The Forgotten Ones (4 page)

TWO HOURS LATER, WE
’
RE SITTING ON HAY BALES
in the back of a pickup truck, the wind whistling through our hair. We both ate well—and I got a doggie bag for Dust—and even picked up some new clothes, then rented a room at a motel to shower and change. I managed to snag a burner cell phone too when Rex wasn’t looking, but Malcolm didn’t answer his phone and I didn’t want to leave a message—just in case someone else gets their hands on his phone. I hope he and Sam are okay, but it’s impossible to know. Just another thing to worry about.

Get yourself together,
I tell myself.
You’ve come this far. Just put one foot in front of the other. This is important.

And what I’m doing
is
important. I’m sure it is. I’ve already seen how powerful Dust is just on his own. Finding the rest of the Chimæra and reuniting them
with the Garde might turn the tide in their favor. It could easily mean the difference between victory and defeat, not just for the Loric but for all of Earth.

However, if my people crack the genetic code allowing them to breed an endless supply of new vatborn soldiers with the Chimæra’s shape-shifting abilities, the fight is as good as over.

One’s death will have been for nothing. My betrayal will have been for nothing too.

So even though I’m tired, lonely and feel like I’m starting to go a little bit crazy, I know that I have to get to Plum Island. I have to free the Chimæra. If I can do it without getting myself killed in the process, that will be a bonus.

Before I can do any of that, though, I have to get out of New Mexico.

It turns out that’s easier said than done. There’s a train. Unfortunately it only makes three stops—one here, one in Colorado and a final stop in Wyoming. None of that was going to bring us anywhere near New York.

The bus isn’t an option either. The nearest Greyhound station turns out to be in Colorado as well, a town named Alamosa, about forty or fifty miles from here. That’s one hell of a walk.

Rex suggested stealing a car, but besides the fact that it’s something I have no idea how to do, it feels too risky. You can’t save the world if you’re in jail for
carjacking. I briefly consider trying to rent a car, but without any credit cards or ID, I doubt we’d get very far with that plan.

That leaves hitchhiking. Rex and I have the pallid, whiter-than-white skin of Mogadorians, and Rex has his military tattoo on his skull, none of which makes us particularly appealing passengers. But we both pull the hoods of our new sweatshirts up and hope to hide our more recognizable alien features.

I’m not sure how well it works, but we also have a secret weapon: Dust has had the good sense to turn himself into the world’s most appealing golden retriever. The kind of dog people slow down just to look at.

Before long, it works. The third vehicle to pass us is a slightly battered pickup truck. It pulls right up ahead of us on the shoulder of the road. The middle-aged driver who rolls down the window has “rancher” written all over him, from the weathered skin to the callused hands to the worn flannel shirt and blue jeans. “Give you fellas a lift?” he asks.

“That’d be great, thanks,” I answer, stepping up to the passenger side. “We’re trying to get to Alamosa.”

“Easy enough,” he assures me. “Don’t think I can fit all three of you up here with me, but you’re welcome to hop in back.”

I glance down at the passenger seat, which is covered with a bunch of packed grocery bags. “Back
sounds good, thanks,” I assure him. I gesture for Rex to climb in, and Dust hops over the side after him. I jump in last, and then we’re off.

We’re in Alamosa an hour later. “Where’re you going in town?” he calls back through his open window as we pull up to a stoplight. “Anywhere in particular?”

“The bus station,” I shout back, and he nods. Ten minutes later he brakes in front of a small redbrick building with a big Greyhound sign out front.

“Thanks again,” I tell him as we all clamber out. “Can I give you some money for gas?”

He waves that off. “I was heading this way anyway,” he assures me. “You boys get home safe now!” I wave back as he drives off.

He didn’t have to take us here or turn down our money. He could have taken one look at us and figured us for hoodlums. But this isn’t Mogador. Here, it’s not considered weak to help someone else.

This driver is exactly the kind of person One and the other Garde are fighting to protect. The kind of person my race wants to enslave or slaughter.

I can’t—I won’t—let that happen. So I buy two tickets to Kansas City.

Dust is safely tucked away in my pocket, in lizard form, and we all settle in for the trip.

