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  The guard approaches the fuel truck’s window. What am I going to do? I glance down at the wires hanging loose beneath the steering column. Maybe . . . I pull out the power wire, and immediately the engine gutters out. I glance up at the guard. She smiles at the fuel truck driver, steps back. I straighten out the power wire and thread its bare end into the hole in the cuff, then do the same with the starter wire. The live ends touch.

  Snap. An icy current zips through my body, and the smell of burned plastic fills the air. I let go of the wires and look down. My com cuff still hangs around my wrist, but it’s lost its pearlescent sheen. Faint gray lines spider under its surface, along the path of its circuits. I turn it over. The readout screen has gone flat and dull. I’ve disabled it.

  “You okay?”

  I jump.

  The guard stands at my window. “Why’re you sitting here with your engine off?”

  “I’m fine.” I manage a smile that I hope doesn’t look half crazed and tug my sleeve down over the com cuff. “Trying to conserve fuel.”

  The guard shakes her head, raises her scanner, and runs it across the bar code etched into the jeep’s windshield. I hold my breath.

  She raises an eyebrow at me. “This your first caravan?”

  “Yeah,” I say tightly.

  “Figures.” She pats the truck’s hood and steps back. “Don’t sit there without any AC on, huh? You’ll get heatstroke and then nobody will be impressed you saved a few ounces of fuel.”

  She moves on to the next vehicle, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding. I restart the engine. We sit for a few minutes more, and then the command comes over the radio again. “Roll out.”

  As the sun breaks over the horizon, we pull out past the checkpoint, onto the open road.

  .26.

  IRONWEED

  VERNONIA GIGANTEA

  The fuel truck kicks up dust on my windshield. I flick on my wipers and glance left as one of the motorcycle guards roars up from the back of the caravan. The landscape on either side of the highway alternates between overgrown fields of Bermuda grass and stands of pine.

  I spare a look at the emergency kit on the passenger seat beside me. I may have a gun, but I can’t take on the whole caravan with a single mag of ammo. If I’d had more time, maybe I could have orchestrated something neater and less risky, but so far, my plan is to wait until the caravan stops for its scheduled refueling break in an hour, and then make my move. Volunteer to guard Alder and the other prisoners while someone takes a piss break. Get him to recognize me, so he can help. Let them out and then get off the road, into the backwoods, where the AgraStar vehicles can’t follow.

  I look at the time—0744. The driver whose spot I stole is probably in her supervisor’s office, getting chewed out for missing her departure time. On the other side of the city, my mother is activating my tracker, finding no trace of me. She might be panicking now, but she’ll get herself under control, call in security forces, start reconstructing my movements from the night before. Maybe they’ll put together a composite feed of me slinking out of my mother’s residence, stealing clothes from the dryer, walking the halls of the security forces barracks, the same way they did for my father.

  I imagine her watching the footage, and a lump rises in my throat. I wish I could explain, make her understand. I know there’s a part of her that might—the part that called me m’ija despite the stigma of Spanish words, and stood up to Kurich for me. But then there’s the part of her that jokes about shirk queens and doesn’t care if the blight kills thousands of scavengers. There’s the part of her that believes so deeply in AgraStar’s mission that she would do anything—denounce her own husband or engineer a bioweapon—if it meant strengthening the company. Nothing I could say would make that part of her understand.

  The radio beeps on. “Caravan status check. Lead vehicle, repor—”

  Something moves in my peripheral vision. I jerk the wheel right. An eighteen-wheeler, its cab aflame, plows out of the overgrown brush along the side of the road and collides with the fuel tanker in a terrible, screeching boom. My jeep pitches and tips as it hits the ditch at the side of the road. An enormous wave of heat, light, and sound washes over me. It’s all I can do to hold on as the jeep rolls.

  It comes to a stop upside down in the grass. Outside, shouts and gunshots punctuate a static roar, but I can’t see through the film of black soot covering the windshield and driver’s side window. I brace myself so I won’t fall and break my neck, then release the seat belt. I tumble against the roof of the car and right myself. The emergency kit has skidded to the back and broken open. I grab the pistol and kick open the driver’s-side door, so the body of the jeep stands between me and the chaos on the road.

