Sneak (22 page)

“I know,” Mrs. Phoenix said. “It’s all super high-frequency

now. Satellite transmitters and computer receivers. This here’s more like what they used . . . well . . . a long time ago. World War II, at least.”

Grandma scoffed. “What do you know about World War II?”

“A lot, actually. History’s always been an interest of mine.”

“Fine,” Grandma said. “Then where’d you get it? And what in

the world are you listening to?”

“I’m not listening to anything right now,” Mrs. Phoenix said.

“That’s the whole problem.”

Grandma picked up the sculpture, ignoring the strong sense

she had that Mrs. Phoenix very much disliked the idea of anyone touching the thing but herself. “I don’t understand.”

Mrs. Phoenix took her hands from her ears, pulling out the

earphones she’d been wearing and laying them down in front of

her. “Hailey made this,” she said. “Gave it to me the night she left. I didn’t recognize it at the time—thought it was just another sculpture of hers—but she told me I’d figure it out, and she was right.

When I got home, I found some earphones, hooked them up right

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here . . .” She pointed to the end of a wire sticking up from the sculpture’s surface. “Sonya. The thing works. And someone was

broadcasting. The Markless are broadcasting on shortwave sig-

nals! Makes sense, I guess—it’s the last place anyone besides them would bother to look. And you clearly don’t need money or anything high-tech in order to listen in.”

Grandma laid down the device and examined the earphones

now. “Well, so what are they saying? What’s the news?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Phoenix sighed. “The station went dead

the night Hailey left.”

“It hasn’t come on since?”

“That’s right.”

“And yet Hailey definitely knows about it. Listens to it. For

communication.”

“Of course. That’s why she made me this radio—so that I

could listen too. Except her plan failed. The thing’s useless now.”

“Useless?”
Grandma was standing now, one foot already out the door. “Dianne, don’t you see what this means?”

10

Project
Trumpet
contained. Acheron IMPS successful. Targets eliminated.

Details to follow on page
. Erin ran the message over in her head, having easily memorized everything about it, right down to the font type (Courier) and time stamp (07:16:32, August 16).

She needed to find that page. It was that simple. Erin
needed
to find a copy of that page.

She rode her rollerstick to the Umbrella and parked it by the

base of the spire.

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In
and
out
, Erin thought.
If
anyone
sees
you, you’re here to see Dad
.

And she swiped her Mark over the scanner by the elevator

doors.
Just
in
and
out
.

Except . . . the doors didn’t open.

Erin swiped her Mark again. The scanner beeped and flashed.

She swiped a third time. The scanner flashed red.

Her father’s transfer was already in effect. Erin was locked

out.

Erin cursed and thought for a moment about what to do

next. But she didn’t hesitate.
Never
hesitate
, she thought. And she unfolded her tablet.

It rang four times.

“I’m here to see you, Dad!” Erin said over the connection.

“But the building won’t let me in.” She frowned. “Can you open the door for me?”

“Erin, I’m busy,” Mr. Arbitor said. “Why can’t it wait until

I’m home?”

Erin frowned, the wheels in her head turning quickly. “Re-

member all those supplies I stole back in September?” she said.

Mr. Arbitor narrowed his eyes.

“Well, I brought them back! What’s left of them anyway . . .”

“You told me nothing was left.”

“I was lying,” Erin lied.

Mr. Arbitor shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “Might as well

salvage some amount of my respect around here.”

And with a swipe at his tablescreen, Mr. Arbitor opened the

elevator doors.

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Erin’s heart raced as she rode the elevator up the fifty- story ascent.

In
and
out
, she thought.
In
and
out, in and out .
. .

The elevator opened and she stepped into the main disk of

the Umbrella. Her father still stood by his desk at the other end of the room, busy with the cleanup of his space and distracted from noticing her entrance.

Erin didn’t think twice—she dodged quickly around to the

other side of the spire at the room’s center, slipped into the stairwell door, and ran up to the very top. She reached the platform leading to Mr. Cheswick’s office and swiped her Mark over its scanner just as she had the one at the Umbrella’s main entrance.

It went red. Predictably. And Mr. Cheswick’s face appeared

on the screen above it.

“Erin,” he said over the connection, not quite menacing, but

certainly not friendly. “What can I do for you?”

“I just came in to return the supplies I stole. You know, back in September,” Erin said. “I, uh, I put them back already, but . . . but I wanted to apologize to you personally before I left.”

“Fine,” Mr. Cheswick said. And like her father before him, the man buzzed Erin in. The platform began to rise.

Erin had to think fast. She had one shot at this. “I really am . . .

very sorry,” she said as she stepped off the platform and into the room. “Just . . . so sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. And I wanted . . . I wanted to tell you that. In person. Myself. Now that Dad and I are leaving.”

Erin tried to be casual about it as she scanned the room. There were no closets, no cabinets, no places to file paper of any sort.

There was only the desk, off to the side of the small glass room. So where was this top secret page of his? Where could Mr. Cheswick’s filing system possibly hide in an office like this?

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“Well, I appreciate that,” Mr. Cheswick said, fidgeting with

some thing beside his chair. And that’s when Erin saw it, the single drawer just under his desk.

Erin’s goals, then, were simple: She had to get into that drawer.

And Cheswick couldn’t know about it.

Suddenly, Erin frowned, hard. “You just . . . you can’t know

how difficult it’s been for Dad and me. Out here. By ourselves.”

Dead
puppies
, she thought.
Lost
kittens. Frown harder!

“And now he’s just . . . so sad . . .”

Iggy. Iggy being hit by rollerstick. Splat. On the ground. Iggy dying
.

