Dead Zone (15 page)

THIRTY-TWO

TABITHA SAT IN THE BACK
of the truck, her hand resting on the frame of a black-and-silver mountain bike. They were going to come under artillery fire, just like they did yesterday, and this time they were going to be on bicycles. It sounded ridiculous.

She’d been on the detail to pick up the bikes from a store in Yakima. The town was evacuated, and Josi had smashed the glass of the building with a rock. They’d gone in through the window and collected a dozen.

It would have been thirteen if Lytle were still alive. Tabitha had said that, but Josi didn’t want to hear it. Josi never wanted to listen to Tabitha.

Tabitha had actually thought about leaving while she was at the bike store—it was just her and Josi and VanderHorst. But Tabitha had promised Krezi she’d take her. And Krezi was useful. Tabitha didn’t need a gun if she had Krezi. Plus, if they disappeared from the battlefield rather than the bike store, they might not be listed as AWOL. Just MIA.

“You see this?” Tabitha said telepathically to Krezi. “This is why we have to get out of here. They’re so hell-bent on finding this lambda that they’re willing to get us all killed in the process. They keep talking about how the lambda is at the center of a bubble, but you know what else is at the center of the bubble? All of the fighting. That’s the whole point of the lambda—to be in the middle of all the action so that no one inside can do anything. And we’re going to drive—ride—right into it.”

They were traveling north of the battlefield, north of where they expected the lambda to go. They couldn’t get too close and get swallowed up in the bubble themselves, or else no one could radio them with the proper coordinates.

The fact that this was Rich’s plan made it even worse. Who was Rich? A fifteen-year-old computer nerd. He hadn’t even graduated from basic training. He hadn’t done anything except write some computer code.

He should have been back at the base instead of out here with them. She wondered if he could even keep up on a bike.

The truck came to a stop on a pine-lined dirt road.

Josi was studying a stack of USGS maps—maps they’d also taken from the bike shop. They showed every contour line, trail, and unused road. Josi had taken enough of the maps to get them all the way to Snowqualmie Pass, and now she was storing them all in her memory.

Josi would have been useful to escape with Tabitha and Krezi, but she’d made it clear a dozen times that she did not like Tabitha in her head.

Jack would be useful, too. And maybe he could convince Aubrey to come with them. Aubrey had no love of rules. She’d proven that over and over. The problem with Aubrey was . . . Tabitha couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it was an overly active conscience. Or maybe it was that she was living with a constant sense of guilt. Either way, Aubrey was always questioning whether she was doing the right thing, and she always needed Jack to reassure her that she was.

If Tabitha wanted to get Jack on her side, then she would need to get Aubrey, too. They were a package deal. But if she got Jack, then Aubrey was sure to come, wasn’t she?

“Jack,” Tabitha said with her mind. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He met her eyes. He looked tired. Or was he annoyed? He was a self-righteous little bastard, wasn’t he?

“I don’t want to talk about this in front of everyone,” Tabitha said. “But I’m scared.”

The look on his face changed slightly. She wished she could read minds as well as talk to them.

“I don’t know if this plan is a good idea or if it’s suicide,” she said. “Think of the artillery that opened on us last night. Think of the shrapnel. That’s all going to come raining down again. They’ve probably got more guns today—more that they brought through the pass during the night. They wouldn’t attack us if they didn’t have guns, right?”

The look on his face was one of concern but not much else. He looked like he was trying to be nice, not like he actually cared.

“We need a code,” she said, “so you can respond. If you want to say yes, touch your chin. If you want to say no, don’t do anything. Okay?”

He rubbed his chin.

“I’m not trying to do anything secret. I just can’t talk about this kind of thing in front of people, and you seem like a good listener. You always listen to Aubrey. She tells us about it. You really care about her, don’t you?”

Jack furrowed his brow, like he was trying to figure something out. But he touched his chin.

“Do you mind that I talk to you?”

He didn’t make any movement. No, he didn’t mind.