  I peer over the front wheels. The fuel truck is a tower of flame, oily black smoke billowing into the sky. The smell of burning rubber and corn diesel hangs thick in the air. I see movement through the haze, muzzle flashes briefly illuminating human shapes as they advance on the armored car. Distantly, I hear the sound of gunfire on the other side of the blaze, and the motorcycle engines revving. Whoever this is, they’re organized, splitting the caravan and coming at us from both ends.

  I move out from behind the jeep, staying low in the overgrown grass. The ground slopes up to the road, affording me a little cover. I drop to my stomach and crawl on my elbows. The other jeep and pickup have pulled up to flank the armored car, and all of the AgraStar forces on this side of the explosion have taken up positions behind the vehicles, firing on the people walking toward them. I squint through the smoke. Every person advancing on them is a man, with goggles over his eyes, a bandanna covering his nose and mouth, and a shaved head. Some of them wear body armor vests instead of shirts. I catch a flash of an arm, and the bold black tattoo on the bicep. Double lightning bolts . . . 88. The Red Hand. AgraStar hit their base. Now they’re hitting back.

  A burst of gunfire lights up the smoke. One of the Red Hand soldiers has a modded AR-15, set to full auto. Bullets spray across the AgraStar line, shattering the windshields of the jeep and pickup and glancing off the armored car. The AgraStar guards return fire. One Red Hand fighter drops, but the smoke is thickening, and the wind is against AgraStar. Most of the shots go wide.

  I raise my pistol and take aim. Like hell is anyone I know going to be taken by the Red Hand again. I single out the man with the AR-15, line him up in my sights, brace, and fire. He falls, one hand flying to his neck, the other spasming on the trigger. A wild arc of bullets fly, puncturing one of the armored truck’s wheels. I flatten myself against the ground as the remaining Red Hand men wheel on my position and fire.

  A bullet rips open the heel of my boot, grazing my foot. Other shots thud in the dirt beside me. I cover my head. The smoke seems to be working against them, too, but I’m pinned down.

  The sound of gunshots intensifies on the road above me, and the rain of bullets stops. I look up. The wind has shifted. AgraStar opens fire on the Red Hand, driving them back toward the burning fuel truck. I jump up and run for the shelter of the AgraStar vehicles. I spot Eli, steadying his rifle over the hood of a pickup. He sees me running and lays down covering fire so I can make it across the open space.

  I skid to a stop beside him, heart thumping, ears ringing. Several AgraStar guards and one of the drivers lie on the asphalt, bleeding or dead.

  “You hit?” he asks over his shoulder.

  I don’t think he’s recognized me. In the chaos, in my hat and jumpsuit, I’m just another soldier.

  “Only grazed,” I say.

  “You still have ammo?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Then use it,” Eli says.

  I take up a position beside Eli, firing over the hood. The smoke is still thick, but the inferno lights up the Red Hand from behind, turning them into silhouettes wavering in the heat. My training tells me to aim for the center mass, but that isn’t much use when my opponents are kitted out in armor. Head and legs, then. Most of my shots disappear int
o the flames, but I think I clip one Red Hand man on the ear. Another falls, clutching his leg. And then my pistol clicks. I’m out of rounds.

  “Get back!” Eli shouts. “Help the wounded.”

  I drop down and crawl to the closest injured guard. She lies beside her motorcycle, her uniform dark with blood. I push back the visor of her helmet, and for a split second, her face morphs into Danica’s. No. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again. This isn’t Danica. This is another girl, no less real, bleeding out on the highway. Her breath comes hard and fast.

  “Hey,” I say. “Stay with me, okay? I’m going to take care of you.”

  “I think it went through.” She pants and looks down at herself, eyes wide. “I’m bleeding.”

  “We need to put some pressure on it.” I cover the wound with my hands and look around wildly for something, anything to staunch the bleeding.

