The Defiant (26 page)

“Stop worrying about me.”

Liam sighs, exasperated. “Do you want to end up like Rika? I can't let that happen to you.”

I stare back at him. “I'm not Rika. I'm me. A warrior. Remember? And I'm going to do it.”

Gadya nods. “I'll cover you.”

“Fine,” Liam says, relenting. “Just be careful. I'll come and take care of the driver once you get the car stopped.”

So a few moments later, I'm standing on the road, waiting there alone.

There are still no cars.

Liam and Gadya are on either side of me now, hiding on opposite sides of the road. I glance back and forth at them. A car has to come along eventually.

I keep waiting. We only have until four p.m. tomorrow. What happens if we fail? I don't want to find out. We must stick to the deadline. If David said it was important, then I'm certain that it is.

Finally, I hear the noise of a vehicle in the distance. I listen closely. If it sounds like a UNA truck, then I'll rush back into the
foliage and hide. But this approaching vehicle doesn't sound like a truck. It just sounds like a normal car. So I stand my ground in the center of the road.

The car comes into view. It's a typical, functionally designed gray sedan. Like the kind that Shawn and Kelley drove. I see the silhouette of a driver behind the wheel, but no one else is in the car.

I hold my arms out, signaling for the driver to stop. I'm nervous, but I know that Gadya is hiding with the gun pointed right at the driver. She will fire if the driver does anything suspicious. I also know that Liam is on the other side of the road, ready to leap out at any point.

The car slows down.

The driver has seen me.

It's a middle-aged man, peering at me through a pair of glasses, with a startled-but-curious expression on his face. He's balding and wearing a black suit. Probably about fifty years old. Obviously he did not expect to find anyone blocking his path.

I start waving my hands animatedly to get him to stop.

He continues watching me as he brings the car to a halt. I make sure to stay right in front of his vehicle, so he can't drive around me. I lower my arms only when the car comes to a complete stop.

The driver's-side window slides down. “Can I help you?” the man calls out cautiously.

“Yes!” I yell. “Get out of the car. Please!”

“Why?” the man asks, sounding puzzled.

I see Liam start sneaking out of the brush at the edge of the road.

“I need to ask you to move,” the man says, sounding surprisingly polite. I almost feel bad about what's going to happen to him.

“Just get out of the car,” I say. “We need your help.”

“We?” he asks.

Right then, Liam springs forward and rushes up from behind. The driver hears him and tries to lock the car doors. But it's too late.

Liam yanks the driver's door open and pulls the driver out. The driver struggles for a moment, but Liam quickly overcomes him. The man sprawls onto the road. Liam leans in and turns off the car's engine and snatches the keys.

At the same time, Gadya stands up from the underbrush, in plain sight. The driver can see that she has her rifle pointed right at him.

He gets up slowly and brushes dirt off the knees of his suit pants. He straightens his glasses and stares at all of us.

“What's going on here?” he asks, sounding oddly resigned instead of angry like I expected.

“We have to take your car. We need it to get out of here.”

“Are you running away from something?”

“No. We're running
toward
something,” Liam says.

Gadya walks over to my side, wearing a fierce expression and still pointing the gun at the man's head.

“You don't need to do that,” the man says. “Who are you three kids?”

“You don't want to know the answer to that,” I tell him. “The less you know, the better.”

“You're rebels, aren't you?” he asks. And then, unexpectedly, he smiles. It's like he's trying to suppress a laugh. “This might come as a shock to you, but you're welcome to take my car, wherever you want to go.”

“Really?” Gadya asks.

“Sure. I've been waiting many years for the citizens to do something and take back our country. I was a college professor at
a university once—at least until Minister Harka, the UNA, and this lunacy took over and the universities were shut down. I wish I could do more to fight back myself.”

“You can,” Liam says. “Just don't tell anyone that we were here. That's what we need from you. That and your car.”

“What should I say happened?” the man asks. “People will want to know where my car is.”

