Savage Drift

^{CHAPTER THIRTY} JOSIE

I have to tell the kids.

That is the first thing.

The second thing? I don’t know what the second thing is. Get sent away for testing, I suppose.

The breakfast bell had rung while I was in the bathroom, while Mario was dying.

Now everyone is milling out, headed to Plaza 900.

“Lori!” I cry. “Lori, where are you?”

I try to push my way back up the stairs, but then I change my mind and go with the crowd. Maybe they are in the courtyard already.

“Lori!” I yell. Where are they?

Then I see Carlo.

He is with another Union Man and they both see me and smile.

The people file past me as I freeze.

I glance behind me and see two more of them closing in. One of them has a chain.

The part of my brain wired for survival takes over and I run straight for Carlo. I see a flash of surprise on his face. I dodge through the people streaming toward breakfast, gaining speed and momentum and then, right as I get close to Carlo, I duck my head and shoulders and tackle a large man in front of me, sending him crashing into the two Union Men.

I veer in the other direction.

Toward Rollins and the clinic.

Away from the crowd I run free and fast.

I hear the Union Men following me and then a sweet sound.

“Hey!” a guard calls to them. “Breakfast’s this way.”

It is my guard. My friend from before.

“That girl’s running away!” Carlo protests.

“Don’t worry about her, just worry about yourself!”

So maybe there is one guard who isn’t in the palm of the Union Men.

I burst back into Rollins. I pound on the clinic door, knowing Dr. Neman will be furious.

“Have you lost your mind?” she screeches. But she lets me push past her into the entry room.

Dr. Quarropas emerges from the back.

“Hey. You!” He recognizes me. “We… we had to discharge your friend. Venger insisted—”

“You have to send me for testing,” I say, my lungs screaming from my sprint. My heart beating hard and fast. “I was exposed for a long time. I’ll be good to study.”

I can’t catch my breath. “I’ll do whatever they say. Send me away.”

“This is the second time today this girl has caused a major disturbance. I’m calling the guards—”

She picks up a house phone.

“There’s no way I’d send a minor to USAMRIID!” Quarropas objects, focusing on me. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“The Union Men are going to kill me. I’m the one who beat up that kid in there.” I gesture to the back room.

“Nobody’s going to kill anyone,” he says kindly. “Look, we have meds that can help you. Let me help you.”

“There’s only one way for you to help me,” I beg. “Send me away for testing, please!”

“There’s a girl here. We need assistance,” Dr. Neman is saying on the phone.

“You’re not going to help me?” I ask him.

“I’m not going to send you for medical testing,” he says.

I back away.

Fine.

Maybe Venger will send me. He’d threatened me with it.

“Mario died, by the way,” I tell the doctors, my anger getting the better of me. “He died on the floor of a bathroom. So thanks for nothing.”

“Venger!” I shout as I arrive at the courtyard. “Venger, where are you? Come and get me, you stupid, freakin’ bully. You son of a pig! Come and get me!”

I walk over to the fence.

There are no reporters there—maybe the soldiers had made them all clear out for good. So much for Lori’s plan.

“Venger, where are you?”

Excellence and Responsibility are eating now. The courtyard is empty.

I dig my fingers into the chain-link fence and rattle it.

There is a car parked a few feet past the second gate. A minivan, of all things.

Over my shoulder, I see Carlo and two of his thugs slip out of Plaza 900, heading for me. One of them is big, the other is puny.

“VENGER!” I shout.

Where is he? Where are the stupid guards when you actually want them?

Then I hear, “Josie?”

A voice from beyond the fences.

I look.

“Josie Miller? Is that you?”

And I see.

A skinny man in a strange dark-brown bodysuit of some kind.

It is all one piece, with a belt built on. It is some kind of light protective suit.

Then I see the person push his hair out of his eyes.

I know the tilt of his head—the straight posture.

I know the brown hair, brown tanned face.

Even across the distance of two chain-link fences.

It is Niko.

“Niko?!” I shout.

“Josie! Josie! I can’t believe it.”

