Quake (3 page)

Clooger sniffed the air like a wolf and stared intently out the window. He pressed the sound ring embedded in his ear and yelled.

“Dylan, if you can hear me, move! Now!”

Hawk tweaked out in his seat at the booming sound of Clooger's voice and banged his head on the ceiling of the HumGee. His Tablet went airborne and hit the dashboard, instantly shrinking to its handheld size as it tumbled to the floor.

“Think you could warn me when you're planning on going nuclear?”

But that was Clooger—a bull in a china shop—and he was never going to change.

“What is it?” Dylan asked. He was finally awake, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes in a room filled with darkness and narrow slits of light.

Faith rolled over and looked at Dylan. She felt her side, hoping she'd find it healed from Gretchen's titanium dart, a dart that had nearly ended her life a day earlier.

“It's too late,” Hawk pressed in. “They've surrounded the house. And I mean
really
surrounded it.”

“Could they hide?” Clooger asked. He didn't press his sound ring, so only Hawk could hear him ask the question.

“Not a chance. Those troops have heat-seeking tech. Unless Dylan and Faith can seriously play dead, they'll have to make a run for it.”

“If you guys get caught now it'll be a disaster,” Clooger said, pressing his sound ring. He veered the HumGee back onto the road and gunned it. “Head into Oregon. I'll relay more instructions once you figure out how to evade everything the Western State can throw at you. Whatever you do, don't get caught.”

“Faith, how are you feeling?” Hawk asked, pressing into the sound ring. He used his Tablet to set the autopilot on the HumGee and nodded for Clooger to let the steering wheel go.

“Ready to roll,” Faith said. She was standing next to the bed in a T-shirt and underwear, nothing else. When she lifted her shirt along the side of her body, Dylan saw in the faint light that the wound had healed into a jagged scar.

“Nice birthmark,” Dylan said as he pulled a shirt over his head and stepped off onto the floor on her side. He pulled her in close and edged back toward the bed.

Faith pressed her sound ring and pushed Dylan away with a smirk. “This is escape time, not make-out time,” she whispered.

“I'm good as new, plus one badass scar,” Faith said. “And my abs on that side feel like I just did a thousand sit-ups. I can roll.”

“Excellent,” Hawk said. “I had a feeling your body would regenerate very quickly. Glad I was right about that.”

Faith pulled on her pants and a second, long-sleeve shirt. She picked her Tablet up off the nightstand, sliding it into the back pocket of her jeans.

“Figure out how to get away from the army outside and back into hiding,” Clooger said. “We'll guide you from here.”

“Okay, first things to know,” Hawk said, scanning his Tablet for data. “You've got two dozen armed flyers with jet packs surrounding the house. They'll be able to keep up, and they may know you can't be stopped with bullets or bombs. It's hard to say
how
much they know. Overhead you've got a half-dozen hovercraft. Those are fast and very nimble in the air. And they have space for a lot of weaponry.”

“Like nets,” Clooger reminded Dylan and Faith. “If they know about your powers, they'll know they need to trap you in order to stop you. Remember that.”

“Okay, we got it,” Dylan said. He looked at Faith, pulled her close again, kissed her.

“You sure about this?” Faith asked.

“Does it matter?”

Dylan kissed her, longer this time. When Faith pulled away and saw the longing in Dylan's eyes, she thought of how much she wanted to stay in the safe house, just the two of them. But she knew their escape from reality was over. They both did.

“No, it doesn't matter if you're sure, not really.”

“Then let's get this party started.”

Before either of them could pull the curtains, the glass in the window exploded inward and a can of tear gas hit the floor, flooding the room with eye-stinging smoke. They both heard the sound of the front door downstairs being forced open with a ramrod as armed men entered and began shouting instructions.

“My system doesn't much like this tear gas. You?” Faith asked.

“Can't say that I love it,” Dylan agreed. They weren't sure whether their second pulses would protect them from poisonous gas; they'd never dealt with it before. No sense taking chances. Dylan went first, then Faith, flying out the window and up into the sky. They stopped and hung in the air over the house long enough to see the trouble they were up against. Men wearing sleek jet packs were already taking off, heading toward them, and firing a barrage of bullets.

“Pretty cool tech,” Dylan said, surveying the armed forces. “I'd love to get my hands on one of those jet packs and take it apart piece by piece. Imagine what Hawk could cook up with the parts?”

“Too bad they don't have any interest in capturing us. These guys are aiming to kill,” Faith said, trying to keep Dylan from geeking out, as he sometimes did at the most inappropriate times. Faith had long understood that things like jet packs and flying saucers set off even the least nerdy guys she'd ever met. Ogling this kind of modern technology was in their DNA. She glanced skyward as she and Dylan flew toward the Oregon border, bullets pinging harmlessly off their second-pulse shields. Overhead she saw the circle of hovercrafts, each of them thirty feet in diameter. They looked like oversized bumper boats, round and flat with one pilot sitting in the center.

“Let's see if we can outrun them,” Dylan said. “That would be the easiest way out. And I'm curious what kind of speed these things can do.”

Faith nodded and they went into high gear, arching up toward the cloud line. But the bullets and rocket grenades kept coming and the men in jet suits stayed tight on their heels. The hovercraft were even faster, encircling them from every side, firing at will.

“Open space isn't working!” Faith said. “Try close to the ground?”

Dylan nodded and they dove toward an abandoned street with houses on both sides.

Several hundred miles away, Clooger and Hawk were keeping track of the action as they drove.

