Viral Nation (37 page)

“I need to learn how to swim first. There’s a pool at the Academy. And I have to find that book.”

“Jude can get the book.”

“I want to be part of the revolution, West.”

“You
are
part of it.”

“I have to go back. At least for a little while.”

For a minute Clover was sure she would have to defy her brother to go. He was going to tell her she couldn’t, and she’d leave anyway. They’d spend who knows how long apart and angry at each other. But then he said, “Revolution isn’t easy, is it?”

Clover shook her head.

West hugged her, and she let him. He smelled a lot less like goat
manure these days. “You know I’m going to ask Jude to watch out for you, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

West nodded slowly. “I’m going to be really angry if you get yourself killed.”

Clover thought it best not to point out that if that happened, his anger wouldn’t do either of them any good.

Time was sticky and slow, except when it moved like
it was greased. Work made the daylight hours fly by. They took an inventory of the entire property. West did his best to outline a plan not only for making the most of the current harvest, but also for the next season. And he lay awake every night, tossing and turning, thinking about his sister alone in the city, or Bennett going after Bridget again.

Two nights before the date they’d decided that Clover, Jude, and Bridget would go back to the city, West asked his sister to teach him how to drive.

“Someone will have to drive you to the gate.”

“You’re right. But if the guards recognize you, the whole plan is shot. I should teach Christopher.”

“I’m driving you to the gate. Don’t argue.”

She shot him a quick salute. “Fine, you’re the boss.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

Clover stuck out her tongue, then went back to pulling carrots out of the ground. Mango was asleep in the shade of the restaurant’s
awning. He didn’t have to work so much here, where Clover had far fewer triggers that he had to help her overcome. She was learning to just be a girl, without primary school bullies to whip her into a frenzy. And West thought Mango was learning how to be a regular dog.

He would miss her when she was gone, but it seemed even more of a tragedy that she’d lose the calm she’d taken on in the last couple of weeks.

“What, right now?” Clover asked when he didn’t go away.

“No time like the present.”

She stood up, wiped her hands on the back of her jeans, and walked with him to the main house, where she could wash up and grab the keys.

“Do you ever feel like you’re in some kind of alternate universe?” Clover asked him when she came back. “Or on a different planet, maybe?”

“You’ve been reading too much science fiction,” he said, but he knew what she meant.

Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, it seemed like someone had stripped him of a protective layer. All the lies he thought were the truth had buffered him. He couldn’t go back to what he was just a couple of weeks ago, even if the opportunity smacked him upside the head.

“Put the key in there,” Clover said, pointing to a spot under the steering wheel once they were in the van. “Good, now put your right foot on the right-side pedal, just a little, and turn the key.”

The engine roared to life, and West’s foot came down harder on the pedal before he could stop it. The noise was like a living thing, and he took his foot off altogether, which caused the engine to stall.

“Well, don’t do that,” Clover said.

Driving was both more difficult and much easier than he had anticipated. His first lesson was on the wide, winding highway leading away from the ranch. The pedals were delicate; if he stepped
too hard on either the gas or the brake, he sent both of them flying against the back of their seats or toward the windshield until the seat belts tightened and choked them. But the transmission was automatic and once he put the van in gear, he only had to focus on learning how to manage speed and the wheel.

He’d driven the tractors at work a few times, and it wasn’t too different. The most difficult part was knowing he had to learn fast. Fuel was too precious for him to waste taking his time with this.

“Turn the wheel the way you want the tires to go,” Clover said. “Don’t drive too fast. Just turn gently, a little at a time…That’s it. See how it works? If you turn the wheel to the right, the van will go to the right. Don’t turn too hard.”

Clover loved driving. West thought he liked his feet on the ground better. Still, he made it back to the ranch, parked, and pocketed the keys as he got out of the van.

Jude held up one of Waverly’s journals. “Frank and
Melissa bring corn oil into the biofuel plant just outside the Sacramento city walls. Apparently, he siphons off just enough to give Waverly to keep the van and the generators going.”

“Did he put down how he turns it into fuel?” Christopher asked.

“Not that I’ve found, but there are books.”

Christopher got up and went to the shelves, filled with books West knew he couldn’t read. Or he couldn’t very well. They’d have to take care of that. Soon.

“I can probably figure it out,” Christopher said.

West looked around the room. When Jude, Clover, and Bridget left, he’d be here with Christopher, Phire and Emmy, and Marta. He was the only one of them who could read or write. If something happened to him, they’d be lost.

“We start reading lessons tomorrow,” he said. Christopher
looked uncomfortable, but nodded. “Not just for you. Every Freak needs to know how to read and write.”

Marta darted her blue gaze to Christopher. She didn’t respond, but West was pretty sure if Christopher was into it, she wouldn’t fight it either.

“Me, too?” Emmy asked.

Jude tugged on her braid. “You especially.”

“We have a lot to do in the next few days,” Phire said. “Maybe that should wait.”

