After the End by Amy Plum
“A few of these smaller roads can get us to the Utah/New Mexico border, so we might as well head that way and I can try to Read again once we’re there,” I say. I look at the scale on the map and calculate. “It’s about eight hundred miles to the farthest part of the state.”
“That’s about thirteen hours nonstop,” Miles says.
“We are thirteen hours away from my father,” I say, breathless with excitement. “Thirteen hours from my clan.” And just as fast as it arrived, the excitement dissipates, leaving a feeling of despair. They tricked us, I remember for the thousandth time. It doesn’t matter now, I remind myself. My goal is to find them and free them. We’ll worry about explanations once everyone is safe.
Where will my clan even go if I can free them? I grab the box in my mind labeled “Open later” and shove all those thoughts inside. One step at a time. And the next step is getting out of Salt Lake City and as far away from our pursuers as possible.
We buy sandwiches in one of the ground-floor shops and take them to the car with us to eat while driving. I can’t wait another minute to get started. I have just thrown my pack into the backseat and placed our lunch on the dashboard when a hand grasps my arm. I look up into the face of someone more than twice my size—one of Whit’s guards is towering over me. “You’re coming with us,” he says, and jerks me out of the car.
My brain is in shock, but my body takes over, and all the hours spent practicing brigand raids instinctively kick in. In a heartbeat, I’ve twisted my arm out of his grasp. Since he’s tall, I aim high and kick him hard between the legs. He doubles over and stumbles back a few steps, giving me the time I need to grab my crossbow from the car’s floorboard.
I load an arrow and fire, hitting him in the shoulder. I turn to see the Jeep parked around the corner. Whit is behind the wheel, but the second guard is coming toward me. I shoot him, landing an arrow square in his upper arm, and he lets out a howl of pain and stumbles back to the car. He pulls it out with one hand and grabs something in the backseat to stanch the bleeding.
And then I see the impossible happen. The first guard pulls the crossbow bolt out of his shoulder, looks at it curiously, and tosses it into the grass. No blood comes out from under the hole it pierced in his shirt. He isn’t even wounded, and I shot him from mere feet away.
He grabs my arm and sends my crossbow clattering to the ground. I struggle and kick, but he’s much stronger than me and forces me toward the Jeep.
I see Miles standing next to his car, fear painted white across his face. Everything has happened within seconds, and he doesn’t know what to do now that the guard has me in his grasp.
“You two will be coming with me,” the guard says loudly enough for Miles to hear. “And no more scenes. Just close the door and follow me to my car.”
“What makes you think I won’t start screaming bloody murder?” I ask. I look around, but there’s no one nearby. “Anyone coming out of the library would see you dragging me away and come help.”
“Well, the fact that we know where your people are being held might change your mind about trying to draw attention,” he grunts.
My eyes widen. So Whit does know where they are. Something deep inside me refused to believe it until now. I turn and see him sitting behind the wheel of the Jeep with his shock of black hair sticking up messily and the sunlight behind him, hiding his features. A blinding surge of hatred sweeps through me, and I know that if, in this moment, I had the chance to hurt him—or even kill him—I would.
“If I come with you, will you let him go?” I ask, gesturing to Miles with my head, since my arm is still in the guy’s iron grip.
“I’m going wherever Juneau—” Miles starts to say, but the guard cuts him off.
“You’re both getting in my car. Now.”
We head toward the Jeep. The other guard is sitting in the backseat, wrapping a tourniquet around his arm and growling through clenched teeth. From behind the wheel, Whit is saying, “I told you not to take her on.” He leans over to open the passenger door from the inside and indicates I’m supposed to get in. “Juneau. Finally,” he says.
“You don’t want me to sit next to you,” I manage to say. I have to force the words out, because Whit’s sitting there looking like his same old self. The same man who mentored me for over a decade.
“Why not?” he asks, a fake smile plastered to his lips.
“Because I seriously doubt I’ll be able to refrain from scratching your eyes out,” I say evenly.
