We’re down the driveway and nearly to the street when the big gate in front of us starts to close.
Corina’s lagging a couple steps behind me. “Faster!” I yell, but it’s not going to help. I dive for the narrow hole between the gate and the fence, and feel the gate brush my backpack as I pull through, but now it’s closed and Corina is still on the wrong side.
“Hold on,” she tells me before tossing her pack over and backing up ten feet.
A bunch of men start running down the driveway toward her. “They’re coming behind you!”
Instead of turning, she runs toward the gate. She jumps and gets amazing air, grabbing it above the top rail just below the spikes, then flips her left leg up and over.
“Catch me,” she calls as she straddles the top between the spikes and lets herself fall to my side of the gate.
I get there just in time and she lands on me. We fall to the ground in a heap. “High jump. Track team,” she explains. We can’t stay there. The gate is opening again and the guys coming after us are seconds away. She’s up and off me almost instantly. I’m up right after her.
We tear down the street. They’re coming after us in cars and on foot and I don’t know where we are or where to go. Corina knows the area better than me and she takes the lead, running out across the street and down another. There’s a park ahead of us and it looks like it has a forest in it. Corina makes a line for it and I follow close behind.
I can sense the men behind us getting closer. Corina dashes across the street and sends a passing car into a skid that nearly hits me. I slap against the fender as I jump over the back of it to warn it to watch out. By the time I’m across, Corina’s already in the woods.
The followers are shouting after us. Cars are skidding to a stop and doors are slamming. Corina’s left the trail and I’m falling behind. I thought I was faster than her back at the compound, but she just wasn’t giving it her all.
Now that she is, I can barely keep up.
We’re going through all sorts of bushes and I’m getting scraped up on my arms. My breath is becoming ragged and I can’t believe how many plants there are up here. I’ve run through the woods in Elysian Park hundreds of times, but there, almost nothing gets in your way. Here, it’s crowded with plants, and they all seem to be out to get you.
We’re gaining some distance, because even though this is hard for us, it’s even harder for them. They’re old and wearing suits.
The woods break in front of us and there’s another street, with a school on its other side.
“Hurry!” Corina shouts back at me.
I understand her plan—we’re kids and we’ll blend. The security team won’t be able to cross onto campus without getting stopped.
We make it to the school grounds just as the first guy behind us breaks out of the bushes. He stops short when he sees that we’re in a crowd of other kids and taps his pod. Just then, one of the others comes into view. He sees us and starts across the street, but the first guy calls him back.
“C’mon.” Corina yanks my arm and I turn back around. Together we walk through campus.
It’s a break or lunch and there are kids everywhere. They’re all white and Asian so Corina and I stand out like neon lights. “We’re not exactly hidden,” I mutter to her as I smile at a group of girls who are staring at us. When we pass them, I hear giggles and I imagine myself through their eyes.
She nods at two girls who’re giving her the eye. “We just need to find a way off this campus without getting stopped.”
There’s a parking lot on the other side of the school. It’s not like I’ve stolen a car before, but I know how to do it. I watched a bunch of videos about it when I was younger and I thought it might be useful. I’m pretty sure I can do it even without tools if I can find a gas car old enough to still have a mechanical key ignition.
I scan the lot. There’s an old Honda Accord parked about halfway back.
The bell sounds and we move with the crowds as they all head toward the doors, but we peel off before we go inside and jog down to the car.
Corina keeps watch while I try to remember how to do this. In the videos, there weren’t a whole bunch of people possibly looking through windows, and there weren’t bad guys giving chase. Also, I could watch them again if I missed something.
Here, if I screw up, we’re done. I stand next to the car with my back next to the driver’s side window, trying to look casual.
“Here goes.” I pull my arm forward, ready to bring my elbow back against the window as hard as I can.
“What are you doing?” Corina whispers.
“Breaking the window.” I slam my elbow backward into the glass, but the window doesn’t break. The pain is incredible. The videos don’t show you how much it hurts to whack your elbow into something as solid as a safety-glass car window. It hurts like hell. “Oh, fuck,” I say, teeth gritted against the pain. I’m not going to be able to do that again without needing my arm in a sling for a week. “Can’t do it.”
“Not with your bare elbow.” Corina digs into her backpack for something and comes out with a folding knife. She hands it to me. “Use this.”
I look at it and then at her. I don’t know what she wants me to cut. “How?”
She shakes her head and pushes me aside again. She takes my place at the door and, with the knife in her hand, the handle exposed, pulls back and slams it against the window. The glass shatters into a million pieces. “Only an idiot uses his elbow,” she says before stepping out of the way.
The alarm is a deafening whoop whoop whoop. I dive inside and reach under the dashboard for the box. It’s right where the videos said it would be, so I grab the orange wire that comes out of one side and the white wire that comes out the other, and pull.
The alarm dies and I yank the housing off the base of the steering wheel so I can see the ignition system.
I take the white wire from the alarm and connect it with the orange wire and the red wire and black wire that I find under the wheel. They spark when I twist them together and I slam on the gas.
The combustion engine revs to life, loud as hell, and my chest fills with hope.
Corina’s already in the passenger seat by the time I’ve got the door closed. As I pull away, I see school security and a bunch of students running toward us. They won’t catch us unless they have a car waiting at the end of the lot.
They don’t. I watch the cop radio it in from the rearview.
“Alex,” Corina says, getting my attention. She points at the street in front of me. There’s a black Ford Interceptor moving in to block the exit from the school.
I look around. The end of the parking lot is approaching quickly. There are security guards closing in on foot from either side of the drive and there’s a school police car with its siren blaring coming up behind us.
I yank the wheel hard to the left and hit the gas. The Accord rumbles forward. It hits the curb and jumps, landing on the grass. The wheels spin for a minute when we land, throwing dirt a hundred feet behind us and I’m sure that we’re going to get stuck in the mud, but we find traction, whip-tailing for a moment before getting forward motion.
It’s a bumpy ride but we clear the grass and jump the curb onto the street, leaving the cop car in the lot. I jam the gas and pull out into oncoming traffic to clear the Volvo in front of me, then hang a hard left onto a busy street against the light.
“Holy shit!!” Corina yells. And then we’re out and away from Seattle.