The Fugitive (7 page)

“What?” I ask. Shit. I knew I should have just got us in the truck and then out of here. “What is it?”

“Mark,”
she says, pointing at my left arm. There’s blood dripping out from under my T-shirt sleeve. “Are you okay?”

I push the cotton of my T-shirt down onto the wound, hoping that stops the bleeding until we get back to home base.

“Would you believe me if I said I was shot while escaping from a bunch of crooked FBI agents?” I ask.

She nods, her eyes wide.

“I’ve been shot at a lot lately,” she says quietly. “A few days ago I was stabbed by a Mog.”

And then we just stare at each other. This is the moment when, months or even a few weeks ago, I’d probably have tried to kiss her. Or at least wished that was what I was doing. I’d have ignored the fact that I promised John Smith I’d keep her safe—ignored the fact that he existed at all. But in the parking garage, I look at her and she looks at me, and there’s some kind of joint understanding. The dynamic has changed between us.
We’ve
changed. I can’t be some hotshot football star trying to win back his ex when the fate of the world could rest on us. And she . . . there’s something different about her. Something fierce. She looks more like a soldier than the girl who used to wander around campus snapping pictures of flowers.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say. “And that you’re okay. I’m fine. I’ll patch up back at base.”

“That wound is supergross, Mark,” she says, her nose wrinkling a little. “You should probably see a doctor. . . .”

Her voice trails off. She knows that’s not really an option.

“I should have brought a healing stone or something
with me.” She’s eyeing my arm, shaking her head. I stare back at her, not knowing what she’s talking about.

“We have a lot to catch up on,” I say. I put out my arm, ushering her towards my truck.

“Let’s start with why you’re in
Alabama
,” she says.

“Um, that’s kind of a long story.” I open the passenger’s-side door for her. She’s halfway inside before she stops and turns to me.

“Wait, when did you get this truck?”

I start to answer, but a huge bird lands on the hood of the truck with a loud thump. I jump, instinctively raising a fist.

“Jesus, what the hell?” I ask.

“Oh,” Sarah says, smiling. “Do you remember Bernie Kosar?”

SARAH FILLS ME IN ON WHERE SHE’S BEEN
since she was taken from Paradise. She glosses over being imprisoned in Dulce. It kills me to think that they might have tortured her or something, but I don’t push the issue, because how do you casually ask, “So what terrible things happened to you when the FBI threw you in a secret dungeon?” She goes into more detail about everything after that, though, and walks me through the escape from New Mexico, their time at the John Hancock Center in Chicago—which I was
totally
right about being a Mog attack—and then their temporary hideout in Maryland, where she finally got the emails I’d been sending her. She tells me about a team of Garde sent down to Florida, and my head buzzes as I think of all the weird messages that had been sent to me about gangs in the Everglades and kids with telekinetic powers.

One of the Garde died down there, and when she left John and the others, none of them even knew which one it was.

Shit is getting very real on Earth.

The more we talk, the more the puzzle pieces start to fit together. A bigger story forms. Notes and small leads start to connect, and I suddenly have information about people and places that I was just kind of guessing at before. I learn names like Setrákus Ra and Adam, and that there’s a giant Mog base somewhere up in West Virginia, and that the Mogs have been doing all sorts of experiments with some of the dead Garde and alien animals—not that
this
is really any surprise, considering the crazy-ass stuff they’ve been doing to Bud Sanderson.

I type notes on one of the computers in the hidden room as fast as I can, trying to keep up with her as she talks.

“This stuff is incredible,” I say. “I never could have uncovered all this on my own.”

“What’s your plan, Mark?” She stares at the security monitors on the wall. Sarah’s still trying to wrap her head around the fact that I’m hiding out in some kind of spy base. Over her shoulder, I see BK travel across the monitors—a pet from another planet helping to make sure our perimeter is secure.

I pause. I’ve been going full throttle, alone, trying
to absorb everything. I haven’t really had to put into words what my mission or whatever is.

“We tell the world what’s really happening,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “We wake them up and get them on our side.”

Sarah smiles at me strangely, as if she wasn’t expecting something like that to come out of my mouth.

“Next time I talk to John, I’ll see what kind of evidence he can send our way.”

As we work, I tell her about breaking into Sam’s house and finding all the old newsletters, stealing Purdy’s computer and my road trip across the country—first looking for her and then following GUARD’s orders to Alabama. She listens carefully as I talk, her face twisting and lighting up as she calls me “lucky” and “stupid” and even “heroic.”

Mark James, hero.
That has a nice ring to it.

