Corina and I walk together behind Cassandra. I reach for her hand and she gives it to me. When Cassandra turns around, she sees us and she smiles. “Cute as pie, you two.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been this thirsty. I can tell from her music that Corina is feeling it as much as I do, but she’s not willing to show it. No weakness from her. Not right now.
No weakness from me, either. My feet hurt like they’re broken. It was stupid to take off my shirt because my shoulders are burning to a crisp.
It’s getting dark by the time we reach a town. There’s a mini-mart, but it looks like it’s not in business anymore. Cassandra walks to it anyways and pushes the door.
The old man behind the counter is drinking from a forty-ounce bottle of Colt 45. He nods at us, but he’s too busy watching the TV to pay us much mind.
“You don’t have anything to eat?”
He doesn’t take his eyes from the TV. “Just some waters ’n’ those.” He points to a display of beef jerky and snack cakes that look old enough for a museum.
“Thanks,” I tell him, and follow Cassandra to the cooler, where there are water bottles. The cooler’s broken, so the water’s room temperature, but at least it’s not a hundred and seven degrees.
Three beef jerkies, three snack cakes. Three bottles of water.
At the counter, ready to pay, I look up at the old-style wall-mounted TV screen to see what he’s watching.
It’s a news broadcast—one of the cable networks. There’s a main anchor and a couple of windows off to the side.
One of them’s got another person in it, talking, but it’s the last window that stops me from doing anything. I recognize the person in it.
My heart starts to pound. It’s Jordan.
She’s standing at a podium with the MtLA logo behind her, set between two American flags. She’s speaking and I know what she’s saying because I helped her write the speech.
“Holy shit,” I say to Corina. “She was my glide target.” I turn to her and smile broadly. “I made this speech happen.”
Corina is frozen in place. She doesn’t look impressed or curious. She looks scared. Her music is quiet, uneven. “You saw this part?”
“Nah, I just did the—” But I don’t get to finish the sentence because all of a sudden the little box with Jordan in it takes over the whole screen. A dark spot has appeared next to Jordan’s podium, bigger than her—a shadow with nothing to cast it. It takes a moment for my eyes to focus on it, to see what it is, but even before it’s clear, my stomach curls up and I want to be sick.
Locust. Jordan looks over. She’s so small compared to it, delicate.
She’s just a kid.
“No . . .” I don’t even mean to say it. It just comes out. “No. No, this isn’t . . .”
The Locust spreads its cape, revealing its arms and legs, which are almost impossible to tell from its body, but I know they’re there.
“Run!” I shout it out loud.
“She don’t,” the counter guy says softly. “She just stands there.”
I watch, as paralyzed as Jordan. She makes no move to get away from it as it moves toward her. She closes her eyes. It’s hard to see what she’s doing, but I know.
She’s praying.
I can even read one of the words on her lips as she says it.
Abaddon.
The Locust’s claw arm emerges, finds her neck. She doesn’t even resist as it pulls her in toward itself, enfolding her in its cape.
“Jordan . . .” I’m nearly crying.
The camera is starting to shake and then suddenly there’s movement from the left side of the screen—a guy has come up onstage. He’s moving over to where the Locust has Jordan.
I know him, too, and as I watch him edge closer to where the beast has Jordan, Sabazios’s plan becomes absolutely clear.
I know what’s about to happen.
The guy onstage is Bicycle Man.
He’s got Live-Tech.
The Locust seems to notice him approach, and instead of reaching for him, it glides back and away from him, dragging Jordan with him, only her feet visible beneath its cape.
The frame freezes and a circle appears around Bicycle Man’s ear. It zooms in to show his pod. It’s Live-Tech.
JEFFREY SABAZIOS’S LIVE-TECH CLAIMS TRUE? appears on the screen underneath, then fades. The screen zooms out, the action continues.
And it’s clear that, just like with me, the Locust is pretending it doesn’t want to be near the Live-Tech.