“That’s the thing that I don’t get about the two of you,” Tabitha said. “You obviously care about each other. Maybe you love each other—I don’t know. Maybe it’s more complicated than that. But she’s always going into harm’s way. That’s, like, her job description. I don’t know how you handle it.”

His lips were pursed, and he kept looking at her, but she couldn’t read his expression.

“I don’t like this war, Jack. I think you know that. I’m not exactly quiet about it.”

He touched his chin.

She smiled. “Yeah, I know. It’s the thing that I constantly harp on.” She looked out the back of the truck at the frost-nipped pine trees. “It’s almost Thanksgiving. I don’t know what your family was like, but mine always had a big party with lots of relatives.” She looked back at him. “I miss it. I don’t want to be here.”

Jack touched his chin.

Yes.

She gave a tiny nod. “Did I ever tell you about one of my first missions, back when I was first assigned to the Green Berets?”

He didn’t move. He seemed to be listening more intently.

“I had been in a quarantine center at Fort Sill, but there was another quarantine center, just across the Texas border at the Red River Army Depot. I was in an ODA with two other lambdas. I didn’t really have much of a job—they kept me around in case the radios didn’t work, or something like that.

“Don’t get me wrong. That was fine with me. I only joined up because it was that or stay in quarantine, in those tiny little cells. And I thought—I really thought—that we were going to be doing good, fighting the bad guys. But that wasn’t what we were doing.”

Jack was watching her closely. He looked like he wanted to say something. Instead, he rubbed his chin.

Did that mean to go on? She assumed it did.

“We weren’t fighting terrorists,” she said. “In fact, I never fought terrorists. While you and Aubrey were out being heroes, do you know what I was doing? I was fighting against American kids. The rebellion.”

He sat upright. He acted like he was stretching his back, but she could tell she’d surprised him.

“The Green Berets were killing them,” Tabitha said. “I know you don’t want to hear about it. No one does. But the rebellion was trying to free lambdas from quarantine, and I was in the group of Green Berets that shot them down.”

Jack looked annoyed now.

“We murdered them.”

He shook his head, just a slight shake.

“You can say that,” Tabitha said. “But I was there. All they were doing was trying to open the gate. They weren’t attacking anyone. They weren’t a threat. They were just trying to tear down the gate. That’s all. And we shot them.”

Jack stared back at her.

“You don’t believe me.”

She waited for his finger to touch his chin, but she was surprised to see that it didn’t.

“You do believe me?”

He rubbed his chin.

Captain Gillett pressed the radio in his ear and announced, “I think this is it, people.”

“You ready?” Aubrey asked Jack, a fake eagerness on her face. “I can outride you any day.”

“It’s not a race,” he said with a smile. He met Tabitha’s eyes for just a moment.

Tabitha spoke to his mind again. “I don’t understand you, Jack. If you believe me, then why do you always change the topic when the rebellion comes up?”

He shot her a look, a stern, fixed stare. But he wouldn’t talk out loud.

“Good news,” Gillett said. “About ten miles. Let’s get on the road.”

They could hear the thunder of artillery in the distance. Gillett helped Josi out of the truck and then gave her the coordinates—coordinates from Rich’s computer program. “You can find it?”

She closed her eyes. “Easy. She’s in the woods, by some cabins. There’s a road.”

“Well, that’s something,” Gillett said. “Heads up—they’re saying this is a major offensive. Reports of a lot of infantry. We may run into more than her up there. But let’s try to make it there faster. They’re closer, but we’re on bikes.”

Jack helped Aubrey down, and as she got onto her bike, he turned and helped Tabitha. “I believe you,” he breathed. “But that doesn’t mean I agree with the rebellion.”

THIRTY-THREE

JACK CLIMBED ONTO A BIKE,
his muscles already sore. His rifle was slung across his back, like everyone else’s, and he thought they all looked ridiculous. Full combat ACUs, fully armed, riding mountain bikes. He wondered how Aubrey would do with her injured leg.