  She groans. Her skin is clammy and ashen. Not again. This can’t happen again.

  My coveralls have a tear at the knee. I rip it wider, strip off the fabric covering my calf, and press it against the girl’s stomach. Everything is filthy, but if she doesn’t bleed out, AgraStar’s doctors can pump her full of antibiotics to kill any infection.

  Shouting and engines rumbling rise above the tumult. I look up. Two of the motorcycles from the front end of our convoy fly alongside the burning truck, firing at the Red Hand guards. The AgraStar line lets out a ragged cheer.

  At that moment, a second explosion rocks the air. A ball of fire blossoms under the fuel truck as its own gas tank catches, engulfing one of the motorcycles and throwing Eli against the pavement. The remaining windows on the pickup blow out, scattering shards of glass over us.

  “Eli!” I run to him.

  Dozens of small cuts cover his face. He opens his eyes. They take a moment to focus, but when they do, they fill with confusion and horror. “Tempest? What the hell are you doing here?”

  I help him up. “We have to fall back.”

  He looks over the remaining AgraStar guards, the ruined pickup, and the bodies on the ground.

  “Fall back!” he shouts into his shortwave radio. “Fifty yards. Regroup.”

  I run to the wounded girl and lift one of her arms around my shoulder.

  She cries out, and then bites down. “Leave me here.”

  “Not a chance,” I grunt as I lift her to her feet. She sags against me.

  “Eli!” I shout.

  He hurries to us, ducks his shoulders under the girl’s other arm, and holds the compress to her middle. I grab her rifle. Together, we drag her back along the highway, the armored car slowly rolling in reverse alongside us, giving us cover.

  Fifty yards back, we stop and lay the wounded girl down. Eli and I survey what’s left of our group. We have three AgraStar guards still in fighting shape, plus the two of us and the armored-car driver. The sound of engines and whoops reaches us from ahead. The Red Hand is regrouping.

  I grab Eli’s arm. “The prisoners. Let them out. They can fight with us.”

  Eli pulls away. “You want me to arm them?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “How do we know they won’t turn on us and join the jackers?”

  “Because the boy who came south with me is one of your prisoners,” I say. “These assholes killed his parents and tortured him. He’ll fight with us, and if he will, the others might, too. Let me talk to him. Please.”

  He looks at the back doors of the armored car. “The boy you were on the road with.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Alder.”

  Eli licks his lips. I know the math he’s doing. He may have sent out a distress call when the gunfire started, but we’re in the middle of nowhere. Help is at least thirty minutes out, and we won’t last that long. He closes his eyes, wipes the blood from his face, and nods. He walks to the side of the armored car and taps the window. The driver steps out. Eli leans close. The man shakes his head, then stares at Eli, then nods. They walk to the back of the vehicle. The driver unloops a key from his neck and inserts it in the door, while Eli holds his com cuff to the scanner. He motions to me, and we stand in front of the double doors, ready to pull them open.

  As one, he and the driver each turn a handle and step back. Alder and the other prisoners stand in the compartment, braced and ready to fight. A flash of shock travels over Alder’s face as he sees me. He holds out a hand, signaling to the others to wait.

  “Tempest.” Alder’s eyes travel over the blood and dirt on my clothes, and then widen when he sees Eli. “What—”

  “We need your help.” I step close. “That’s the Red Hand blocking the road ahead. If we give you weapons, will you fight with us?”

  The older man looks over Eli and the other AgraStar guards. “So you can carry us on to your assimilation camp?”

  Eli stands beside me. “Would you rather be captured by the Red Hand? Because we’re outnumbered.”

  “It’s a trick,” he says. “You get us holding rifles and then you gun us down and say it was justified.”

  Eli clenches his jaw and turns to the bleeding guard on the road behind us. “Does this look like a trick?” He looks at me. “We don’t have time for this.”

  I lock eyes with Alder and hold out the rifle. “Please. I’m not your enemy. Neither is Eli.”

  He opens his mouth to answer, but the girl at the back of the compartment pushes past him. “Give it to me. The Red Hand took my sister. I’m not letting them take me.”

