Chapter 27

There wasn’t a way to explain how I knew. Maybe it was the way Liam’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, or how he kept glancing in his side mirror throughout the conversation, long after a silver car had passed us from the other direction. It could have been the way his shoulders sagged, sloping down in a way that was so defeated. I just knew, long before I caught his worried eyes in the rearview mirror.
Slowly, without disturbing Zu and Chubs as they watched an endless stream of forest pass by the side windows, I crouched between the two front seats again.
Liam met my gaze for a split second, nodding in the direction of his side mirror. See for yourself, he seemed to say. So I did.
Trailing behind us, back about two car lengths, was an old white pickup truck. With the rain fogging up the air between the two cars, I couldn’t tell if there were one or two men inside. They looked like little more than two black ants from where I was sitting.
“Interesting,” I said, keeping my voice even.
“Yep,” he said, his jaw clenched. The muscles of his neck strained. “Gotta love West Virginia. Glorious Mountain State. Land O’Many John Denver Songs.”
“Maybe…” I began slowly, “you should pull over and look at a map?”
It was one way of feeling out the situation. Liam was about to turn onto George Washington Highway—slightly wider than the twisting road we were leaving. If the truck was following us, they wouldn’t be able to stop without revealing it. In any case, whoever was driving the truck wasn’t being aggressive about it. If he was a bounty hunter, as Liam apparently thought, they were probably feeling us out, too.
We continued up Gorman Road, following its natural curve. Black Betty slowed in anticipation of the upcoming turn. Liam hesitated half a second before flipping his turn signal on. I looked in the mirror, my heart lifting when I saw the truck turn its other blinker on. They were turning right. We were going left.
Liam blew out a long sigh, finally sitting back against his seat as the minivan reached the intersection of the highway and the road. There was another car turning off the highway, a small silver Volkswagen; both Liam and I threw up a hand to block the intense glint of the sun against its windows.
“Okay, Old Man River.” Liam gave the car an impatient wave. “Go ahead and turn before the next century. No, take your time, shave, contemplate the universe…”
Lynyrd Skynyrd was blasting through the pickup truck’s open windows as it pulled up alongside us, creaking and groaning in the way all old cars seem to do. “Free Bird.” Of course. It had to be Dad’s favorite. Two seconds into the damn song, and it was like I was back in the front seat of his squad car, cruising around town. That was the only time I got to listen to the good music—when it was just the two of us, cruising. Mom hated the stuff.
A laugh bubbled up inside of me as I watched the driver bob his head in time with the music. He howled the words at the top of his lungs, exhaling each lyric with a puff of cigarette smoke.
And then it was replaced by a different sound—a shriek of sorts. I looked up just in time to see the Volkswagen slam on its brakes right in front of us, jolting to a stop and sending another blinding glare of sunlight our way.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Liam made as if to press his hand down on the horn, but not before the driver of the Volkswagen rolled down his window and pointed something black and gleaming at us.
No. The world went into sharp focus. Sound evaporated around me. NO.
I reached up and slapped Black Betty’s radio button on, turning it up as loud as it would go. Liam and Chubs both started yelling, but I knocked Liam’s hand away before he could switch it off.
The White Noise cut straight through the music from the speakers, tearing at our ears. Not as loud or as powerful as I was used to, and not even close to as bad as it had been last time, but still there, still agonizing. My radio trick couldn’t drown it out, not completely.
The others crumbled around me, shriveling at the first piercing shriek.
Liam fell forward against the wheel, mashing his hands up against his ears. Chubs knocked his head into the passenger seat window, as if trying to ram the noise out of his head. I felt Black Betty began to drift forward, only to jerk to a stop when Liam hit the brakes instead of the gas.
The door opened beside me, and a pair of arms circled Chubs’s waist, trying to untangle him from the seat belt. I pulled myself up off the floor and lashed a hand out, catching the man’s cheek and raking my fingernails down as hard as I could. It was enough to startle the truck driver, the same one that had been nodding his head to “Free Bird” two seconds before, into dropping Chubs. He was left half hanging in his seat, half hanging out.
The driver stumbled back against the bed of his truck, his words drowned out by the thunderstorm of noise that had settled over the three cars. It was only then that I saw the badge hanging around his neck on a silver cord, and the bright red Ψ stitched there. They weren’t skip tracers.
Psi. PSF. Camp. Thurmond. Capture.
The man from the Volkswagen had opened the driver’s side door of the van and was trying to unhook Liam’s seat belt. He wasn’t large in any sense of the word—he looked like he could have been an accountant, with thick glasses and hunched shoulders from spending too many hours at a desk. But he didn’t need strength, not when he was holding the black megaphone in his hands.
Some of the PSFs at Thurmond carried the noise machines around with them, blasting them at small, rowdy groups, or just to see a few kids squirm. What did they care? They couldn’t hear it.