Whit pulls on an expression of false surprise. “No need for histrionics,” he says. And then, lowering his voice, he urges, “Get in the Jeep.” He glances down at a folded-up piece of paper sitting square in the middle of the passenger seat and raises an eyebrow, looking back up at me. “Get in! Now!” he yells.
All of a sudden, the sickening sound of crunching metal comes from behind the Jeep, and the vehicle lurches forward, its door springing away from me. As everyone swings around to see what happened, I scoop the paper from the seat and stuff it in my pocket.
“Sorry about that,” comes a man’s voice from the large black car that rear-ended the Jeep. “Let me get my insurance papers.”
The guard drops me and heads for the reckless driver. As I turn to see who hit the Jeep, another man jumps out of the black car and heads straight for me. I recognize him. He’s one of the guys who was trailing me around Seattle—he must work for Miles’s dad. Before I can run, he’s grabbed me around the chest and growled, “I’ve got a gun.”
I turn frantically to look for Miles, but he’s been pulled away by Whit’s guard.
“Miles!” I scream. But my new captor has shoved me into the black car, the driver jumps back behind the wheel, and we take off just as Miles realizes what’s happening. Away from Whit and his men. Away from Miles, who I watch running after us until it’s clear that he’ll never catch us.
Whit’s guard is right behind him and, seizing him by the arm again, leads him back to the Jeep. We turn a corner, and they’re gone.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
53
MILES
THE GUY WHO GRABS ME HAS ARMS THE DIAMETER of a telephone pole. So guess what? I don’t even fight. I let him drag me by the shoulder to the Jeep and stuff me in the passenger seat. He hops in the back and we’re off.
There’s a young guy driving. His hair is like Albert Einstein’s if Albert dyed it with black shoe polish. He looks kind of crazy, but in a good way. Like your favorite science teacher at school—brilliant but hanging out in another dimension. He had exchanged a few words with Juneau, but I couldn’t hear what they said.
The two guys in the back look like they were made from the same cookie cutter. Neckless boulders of steroid-fueled muscle. Both dressed in khaki, green, and camouflage like they think they’re in the middle of a war zone. But the one is giving himself a shot in the arm and bandaging the wound Juneau gave him, and the other is unbuttoning his shirt to inspect the dent Juneau made in his Kevlar vest.
I taste copper in my mouth and realize that I’m scared. And then it occurs to me that I’m not afraid of them. I’m scared for Juneau. I don’t think that Portman and Redding will hurt her, but these guys look rough. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were wearing weapons strapped under their flak jackets.
We pull up to a fork in the road, and the driver looks both ways. There’s no sign of Juneau and her captors. They had too much of a head start: we’ve lost them. He pulls over onto the sidewalk next to a Dairy Queen and puts the Wrangler in park. “Where’d they take her?” he asks, turning to me.
There’s something off about his eyes. Like one of his pupils is slightly facing the wrong way. It freaks me out because I don’t know which eye to look at.
“No clue,” I respond, and receive a cuff on the side of my head from one of the GI Joes behind me.
“Ow!??
“Answer the man’s questions,” he says in a thick voice, like his tongue’s on steroids too.
“I’m being honest. I have no clue who those guys are or where they could be taking Juneau,” I lie, looking at Einstein’s right eye.
“You’re the one I saw camping with her,” he says.
What? We didn’t see anyone else when we were camping, I think, and then all of a sudden I get it. He used the bird to see us. This must be Whit.
But how can it be? This guy’s in his midtwenties. Thirty, max.
As if reading my mind, he says, “I’m Whittier Graves. I’ve known Juneau since she was a baby. And I need your help to find her. She could be in grave danger.”
The men in the back chuckle like Whit’s cracked a really good joke, and he glances back at them, exasperated.
“You can’t be Whit. Juneau told me about him, and he’s some old guy.”
“Good guess. Fifty-three. So I suppose Juneau hasn’t told you all our secrets.”