  I hand over the rifle and raise my eyebrows at Alder.

  “Okay.” He hops down onto the pavement. “If Tempest gives her word, I’m in.”

  Now it’s just three—the old man, the woman, and a boy a little younger than Alder.

  “If you’re not going to help, then run.” Eli jerks his head at the road. “Get out of here.”

  The boy swallows. “They’ll gun us down.”

  “Then stay and fight,” I say.

  The three remaining prisoners glance at one another.

  “Fair enough.” The woman sighs. “Shouldn’t always be the young people dying. I’ll stay.”

  “I’m out,” the man says. “I’m not getting killed for a bunch of cogs.”

  We all look at the boy. His Adam’s apple bobs, and his eyes flit between all of us. His gaze comes to rest on Alder, then on me.

  “I . . .” His voice cracks. “I’m in.”

  Alder and I lie side by side beneath the armored car, rifles at the ready. Above us, Eli, the other scavengers, and the AgraStar guards stand with their weapons drawn, aiming at the tower of fire where the fuel truck once was. Shouts and starting engines echo down the blacktop.

  “Hold steady,” Eli says. “They’re trying to scare us, that’s all. We can take them.”

  I lick my lips and taste blood and sweat.

  “I told you to forget about me,” Alder murmurs.

  “And I told you I was coming for you.” I look at him. “No matter what happens to us, the data is out. I uploaded it, exactly like you said. I keep my word.”

  Alder turns his attention back to the road. “I guess you do.”

  The clamor of a dozen engines gunning rips through the air. Ninety feet down the road, the Red Hand have staggered their vehicles in a rough V formation, a reinforced tow truck with a low-set metal plow welded to the chassis at the front, and a collection of pickups and motorcycles flanking it. They lurch forward.

  The Red Hand men open fire, and we answer. I take aim at one of the motorcycles with two riders, a driver and a man with an AR-15, and fire. The front wheel blows out. The driver flips over the handlebars, and the gunman flies off to the side, colliding with the back end of the tow truck.

  Eighty feet.

  A fresh hail of bullets patters against the armored car. One of the other wheels pops, sinking the undercarriage lower above our heads. Alder lets off five shots in quick succession, partially shattering the windshield of one of the pickups on the right flank. It veers off to the si
de of the road, plowing into a motorcycle.

  Sixty-five.

  I try the same on the left flank, but they’re on to our trick. The pickup pulls forward and weaves, so my shots ricochet off the grill. The tow truck picks up speed, barreling down on us, its plow glinting in the sun.

  “Fire on the lead truck!” Eli shouts.

  We pepper the truck with shots, but it doesn’t slow. I try for the tires, but the plow sits too low for me to hit them.

  Fifty.

  “Alder!” I shout. “The pickup! Force it into the lead truck.”

  We concentrate fire on the pickup. Above us, the others seem to catch on to our plan, and redirect their shots.

  Thirty.

  The pickup’s tires blow, and then a bullet strikes the driver. The vehicle veers hard to the left, wedging its front end beneath the tow truck’s undercarriage. Time slows. The tow truck shudders, then tilts up on two wheels. Ten feet, nine, eight . . . The tow truck crashes to its side and skids, sparks flying across the pavement as it rushes toward us. I grab Alder, but there’s no time to move. I squeeze my eyes shut.

  The truck flies past, barely missing us, and grinds to a stop forty feet behind us. For a moment, the only sound is the rush of the flames. Then coughing. Voices.

  I crawl out from beneath the armored car and stand unsteadily. All but two of us have survived the fight; we lost the scavenger woman and the armored-car driver.

  Eli aims his weapon at the remaining Red Hand men, idling their bikes and staring at the wrecked tow truck.

  “You’ve got five seconds!” he shouts, his voice hoarse. “Then we fire.”

  I bring up my rifle beside his. Alder does the same, and the rest of the survivors follow his lead. The Red Hand men exchange a look. One of them spits on the ground between us, but then he turns on his bike and tears away. The others flee after him.