As our bus speeds off down the highway, Rex closes his eyes. I look over at him and wonder what he’s
thinking. Part of me wants to believe that spending time with me and Dust has changed him. That maybe he’s struggling with himself the way I once did, questioning the tenets of the Good Book that have been drilled into his head since he learned to walk.

I wonder too if he wants to know why no one’s out looking for him. If he’s angry to learn exactly how disposable he is to the Mogadorians. I know how it feels.

Eventually I drift off to sleep. As I do, One appears to me again. I know it’s not really her. Sometimes a dream is just a dream. But she speaks to me in her own voice for the first time in ages. “You’re different from him,” she reminds me. “You can’t trust him. Hate is in his blood. It always will be.”

“It’s in my blood too,” I say.

“
Was
in your blood. Until you met me.”

When I wake up, I wonder if she’s right. I honestly don’t know the answer. Maybe I never will.

Almost exactly a day later, we pull into Kansas City. Union Station is a big, imposing stone building, easily a city block in every direction, and I gaze up at it as we step out of our bus.

“You think we can catch a train straight to New York from here?” Rex asks as we walk across the polished marble floor. I feel strange to be back in a crowd after the loneliness of the last few weeks. The place is
packed, with lots of people coming and going, including plenty of college kids. The hectic nature of it all makes me a little antsy, but I know it’s a good thing. We can blend right in.

“I don’t know,” I admit. There’s a row of ticketing machines off to one side of the actual service counters, and I step up to one of those. When I punch in New York as our destination, I get an unpleasant surprise.

“No, there’s nothing that goes straight there,” I reply finally, staring at the screen as if that’ll make it change its mind. “We can get from here to Chicago, though, and then from Chicago to New York.” I study the information a bit more. “It’ll take thirty-three hours in all,” I report, “and cost us about three hundred per ticket.” That’s more money than I’d like to spend—it will leave barely any cash in our pockets—and I don’t want to spare the time either, but I don’t see much we can do about it.

The way Rex sighs, I’m pretty sure he agrees. “Fine,” he says finally. “Just do it.”

As I’m about to hit
PURCHASE TICKETS
I see a strange reflection in the screen. Someone is walking by and glancing my way—I know because there’s a faint flicker of pale skin with a dark band across it—sunglasses. The rest of the reflection is dark too—dark coat, dark hat. Almost exactly like Mog scouts wear. Panic flashes through me and I whip around, but I can’t find the figure or anyone like him in the crowd.

I get an idea. I change our destination to St. Louis—that’s only thirty bucks apiece instead of three hundred—and buy the tickets. I take the tickets but leave the receipt behind, and turn away fast. “Come on.”

Rex sticks with me without a word as we hurry down the hall to our platform. I keep moving to the end, then quickly push through the door marked
EXIT—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
.

“What’re we doing?” he asks as we step outside. Just as I’d hoped, we’re in the rail yard itself. There’re trains everywhere, and a few people loading luggage or refueling or just walking around checking on things. None of them pays us any attention, and I don’t look their way more than a second either. The best plan, I figure, is to move fast and look like I know what I’m doing.

Maybe I’ll even convince myself.

There’s still Rex to deal with though. “We’re not getting on our train, are we?” he asks, putting a hand on my arm and pulling me to a stop. “What’s up?”

Well, the moment of truth. I square my shoulders. “I think I saw a scout,” I tell him, watching him closely. And then I wait. And tense, gathering my strength. If he tries to grab me, I think I can use my Legacy to knock him down long enough for me to lose him in the yard, but I’d rather not do that unless I really have to. And I still have Dust in my pocket.

After a few seconds that feel like forever, he nods. “So what now?”

“Now we hitch a ride instead.” I gesture toward the freight trains on the other side of the yard.

Surprisingly, Rex grins. “All right, then!” And he breaks into a jog. I guess it makes sense he’d get into the idea of something as physical—and as dangerous—as train hopping. Ivan probably would have loved it too.

“How’re we gonna know which train to hop?” Rex asks over his shoulder as he slows by the first group of cars. “Are they labeled or something?”