“Just say that someone carjacked you,” I say. “Not us kids, but someone else. A crazy old man with a gun or something. Throw the scent off us, okay?”

He pauses for a second and then nods. “Deal.” Then he hesitates again. “I just need to get my briefcase. Will you let me have it? It's in the back.”

“I'll get it for you,” Liam says, eyeing him. “Just to be cautious.”

The man nods. “I understand.”

Liam rummages in the car and comes back with a shiny black briefcase. He hands it to the man, who receives it gratefully.

“Don't open it until we're gone,” Liam says. “If it turns out there's a gun inside, and you try to use it, understand that we'll have no choice but to kill you.”

“Of course,” the man says, clutching his briefcase. “But I can assure you there are no guns in here. Only boring papers about American history.” He smiles again. “Please take good care of my car. I doubt I'll ever see it again, will I?”

“Probably not,” I admit.

“Then make sure you kids put it to good use. Do some damage for me.”

“Oh, we will,” Gadya says.

The man steps over to the side of the road. “I suppose I'll be walking from here on out.”

I nod, grateful and relieved at his inexplicably positive attitude. “Thank you for helping us.”

“I didn't really have a choice,” the man points out.

“We better get moving,” Gadya says to me. “Who wants to drive?” She keeps her gun trained on him.

“Me,” I say. I walk around and get into the driver's seat.

Liam gets into the back of the car. “Do you want these?” he calls out, holding up some old paperback books.

The man shakes his head. “You can keep them. The government would classify them as revolutionary materials anyway.”

“Then we're probably helping you by stealing your car,” Gadya tells him. “If you drive around with a bunch of books out in the open, you'll be arrested.”

“True,” the man says. “Although fortunately for us, there aren't many police on these back roads.”

Gadya walks past him and around to the passenger side of the car. She gets inside. Only then does she lower her gun and flick the safety on. “Who knew stealing a car would be so easy?” she murmurs to me.

“Thanks,” I call out to the man again through the open window, as I get ready to start the car and begin driving.

“My pleasure.” He pauses, taking a little half step toward us. “There's only one last thing . . .”

“Yes?”

“I think you rebels might be interested in this—”

He snaps the locks off his black briefcase, facing the opening toward us.

For a split second, I think he's going to show us something helpful or interesting. He opens the briefcase wider, aiming it at the open car window.

Then a metal device explodes out of the briefcase and through the open window, right into the vehicle with us.

I scream in terror.

It's one of the MIODs.
Like the kind that burst out of the girl's mouth right before Rika died.

It flies past my face and lands in Gadya's lap. She scrabbles at it and tries to throw it out her window, but it scampers into the back.

The three of us are screaming.

Liam gives out a yell as the machine tries to claw and burrow its way into the flesh of his leg. Its metal tentacles are like sharp knives. He manages to get if off his leg, but it crawls back around to the front before he can grab it again.

Gadya struggles to raise her gun in the close confines of the car. Out the window, I see the man in the suit just standing there, smiling with delight as he watches the carnage. I can't believe he has done this to us. He had me fooled.

Then the creature is clawing at my mouth, like it's trying to get inside my body. I scream and shove it away. But it's persistent. It scrabbles like a wild animal. I feel its metal tentacles on my lips and tongue.

I cough and gag, retching in horror and pain. I taste blood. The thing is slashing up my hands and tongue as I battle it.

“Help!” I manage to scream out.

“Move out of the way!” Gadya yells. “I'm trying to shoot it!” But there's nowhere for me to go in the car.

Liam lunges forward and manages to grab the MIOD with both hands, grimacing as it cuts into his flesh. Its blades are whirring and gnashing, in a mechanical frenzy. All of us are covered in blood. The machine seems possessed with energy.

“Shoot it!” I yell at Gadya. “Do it now!” Liam is holding the
machine away from us. But Gadya can't get the gun up in time.

