turned and looked right at Jason. “It’s up to you.”
That settled it, then. Jason didn’t know what, exactly, this man and his associates wanted, but he knew for certain that he couldn’t swim the distance a boat could travel in three days.
“I guess I have no choice,” he said.
“Good,” the captain said. “Meet me down at the stack in half an hour. It’s time you saw what’s really going on around here.”
28
The days were bad, but the nights were terrible.
At least during the day Skexka was distracted from her aching hunger by the wind whipping her hair wildly around her face and the stolen scooter shaking and rumbling between her thighs as she drove it from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day with very few breaks. The scooter was old—a relic of the gasoline era—but it was the only vehicle she could find still street-legal in the state of Texas that could make the trip from Houston to Austin with no stops at charging or gas stations. Plenty of e-cars could make the normal trip without a charge, but she was forced to follow an exhausting ‘untraceable route’ that took twelve days and every gallon of gas the 180 mpg scooter could hold in its tank and in the three spare tanks mounted around the seat. Even with the backtracking and looping around, she could have made it in a couple days with a car if she had taken the major roads. Of the many rules valenC, the current leader of the AC, had given her, staying off highways was the one she hated most. She hated it so much that it was now practically all she thought about.
Until night came.
Every evening Skexka pulled the scooter off the road at the predetermined point on her map. Some nights she stayed in wooded areas, sometimes abandoned storage buildings; anywhere she could stay out of sight and relatively safe was good enough. One night she had stayed up until dawn, cowering in fear behind a dumpster, while some kind of street gang flashing big guns and wearing Mexican flags as capes had chosen the vacant lot she was in for their all-night gathering. Not that she would have slept much anyway. If it wasn’t the hunger pains or the ache of riding, it was the fear of being caught or the rough ground or the snakes and spiders and scorpions and all other kinds of disgusting crawling things. This was how it was every night because valenC said no hotels, because you had to pay for hotels and Skexka couldn’t risk paying for anything and leaving a trail. ValenC had lots of rules on top of that: no buying gas, no buying food, no buying water, no buying cigarettes. Fuck she hated that last one. Her one and only carton had run out on the third day, and she hadn’t been able to get any when she had stolen a small bit of food during one risky excursion into a Wal-Mart—an endeavor she was pretty sure valenC wouldn’t approve of.
But what had he expected her to do? Drink from streams and puddles? Forage for acorns and roadkill and half-eaten trashcan sandwiches? Make it to Austin on gas fumes and dreams of comfort? She brooded on this every night as she nibbled her rationed granola bars (which had run out three days ago) and sipped from the water bottle that she filled in sinks whenever she stopped at public restrooms (because she refused to squat in roadside ditches to piss and shit). She was angry and she hurt all over, but mostly she was tired. Physically and mentally. She was absolutely sick of all of this secretive, risking-her-life, running around bullshit. She was a slave to whichever greedy assholes had hijacked the movement’s ideology this week. No, not quite a slave just yet. A slave couldn’t leave; she could technically go whenever she wanted. And they would never find her because she was at least as good at hiding herself as any of them were at searching. She had long since earned the right to walk away. It was Skexka who had found the Dellia woman; Skexka who had obtained the Project
That settled it, then. Jason didn’t know what, exactly, this man and his associates wanted, but he knew for certain that he couldn’t swim the distance a boat could travel in three days.
“I guess I have no choice,” he said.
“Good,” the captain said. “Meet me down at the stack in half an hour. It’s time you saw what’s really going on around here.”
28
The days were bad, but the nights were terrible.
At least during the day Skexka was distracted from her aching hunger by the wind whipping her hair wildly around her face and the stolen scooter shaking and rumbling between her thighs as she drove it from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day with very few breaks. The scooter was old—a relic of the gasoline era—but it was the only vehicle she could find still street-legal in the state of Texas that could make the trip from Houston to Austin with no stops at charging or gas stations. Plenty of e-cars could make the normal trip without a charge, but she was forced to follow an exhausting ‘untraceable route’ that took twelve days and every gallon of gas the 180 mpg scooter could hold in its tank and in the three spare tanks mounted around the seat. Even with the backtracking and looping around, she could have made it in a couple days with a car if she had taken the major roads. Of the many rules valenC, the current leader of the AC, had given her, staying off highways was the one she hated most. She hated it so much that it was now practically all she thought about.
Until night came.
Every evening Skexka pulled the scooter off the road at the predetermined point on her map. Some nights she stayed in wooded areas, sometimes abandoned storage buildings; anywhere she could stay out of sight and relatively safe was good enough. One night she had stayed up until dawn, cowering in fear behind a dumpster, while some kind of street gang flashing big guns and wearing Mexican flags as capes had chosen the vacant lot she was in for their all-night gathering. Not that she would have slept much anyway. If it wasn’t the hunger pains or the ache of riding, it was the fear of being caught or the rough ground or the snakes and spiders and scorpions and all other kinds of disgusting crawling things. This was how it was every night because valenC said no hotels, because you had to pay for hotels and Skexka couldn’t risk paying for anything and leaving a trail. ValenC had lots of rules on top of that: no buying gas, no buying food, no buying water, no buying cigarettes. Fuck she hated that last one. Her one and only carton had run out on the third day, and she hadn’t been able to get any when she had stolen a small bit of food during one risky excursion into a Wal-Mart—an endeavor she was pretty sure valenC wouldn’t approve of.
But what had he expected her to do? Drink from streams and puddles? Forage for acorns and roadkill and half-eaten trashcan sandwiches? Make it to Austin on gas fumes and dreams of comfort? She brooded on this every night as she nibbled her rationed granola bars (which had run out three days ago) and sipped from the water bottle that she filled in sinks whenever she stopped at public restrooms (because she refused to squat in roadside ditches to piss and shit). She was angry and she hurt all over, but mostly she was tired. Physically and mentally. She was absolutely sick of all of this secretive, risking-her-life, running around bullshit. She was a slave to whichever greedy assholes had hijacked the movement’s ideology this week. No, not quite a slave just yet. A slave couldn’t leave; she could technically go whenever she wanted. And they would never find her because she was at least as good at hiding herself as any of them were at searching. She had long since earned the right to walk away. It was Skexka who had found the Dellia woman; Skexka who had obtained the Project
Similar Books
