I had a plan before I even realized it.
While Martin entertained himself by fiddling with the soda dispenser, I grabbed a few bags of chips and chocolate bars. A flash of guilt cut through me as I stuffed them in my bag, but, really, who was I even stealing from? Who was going to call the cops on me?
“There’s only one bathroom,” Martin announced. “I’m using it first. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll leave some water for you.”
Maybe if I’m lucky, you’ll drown yourself in it.
He slammed the door shut behind him, and any guilt I might have felt about leaving him behind disappeared. Maybe it was cruel of me, maybe I would spend the rest of my life feeling guilty about abandoning him without so much as a warning, but there was no way I could tell him what I was about to do without alerting Cate and Rob. I didn’t trust him enough to believe he wouldn’t shout for them, or try to hold me there.
I wasted no time in stepping out of what had been Sarah’s—Norah’s—scrubs, leaving them in a heap on the floor. The uniform I was wearing under them was a dead giveaway to what I was, but the scrubs were too baggy to run in. I needed to get away fast.
Martin must have turned the faucet up all the way, because I could hear the water sputtering as I stepped around some of the broken glass from the store’s big windows.
I came around a shelf just in time to see Rob break away from kissing Cate. He patted around his jacket pockets, and out came a cell phone. Whoever it was, he wasn’t all that happy to be talking to them. After a minute, he threw the phone at Cate and moved to the driver’s side of the car. She turned her back to me, spreading out what looked to be a map over the hood of the SUV. When Rob appeared again, he had a long black object tucked under one arm, and he was holding another by its barrel. Cate took the rifle from him without so much as even glancing at it, and pulled its strap over her shoulder. Like it belonged there.
I recognized them—of course I did. Every PSF officer that walked the perimeter of the electric fence carried an M16 rifle, and I was sure every camp controller that watched us from high up on the Tower had one within reach, too. Is that what they’re going to use on us? I wondered. Or are they expecting me to use one, too?
The rational part of my brain finally kicked in, stomping down the chaos of panic and terror that had overtaken me. Maybe there was a reason Rob had killed those kids. Maybe they had tried to hurt him even though they were tied up, or maybe—maybe they had just refused to join up with the League.
The realization rose inside my chest like fire, burning everything in its path. Just the thought, the image, of having to touch one of those guns, of being expected to fire one of them… Is that what it would take to be a part of their family?
Or would I have to be like Martin and become the weapon myself?
My dad had served as a cop for over seven years before he had to shoot someone. He never told me the whole story. I had to hear it secondhand from the kids in my class, who had read about it in the paper. A hostage situation, I guess.
It wrecked him. Dad wouldn’t come out of my parents’ bedroom until Grams drove out from Virginia Beach to pick me up. When I came back home a few weeks later, he acted like nothing had happened at all.
I don’t know what would force me to pick up a weapon like that, but it wasn’t a group of strangers.
I had to get out. Get away. To where didn’t matter in that moment. I was a lot of things, terrible things, but I didn’t want to add murderer to that list.
There was a sound like crunching glass, just loud enough to hear over the bathroom’s running water and the buzz of the drink coolers. The water shut off, and it was only then that I heard the rustling again. I whirled around, just in time to see the door with the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign swing open and shut behind the low food shelves.
A way out.
I glanced back out the window one last time, making sure Cate and Rob still had their backs to me, before bolting past the display of beef jerky and heading straight for that door.
It’s just a raccoon, I thought. Or rats. Not for the first time in my short life, rats were a preferable option to humans.
But the crinkling came again, louder, and when I pushed the door open, I wasn’t staring at a group of rats ravaging a bag of snack food.
It was another kid.
EIGHT
HE—NO, SHE—OPENED HER MOUTH, her lips parting in a silent gasp. At first blink I hadn’t been able to tell, but she was definitely a girl, and a little one at that. Eight, maybe nine at most, judging by her size. Just a baby, drowning in an oversized Indy 500 shirt, complete with checkered flags and a bright green race car. Even weirder, her hands and arms up to her elbows were covered by bright yellow rubber gloves—the kind my mom used to wear when she scrubbed the bathroom or did the dishes.
The Asian girl’s dark hair was shaved down into a buzz cut, and she was wearing baggy boys’ jeans, but her face was so pretty she might have been a doll. Her full, heart-shaped lips formed a perfect O of shock, and her skin paled in such a drastic way that the freckles on her nose and cheeks stood out all the more.
“Where did you come from?” I managed to choke out.
The stunned look on her face flashed to one of terror. The hand she didn’t have jammed down into a container of Twizzlers slammed the door shut with a streak of yellow.
“Hey!” I pushed it back open in time to see her dash out the door at the other end of the stockroom, heading out into the rain. I was right behind her, throwing the backpack over my shoulders as I ran past the shelves. The door had caught on a large rock and went flying open as I kicked it and sprinted through.
“Hey!”
Snack-sized bags of pretzels and chips were spilling out from her pockets and beneath her shirt.
She had every right to be terrified of the half-crazed girl chasing after her. I could waste time feeling bad about it later; but, for now, my mind had gotten a whiff of hope, and it wasn’t about to let it escape through a parking lot. She had to have come from somewhere, and if she had a way out of this town, or a place to hide until Cate and the others gave up on me, I wanted to know about it.
The gas station’s back lot was only four parking spaces wide, and one of them was taken up by an overturned Dumpster. I heard animals tittering inside it as I sprinted after her, keeping my eyes on the back of her gray T-shirt. Her legs were pumping so fast beneath her that she tripped where the lot’s loose asphalt met a patch of wild grass. My arms flew out to catch her, but the girl recovered just in time.