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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
he coop wasn’t much smaller than the Basement. The birds were sleeping and hardly made a sound as I laid the heavy plastic on the floor and helped Becky down. I folded the plastic back over her like a taco, and then lay next to her, my arms around her to keep her warm. I listened to her breathing as she fell asleep.

The night was silent, and I strained at that silence, terrified of hearing a sound. A deer or a raccoon or another robot could stumble upon us while we slept, and there would be nothing I could do. We knew the chickens and cows were real—Birdman checked the cows the same way he checked the rest of us, and the chickens laid real eggs, and Jane said they’d occasionally cook one.

There wasn’t much I could do if someone found us anyway. I had no weapons. Becky still carried Ms. Vaughn’s Taser in the pocket of her coat, but it had already been fired and couldn’t help us anymore. The hatchet I’d used on Iceman was back up in the Basement.

On the other hand, maybe Maxfield knew exactly where we were, and how sick Becky was, and they didn’t care. None of the dupes were active anymore, so it wasn’t like there was a high demand for teenagers with implants in their heads. Maybe they were waiting for us to kill ourselves here in the town before they started anything new.

I was cold. My face stung. Frostbite was a real possibility, and I didn’t know what to do to stop it. I fiddled with the hood of Becky’s coat, pressing it down over her face as much as I could. It would have to do.

When the sun finally started to come up, I bent over Becky and checked her face, and I was relieved to see there was no frostbite. Her nose, mouth, and chin looked sunburned—the skin rough and splotched with red—and her lips were chapped and cracked, but it could have been a lot worse.

I felt some of the sting of frost burn on my face, but I had been better off than Becky. I was able to nestle my face into the back of her hood while she slept.

There was a tiny tap on the plywood door of the coop.

“Hey, Fish.”

I froze.

“Fish,” the voice said again. “It’s me. Mason.”

Slowly I peeked out the door. Mason was crouched beside the coop. He was alone.

“Hey,” I said, not moving.

“Cold night?”

“We’re okay.”

I didn’t like that he knew where we were, even if this was all perfectly innocent. If Mason had seen us, who else had?

“Got a minute?” he asked.

He was standing by himself, his coat off, and wearing only a flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up. He looked tired.

“What’s up?” I asked as I stepped out of the coop and scanned the tree line.

“I know what they did last night,” he said. “It’s not right, man.”

I thought for a moment. “Which of the not-right things do you mean? There were a lot.”

“I mean about the fight,” he said. He paused, looking past me, and then off toward the horizon and the rising sun. “Is she okay?”

“Great.”

“I’m sorry, Fish.”

I stared back at him, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s not right,” he said again.

Becky stirred, moving in her sleep and softly moaning at the pain in her arm. I closed the door and motioned for him to keep his voice down.

Mason was older than his dupe had looked. A little stockier, and he needed a shave. So did I.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said, still staring at the coop like he could see Becky through the wood. “At the fence.”

I shook my head. “We don’t need to talk about it.” I wasn’t trying to spare his feelings—I just didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to hate him, but I did.

“I need to know,” Mason said, finally looking at me. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “You didn’t do anything.”

“What did my dupe do?”

I ran my hands over my face and looked up at the brightening sky.

“You hit her,” I said. “That’s it. You chased us, and you hit her, and she fell.”

“Hitting someone doesn’t make them that sick.”

“What do you care?” I said, suddenly angry. I took another step toward him. “What’s it to you? You popped. The dupe wasn’t taking orders from you.”

“I care because it’s important,” he said. “I know what she … what she means to you.”

I raised an eyebrow.
I
didn’t even know what she meant to me. “Really? And what is that?”

Mason exhaled, frustrated. “What’s your problem?”

“My problem? Someone got murdered last night, and then they tried to … Well, we’re prisoners here, and Becky’s sick, and you want to stand around and talk about feelings. You know what she means to me? She told me that she trusted me. No one trusts me—no one should, as you can see by all the people who got killed at the fence, and the next day, and last night, and probably tomorrow.”

