No Passengers Beyond This Point (21 page)

I could talk to him . . .

But then all at once I understand. I don’t want a piece of someone else’s life . . . I want my own. I want my chance to live my own life my own way.

I leap forward and slip into the driver’s seat. When the driver reaches up to shut the trunk, I pounce on the gas pedal and the feather taxi shoots forward, veering wildly onto the sidewalk. I forgot I have to steer and press the gas pedal at the same time. I get a firm grasp on the wheel and manage to turn the car so it thumps back over the curb and onto the street.

The driver is running after me, waving his short arms. I drive onto the sidewalk on purpose this time to avoid the crowds in the street. Once I’ve made it past the amphitheater, I press the accelerator pedal as far as it will go and fly down the almost deserted street. I look back but the driver is so far behind he’ll never catch up.

Mary Carol totally explained the map to me. I was thinking I’d be on a tram, but the route is almost the same. I know how to get to the inspection station.

What I don’t know is how long it will take the driver to alert the blue security dudes. Can they see the taxi on a radar screen? Am I being watched now? The only people here are clustered around the screens. They aren’t looking at me. But what about the people in Headquarters—the people who run Falling Bird, can they see me?

The driver has left his jacket with
Travels with Ed
embroidered on it and his cap on the seat next to me along with his paste-on sideburns and beard. I wiggle into the jacket, switching hands on the steering wheel, then use my elbows while I wind my hair up and quickly smash the hat on, catching the wheel again with both hands.

Yes! I am so good at this!

For a few minutes I get caught up in the sheer power of being behind the wheel on the open highway. Driving is so cool! I’m glad I got to try it while there’s still time. “Shut up,” I tell myself. “You’re so totally a fighter, India Tompkins. You can figure this out.”

“Come in, number seventy-seven,” a woman’s voice on the radio blares. “You are making an unauthorized city exit. Please return your vehicle to the garage and report to Vehicle Registration Group. Come in, seventy-seven. It is against regulations to tamper with a vehicle. Please access your radio. We are contacting Human Behavior Group.”

I pull the clock out of my pocket and glance at it. I have three hours and eighteen minutes. I can do anything in three hours and eighteen minutes, right? I grab the radio and switch it off. The car shudders as I floor the gas pedal again.

“In, it’s me! Where have you been?”

Ohmygod! Maddy is on my wrist screen, which has flipped upside down on my arm. I wiggle it around to where I can see the curly hair and sweet eyes of Maddy, my best friend.

“Maddy.” The tears stream down my face. “I miss you,” I sob.

“Well, come back then, In.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. I’ll meet you at Laird’s station.”

Wait. How would Maddy know about Laird? I didn’t tell her about him, did I? Is this even Maddy?

“Maddy,” I whisper as the checkpoint station comes into view in the distance. The gates are closed. The golf carts are parked helter-skelter. “Talk me through this, okay?”

ALL PASSENGER VEHICLES PLEASE SLOW FOR INSPECTION, a sign reads.

“I don’t want to go back there, Maddy. And my clock is running out.”

“Don’t sweat it, In. It’s all good,” Maddy says.

The video screens are like great dancing billboards, like huge cineplex-size TV screens flashing: RED ALERT! RED ALERT! CAB #77 INDIA TOMPKINS.

I’m close enough to hear the speaker system droning in that mechanical voice. “Human Behavior Group is requesting the immediate return of India Tompkins. All Border Group personnel please be aware of a possible vehicle theft. Suspect age fourteen, five foot one, long brown hair.”

“I’m driving right into this, Maddy.”

“Just be like, I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t know.”

“Wait, that’s not true. I do know . . . just like I know you took the ring.”

“What is the big deal about that stupid ring? I was going to put it back, if everybody hadn’t totally freaked about it.”

“If you were just borrowing it, why didn’t you ask?”

“I just forgot. Man, you better be careful, you’re starting to sound like Rules, India.”

“You’re wrong about that, Maddy. I don’t sound like my mother, I sound like me,” I tell her, and then all at once I want Maddy to disappear. I can’t think with her talking to me this way.

And as surely as if I switched an off button the wrist screen fades gray, flickers green, and flashes off.

Okay, you’ve got to think this out, I tell myself. If I try to lie my way through the checkpoint, I’m toast. I’ll never make it. They’ll send me back to Passengers Waiting. I can’t let that happen. Mouse and Finn are on the other side.

I pull off the highway and drive parallel to the wall, hoping to spot a break. But the wall goes on forever. Mile after mile of shiny aluminum, rounded at the top and three or maybe four stories tall.

I make a U-turn and head back across the road to the other side, but it’s the same thing in this direction—just wall as far as I can see. Even if I could manage to climb over, they’d see me, plus, I’d be on foot. How would I ever find Finn and Mouse on foot?

Then I see a lone cart moving along the wall. It pulls behind the tram stop. The driver leans out, pulls a lever, and a small gate opens. The cart scoots through and the gate shuts behind it, but the opening is too small for the feather cab—it’s cart-size.

Here comes another cart with a young girl driving. I grab the paste-on sideburns and stick them on, jump out of the feather cab, and tear across the grass waving my arms. “Wait!” I shout.

She comes to a whiplash halt, and I jump into the passenger side.

“Hey,” I say, deepening my voice as if I’m the driver, Ed. “Hi!”

She takes me in warily, snapping her gum. The name on her badge says
Pamela
. “Where’s your cab—” she asks.

“I parked it already.”

“You
parked
it?”

Oops. Guess I’m not supposed to have done that. If I backtrack and launch into another story, that will be worse. I keep going.

“Yeah, sure. You just have to know how.” I try for a swagger.