Everybody thinks it’s afraid of it, but now that I know the truth it’s hard for me to see how anybody can believe the lie.
Within moments, the Locust backs up against the wall behind the podium. The wall shimmers behind it.
It does something under its cape. Jordan’s feet twitch. Her toes extend, flex in her shoes, then relax.
Blood drips down her exposed legs.
Her body drops.
The Locust backs into the wall and disappears and then Jordan’s body is alone, bloody, collapsed on the ground.
She fell just like my mom did.
“Alex,” Corina whispers. “We’ve got to go.” She touches my shoulder, leaves her hand there. The sunburn under her fingers comes alive and the pain is searing, but I don’t move away because I can’t move at all.
“I killed her.” But no one seems to hear me, so I say it again. “I killed her.”
“No you didn’t, Alex,” Corina says. Her voice is almost too quiet for me to hear.
“I set her up.” My voice is squeaky and high but I don’t care, can’t. “I made her do the speech. She wasn’t going to, but I made her.”
“You didn’t kill her, Alex.” Corina squeezes my shoulder, making me wince. She pushes against it, turning me to face her. “You didn’t do this.”
I shake my head, ready to tell her that she’s wrong, but she puts up a finger, stops me.
“Sabazios made this happen, not you.” Then: “Not me.”
It takes me a moment. “You knew?”
She nods her head, then looks at the guy behind the counter, who’s watching our conversation. “President Castle was my target. I was there when he got the news.”
“That’s some terrible shit,” Cassandra says from behind me. “But one dead kid isn’t the end of the world. The end of the world is the end of the world, and if we don’t get a move on, it’s gonna be here before you know it.” She points at the counter guy, who’s wide-eyed. “Give the guy the money.”
I hand the guy the wad of ones in my hand. “Don’t believe the bullshit about Live-Tech,” I tell him. “It’s a lie. It’s how they target you—that guy on the screen wasn’t saved by it, he used it to bring that Locust to her.”
He doesn’t say anything back. I don’t ask for change.
When we leave the store, I offer Cassandra one of the beef jerkies.
“I don’t eat meat,” she tells me, grabbing the three snack cakes out of my hands instead.
She doesn’t say thanks.
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“Your friend’s a piece of work,” Corina says.
It’s hard to focus on what’s around me because my head’s filled with Jordan. Not big moments, just memories. Her excitement at the prospect of waffles.
The way she thought it was funny that everybody took her dad so seriously.
How much she wanted to help.
How real she was with Will.
Will. He was there. He watched that happen in real time.
I convinced her that this was the time for her to be Abigail. We were both sure that what she was doing was right.
She thought it was God’s will.
It’s full dark when we pass a painted mountain. I can just make out the colors on it. It’s covered with colors and designs, rising hundreds of feet off the road. I slow to look at it, but Cassandra doesn’t and neither does Corina. She’s too tired.
While I’m looking at it, there’s a flash of light and then, a few seconds later, an explosion. It’s followed by several more—big hot red round balls of fire rise off the ground in the distance. It sounds like war. “What the hell is that?!” I yell.
I can hear Corina’s concern over the explosion, but it doesn’t show through in her face. She’s too tired.
Cassandra shrugs. “Artillery.” I wait for more explanation. None comes.
I jump with every explosion. They get louder as we get closer. When Cassandra turns, the bombs are falling so close I think I can feel their wind.
Everything on this walk has been strange, but the place she takes us is like a scene from the end of the world. We’re walking on a desert road across an open field, and there are fires burning all around us. I sense hundreds of people nearby, but there are no lights beside the fires. There’s no cars, but I can see the outlines of camper shells.
We’re walking up Fury Road, but all the insanity around me is overwhelmed by Jordan in my mind. She’s everywhere and I can’t escape.
Eventually, Cassandra stops in front of the nose of a yellow school bus that’s rising out of the ground like a dolphin jumping from the water. It’s sitting at a thirty-degree angle. Everything beyond the fifth row of seats is underground. “We’re home.”