My Niko. He is pressed up against the outside fence. He has his fingers through the grill.

It is him. It is.

“NIKO! How did you find me?” I shout.

“The paper! Your picture was in the paper!”

“I got your note,” I say. I find I am crying. “I was going to get to you. Mario was helping me—”

A sharp jang of pain as my head is jerked back.

Carlo has me by the hair.

“Who’s that, Josie? Who’s your friend?” he asks, as if he is asking me to be introduced to someone at a party.

He pulls my head back and pushes down so that I sink to my knees. The skin on my knees screams and I feel the scabs slit open.

“Leave her alone!” Niko shouts.

“Or what, spaceman?” says one of the Union Men.

The other one snorts, “Spaceman!”

“Leave her be!” Niko shouts.

He starts to scale the fence.

“Don’t!” I scream. “They’ll shoot you!”

The guards had shot people trying to rescue prisoners. But I don’t get to explain because Carlo punches me in the face.

It’s hard to explain the counterbalance of rage—but as the blow registers, I know it hurts, but I can’t feel it at all because my blood is amped up now, adrenaline flowing, and I am ready to kill him.

He leans in low. “We are going to take you to our suite now. So you’d better say good-bye to your friend.”

“Somebody help!” Niko calls. He paces back and forth.

He can’t believe that no one is coming to help me.

Carlo digs his fingers into my hair, as if to remind me I am in his control. I fight to think.

Can I kill the three men and somehow get over the fence?

But then I hear the voices of the kids.

They are pleading.

They are pleading with Venger, trying to keep up with him as he strides our way.

“Please,” Lori says, “she was only trying to defend me and they’re going to kill her!”

The kids step up to us in a cacophony of pleading and begging.

“Shut up!” Venger says. Then he makes a gesture to Carlo like What the heck? “Carlo, you seem to have forgotten our agreement.”

“I apologize, Mr. Venger. We were just leaving.”

“Those men are beating her!” Niko shouts. “She needs help!”

Venger ignores him.

“I know she put two of yours in the clinic. She’s been trouble from day one. But if you’re gonna take her, TAKE HER. Don’t stand here with her in the light of day where the press can see.” Venger gestures toward Niko.

“Again, my apologies,” Carlo says.

Now people start spilling out of Plaza 900. Breakfast is over.

Some of them must have seen what is happening.

Aidan is pulling on Carlo’s arm.

“Please don’t hurt Josie,” Aidan pleads to Carlo. “It’s all my fault. Please, you can have all my food! Every day! And my sugars!”

The short Union Man pulls Aidan off and shoves him away and he falls on his backside.

I look at Aidan and suddenly, with a wrench, I realize I love that little scrappy kid.

“You leave that girl alone,” comes a man’s voice from behind us.

The people from the mess hall are coming close.

“Venger, this is too much,” someone else calls. “Let that girl alone!”

A chorus of yeahs goes up.

“Josie!” Niko calls.

I look, see him fumbling with his pack.

There is this funny, tinny whistle.

“Josie!” He gets out some kind of mask with a visor and is attaching it to the suit.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Venger says through his teeth to Carlo. He gestures to the mob.

“No worries.” Carlo jerks me toward Excellence. “We’ll just be on our way…”

And then Heather screams.

I look where she is looking.

I see Niko is pointing that same direction.

From the empty quad across the street there is some kind of a dust cloud coming. It doesn’t float, the way you’d think it might—it slinks. It seems to be a cloud with weight to it—lifting and then settling again, like something alive and restless.

And then I smell it.

The compounds hit my nose and it is like coming home.

Black grit in my eyes and mouth.

A key in a lock.

One second, everything is dull and gray and then the world is on fire—everything I look at is brilliant and beautiful.

The grit is the compounds and it washes away my weakness.

The drifts go through the people in the camp like a ripple.

Voices rise in an instant chorus of rage and terror.

The desire to kill is a lightning bolt and I am full of its charge.

Venger.

Face pale with terror, he fumbles for his gun.

His hand is shaking.

He will be the first one I’ll kill.