Every nerve in my body was singing, but I launched my elbow into the chest of the pickup truck driver. He fell back again, and I pulled the door shut and locked it. I only had a second to look back at Zu as I dove across Liam’s body, fist-first. I nailed Volkswagen in the glasses, knocking them off his face. Somewhere behind me, Pickup Truck had moved on to the sliding door, and this time he wasn’t empty-handed.
Zu didn’t flinch as the rifle was pointed in her face—by the way she was moaning, her eyes scrunched up and her yellow gloves curled over her ears in agony, I don’t think she was seeing straight.
I didn’t know what to do. My hands were on Liam, trying to shake him back into consciousness. His eyes flashed open, clear and so blue, but it was only for an instant. The megaphone was suddenly two inches from my face, and the White Noise sunk into my brain like an ax. My bones went to jelly. I didn’t register the fact I had fallen over Liam until I was there. The only thing louder than the White Noise, than the radio, than Chubs’s screams, was the sound of Liam’s heart racing.
I squeezed my eyes shut again, my fingers curling into the soft leather of Liam’s coat. Half of me wanted to push away, put enough distance between us that I had no chance of sliding into his mind—but the other half of me, the desperate part, was already trying to push through, to anchor myself to him and will him to move. If I could hurt someone, shouldn’t that mean I could help them, too?
Get up, I begged, get up, get up, get up, get up…
There was a high-pitched wail, a sound that couldn’t have possibly come from a human. I forced my eyes open. Pickup Truck had his rifle in one hand and the collar of Zu’s shirt in the other, and he was tugging both in the direction of the truck. I tried to scream for her, even as I felt Volkswagen’s hands in my hair, yanking me up and out of the door. He let me hit the ground hard, the loose gravel cutting open my legs and palms.
I rolled onto my side, trying to twist away from the PSF’s reach. From under Betty, I saw flutters of yellow dropping to the road like two small birds, and heard a door slam.
“Stewart—confirm Psi number 42755 spotted—” Volkswagen wrenched the driver’s side door open again, pulling something bright orange from his pocket. I swiped at my eyes, trying to force the double image of him I was seeing back into one. The orange device in the PSF’s free hand was no bigger than a cell phone, easy enough to maneuver in front of Liam’s face from where it was pressed against the minivan’s steering wheel.
Taking a swipe at the PSF’s ankle with my hand was pointless—he was so involved with whatever it was he was doing that he didn’t so much as notice.
Liam! My mouth wasn’t moving, it wasn’t working. Liam!
The orange device flashed, and a moment later, above even the wailing of the White Noise, I heard Volkswagen say, “That’s a positive ID on Liam Stewart.”
Something hot and sharp cut through the air, billowing out under Betty like a stinging cloud of sand. I felt it rub up against my bare skin and had to turn my face away from the blinding light that came next—a flash burn that erased anything and everything that stood in its way. I heard Volkswagen cuss from above me, only to be drowned out by the sound of metal screeching against metal, glass exploding so hard, so fast, that tiny shards dropped like hail onto the ground in front of me.
And then it was gone. The White Noise cut out sharply as something clattered to the ground and landed a short distance away. The megaphone.
I stretched my arm out, hand groping for the megaphone’s handle. Volkswagen was screaming something that I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears, and I was too focused on getting the bullhorn to actually give a damn and listen. A hand wrapped around my bare ankle and tugged me back across the ground—but not before my fingers closed around the handle.
“Get up, you piece of—!” There was a digital squeak, like an alarm, and the man immediately dropped my leg. “This is Larson, requesting immediate backup—”
I pushed myself up on my knees with a grunt, then my feet. The man had his back turned to me one second too long, and when he finally realized his mistake and looked over his shoulder, he was rewarded with a face full of metal as I swung the megaphone.
His radio clattered to the asphalt, and I kicked it out of his reach. Both of his hands went up, trying to shield his face from another hit, but I wasn’t going to go easy on him. I wasn’t going to let him take me back to Thurmond.
My hand closed over his exposed forearm, and I yanked it, forcing him to look down at me. I watched his pupils shrink in his hazel eyes before blowing back out to their normal size. The man had a foot of height on me, but you never would have known by the way he dropped to his knees in front of me. He hadn’t even been able to catch his breath, let alone keep me from walking straight into his mind.
Leave! I tried to say. My jaw was clenched, the muscles there seized as though the White Noise was still running through them like a current of pulsing electricity. Leave!
I had never done this before, and there was no way to know if it would actually work—but what did I have to lose now? His memories flooded over me, wave after wave lapping at my brain, and all I could think was, I’m going to do this. It is going to work.