He started to speak, but I cut him off.

“Becky trusted me to get everyone out of the school, and now look at her. I need to make good on that trust.
That’s
what she means to me. And I don’t need you to come around here trying to apologize or whatever it is you’re doing.”

“But it’s my fault,” he said. “If she hadn’t gotten hurt, you would have escaped.”

I shook my head and turned back to the coop. “Too late for that.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not too late.”

I wanted to crawl back under that plastic and put my arms around her and wish we were somewhere else.

“They’ll come take Isaiah’s body,” he said, speaking with more urgency. “They always do when someone dies, because they want the implant back.”

I was going to have to hide—going to have to find a better place for Becky to recover. But I could tell that wasn’t what Mason was thinking about.

“So what?”

“I’m going to help you get out,” he said.

“Really.”

“Yes, really. Last night those guys left the body out in the road, but I moved it. It’s in the stream.”

I glanced over at the ford, but we were too far away to see anything. “Why?”

He spoke nervously, but with a glimmer of enthusiasm. Whatever he’d done, he was proud. “It’s a trap. I got the idea about it the day you got here and Harvard hauled you into the forest. This is the first time we’ve had the bait to make it work.”

“What did you do?”

“The body’s in the stream, under some brush that overhangs the water. Iceman’s going to have to climb in, jostle those branches. I ran some cables from the washroom lights, frayed them. I worked on it all night. He fights through the branches, the cable falls into the water, he’s toast.”

“Toast?”

“He’s a robot, right? I bet he can still be electrocuted. Pop some circuits.”

I paused and then gave a tired smile. “That’s how we got you. Your dupe, I mean. Becky hit you with a Taser.”

Mason looked uncomfortable, but laughed. “Then it works.”

“What good does it do to fry him, though?” I asked. “There are more guards than him.”

“He comes in the truck,” Mason said. “He gets zapped; you take the truck and burn rubber to the highway.”

I paused. It wasn’t a bad plan. I peered off where the dirt road disappeared down into the stream. “Do we know where that road goes?”

“It has to connect somewhere,” he said. “It’s not like they built the truck here. Listen, it’s getting light and he could come anytime.”

“Becky can’t go,” I said. “She couldn’t get to the truck fast enough.”

“I’ll take care of her here,” Mason said. “We’ll put her back in the Basement.”

I felt panic boiling up inside of me. “I don’t trust Birdman. Not anymore.”

“Then Shelly.”

“I have to take care of her,” I insisted.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Now come on. I’ve got to get away from here so I’m not disabled right next to her.”

He started walking backward down the road to the stream.

This was too much, too soon. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t go without Becky.

“Do they have any other trucks?”

“What?”

“Do they have any other trucks?” I repeated. “How long will it take for backup to get here?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen three. There’s the flatbed they brought the lumber on, and two pickups, one white and one red. And we know there’re at least four four-wheelers.”

“So I could be driving back straight toward them, and they’ll have two trucks. They could chase me, or block the road.”

Mason shrugged. “You’ll have to be better than them.”

I looked at the road again. I’d bounced through foster care with poor families all my life; aside from driver’s ed, I could probably count the number of times I’d driven a car on one hand. I’d never driven a truck.

“Do you know if it’s a stick?”

He shook his head. “Don’t tell me you can’t drive.”

“I can drive a little.”

“You have to do this.”

We were halfway down the road, and I turned to look at the coop. Maybe I could hide there with her and get her to the truck. But how would I know when Iceman got zapped? And the bigger problem: what if he parked on the wrong side of the stream? I’d have to pass him, through the stream, to get to the truck.

Maybe I could bring Becky with me now, across the field, and we could hide in the fort and wait.

The warning bell rang, breaking the early morning silence of the town.

We were running out of time.