Only Carlo and the other two Union Men had set on him already and are dragging him to the ground.

“JOSIE!” comes a muffled voice, over the joyous background noises of glass breaking and doors pulled off their hinges and bones snapping.

From a million miles away I see Niko in his suit.

No, no. I need to kill and Venger deserves it.

Venger has dropped his gun and is scrambling for it in the dirt.

Carlo and the short man are on him but I dive into the fight. A few blows to the head. Fighting. Freedom. Heaven. I grab Venger’s head and he begs for mercy but my blood demands he die and I say, “Shhhhhh,” and I brace my feet on his shoulders to pull his head off but I see the light is gone, his eyes are dead, and I see Carlo has punched his hand into Venger’s chest and is pulling out organs by the fistful.

The people who’d spilled out of the dining hall are now attacking one another. Bodies twisting and fighting and bleeding everywhere and the screaming.

I breathe in.

The colors are so beautiful.

Sky blue and grit gray and blood and brain.

I am finally living again.

Carlo, Carlo.

Carlo next then.

He still has his hands in Venger’s abdomen so I pick up Venger’s gun and hit him on the head with it.

I fell him and pound one-two-three-four-five. Carlo’s skull, caving in under my gun hammer. Joy in my heart.

I turn to take the other Union Men down. They are fighting each other.

Then my brain says: WAIT.

And I see a guard at the gate, fumbling with his keys.

He gets it open and goes running for the second gate.

And Niko is there.

My brain wants me to pay attention to that.

My hands want a throat to squeeze.

The short man is biting some other man on the leg. I grab him up by the neck and snap, I twist his head to the side.

THINK.

My brain talking to me again and I bring my bloody hands up to my head and squeeze it.

The thoughts are painful to me.

I want to rage with the others. What a party it is.

SEE THEM—my brain makes me look.

A woman grabs me by the waist and I push her down.

My brain is winning.

LOOK and I see it: my kids.

My kids are fighting.

Lori is on Freddy, and Aidan is attacking a man alongside Heather. The man swipes at Heather and she falls to the ground. Hits her head and isn’t moving and then Aidan, mouth bloody, like a newborn vampire, turns on Heather, on his own almost-sister, and starts to attack her.

NO. This is wrong.

I look back at the fence.

Niko is at the second gate. Has his hands stuck through and is trying to help the guard to unlock it.

One step. Two steps. To the kids.

My brain can make my body OBEY.

I grab Aidan by the shoulder and wrench him off Heather. He sinks his teeth into my hand.

Can’t feel it.

I drag them toward the other two.

“LORI!” I shout.

She is sitting on Freddy, clawing at him.

“STOP! STOP!” I shout.

She looks up at me for a second.

Then a woman, an older woman, attacks Lori.

Freddy lays gasping and I haul Heather up, onto my shoulder.

“FREDDY, COME!” I shout.

He lays there, panting, looking at me like I am speaking Russian.

Heather on my shoulder, I haul Aidan toward the gate.

I will get them out.

Yes.

Then I will go back and get Lori and Freddy and we’ll be free.

Now I am fully in control, riding the rage like a surfer, using its power to fuel my escape.

I can hear Niko’s heart praying for me to hurry.

“I’m coming,” I whisper to him in my own heart. “I’m coming.”

I step over the bodies of the dead and dying and brawling. I slip a little, in their blood and spilt organs.

I see Dr. Quarropas and Dr. Neman and some guards coming from the direction of Rollins. They burst into the courtyard, spewing darts from machine guns.

The doctors are headed for the gate, shooting down anyone in their way.

But at the gate, Os are there. Two teenagers attacking the guard. Others attacking the teenagers.

Niko is trying to get the keys, which lie just out of his reach through the fence.

“Almost there,” I tell Niko inside my heart and then I see Dr. Quarropas notice me.

I have Heather on my shoulder and I am dragging Aidan. I am going to make it to the gate.

And then Dr. Quarropas catches my eye. I don’t know what he is trying to tell me before he raises up his gun and mows me down.