And then it hits me. The no-aging thing. I believed her, as much as I could, when she told me this morning. But here’s the proof, sitting right in front of me. I have no question now that what this guy’s got is what my dad is after: whatever’s keeping him young.
No wonder he’s after Juneau. And no wonder someone invaded her village. An antiaging drug could make its owner a fortune.
I ask myself just what my dad would do to get his hands on it. How far would he go if he could be the richest man on earth? All of a sudden I no longer trust Redding and Portman with Juneau’s safety.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
54
JUNEAU
WHEN WE’RE FINALLY FORCED TO STOP BECAUSE of traffic, I try to slip up the door lock, but it’s frozen in place. “Child safety locks,” says the driver, who is bald and wearing sunglasses.
“Who are you?” I ask, knowing exactly who they are but wondering what else I can find out.
“We are your escorts to Blackwell Pharmaceutical. Mr. Blackwell has something he wants to chat with you about.”
“So you’re just going to kidnap me and drive me to L.A.?” I ask defiantly.
“No,” the man in the backseat says. I turn to look at my other captor. He’s got a brown crew cut and thick neck, and his clothes look too small. He sees me looking and puts two fingers inside his collar to loosen his tie. “We’re not driving you to L.A. You get the special princess treatment.” He glares at me as Baldy pulls into the Salt Lake City airport. “We’ve been looking for you for days,” he says, as if I have been hiding expressly to piss them off.
“That’s not my fault,” I say.
“Well, it doesn’t make me like you more,” he says.
We pull into an isolated section of the airport with signs for PRIVATE: CHARTER AIRCRAFT, and drive straight up to a tiny plane with BLACKWELL PHARMACEUTICAL painted on the side. My stomach drops, and I feel all the blood leave my face. I’m going up in the air. In an airplane. Oh gods.
Baldy clicks the unlock button, and we all get out of the car. “Don’t bother running,” he says, opening his jacket to show a gun holstered across his chest. They need me. They’re not going to shoot, I think, and take off running across the pavement. I am immediately tackled from behind.
Baldy slaps handcuffs on my wrists and pulls me writhing to my feet. The heels of my hands are scraped raw, and my elbows and knees sting from my collision with the concrete.
“Got a live one,” he chuckles to Necktie, but he’s red and panting with exertion.
I take a deep breath and try to look calm. “You guys are going to feel pretty stupid when you take me to Mr. Blackwell and I tell him I don’t know anything about a drug formula.”
“Not our problem,” says Baldy, and puts a hand on my back, steering me toward the plane. There’s nothing I can do but go with them. I consider metamorphosis, but that only lasts a few minutes, and there’s nowhere out here to hide once I’m visible again.
I grasp for straws . . . I could try to call any animals in the vicinity. I glance around at the barren landscape. Nothing to work with. I could try to Conjure a strong wind, I think, but before I can form a plan, I am walking up the stairs toward a man in a pilot uniform who steps aside to let us board.
“Didja get my message?” Baldy asks him.
“Yes. Ready to go,” the pilot confirms. I am trying to control my shaking, but my bowels are twisting and I feel like I’m going to be sick. And we haven’t even left the ground.
Planes were one of the evils of society that Dennis taught us about. They polluted the air and gobbled fossil fuels. In the Seattle newspapers, I saw the term “carbon footprint.” If Dennis had known that term, he would have used it.
I saw pictures of planes in the EB. I know that the pilot sits in the cockpit, in the front of the plane. That the passengers sit behind in rows. But this plane only has six seats, and they look more like overstuffed armchairs, all grouped around tables. I stand there, not knowing what to do, and Necktie points to one of the chairs. “You sit there,” he says, and pushes me down into a cream-colored seat that smells like new leather. As soon as the pilot closes and locks the door, Necktie produces the key to my cuffs. “You can’t go anywhere now, but you can be a pain in the ass. Tell me you won’t, and I’ll uncuff you.”
“I won’t,” I say, but only because I haven’t yet thought of a plan.
