WE’RE ON A HIGHWAY now that Kai is driving, and the miles fly past. We’ll have to get rid of this car soon; if they’ve found that CCTV, they’ll know what we’re driving.
Azra and Wilf are asleep behind us. His head has slipped onto her shoulder. They’re like brother and sister—they fight all the time, like Dineke and I did when we were younger. My little sister could drive me crazy, endlessly hanging around me, wanting attention all the time and never shutting up—like Wilf does to Azra. But I’d do anything to argue with her again.
I should try to sleep. I close my eyes, but my thoughts are traveling. I’m keeping a feel out all around us; I’m anxious even though there is nobody anywhere near—no one alive, that is.
The anxiety comes from the feeling that we’re going the wrong way. That’s it, isn’t it? Not so much because of specific dangers of heading south, even though they are there. The farther south we go, the more likely we are to find people—army, air force, immune groups to start with—and then to hit quarantine boundaries. Boundaries that protect people who don’t know what it means to watch those you care about get sick and die.
Or even worse: to get sick and survive.
But if we turn around, if we go north, we could head for Scotland—to Patrick and JJ, I tell myself, but they aren’t all that is there. There is also Alex and his strange ways and his group, Multiverse. Shay, too, and what could that mean for Kai and me? I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out either.
But I still feel it deep in my bones: we’re going the wrong way.
“Kai?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I’m scared. For me, for them.” I glance in the mirror to check: they’re still asleep behind us. “And you too.”
His hand slips off the gearshift to mine, gives it a light touch.
“I know, Freja. But I’ve got an idea to handle at least part of that.”