Strike

For Merle, who taught me that hugging a fat dog always helps

The thing about faking your own death is that it kills a little part of you while setting everything else free. It would feel great if not for the blood under my fingernails and the knowledge that I have nowhere to go. Everything I did, I did for my mom, and I have no way of knowing if they killed her anyway. My dad could be dead too, for all I know. I haven't seen him since he walked out when I was a little kid. All I want to do is go home, and I can never go home. My entire world is in this car: me, Wyatt, my dog, Matty, the clothes in my backpack, and the laptops I took from a double agent's burning trailer.

He told me the password before he died. He wanted me to help take down Valor, the bank that now controls the government and sent me out on a killing spree. So I guess I should use it.

I type “Adelaide,” and a green glow fills the car as the laptop flickers to life.

“What is that, the Matrix?” Wyatt asks.

He's driving too fast, but I wish it were faster. The green lights flash over the dark interior of his old Lexus, and when I glance at him, the green dances over his face, leaving his eyes black slits. It's hard to see on this curving country road, and I'm grateful for every second that passes without Hummer lights blinding us from behind or the thump of helicopter blades overhead. Because soon Valor will know what we did. And they'll come after us.

I sigh. “You're such a nerd. And I don't know. The green numbers are moving too fast.”

I hit return a few times, hoping something will happen, but nothing does.

“You look good in green. Like the Hulk,” I say quietly, so he knows I didn't mean the nerd thing and so he knows I'm not still in shock.

At least not on the surface.

The numbers on the screen slow and stop, but even frozen they make no sense. There are no windows, no icons, no white background with discernible navigation. Not even that tooly little paper clip on my mom's old Dell.
It looks like you're trying to hack into a conspiracy network. Want some tips?
Just a black screen with rows and rows of green nonsense, ending in a blinking cursor.

“It's code,” Wyatt says, and the tires eat gravel as he swerves back into our lane. My heart stutters, but will it ever stop stuttering?

“No shit, Mario. Keep driving.”

He slows and corrects the car, flashing his brights in the shadowy spots where there aren't any streetlights. Deer eyes gleam green before their white tails bounce back into the darkness, and my heart can't speed up any more when Wyatt slams on the brakes because it's already going full tilt. Crashing the car over a deer in the middle of nowhere after all I've done would be an ironic end to my story. I've killed nearly a dozen people in the past few days, and now I have no idea where we're going, how we'll live, where I'll manage to get clean underwear when this pack of cheap white ones from Walmart runs out.

I thought the laptops would . . . I don't know. Have all the answers? Maybe a file labeled
VALOR PLANS
or
WHY I PRETENDED TO BE A VALOR MURDERBOT AND THEN HID IN AN OLD SINGLE-WIDE
or something from Alistair that explained what we're fighting and why we were chosen. Why I was chosen. I want to swing by my old neighborhood so bad, but I know we can't. I just have to hope Wyatt has another hiding place for us tonight, somewhere we can go and sleep off the adrenaline and drink another milk shake.

Except—shit. He can't use his Valor credit card anymore. They can track us. Every time it slides through a machine, they'll get a little
ping
. And I'm almost out of cash. I'll barely be able to cover his
four-hamburger minimum tonight. I'm used to being poor but not completely bankrupt, and it's easy to see how the entire country got so accustomed to using credit cards. I'd give anything for comfort tonight, even if it meant paying it back double next month. I can't imagine living through the next week, so maybe the lack of cash won't matter. It's not like we can get jobs. No one can know who we are, or Valor will kill us—and maybe everyone around us too. That seems to be how they work.

We're on a road I drive every day, and yet suddenly I'm a million miles from home, and I slam the laptop closed to keep the torrent of tears from electrocuting my lap. All this week, and I've barely cried. All that blood, all those eyes going flat. Explosions, fire, bullets, stitches, fights with Wyatt, running and running and running. I came within inches of being shot tonight. Inches. By this boy I've known only a few days but who I trusted enough to almost shoot me, even though I killed his dad. And—I'm so soft inside, so mushed up and broken and trampled. I push the laptops onto the floorboard, pull up my knees, and uglycry so hard that Wyatt's music is almost drowned out. In the backseat, Matty whines in solidarity, her tail thumping.

The car slows, and Wyatt reaches for me.

“Keep driving,” I say. “I'll keep crying. No big deal.”

“That's a band, you know. From Georgia.”

I stare at him, eyes hot and wet. “What?”

“Drivin' n' Cryin'. It's a band. They do ‘Honeysuckle Blue.' ”

“Jesus, Wyatt. How does that even matter?”