“Start driving!” she yells at me.

As Liam keeps wrestling with the machine, I get the car started and floor the accelerator. The tires squeal, and then, with a spray of dirt, we begin to move forward.

At the same moment, Liam lifts the MIOD up. It claws at him, like it's desperate to enter his mouth and burrow inside him. I see the look of complete revulsion on his face. It mirrors my own.

Summoning his strength, with a yell, Liam finally tosses the machine right out his window. I see it spark and hear it clatter as it flies onto the road and tumbles down the asphalt away from us.

I can barely breathe. I look down at my hands, which are covered in bleeding cuts. But we won the battle. The machine is out of the car.

I see the man in the suit standing in the road behind us, watching us. He's not smiling anymore. He looks startled. I'm shocked that he turned out to be on the UNA's side. I realize now why he was able to drive around with books out in the open.
Because he works for the government and nobody would dare to stop him.

“Hit the brakes!” Gadya yells.

I trust her enough to do it. I instantly stop the car with a screech.

She leans out the window with the gun.

The man looks back at us. He sees the gun. He turns to run.

“Thanks for the car, you bastard!” Gadya calls out to him. And then she pumps two rounds right into his back. The man falls to the ground, crumpling into a heap. “We can start driving now,” she tells me.

Feeling like I'm about to throw up, I push the pedal to the floor and we begin speeding away.

“Was that necessary?” I ask her, as she rolls up her window.

“I had to,” Gadya says. “If we'd let him live, he would have told the police that we're out here. I didn't have a choice.”

I nod.

“It was either him or us,” Liam adds.

I glance at the rearview mirror, concerned that the MIOD will be chasing after us. But there's no sign of it. I doubt it could keep up with the car, anyway. We're now going sixty miles an hour, and still picking up speed. I don't want to go too fast, because I don't want to get pulled over. I know that if any police stop us, we will have to fight them to the death.

“Just shows you can't trust anyone in the UNA,” Liam says, musing about the man whom Gadya just killed.

“Who do you think he was?” I ask.

“A top UNA scientist? A government agent?” Gadya says with a sigh. “It doesn't matter. He was so nice at first, but he was just a phony, trying to trick us.”

We keep on driving.

I know now that our journey will be just as brutal as the one we undertook on the wheel. Maybe even more so, because of the guns. I stare straight ahead out the windshield as we drive toward New Dayton. There, we will find the address that David left for us, and detonate the nuclear device, before time runs out and we lose our one chance.

W
E PASS PLENTY OF
other cars, including some police vehicles and armored personnel carriers. Yet nobody stops us. I can't believe it.

Each time we pass a police car my heart leaps into my throat. I know that we could be apprehended at any moment. But every time, the police car just passes us by. Sometimes I sneak glances at the officers inside. They are usually staring straight ahead with earpieces in, not even concerned with us. I don't understand why.

The roads are not as crowded as I once remembered. Maybe more people are staying at home these days, given the high degree of civil unrest.

We pass two bad accidents, with bodies lying in the road and people crying for help. No ambulances come to their rescue, and nobody stops to help them.

Perhaps because of the wars the UNA is fighting in other countries, it no longer has the resources to run ambulances and fire trucks for civilian purposes. There were lots of roadblocks and police in Texas, but maybe they knew that rebels would be landing there that night.

The UNA has presumably put all its money into wars and counterterrorism measures, and obviously no longer allocates
much money toward policing everyday citizens to the degree it once did. I'm guessing that after we destroyed Island Alpha, the government shifted its priorities to catching us rebels.

Most of the time, Liam, Gadya, and I are quiet in the car. We want to stay focused so that we don't get surprised by anything. Liam has used a rag to wipe off the blood from the gray vinyl seats so that the car doesn't look suspicious to anyone who glances inside.

I'm also on the lookout for any roadblocks. Luckily, I don't see any, even as our two-lane road widens into a four-lane highway.