We’ve been in LA for days. Nothing. We’ve visited lakes. We’ve done what we can to avoid being seen, but every minute we stay, the chances that Bicycle Man or somebody like him finds us gets bigger, and the only thing we’ve learned is that Corina and I irritate each other when we’re feeling hopeless.
Corina doesn’t know what I’m planning. She went to get us some dinner. When she gets back, I’ll know what the plan is—I’ll know what’s going to happen.
I won’t be able to tell her because I’ll be a Zombie, but at least I’ll know. I lie down on the bed. I’ve been working on how to do this for a few days, but this is my first real attempt. I close my eyes. My music is there, top of the drawer. I pull it, examine the staff, looking far ahead, following it beyond where it splits, splits again and again, following one thread into the mist.
A week from now:
My eyes are closed. This was a bad idea. Memories are flooding in, but it’s all coming in too quickly to sort. There’re parts that feel familiar and then there are other parts that don’t make any sense.
I open my eyes. I’m in a bathroom stall. I’m sitting on the toilet with my pants down. My head is in my hands and my legs are nearly asleep. I’ve been here awhile.
Corina is here, too. Somewhere. Outside. We’re at a rest stop near Palm Springs. Near the windmills, past the big casino.
We got a ride here from a guy in a minivan who made room for us by asking his youngest son to sit on another kid’s lap. I wouldn’t have made him do it if we hadn’t been desperate.
We needed to get away.
The last week comes into clearer focus:
I make a plan.
Corina and I talk it over. She wants to keep going to lakes, but I tell her it’s a waste of time. I tell her about the car crash when the truck nearly hit me and how Cassandra was the one who saved me. “Maybe she’s still around my old neighborhood.”
Corina’s sure somebody will recognize me and I’ll get arrested. I point to my hair, which is now a fuzzy mess. “It looks so terrible that as long as I wear the nerd glasses, nobody’ll even look at me twice except to laugh.”
She comes around eventually, but she’s not thrilled.
We set out the next morning. We’re on the bus and then we’re at Echo Park. I’m sweating bullets. Corina is walking next to me. We hold hands while we walk around the lake.
She thinks it’s really pretty. The lotus flowers are just starting their first blooms, the turtles and birds are everywhere. She wants to rent a pedal boat, but I can’t even think about doing that.
I’m too messed up by being this close to home.
It’s like nothing’s changed here at all. My family being gone hasn’t brought even one part of life here to a standstill.
All the normal feels personal and it hurts.
There’s no sign of Cassandra.
We go to Elysian Park. We’re on the old road that runs from Scott up toward the conference center when I hear someone familiar nearby.
It’s not anybody I recognize from LA.
“Something’s not right,” I whisper to Corina.
“What?” She looks around. She’s as nervous as me.
I don’t know. We scramble down into some bushes and wait.
Minutes later, we see it.
“There!” I point back up at the road. It’s not much bigger than a bumblebee, but it flies too straight for any bug. They’re called dragonflies because of how they look, but nobody says that—we call them flying pigs.
She squints, then sees it. “Well, shit,” Corina whispers. “Is it here for us?”
“Don’t think the cops’d be using theirs to watch an empty park trail.”
“Shit.”
We hold still, careful to stay quiet as it flies past on the road. Moments later, Bicycle Man comes into view, walking slowly, watching the air in front of him where the flying pig’s camera view is being projected.
“Fuck,” I whisper without meaning to. “How’s he here?”
Corina shakes her head, reaches for the scar on her arm where her patch was. “I don’t know.”
We go silent, holding perfectly still as he passes close to us. When he’s past, we scoot deeper into the trees to hunker down until it’s dark, when I move us to another place I know—a tight-knit grove of trees and bushes that has a hollow place in the middle. We called it the Den when we were kids—it’s where we used to hang out. Nobody ever came here but us because it’s up a steep hill that doesn’t look like it has a trail.
All night long, we can hear the soft buzz of flying pigs as they circle around, looking for us. In the morning, as I’m looking for a place to go to the bathroom, I catch sight of the trail below us.
Bicycle Man’s standing there, looking down the hill toward the grass.
I stay where I am and wait for him to leave, praying that Corina doesn’t choose this moment to come looking for me.
He’s following us, and I don’t know how. He doesn’t seem to be able to pinpoint us, but he’s able to get a general location. It occurs to me that he might be using face-rec from public cameras, so he would have seen us coming into the park, but can’t figure out exactly where we are. If that’s the case, we’re never going to be able to get clean away unless we stop him. I sit still, wait for him to leave, think about what to do. By the time he’s gone and the air around us is quiet, it’s been so long my legs have fallen asleep and my bladder feels like it’s going to explode.
Corina and I come up with a plan. We wait for Bicycle Man to come back along the trail below us. I hear his music before I see him, and we brace ourselves. When he reaches the outlet of the coyote trail that leads to us, Corina makes a noise.
He stops, looks up to where we are, smiles, then starts up the hill, scrambling right past where I’m hiding.
He doesn’t see me until it’s too late. I kick his feet out from under him and he falls face-first into the dirt.
I bring up the concrete I’ve found. It’s heavy, the size of a football.
I drop it on his head. It lands with a thud. His instrument jangles like broken strings and he makes a sound like a sigh, then he’s quiet, his music no more than a faint reverb. We run to the road, where we meet the guy in the minivan. He was only going home to Highland Park, but I helped him want to drive us east.
On the way, I use his son’s screen to send a message to the reporter:
Sarah,
Tell my auntie that I love her and that she was right about Sabazios. He’s working with the LOCUSTS!
Tell everyone that Sabazios is trying to get us all to use Live-Tech because when it’s connected to people it lets the Locusts know where to go.
When everybody has it, they’re going to all come at once and make us slaves and food.
Jordan Castle is going to give a speech for MtLA where she’s going to blow the cover off of everything and she’s going to say that Sabazios and Live-Tech are the answer, but she’s WRONG and you have to tell people. Jeffrey Sabazios is THE ENEMY!
I don’t know if she’ll listen to me, but I have to try.
We ask the driver to drop us at the rest stop. It felt like a good place to get ourselves together.
To get cleaned up.
I get up off the toilet and go look for Corina. I hear her before I see her.
She’s still scared. She’s scared of going to jail. She’s afraid of dying. She’s still scared for me. I can hear it in her music.
The wind is whipping hard and my hood fills with air. I turn away from the wind, toward the mountains on the other side of the rest area.
They look familiar. They look like something I’ve seen before.
I turn to find Corina. I see her standing by herself near the tables. She’s looking at the mountains, too.
I walk up to her. I approach her slowly so I don’t scare her.
She looks at me. “There’s no water.”
“Not on this side,” I say. I reach for her hand. She gives it to me. I lead her down to the building where the bathrooms are, where there’s a map.
I point at it. I point at the big blue spot. “The Salton Sea,” she reads.
I nod.