“And I just . . . I don’t know what we’re gonna do . . . and it’s all my fault . . . and . . . and . . .” Erin sniffled.

There
you
go
, she thought.
Yes. Yes—that’s it!

She sniffled again.

“And . . . I just . . . I know I let you down . . . and I know I let Cylis down . . . and my mom . . . and . . . and . . . every-body . . .” A tear! She felt a tear in her eye!

That’s it, Erin! Keep it up!

“And now you hate me . . . and my dad hates me . . . and

e-e-everyb-b-b-body h-hates m-m-me . . .” And bingo. Erin was

crying.

The tears came fast now, and the hyperventilating, and the

hysteria. Mr. Cheswick looked on in horror. Never having had a child of his own, he had no idea how to handle a situation like this.

“Erin. Erin, please. It’s . . . it’s all right, Erin. Honestly. I’m—

I’m not mad at you. I . . . I promise! I don’t hate you!”

But Erin only cried harder. Blubbering now. Uncontrollably.

Inconsolably.

“Would you . . . would you like me to get your father?” Mr.

Cheswick said.

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“O-o-oh . . . kay . . . ,” Erin said between sobs.

“Just . . . uh . . . just take a seat here, all right? Just . . . just sit right here, and I’ll be right back.” Mr. Cheswick moved swiftly from his seat at the desk to the platform in the middle of the room.

Erin made sure to look up at him, to look him in the eyes, with her blotchy red face and the snot dripping from her nose. She made sure he got a nice, long look at that face before he descended.

And then she was alone.

Erin wiped the tears on her sleeve.

She had to work fast.

11

It was midafternoon, and Logan, Hailey, and Dane were already

exhausted.

“I’m not gonna make it ’til sundown,” Dane said. “I can’t walk much farther.”

Earlier in the day, the three of them had hopped off the freight train just where they said they would—at the track’s closest point to the Potomac River.

“Can’t help you find a boat,” the conductor had said. “But

from what I’ve heard, you just follow this ridge twenty miles or so.

There’ll be a valley after that—green and inviting, right next to a bend in the South Branch of the Potomac. Don’t know where or

how you’re likely to find a way to ride that bend, but fishers say it can be done.” And the conductor rode his train on toward the Gulf.

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“You can make it,” Hailey told Dane now. “If I can, you can.”

They’d been on their feet for hours, hiking the difficult ridge of the Appalachian terrain.

“’Least it’s warmer out here,” Logan said. “Beats the lake

weather in New Chicago; that’s for sure.”

Hailey shook her head, pulling a foot up out of her boot defi-

antly. “I didn’t have blisters like this in New Chicago.”

“Me neither,” Dane agreed.

It was nighttime when the three of them finally came upon the

valley.

“I’m never walking again,” Dane said, basking in the rushing

sound of the Potomac. But he was laughing. They had made it.

“I don’t get it, though,” Logan said. “It’s just . . . grass.”

But Hailey kept walking. She made it a hundred yards out

before she stopped and saw it, the sign sticking up from the ground.

It was wooden, waist height, propped up by two stakes in the dirt.

“Village of the Valley,” it read, and a little anchor adorned its face.

“Look here,” Hailey called. “Says this is . . . a village.”

Logan laughed. “Well, what is it? Invisible, then? There’s nothing here, Hailey.”

Hailey shrugged, looking very small against the wide field

backdrop, the mountains all around them, and the stars in the

clear, crisp sky.

But then something amazing happened. Behind Hailey, in the

middle of fifty acres of grass and dirt, the ground popped open, and a man poked his head out as if it weren’t anything out of the ordinary at all.

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“What’s the ruckus?” he barked, and Logan, Hailey, and

Dane all jumped what felt like fifteen feet into the air. “It’s nighttime! Don’t you kids have manners?”

Hailey held up both arms, displaying her empty wrist. “We’re

a little lost,” she said. “We didn’t, uh . . . we didn’t quite expect we’d be bothering anyone out here . . .”

“Well, didn’t you see the sign?” the man asked.

Dane laughed. “Yeah, but . . . dude . . . there’s no village

here . . .”

“No village? Well,
that’s
quite a thing to say!” And almost as soon as the man had spoken, all across the field, a dozen other people poked their heads up out of the ground.

12

Two hundred miles away, the Dust were developing blisters of

their own. They’d been walking east going on sixteen hours,

through street after forgotten street and who-knew-how-many

ghost towns, and they’d passed now into an area so isolated that even the ruins were far behind them. Since sundown, they’d

been hiking along an old, decrepit highway labeled “70” by the pre-Unity signs that had long since fallen to the ground. Every few miles, they’d pass a car by the side of the road, or sometimes right in the middle of it, abandoned, rusted, falling apart . . .

“We’re gonna die out here,” Eddie said.

“No we’re not,” Peck told him.

But two hours and four abandoned cars later, Eddie con-

tinued the thought. “I think we are. I think we’re all gonna die out here.”

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“You’re wrong,” Peck said.

“No, I’m definitely not,” Eddie mused, yet another hour later.

“Eddie! We
are
not
going
to
die
,” Peck insisted.

“But I’m not so sure . . . ,” Eddie said, well into their twentieth hour of walking.

This time Peck just shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “Then we die

free.”

No one talked after that.

On their twenty-second hour, the Dust saw it, the mansion in the distance with a light in every window.

At first, Blake thought he was seeing things. He was sure he’d begun hallucinating.

But when everyone else saw it too, it became clear: the man-

sion really was there. It was the biggest they’d ever seen. And the lights really were on.

Someone was home.

At the end of a long, winding driveway, there was a post where a mailbox used to be, a relic left over from pre-Unity days, when paper mail still existed.