West shook his head. “After dinner tomorrow, just for an hour.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Jude said. Something about his posture caused West to pay attention. “I think I know how I can get back into the city.”

“How?” Clover asked.

“There’s another train tomorrow night. Remember, to bring more oil?”

Clover hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

“I think Frank and Melissa can sneak me in. Melissa told me there’s a truck at the stop for them to drive into the city when they arrive with a shipment.”

West waited for Clover to tell Jude what a bad idea that was. When she didn’t, he said, “Don’t you think that someone will notice an extra person?”

“That’s why I said
sneak
.”

“What if you get caught?” Clover asked.

Jude ran a hand over his mouth and turned to look at her. “I’ll talk to Frank and Melissa about it, at least. They’ll know if there’s a way.”

“But what if you do get caught?” Clover’s voice rose an octave, and West saw the signs of an impending meltdown. “Then what? Then what if I get into the city and you’re not there?”

“Okay,” West said. “Breathe, Clover. Let’s wait until tomorrow,
when we can talk to Frank and Melissa before you get yourself all worked up.”

“I’m not worked up!” She stalked out of the big house.

West sighed. He was so tired. More tired than he could ever remember being. Finding a rhythm for the farm wasn’t difficult. This was one of the busiest times, with the harvest starting to come in. It was all the rest that threatened to overwhelm him. What were they supposed to do out here, besides run the farm? Would others come? Were the people who wrote the letters expecting something of them?

“I’ll go after her,” Jude said.

West let him. It was a sign of his exhaustion that he was grateful not to have to deal with Clover’s meltdown on his own.

Jude calmed Clover down, and the evening proceeded
without any more drama. As tired as West had been all day, when he finally lay down to sleep, his brain wouldn’t shut down. The idea of sending Clover and Bridget into the city alone made him sick.

There had to be something he could do. Staying on the ranch while Clover and Bridget went back to an uncertain future in the city felt so wrong.

It took a couple of hours of tossing and turning for the solution to hit him square in the gut. He put on his pants, with the keys to the van still in the pocket. He eased past the sleeping bodies of his friends, then went outside.

Jude sat on the porch, leaning back in his chair so that only the back two legs teetered on the ground. He looked up from the notebook he read by flashlight. “What’s up?”

West was tempted to tell Jude he was going to the bathroom. That would be a useless lie, though, because Jude would hear the
van start. And even if he didn’t, he’d come looking for West when he didn’t come back.

“I’m going for a drive,” he finally said.

“Why?” West didn’t answer right away, and Jude didn’t back down. “Joyrides aren’t a good use of our fuel.”

West shifted his position, squaring his shoulders. “Don’t try to stop me.”

Jude didn’t move and he didn’t raise his voice when he said, “We’re going to miss that van if you don’t come back.”

“I’ll come back.”

“What happened to staying in pairs?”

West took a deep breath. “You’re on duty.”

“Take Christopher.”

West knew his resistance came from guilt. He shouldn’t be anywhere near the gate. But he had to talk to Isaiah. He trusted Jude and Christopher, but he’d known Isaiah his whole life and he wasn’t sending his sister, or Bridget, back into the city without talking to his friend first. Or at least trying to.

“Your friend’s a guard,” Jude said, reading his mind. “Are you sure his loyalty hasn’t been trained out of him?”

“How did you know?”

Jude put his book down. “I’ve been waiting for it. Makes sense you’d try to talk to him, and there’s not much else you’d need to sneak out in the middle of the night for.”

West had to trust this kid with his sister and his girl. He guessed he’d better start now. “We need as many allies as we can get. Isaiah is one of the good guys.”

“He’s been a guard for three years. And you left the city. You might not know him now as well as you think you do.”

“I know he tried to warn Clover.”

Jude didn’t say anything to that. West wished he weren’t at least possibly right. Isaiah might believe that he was doing the right
thing, even protecting Clover and Bridget, if he took West into custody. “I have to talk to him. I have to go now, so that he’ll think I’m dead when Clover and Bridget say I am. I won’t tell him anything he won’t find out anyway—that Clover and Bridget have been outside the city walls all this time. That they’re coming back and need protection.”

“I’ll take care of Clover,” Jude said.

“And who will take care of you?”

“You think working a hoe and living in the neighborhoods without enough rations was hard?” Jude asked, his voice low and calm. “I said I’ll take care of her and I will.”

West was losing his baby sister. Right here, on this porch. He hoped Jude was as tough as he thought he was. “I’m still going. You’re the one who keeps saying change starts on the inside.”

“You really believe this guy is a Freak?”

“He tried to warn us. Twice,” West said. “He deserves the chance.”

He didn’t tell Jude that he had a hunting knife in his back pocket. Or that the one question that haunted him was what would happen to Clover and Bridget if Isaiah wasn’t part of the revolution after all. If he wasn’t a Freak.

Jude nodded. Maybe deciding, like West had, that they had no choice but to learn to trust each other. “Take Christopher with you or I’ll have the whole house up.”