let out a long groan.

“Oh yeah,” Liam said, popping his door open, “you’re gonna fit in real nice.”

The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time Liam got to work on the back tire. I had stayed exactly where I was in the driver’s seat, mostly because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. The other two kids had jumped out of the car after him, Suzume heading to the back of the van with Liam, and Chubs in the exact opposite direction. I watched through the cracked windshield as he made his way toward a sign pointing us in the direction of the Monongahela National Forest. After a minute, he pulled something—a paperback book—out of his back pocket, and sat down at the edge of the road. Feeling more than a little envy, I squinted, trying to make out the book’s title, but half of the cover was missing, and the other half covered by his hand. I don’t know if he was actually reading or just glaring at the text.

I had pulled us over into Slaty Fork, West Virginia, if the road signs were to be trusted. What I thought had been some hickville back road had actually been Highway 219, in the middle of nowhere. Marlinton might have lost its people, but it didn’t look as though Slaty Fork had any to begin with.

I stood up from the driver’s seat and made my way to the back of the minivan. My hands were still trembling, as if trying to shake out that last bit of adrenaline singing in my blood. The black backpack that Rob and Cate had given me had been thrown into the backseat, covered in a few loose sheets of newspaper and an empty bottle of Windex.

I brushed the backpack off and set it down next to me on the seat. The newspaper was over three years old and stiff with age. There was a half-page ad for a new face cream someone had oh-so-cleverly called Forever Young.

I flipped the sheet over, looking for any actual news. I skimmed over an opinion piece that celebrated the rehabilitation camps and was more amused than offended that Psi kids were now being openly referred to as “mutant time bombs.” There was also a short article on rioting that the reporter claimed was “the direct result of escalating tensions between the West and East government on new birth legislation.” At the very bottom of the page, past some fluff story about the anniversary of some train conductors’ strike, was a picture of Clancy Gray.

“President’s Son Attends Children’s League Hearing,” is what the headline beneath it said. I didn’t need to read more than the first two or three lines to get the basic gist: the president was too big of a coward to come out of hiding after a failed assassination attempt, so he sent his freak baby to do the dirty work for him. How old was Clancy now? I wondered. The pictures at Thurmond were identical to this one, and I had never thought of him as anything older than eleven or twelve. But he must have been eighteen or close to by now. Practically an old geezer by our standards.