Josi led the way, the map stuck in her brain. She was followed closely by Gillett. The rest of the group was strung out behind, with Chase-Dunn and Uhrey taking up the rear.

Tabitha’s voice was in Jack’s head. “I wasn’t trying to get you to join the rebellion, silly. I’m not part of it, so how could I even be recruiting?”

Jack pedaled a little faster, pulling his bike alongside Aubrey’s.

“I just want people to understand what I’ve been through,” Tabitha continued. “That’s all. I don’t think it was right what happened. When this war is over, someone is going to have to tell the parents of those teenagers how their kids really died, and they’ll have to know that it was the army.”

Jack wished he could respond. The army attacked the rebels because the rebels were attacking an army base. Maybe the rebels were right—maybe the quarantines were a horrible suspension of civil liberties. Jack could agree with that. He’d been taken from his hometown by force, in handcuffs. He’d had a bomb strapped to his ankle, for crying out loud, and that was even after he’d agreed to help the army. So, yes, there were some very bad things going on.

But right now they were riding their bikes into a war zone. He didn’t need his exceptional senses to hear the bombardment of artillery—it shook the entire area and echoed from hill to hill. American soldiers were being killed this very minute. Protests about the treatment of the kids in quarantine could wait.

Whenever their bikes reached a high point in the road, Jack could see smoke in the distance, and he knew that the Americans were once again sitting ducks. Powerless and unable to return fire. There were a lot more American infantry on the ground this time, he saw, prepared for a war without vehicles. And more airpower would be brought in—hopefully with the knowledge of how the lambda’s bubble worked and where it was situated. Jack didn’t know if the higher echelons of power fully believed Rich’s computer model and had passed it along to the air force. Jack hoped so.

But that made Jack think about Tabitha’s words. Did the army or air force really trust the lambdas? Sure, they’d assigned Captain Gillett’s ODA to follow up on Rich’s prediction, but if the commanding generals actually thought this lambda could be found with Rich’s computer model, wouldn’t they throw more resources at it than a single team of Green Berets?

So, in a way, Tabitha was right. Not in the sense that they needed to rebel, but in the sense that lambdas were undervalued.

Something exploded high in the sky, and Jack looked up to see the white smoke trail of a missile. It didn’t look like it had hit anything—it looked like it crossed into the bubble and exploded harmlessly. He could see the fighter that had fired it far in the distance, over Snowqualmie Pass, in a dogfight with an American Hornet.

“How’s your leg?” Jack asked Aubrey as they pedaled hard along the trail.

“I’m okay,” she said. “This is more what I trained for.”

“Biking?”

“No,” she said with a smile. “Sneaking up on the bad guys.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’ll be invisible. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be panting like a dog.” He felt so heavy with all this gear and body armor that he was amazed he hadn’t fallen off the bike already.

“I’m a little worried about that,” she said. “I get tired so quickly when I disappear. I’ll already be tired by the time I start. That won’t be good.”

“Hopefully we’ll get in and out fast,” Jack breathed.

“There’s no sign that this flyer has any backup, is there?”

“Just the lambda that she carries with her, and that’s the one who can disrupt electronics. We assume.”

“Good,” Aubrey said. “If I can sneak up on them, I’ll be okay.”

Josi directed them off the road and onto a forest path. Jack had to fall behind Aubrey because the trail was too narrow to ride side-by-side.

He tried to focus on listening to the battle. He could hear shouts and calls in both English and Russian. The Russians sounded closer than Jack expected. Their infantry was moving quickly. Maybe they’d started their advance before the lambda had flown over the battlefield.

Even so, Jack’s team was still going to be okay. They were moving fast on the bikes, and they’d get to the flyer soon. Assuming the flyer didn’t move. But in the last battle the flyer hadn’t moved until late in the battle—when planes began hitting the Russian front lines near Cle Elum.