Pamela gives me another once-over. She clearly isn’t buying this. Then her eyes light on my wrist screen.

“Wow. I’ve never seen one of those. They’re really rare. Only Headquarters people are supposed to have them. Is yours free roaming or does it have a chip?” she asks.

“A chip?”

“It allows Headquarters to alter the information.”

“Oh. I don’t know,” I say truthfully.

She wants the wrist screen as much as the people in Passengers Waiting. I can see it in her eyes. “Yeah, check it out,” I say, directing all my attention toward the screen. I know how to do this now. I can turn it on with my mind. I focus on Maddy and how much I like to talk to her. The dull gray flickers tentatively and Maddy pops up.

“In, don’t do that again. I hate when you shut me out like that.” Maddy has that peeved look on her face.

Pamela’s riveted to the screen. “Who’s that?” she asks.

I smile at Maddy. But something inside me has changed.

“My friend, when I lived in California,” I say.

“Can I see?” Pamela asks, her voice suddenly vulnerable, needy.

“Sure,” I say, “if I can, um, borrow your cart.”

Pamela’s eyes snap back to me. “You’re that girl they’re looking for.” She snatches the radio on her dashboard and pulls the curly cord toward her.

“No! Wait!” I plead.

She freezes, her finger hovering over the transfer button.

I unbuckle the half-broken strap. “You take it. Go ahead. There must be someone you want to talk to . . .”

“In! What are you doing?” Maddy’s face is pale; her hazel eyes fill the screen, but as it moves away from my skin, wavy lines disrupt the picture.

“Bye, Maddy,” I whisper as Pamela buckles the screen onto her own wrist and in place of Maddy’s ghosted image comes a new face, sharply in focus. It’s a pale boy with eyes an unnatural shade of blue, a thin face full of dark shadows, and the beginning of a beard.

“Pamela,” he says in a thick Australian accent. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

“Jack. Oh Jack,” she says, her throat full, her eyes captivated. The radio falls from her hands as she strokes the screen with the tips of her fingers.

Slowly, I move my hand to the transmission stick. Then in one fierce motion, I bump Pamela out of the driver’s seat, switch the transmission to drive, and pounce on the gas pedal. The cart lurches forward, I grab the wheel and sit down.

I’m surprised how easy this is. Pamela is so distracted, she pops right out of the seat into the grass.

“Sorry!” I call over my shoulder, but in the rearview mirror I see Pamela does not look up, so intent is she on her conversation with Jack.

The cart doesn’t go as fast as the cab and it hits the ruts with twice the force, but I push the accelerator hard, clamping down on the wheel to keep on course. When I get to the gate lever, I scoot in close, barely skimming the handle with my fingertips, and the gate opens.

“Finn, Mouse! I am so gonna be there!” I say as the road dips and the cart goes through the gate. On the other side of the thick aluminum wall, the weather turns instantly stormy, the sky strangely blue. I begin trembling so violently I can hardly hold the steering wheel. I don’t know if this is because it’s freezing cold out here or because I now know for certain I can’t go back. No one can help me now. I have nothing but me . . . me and my two-hour-and-twelve-minute life.

B
oom is like our own personal bulldozer. She digs a path for us out of the landslide and up to open ground in minutes.

Aboveground, the cold hits like we’ve walked into a deep freeze. The wind bites through me. My teeth chatter. The thunder and lightning have stopped, but the rain is misting down, melting the dirty crust of snow.

I can see the border station from where we are, and the vehicles parked there. We will need one with a heater and lots of gas. I don’t know if the airport is twenty minutes away or six hours. I look down at my own clock, which says one hour, fourteen minutes.

“Mouse, let’s go closer, but we have to sneak,” I say, eyeing Boom. How do you tell a dog to keep her mouth shut?

This side of the border isn’t manned the way the other side is. It’s much plainer over here. More like Colorado must be, with meadows partially covered in snow in some spots, brown and muddy with rain in others. But there’s certain to be some kind of electronic surveillance system.

Up ahead I see a lot filled with maybe fifty Segways parked in neat rows A whole parking lot full of vehicles—though not the kind with heaters, that’s for sure. Still, the keys to each are dangling from the handlebars like invitations. A sign posted to the fence says: SEGWAY USE FOR AIRPORT RETURN ONLY.

Looking better all the time.

We walk closer to the Segways and a recorded message starts playing with instructions. “First make a selection, then place the key in the ignition.”

It doesn’t seem too difficult. Mouse could probably manage. She follows instructions well, but how will we get Boom on board?

“Finn!” Mouse whispers.

“And when you get to the airport,” the voice continues, “follow signs for the periphery road/airport return. Just remember”—the voice drops low and begins speaking quickly now like a commercial for medicine required to state the side effects—“no standing or stopping at the curb. No passenger pickup. Only one driver allowed on each vehicle and no exit from the periphery road.”

Wait . . . no exit from the periphery road? My mind flashes on the first night at the airport. What was it Chuck said about the Segway riders?
They’re always here.
So people just go around and around the airport waiting for planes that never arrive?

“Finn, look!” Mouse calls again, pulling on my arm. She points to an approaching girl—not much older than I am.

We dive behind a storage bin. Boom follows us. She seems to understand we are hiding and curls in a tight ball.

From here, we can watch the girl, without her seeing us. Her hair is hanging limp and wet. She’s wearing a lime green Falling Bird vest and she has a wrist screen attached haphazardly to her arm.

The way she steps, her eyes in constant motion like a surveillance camera, makes me think she’s not supposed to be here. She moves stealthily from Segway to Segway until she hops on the one she wants and turns the key. She has trouble with reverse—clearly she hasn’t driven one of these things before. She’s close to us now—very close—I can just make out the name on her shirt:
Pamela
.