MacKenna chews her lip.
Navarro runs his hand through his hair. “They’re waiting for us to come up with Dr. Marshall’s code. Waiting for us to leave here with the key in our pocket. This is exactly what Marshall didn’t want. His instructions were to stay here.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “Gus. When my dad...died, he didn’t know what we know. About Charles. I have to save my brother. And I can’t think of a better idea.”
Navarro sighs in defeat. “Well, we still could have discussed it first.”
MacKenna pulls the atlas closer to her, slouches in her chair and traces a thin blue line with her finger. “So. How are we gonna get there?”
“Probably walk,” he responds flatly. “There are a few dirt roads that will put us in the general area. But it’s...well...” He glances at me, and his face turns red. “I don’t know what the technical term is, but it’s essentially like a rainforest or something.”
I pull at a thread on my own sweater. Everything makes me think of my brother. Charles is the expert in all things botanical.
Toby is lost in his own thoughts. “So, it’s a jungle out there?” he mutters.
“Glad to see you’ve still got your sense of humor,” Navarro says. “You’re gonna need it.”
Jay crosses to the far side of the bunker, and I can barely hear him when he says, “I see no choice but to press on with this plan and see what develops.”
He opens another plastic bin. “Everyone get ready. We leave tomorrow at dawn.”
MacKenna pokes Navarro in the arm. “So, Ojos de Esmerelda? That means eyes of green, right? Why do they call it that?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” he tells her before joining Jay at the supply cabinet.
From the comm center, the NeXT beeps. A message appears on the screen.
SUSAN. THIS IS YOUR MOTHER.
All the dystopian books we’ve read. Everything we’ve been told about brave new worlds and doublethink. Sure, these stories are cautionary tales. But they aren’t about some big systems collapse or a warning against evil dictators. Not really, anyway. They’re about what happens when it’s no longer important to regular people to do the right thing. What’s happening isn’t a crisis of government. It’s a crisis of conscience.
—MacKENNA NOVAK,
Letters from the Second Civil War
MacKENNA
Well.
We’ve got enough guns to start our own militia.
They’re stored in four black plastic tubs that fill up half of the camper of the cruddy truck Navarro picked up back in Guadalajara. He’s got the tubs labeled with our names. It kinda disturbs me to see MACKENNA written in thick block letters on the side of a tub of Smith & Wesson M&P Shields and Glock 43s.
It also kinda disturbs me that I now know the difference between a Shield and a Glock. How to load and fire them.
Jinx gets way cooler guns. The kind that look like they belong to cops in old-timey TV shows. But Navarro says I have too much trouble with the grip safety. So, no Colt Governments for me.
I shudder. The old me wouldn’t have considered any gun cool.
Oh, for the love of Pete. Calm down, MacKenna. Focus.
The old me wrote a paper called “Your Thumbprint Is Your Weapon: How DNA-A Technology Killed Gun Culture.” It was all about how old guns should be destroyed. How The Spark basically stopped school shootings and mass murders with the National Gun Control Act. All new guns had to be connected to the internet, and the user had to login to shoot.
Jinx could probably explain all the techie stuff.
The old guns though... The Spark wasn’t able to get rid of them all.
And...here I am. Like a hypocrite. Carting around an arsenal of Dr. Doomsday’s twentieth-century weapons.
I try to tell myself that our lives depend on it.
But where is the old me? Am I in here somewhere?
I have to be, right?
I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, listening to Jinx and Navarro go through another one of their survivalist routines. It’s kinda like a mating ritual for doomsday survivors. Watching them in the rearview mirror, I can tell Navarro is still mad. He’s making that squinty-eyed face and keeps crossing his arms.
And hey...it’s looking like it was a big mistake not to tell him about the satellite dish. After we got that cryptic message, Jinx pretty much threw that old computer off the desk and, like, destroyed anything that could even possibly communicate with anything else.
LEAD: Stephanie Marshall knows where we are and is coming for us.
“How many self-heating meals did you pack?” Navarro asks.
I have to hand it to them. They’re running their drills.
“One hundred and fifty,” Jinx says.
“That’s only enough for ten days, Susan.”
Jinx pushes her reddish-brown bangs out of her face. Sometimes she looks like Stephanie. She makes these faces, with her lips kinda scrunched up. Or sometimes, she’ll reach for her neck, like she’s playing with an invisible necklace.
Stephanie used to do that too.
The resemblance scares the hell out of me.
“This isn’t a magic camper,” Jinx says with an eye roll. “We don’t have unlimited space back here. And if we haven’t found something in ten days, we’ll need to come up with...with...”
Navarro snorts. “With what? A plan better than this one?” The muscles in his arms kinda flex, stretching the fabric of his camo T-shirt.
I have to give it to Jinx. The guy is hot.
She picks up a bin of food and shoves it into Navarro’s arms. “With another idea.”
I lean so that I can see myself in the mirror.
Ugh. What I wouldn’t do for a facial. Or some kinda moisturizer that doesn’t smell like a banana snow cone.
I wonder if anyone ever thinks I look like my mother.
Toby and I both look like Dad. Even Mom used to say so all the time. These days, I try to think about Mom. Try to picture the exact color of her hair.
I can’t.
That scares the hell out of me too.
Jinx and Navarro grow larger in the mirror as they come closer to me. The space that’s right over the top of the truck’s cab is a bed. They fill it with the bins, clearing enough room for us to be able to move around in the camper.
Dad gets into the driver’s seat and pokes me lightly on the arm. “You’re in the back.”