I’m pretty sure I blush when she says it, because afterwards she laughs and rolls her eyes. But it feels good. Especially since this is the first time I’ve really sat and thought about all the different things I’ve had to do in the last few weeks. I’ve been so focused on the stuff I’ve failed at—like getting caught in the FBI trap and not being able to contact Sharma or find Sarah—that I’d kind of forgotten that I’ve totally been living in, like, a James Bond movie lately. With aliens. And
I’m
007.

John sends us crappy cell phone pics of a bunch of documents he recovered from some FBI agents—including my old friend Agent Walker, who has apparently switched sides completely and is helping out the Loric. At least for now. I’m happy she let me go, but I can’t imagine that I’d trust Walker or her agents with my life or anything. I hope John and the others know what they’re doing. I
can
say that this stuff combined with some of the other files we’ve salvaged from Purdy’s computer make for some pretty epic breaking news. I’m talking stuff like photos of Mogs shaking hands with politicians and lists of who within the government is playing ball with the shark-faced mofos. I practically piss my pants with excitement when Sarah forwards them to me—before I send them along to GUARD for a second look. A story like this could be big, so we should probably make sure that we don’t completely screw it up when we post it.

We print out everything and tape it to the walls of the back room, trying to piece together the larger story. This stuff is bigger than all of us. It’s the truth, and the world needs to be able to see it.

I start working on articles: posts that incorporate all the new info that’s suddenly been dumped at my feet.

“This shit is going to go
viral
,” I tell Sarah.

“It’s definitely going to piss off the Mogs,” she says hesitantly. “You’re sure they can’t track us here?”

“Definitely. GUARD’s got this place locked down.”

“He’d better,” she says.

It sounds like she might have some doubts about this. She’s not exactly on Team GUARD and asks a lot of questions—about where all the stuff in the safe house came from, how he got a truck to me,
anything
about his actual personal life—that I can’t answer because
I have no idea who he is
. I tell her that she should just trust him and be done with it, but that’s not exactly her style—especially with all she’s been through. I don’t really blame her. I’m not even really sure why I trust in him so much. Maybe it’s because, after Sarah disappeared, he was the one constant I had.

After Sarah’s read over the articles, I upload them, and our hit counter on They Walk Among Us skyrockets. My post detailing MogPro—which, it turns out, stands for “Mogadorian Progress”—attracts a lot of attention thanks to the intel John gets out of Walker. Some commentators start guessing that the whole blog is viral marketing for some new sci-fi movie. Other anonymous users send death threats. Views and comments come in from all over the world—so many that I give Sarah the log-in to my JOLLYROGER182 account so we can split the work of sorting through them.

We make a good team. Things are looking up.

Until the next day, at least. I wake up from a power nap around dusk feeling a little off. Just weak, and a
little sick to my stomach. I’m sweating a lot too, which I brush off as the fact that we’re in the South and it’s humid as balls. When I get up and start moving, I realize that my left arm is all stiff and sore. And so while I wait for coffee to brew in the kitchen, I pull up my T-shirt sleeve and take a good look at the place where the bullet grazed me.

It’s not pretty.

The wound is swollen and a dark, sort of terrifying red color. It’s kind of hot to the touch too. In short, it looks mad at me for not taking better care of it.

Sarah walks into the kitchen while I’m looking at my arm.

“Holy crap, Mark.”

“It’s not that bad,” I suggest.

“No.” She shakes her head. “That looks terrible.”

“I’ll just pour some more rubbing alcohol on it and pick up some superglue and . . .” I have to stop because she looks like she’s going to simultaneously puke and smack me.

“It’s infected. We have to do something about it or it’ll get even worse.”

“We’ve got a lot of work to do.” I start for the back room.

“You could lose your
whole arm
, Mark,” she says, standing in front of me so I can’t pass. She puts her hand on my forehead. “Jesus, you’ve got a fever. You
could get
sepsis
. We’ll just . . . We have to do something. At least let’s get some antibacterial stuff.”

I relent. We could use some more groceries, anyway.

I grab my keys. Sarah clears her throat, holding out one palm.

“I’m driving,” she says.

“Uh, no way,” I say. Suddenly I’m feeling very overprotective of my shiny new truck, and the Sarah I know—or knew in Paradise at least—didn’t have the best history with oversized vehicles.

“Mark.”

“Sarah,”
I say. We lock eyes for a few seconds. “I’m okay to drive. I promise. Trust me.”

She doesn’t respond immediately but finally sighs.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

Huntsville is the big city closest to us, but there are a bunch of little towns between there and the ranch. I try to go to a different one every time I pick up supplies, so this time I drive Sarah towards a place called Moulton, which is tiny but has a Walgreens and a grocery store at least. BK rides in the back, and I roll one of the windows down so he can stick his head out. The sun starts to set in the west. As we drive, we make supply lists out loud.