The artillery bombardment was heavy, but still in the distance. Jack kept waiting for the American bombers to come in and silence the Russian guns like they had last night, but so far it hadn’t happened. Other than a handful of Hornets, Jack hadn’t seen much of an air presence.

The trail headed uphill, and Jack had to pedal harder to keep up. He was amazed at how quickly everyone was moving. He focused on Josi at the head of the line, and heard her panting heavily and her heart thrumming in her chest.

Jack moved down the line and found everyone to be much the same. A few of the Green Berets were doing better—they had to be in great shape—and a few of the lambdas were doing worse. Krezi was really struggling.

The trail turned again, onto an old road with two grassy wheel ruts. Jack pumped the pedals until he could catch back up with Aubrey.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“This is going to be a waste if we get there and I can’t do anything.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

He focused on the battlefield again, listening for the sound of Russian voices. They were close, maybe a few miles off.

“We’ve got to be getting close,” he told Aubrey.

Tabitha’s voice appeared in his head. It sounded so out of place—there was no panting or heavy breathing, just a calm, soothing tone. “Jack, I know you don’t care about what I say, but I know you care about Aubrey. We need to call this off. You and I have both trained with her. We know how tired she gets when she’s invisible.”

He shook his head, but halfheartedly. They couldn’t call it off, could they? Not when they were so close.

“She’s going to struggle up here. She’s going to struggle and she’s going to make a mistake. It won’t be her fault, but things happen when you’re tired.”

Jack looked at Aubrey. Her face was splotchy, and her cheeks and nose glistened with sweat. She pushed her glasses back up, and glanced over at him.

“You worry about you,” she said, with a huff of breath and the faintest smile.

Tabitha’s voice continued. “It’s not just her, Jack. It’s all of us. If this doesn’t work, we’re all on the front line.”

But it was too late for whatever Tabitha was going to say next, because up ahead Josi slowed to a stop. She laid her bike on the side of the road, and then turned to Gillett, her hands on her hips as she gulped in air.

“We’re five hundred yards northeast,” she said, and pointed into the woods. “That way.”

Everyone climbed off their bikes and stashed them against the side of the road. Gillett came down the line to where Jack was standing next to Aubrey.

“Are you ready for this?”

She let out a deep breath of air, her tongue on her lower lip, and nodded.

Tabitha spoke up. “Captain, are we sure about this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after what happened yesterday . . .”

He turned and looked in the direction Josi had pointed. “There’s no artillery falling here. They’re probably avoiding this area because they’re protecting the lambda. This is the safest place on the battlefield. Now be quiet so the fish doesn’t swim away.”

Jack said, “Russian infantry’s coming, though. I can hear them. They’re not as close as the lambda, but they’re headed this way.”

“Then let’s get moving. Jack, find me the lambda.”

He nodded and stepped forward, closing his eyes to focus on sounds. Behind him eleven people wheezed heavily, and their clothing rubbed as they stretched.

The forest in front of him was quiet, all the animals gone to ground. In the far distance—maybe a mile or more away—he could hear the chatter of automatic-weapons fire, the voices of troops. He tried to focus on something closer.

There was water burbling, not much more than a trickle. It was probably an irrigation ditch, he thought. He knew there was farmland up ahead.

Something metal was swinging on a squeaking hinge. A gate, maybe, or a barn door, or possibly a weathervane.

He heard breathing, and he zeroed in on it. It was rapid, and the heart was pounding, and it didn’t seem right. Not for a human. Was it a deer? It had to be something like that.

He searched again, scanning the woods for any sound. A squirrel chattered. Branches rubbed together.

Something ticked.

He focused on that. Something ticking. A watch. And there was breathing nearby. Two separate bodies.

“Found them,” Jack said, and opened his eyes, pointing into the forest. “Two people. They’re probably a lot closer than five hundred yards. Maybe three hundred.”

Gillett turned to face Aubrey. “Your job is to stop that flyer from flying. We could all march in there and she’d be gone in an instant. You sneak in, and you do what you have to.”

She took a breath and nodded. “Yes, sir.”