“Spread out, you two,” Clooger said, pressing his sound ring. He was leaning toward Hawk, watching heat signatures on the Tablet as the autopilot swerved them back and forth down a dusty road. “Make them choose who to follow!”

The HumGee went fast into a turn and pitched sharply to the right, throwing Hawk into the door. Clooger's weight followed, smashing Hawk as if they were on a shoulder-crushing fair ride.

“Buckle up, big guy! You're killing me here.”

“Don't be such a wimp.”

“I'm not a wimp. You're huge, bro!”

While Hawk and Clooger waited for the next hairpin turn, Faith picked up an abandoned car with her mind and threw it over her head. The men in jet packs swerved admirably, but when they looked back, Faith had picked up ten more cars. She turned on the troops and they all stopped in midair, watching.

“Stop following me,” she said. Faith had a way of saying things like this that could turn the most hardened army veteran toward home. But these guys were either stupid or crazy or both. The troops all moved forward slightly, firing off a whole new round of bullets and blasters.

“Don't say I didn't warn you, because I did. I warned you.”

Faith moved the cars into a long horizontal line in front of her and then pushed them forward one at a time like pendants stuck together on a chain. By the time they started reaching their intended target, the cars were traveling at a hundred-plus miles an hour, spreading out and clobbering everything in their path. The troops bounced like bowling pins, spinning wildly out of control as the jet packs malfunctioned and pushed them all over the sky. The cars continued their journey, slamming into houses and streets on the ground as the flying Western State troops tried to right themselves in midair.

Dylan was a quarter mile to Faith's left, dealing with the hovercrafts, all of which had decided to follow him.

“Clooger was right on the money—these things have net bombs,” Dylan said, dodging hard to one side as a bowling ball–sized projectile headed his way. When it was within twenty feet of where Dylan had been stationed, it burst open like a shotgun shell full of lead pellets, splaying out a wide net with golf ball–sized weights around its perimeter. A long wire connected the net to the hovercraft, and when the net missed its target, it curled back into a ball and returned to where it had come.

“We need cooler weapons,” Dylan said, pressing his sound ring so Hawk could hear. “You gotta see this, Hawk.”

“You do realize it's killing me not seeing this stuff up close?” Hawk said as he turned toward Clooger. He pressed his sound ring. “Grab whatever you can!”

Dylan nodded to himself, but he knew it would be a fool's errand trying to separate a Western State flyer from his equipment. He looked down and uprooted an entire house with his mind, raising it into the air from below as dirt and debris crashed to the ground. All six hovercrafts fired net bombs, surrounding Dylan as they exploded in a circle around him. Dylan shot into the air, raising the house as he went. The nets were beyond sticky, covered in something that adhered to whatever they touched. Dylan heard the pilots screaming, “
Release! Release!
” But they weren't fast enough. Dylan pushed the house back toward the ground, pulling the hovercrafts down with it. By the time the lines were all cut, it was too late and all six pilots had to abandon ship, taking to their emergency parachutes and brandishing sidearms.

“Let's make a run for it,” Faith said. “Stay low to the ground, out of sight.”

The jet-pack troopers were barely getting their baring again, and the hovercraft pilots were totally out of the fight. Only two troopers followed Faith and Dylan into the trees.

“A couple of stragglers and we should be clear.” Faith pressed into her sound ring. She looked at Dylan, saw what he was considering. “Don't even think about it. You are not going back there for a hovercraft or a jet pack. Let it go.”

“Sorry, Hawk.” Dylan smiled. “I'd have done it for you, but Faith is a little more rational than me.”

Dylan moved in close, wrapping an arm around Faith's waste. They kissed and Faith felt Dylan smiling. She loved it when this happened. To touch his lips to hers when he was this happy, to
feel
his happiness and know it was because of how much he loved her—it was everything, all she needed, all she wanted.

“Man, it would have been fun parting out one of those jet packs,” Hawk said, his voice all excited and bummed out at the same time.

“It was a search mission,” Clooger said. “Now that they've found you they'll send more. You need to move fast and find some cover.”

“Head for the Columbia Gorge,” Hawk pressed into the sound ring. “A million acres of trees along there. They'll never be able to track you.”

“Still two on your tail, but they're falling back,” Clooger added.

The HumGee turned suddenly to the left, barely missing a cliff wall as it continued down a winding forest-service road somewhere on the border of Oregon and Idaho. Hawk lowered his shoulder and used the gravity of the turn to slam Clooger as hard as he could, but his shoulder missed and Hawk face-planted into a wall of Cloog.

“I almost feel sorry for you.
Almost
,” Clooger said, laughing softly as Hawk felt around his head for missing parts.

“I think you broke my face.”

Clooger glanced at Hawk and gave him a playful shove.

“All in a day's work for a military man, right, kid?”

Hawk went right back to his Tablet, all business. “Let's get these two out of harm's way before another State armada shows up. It's all clear for the moment.”

But Hawk was about to find out how wrong he was.

Faith and Dylan were far from in the clear.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Both parties settled into their respective journeys for the next twenty minutes, covering a lot of ground fast. Faith and Dylan were especially quick, finding themselves flying low over the dense forest near the Columbia Gorge in no time.

“So you're really not going to tell us where we're going?” Dylan asked, pressing his sound ring.

Clooger had been asked where the new hideout was more times than he could count. Everyone wanted to know. But it was secret in part for a very personal reason, and he didn't want to take any chances until he absolutely had to.

“You're heading in the right direction.”

That was all Clooger would say as they kept on, deeper into the green and blue of the Northwest.

Faith kept glancing back, wondering if the two jet-packed stragglers were still behind them, but she hadn't seen anyone chasing for a while.