“Uh. I'm driving. You're crying. This blows? I don't know. I'm just . . . It's so surreal, right? Where are we even going? We never discussed that part.”

I fit each eye into a knee and press hard to keep from flying apart. “Take us to another one of your ex-druggie hangouts. Somewhere with no lights, where the car will be hidden, where no one would ever think about looking for either of us. Somewhere with milk shakes and money trees and day-long mosh pits. I don't care anymore.”

Wyatt puts on his blinker and turns onto the main highway, four lanes buzzing with late dinnertime traffic. Calm as a damn Buddha statue, he says, “Yes, you do. You say that, but you do care. That's what makes you different. You care, but you keep going anyway.”

My crying falls off after that. He's right.

I'm not surprised when he turns in to the McDonald's, but I am surprised when he pulls a twenty out of his backpack. “Get whatever you need. Dad's emergency fund. Not like he's going to need it, right?”

I wince and mutter, “Milk shake.”

I wish we still had the mail truck with the bed in back so that I could slither between the seats and lie on the hard bed beside Matty. It's easier to cry when Wyatt's not looking at me, when I'm not this
broken object on display. He still thinks he can fix things, fix me, somehow. But now the backseat holds an aquarium full of snake and a big black dog who'd love nothing more than to lick all the tears off my face. I don't even have a sweater to wrap up in or yarn to knit a new one. In all the world, I have nothing but my dead uncle's dog and this messed-up boy who has no business caring about me because I'm the one who killed his dad.

And then he buys me three milk shakes, one in each flavor, and it's okay again.

For now.

I'm finishing up the vanilla milk shake when Wyatt turns the car down a gravel road. Branches brush the roof, and Matty springs up from the floorboard and sniffs the air.

“Where are we?” I ask.

Wyatt swallows half a cheeseburger and grins. “Just another place Mikey and I used to hang. Land that the county bought to make a park and then ran out of money.”

A
NO TRESPASSING
sign flashes past, filled with bullet holes.

“Is it safe?”

Wyatt shrugs. “Is anything now?”

I go quiet as he navigates the overgrown road. Asphalt fades in and out. Sometimes it's just two bumpy red-dirt ruts, and I have to put my milk shake down so my teeth don't clack. Matty's pressed to
the window, panting like crazy. Monty the python remains creepy and still. The lights flash over a half-blackened concrete block that might've once been a crappy apartment in the middle of the forest. Ancient barns and rusted cars pop out of the trees like sleeping dinosaurs caught in the headlights. Finally, Wyatt eases his car in between an old boat and a topless Cadillac and parks. When I squeeze out and look back, stretching until my fists brush the branches, his car has a sort of camouflage. Funny how I hadn't noticed the worn-off paint on its hood until now.

I open the back door, and Matty bounds out of the car as if she's forgotten the bullet wound in her neck and starts sniffing around. The big shadow looming over us is a huge, creepy house, one story and all spread out like they made them when my mom was a kid, before people realized that land was a finite sort of thing. Wyatt rummages in the trunk and hands me a flashlight as he hefts his backpack and a sleeping bag over his shoulder.

“Go ahead. Ignore the signs. The key is under the mat.”

I stare up at the house. It looks haunted. “Seriously?”

“Unless you want to sleep in the car with Monty. He loves warm snuggles.”

With a shiver, I grab the fast food out of the front and hurry to the house as if Valor guys are stalking us through the woods. We're in a clearing, and overhead the stars are as glittery as broken glass. The moon is higher and smaller than it was when I walked up
to Wyatt's door in my postal service uniform just a few hours ago, mostly expecting to get shot, whether by accident or on purpose. I feel like part of me stayed buried with my Valor camera, under my friend Amber's body in Wyatt's front yard. The moon watched me then, and it watches me now, distant and cold as a frowning judge robed in black. The moon knows I walked away alive, and by now surely the Valor suits have turned Amber over and realized she's not me. The question is: Do they care enough to hunt me down?

It would be beautiful out here if I weren't terrified and shivering, if I weren't constantly expecting to be shot. When Matty's tongue slops over my hand and the oil-spattered bags, I go for the key and wrestle the door open. The sign to the right says
DANGER: ASBESTOS
. So that's promising.

The door creaks, and I swing the flashlight around. Matty rushes past me and starts sniffing the floor. It looks like this place got burgled during an earthquake in the sixties and everything got left on the ground to rot. The smell is musty with an overlay of moss and the faintest sprinkle of skunk, and I wish to hell Wyatt hadn't already exhausted his other, nicer hideouts. He's so close behind me that I can smell his deodorant.

“You pick the best hotels,” I say.

“Five stars. You're going to love the indoor pool.”