Martin had said that he pushed feelings into people, but my abilities didn’t work that way, and they never had. I only saw images. I could only muddle, sort, and erase images.
But I’d never tried to do anything else. I had never wanted to, before this moment. Because if I couldn’t help these kids, if I couldn’t save them, then what good was I? What point did I even have? Do it. Just do it.
I imagined the man picking up his radio—every detail, from the way he would fumble for it without his glasses to the way his jeans would wrinkle. I imagined him canceling the request for backup. I imagined him walking down the rocky hill that kissed the edge of the road, into the wild.
And when I released my fingers from his arm, one by one, that’s exactly what he did. He walked away, and each step brought a new jolt of shock. I had done that. Me.
I turned to where black smoke spilled out over the road, coating the hill’s grass and hidden edges in a thick, ugly blanket. Then, I remembered.
Zu.
I could see the wreckage clearly now as I limped forward. The pickup truck, which at one point had been parked beside Betty, was now several hundred feet away, resting in the empty green field. The smaller silver Volkswagen was on its side in front of it, a heap of twisted metal that I barely recognized. It was smoking wildly, belching out thick smoke, as if it were only one small spark away from exploding.
It rammed it, I realized. The truck rammed it out of the way.
I followed the trail of tire marks and glass, but I only found Truck Driver. What was left of him.
His body was tangled up in itself in the wild grass; I couldn’t tell where one limb began and the other ended. None of them seemed to be in their right place. His elbows stuck up from the ground like two broken wings. He had been rammed, too. Something cold and brittle wrapped itself around my chest, forcing me back out of the haze of smoke once I confirmed Zu wasn’t in either car. I waited until I cleared the heaviest of the smoke before falling to my knees and throwing up what little food I had in my stomach.
It was only when I looked up that I finally saw her, sitting on the road just beside Betty, her back slumped forward, her head bowed, but alive—alive and safe. My mind clung to those two words as I tried calling for her again. Zu looked up, panting. As I stumbled closer, the smoke revealed her in pieces: bloodshot eyes, a cut on her forehead, tears streaming down her dirt-stained cheeks.
My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat as I knelt down in front of her, and for several agonizing seconds, it was all that I could hear.
“O…kay?” I asked, my mouth feeling like mush.
Her teeth chattered as she nodded.
“What…happened?” I squeezed out.
Zu curled down on herself like she was trying to vanish from my sight. Her yellow gloves were beside her on the ground, and her bare hands were still up and facing forward, as if she had only touched the truck a second before.
I didn’t know what to say to get her to calm down—I didn’t even know how to calm myself down. This girl, this Yellow—she’d destroyed two vehicles and one life in a matter of seconds. And, by the looks of it, she’d done it with a single touch.
But even knowing that, she was still Zu, and those hands? They were the ones that had pulled me to safety.
I lifted her back into Betty with shaking arms. Zu was hot, well past the point of feeling feverish. Dropping her into the closest seat, I pressed my hands against her cheeks, but her eyes couldn’t focus on me. I was about to roll the door shut when she grabbed my wrist and pointed toward her gloves on the ground.
“Got ’em,” I said. I tossed them to her, and then turned to confront a heavier load.
Chubs was still passed out in the passenger seat, his body hanging out of the open door. The truck driver hadn’t been able to maneuver his long limbs farther than that, thank God—otherwise Chubs probably would have been in the grass with the driver. His limp sack of bones smacked against the door as I slammed it shut behind him.
I tripped over the tips of my tennis shoes as I made my way around the front of the van. With a cloud of bright spots bleaching out my sight, I pulled the driver’s door open the rest of the way. Liam was also still out cold, and no amount of shaking was able to stir him up into consciousness. Zu began to whimper, her cries muffled as she pressed her face against her knees.
“You’re okay, Zu,” I said. “We’re all okay. We’re gonna be fine.”
I untangled Liam’s arms from the gray seat belt and half pushed, half rolled him off the driver’s seat. I wasn’t strong enough to deposit him into one of the back seats, not right then. So he ended up on the ground, wedged between the two front seats. With his face turned up toward me, I could see the muscles around his mouth twitch, every so often turning the corners of his lips up in an unnatural smile.
I stared at the wheel, trying to bring to mind the right steps to getting the van to work. Trying to remember what Liam had done, what Cate had done, what my father used to do. Sixteen, and I couldn’t even figure out where the goddamn parking brake was, let alone if it was actually on.
In the end, it didn’t matter. I could drive with it on or off, apparently, and all I really needed to know was that the right pedal was go, and the left was stop, and there really wasn’t a whole lot more to it than that.
Betty tore through the thickest heart of the smoke, and chased it down the open road until we were finally, finally, finally free of the wreckage, and the air coming through the vents no longer carried the echo of the White Noise into our heads, or smell of smoke into our lungs.