“Maybe we could get BK to sneak into the pharmacy section and steal you some penicillin,” Sarah suggests. “Though, I’m not sure he can read.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to penicillin,” I say.

“You don’t know?”

I shrug. “I’m, like, 90 percent positive.”

She shakes her head.

“What?” I ask. “I’ve been going to the same doctor since I was a baby. He always just prescribed me medicine, and I took it.”

“Give me a list of UN ambassadors,” she says.

I don’t know where she’s going with this, but I start to rattle off the people I’ve been looking into based on the files we’ve uncovered. She stops me after a dozen.

“You can name all those people,” she says, “but you don’t know if you’re allergic to penicillin. If it could
kill
you? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’d been replaced with a Mog clone since we were in Paradise.”

She’s right. I start to laugh a little at just how absurd this is. How absurd all this is. Then she does too. It’s like I haven’t laughed in a really long time and now have to get it all out of my system while I can. I go into a
fit
of laughter. And it feels wonderful.

So wonderful that I end up running a stop sign.

I know this because suddenly there are flashing lights and a motorcycle cop behind me, pulling me off onto a side street in Moulton.

“Oh shit,” I say. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

You’re so fucking stupid, Mark.

“What do we do?” Sarah asks. She’s sitting up
straight, her left hand white knuckled as she grips the console between us. “Please tell me your GUARD friend gave you a legit fake ID.”

“No.” I shake my head. It’s not like I can give the officer my real license—I’m guessing everything with my name on it has been flagged by the FBI. “Let me think.”

I never had to worry about traffic tickets in Paradise—perk of being the sheriff’s son. I even talked my way out of a ticket for underage drinking once because this guy Todd, a former Paradise High football player, was the officer who caught me and my buddies with a case of beer out in a cornfield. But now my life is going to be monumentally screwed up because of a single stupid stop sign.

The officer dismounts from his bike. I pull my sleeve as far down over the wound on my arm as I can and then tighten my grip around the steering wheel.

“I might be able to lose him if I speed off while he’s up here,” I say.

“He’s on a bike, Mark,” Sarah says. “And you have no idea where you are, do you? He’d catch up to us.”

She’s right. Of course she is.

I glance into the truck’s backseat. BK’s tail is wagging, but his eyes are darting back and forth between me and Sarah as if he’s asking what he should do.

“Worst comes to worst, can BK scare him off?”

Sarah just looks at me, shrugging. BK lets out a little
whine. I can’t even tell if the damned dog can understand me.

And then the officer’s tapping on the window.

“License and registration,” he says as I roll it down.

“Uh, yeah . . . ,” I start.

I launch into this whole story about how we’re on vacation—hence the Louisiana plates—and we’d just run up to town to buy a few groceries, and, oops, we totally left our IDs and stuff down by the swimming hole at the ranch where we’re staying.

I actually use the term “swimming hole.”

The officer sighs and asks if the truck is mine. I say it is, and he tells me to stay put while he goes back to his bike. I use the time to take a few deep breaths and try not to completely lose my shit.

“This is okay,” I murmur. “Maybe he’ll just write me a ticket. I’ll give him a fake name.”

Sarah stares holes through me.

“What?” I ask. “Do you want me to make a break for it now?”

“Is this truck stolen?” She raises one eyebrow as she speaks.

“No, of course—” I stop talking because . . . it could be. I guess I really have no idea.

I look into the side mirrors nervously as the cop strolls back up to my side of the truck. He doesn’t seem to be treating us like felons at least.

“All right,” he says. “The vehicle’s not listed as missing or anything. I don’t see why I should ruin your vacation with a few tickets. I’m going to let you off with a warning, but I’ve reported it, so don’t make it a habit of driving around without your license or you’ll definitely get a citation next time.” He grins. “Just make sure to watch for those stop signs, son.”

I’m so relieved I could vomit.

He starts to walk away but turns back.

“Funny first name,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

“Huh?” I ask, confused.

“From your registration. Jolly. Jolly Roger.” He thinks about this for a second and laughs a little. Meanwhile, my lungs fall into my guts.

“It’s a family name,” I mutter.

But all I can think about is how he just ran the plates to a truck that turns out to be registered to a guy named Jolly Roger. A truck purchased the morning after a shootout between JOLLYROGER182 and the FBI, in the same city. And how, at this moment, the Mogs are probably slobbering all over themselves to find out who this dickhead is who’s unleashing all their secrets on the internet.

You’re an idiot, Mark. How could you be so stupid as to use that name?

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” Sarah says.
“Are you feeling okay?”

I swallow hard. Screw supplies. Screw my arm.

“I think we’d better go back to the ranch.”