I’m not sure what to do once I’m uncuffed, but I watch Necktie pull seat belts up from the sides of his chair and click them together, and I begin to do the same. And then I remember something and unclick the belt. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I say.
“She needs to go to the bathroom,” he yells to Baldy, who has stuck his head through the cockpit door and is talking to the pilot. The sound of the plane’s roaring engine and spinning propellers is deafening.
“Well then, let her go to the bathroom,” Baldy shouts back, shooting him a what are you, stupid? look.
“It’s back here,” Necktie says, and standing again, leads me to a door in the back, stationing himself just beside it, thumbs through his belt loops as he waits.
“Are you going to wait here by the door while I pee?” I ask, raising my chin. Daring him.
He looks offended. “No!” And he sits back down in his seat.
I squeeze into the toilet, find the door lock and pull it over, and then fish in my pocket for the paper that Whit left for me. It’s a page torn from a map. Printed across the bottom is “. . . w Mexico.” About an inch above Roswell—in the middle of nowhere—is a circle drawn in blue ink. And at the bottom of the page, in handwriting that I know as well as my own, Whit has written, “Things aren’t as they seem.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
55
MILES
“IS JUNEAU IN DANGER WITH THOSE MEN?” WHIT asks.
I cross my arms defensively and stare at him.
“Are you and the men who took her working for Blackwell Pharmaceutical?” he asks, and something in my expression must be giving it away, because he nods like he’s thinking, I knew it! One of the guards in the backseat shuffles uncomfortably.
“Since when does Murray Blackwell hire teenagers to do his dirty work?” he prods.
I don’t say a word. I just give him my eat shit and die look. But it doesn’t seem to be working on him because he just gives me an astonished look, like he read my mind and knows exactly who I am. And then I notice that his hand is positioned over the gearshift so that his fingers are lightly touching my jacket.
“You were Reading me!” I say.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Whit protests, but something in his eyes tells me that’s exactly what he was doing.
“Come on, let’s get this show on the road,” urges Thick-tongue from behind me.
Whit puts the Jeep in gear, and I scrabble to pull up the door lock while yanking on the handle. It’s already unlocked! I manage to think before I tumble out the door, landing hard on the sidewalk and sending a shock wave of pain through my right shoulder. Rolling to my hands and knees, I leap forward and make a run for the Dairy Queen.
I hear swearing behind me, but don’t dare look as I sprint across the parking lot and in through the glass door. I push it closed behind me and see Thick-tongue stop mid-run as Whit yells something at him. The burly guard turns his head and gives me a scorching glare, pointing his thumb and index finger at me like a gun. He shoots. And then he turns and stalks back to the Jeep. They drive off in a screech of rubber, leaving skid marks on the sidewalk.
“May I help you?” I swing around to see a teenage girl standing behind a cash register. I stick my hand in my pocket and pull out my cash. Juneau paid for our uneaten lunch, so I still have change. “What can I get with a dollar twenty-nine?” I ask.
“Water,” she says snippily.
I look back at the street. They’re definitely gone, although who knows if they’re just turning around to come back for me. I have two choices: hang out drinking water in Dairy Queen in case they come back, or risk it and make the trek back to my car.
“That’s okay,” I say. “Not thirsty.”
She rolls her eyes, and I walk out the door.
A twenty-minute walk later and I’m amazed to see that my keys are still on the ground where I dropped them when Portman and Redding smashed into the Jeep. Our lunch is still sitting in the bag on the dashboard where Juneau had set it. And Juneau’s pack is still in the backseat.
I’ve got this Tabasco-hot anxiety burning in my chest, but it quickly turns into anger as I think of Dad’s men snatching Juneau. They better not lay a finger on her. I’m comforted by the knowledge that Dad will treat her well as long as he thinks she can help him. But knowing her, she won’t be very helpful. Even if she knows the formula or technique or whatever it is that they use to stay young, there’s no way in hell she’s going to give it to him.