I turned back to Mason, but he was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t have made it all the way back to the fort, and he couldn’t be in the trees.

No, he was on the ground, face-first in the dirt.

Dread seized my whole body, pain running through my chest like a heart attack. I turned and ran.

They were coming. I could hear the truck now, its old unmaintained engine rattling through the trees.

Becky’s head was sticking out the low coop door, watching me in confusion. She waved her arms frantically, urging me to go faster.

I stumbled with almost every step, tripping on the uneven ground, the knots of grass. I felt like the adrenaline and panic coursing through my veins were making me drunk, like I didn’t know how to run anymore.

And then I was inside, and Becky and I dropped to the floor, collapsing onto the plastic.

I scrambled to look at the road, the coop entrance only open a crack.

I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the engine. It sounded like it had stopped on the other side of the stream.

Becky pushed the door open.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing her coat.

“What?”

“Mason set a trap,” I said.

She started to get up. “I know. I was listening.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the truck,” she said, her words punctuated with a wheeze.

“We don’t know if the trap worked.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“But what if it didn’t?”

She looked horrible—her face burned by cold, her skin pale and sickly, dark circles under her eyes.

“We have to go now,” she said. “Before someone else comes.”

I stammered, trying to find a way to say no. I just wanted to stay here, for her to get better—completely healthy—before risking anyone’s life again.

“You can’t run.”

“I’m not as bad as you think. And you can help me.”

I looked back at the empty trees. Was the trap going to work? Would we just meet him face-to-face at the stream?

“Bense,” she said, “we have to go.”

“But …” We were going to die.
She
was going to die.

“We don’t have time.”

“I can’t drive a stick.”

Becky’s cracked lips turned up in a grin. “Is that all? Do I have to do everything?”

She took my hand and coaxed me up, walking unsteadily. “You do?”

She squeezed my hand. “I told you. I grew up on a ranch. I’ve been driving old trucks since I was eleven.”

I took a deep breath, and then pulled her good arm over my shoulders. We couldn’t run, but we strode out onto the road, brazenly into the open.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
was moving as fast as I could, but it didn’t feel like enough. It was taking too long, and the seconds were ticking away. We weren’t going to make it.

I hedged my bets, leaving the road and heading for a thicker cluster of brush south of the ford.

“Where are you going?”

“He’ll be heading for the ford,” I said. “That’s where the trap is set. I want to cross the stream somewhere else in case it doesn’t work.”

Becky nodded and pulled her arm away from me. “I can walk by myself. It’ll be faster.”

“I can carry you faster.”

She took a breath to say something, but didn’t.

There was still no sign of anything. I’d expected to hear a big electric crackle, or a pop, or anything. Maybe the trap didn’t work—the wires didn’t fall in the water. Or maybe they did, and he was built to resist electric shock. Or there was too much water and the electricity dispersed and didn’t incapacitate him.

“Go without me,” she said.

“No.” We were almost at the stream.

“You don’t have to protect—”

“Yes, I do,” I said sharply. If she’d heard me talking to Mason about his plan, she’d heard me talking about her.

Her fingers dug into my shoulder. “Down!”

I was falling to my knees before she’d even said it. Iceman was on the road.

He wasn’t looking at us—he was glaring down the road toward the barracks. He was dripping wet, and pissed off.

Becky was trying to pull herself with one hand toward the cover of the stream. With Iceman facing the other way, I risked it and jumped to a crouch. I grabbed the shoulder of her coat and pulled her into the bushes.

Without talking, we crawled farther, sliding down the stream bank to hide. We were still fifty yards of twisting river from the ford—from where Isaiah’s body was. This felt safe. Relatively.

“Come to the fort!” Iceman bellowed, his voice unnaturally loud.

I darted across the stream, splashing through the icy water that was deeper here, and peered through the bushes at the fort. He was back on the fort side now, walking past his white pickup. We were too late. He was still closer to the truck than I was, and he had to be faster than me anyway.