I glance at the cars, hoping they have address labels or big destination signs like buses, but each one just has a number, plus stuff like the manufacturer and model. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m making this up as I go along.” Rex snorts. But then I spot a guy walking around in a rail-yard uniform, carrying a clipboard. “I bet he’d know.”

“Yeah?” Rex scoffs as we both slide between two cars so the guy won’t see us. “What, you gonna go ask him?”

The man’s past us now—and as I watch he heads to a little shack in the center of the yard and enters it. But not before hanging the clipboard on a hook outside. “Not me, maybe,” I answer, grinning. “Dust?”

I pull him out of my pocket and hold him in my palm. He twitches his tail as if to tell me he’s ready for
action. We’ve developed such a rapport that it sometimes feels like he knows what I want before I know it myself.

“We need that clipboard.” In a flash, he’s a hawk again, arrowing across the yard. He swoops down, snags the clipboard between his talons and then soars up into the sky. The few people who see him gasp and stare, but lose him in the sun—which is why nobody notices when he drops down to my shoulder a minute later. He changes back into a lizard as he lands, and the clipboard falls free, right onto the ground for me to scoop it up. “Nice one,” I say.

I scan the list. “Here,” I say after a second, stabbing a finger at one line. “There’s a train heading to Philly in a few minutes. Track twelve.” All the tracks are numbered, and twelve is only a few rows away. “Let’s go.”

Rex nods and we take off, but then he pauses, stoops down—and comes back up with a thick, blackened metal spike. “To jam the door open,” he explains. “Sliding doors, probably won’t open from the inside.” That makes sense. Of course, it also means that now he has a blunt object that he can use as a weapon.

He doesn’t try anything, though. We get to track twelve just as the train starts to rumble into motion. I quickly spot a boxcar and start moving toward it, but Rex is on board before I’m even to the train: he jogs over, hauls himself onto the ladder affixed to the side
and yanks the door right open. Then he swings in and, kneeling down, slams the spike under the door’s bottom edge to keep it from closing.

It bothers me a little to see exactly what a miraculous recovery he’s made. When we left the base, he could barely move his arm and now he’s swinging around like a champion athlete. As if it’s nothing. Instinctively I pat my pocket, reassured by Dust’s very presence.

“Come on!” Rex calls. “Let’s go!”

I pick up the pace. Unfortunately, so does the train. I manage to get a hand on the ladder, but I can’t jump up without stopping first.

My feet are scraping the ground now, the train accelerating beyond what I can manage, and I’m forced to pull my legs up and grip the ladder for dear life. If I fall now I’ll probably get pulled under the wheels. My hands are starting to lose their grip, my feet are drifting down again and the ground is now whistling past below me. If I don’t do something, and fast, I’m not going to go any farther because I’ll be nothing but a smear across a few miles of Missouri track.

Rex solves that problem. He reaches down and grabs me around the chest just below my arm, then he just lets himself fall back, pulling me with him into the boxcar. We both land on the worn wooden floor with a thud and lay there a second, winded.

Then he starts to laugh.

“Woo!” he shouts, still laying there, the biggest grin I’ve seen yet plastered all over his face. “We just jumped onto a moving train!”

I smile too. Rex just saved my life. Now we’re even. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.

We have to hide once, in Columbus, Ohio, when the train stops and rail-yard cops check all the cars for stowaways like us, but it’s easy to hear them coming. We just duck out of the boxcar as soon as the train lurches to a halt, taking the spike with us, and then circle around, hopping back on once they’ve gone.

It would almost be fun if I wasn’t so preoccupied with what’s going to happen once we get to New York. I still have no idea how we’re going to make it to Plum Island at all, much less how I’m going to get inside, get past whatever security measures the Mogs have and free the Chimæra.

It’s overwhelming, but I’m starting to doubt myself less now. When I look back and think of how much I’ve managed to accomplish since I left Ashwood, I’m amazed. I could actually pull this off.

However, I still haven’t managed to get in touch with Malcolm, and
that
is worrying me. Why wouldn’t he be answering his phone? Unless he never got to the Garde at all.

I can’t let myself think about what that would mean.

Rex and I are silent for most of the trip, but somewhere halfway through the journey, as I’m watching the countryside fly by, I surprise myself with the sound of my own voice.