Elle tried to avoid looking at the dead that hadn’t been collected from the battlefield. Many of them had been blown to pieces. She’d never seen anything so horrible.
“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?” Pix whispered.
Elle didn’t answer. She hoped it wasn’t.
By the time they reached the bottom of the mountain, night had fallen. They passed a rest stop, Laval Road. Signs of recent military presence were everywhere. An American flag had been painted across a freeway overpass. Someone had scrawled USA FOREVER on the side of an abandoned restaurant.
“USA forever,” Georgia snorted. “Wishful thinking.”
“At least someone’s trying to keep hope alive,” Elle replied.
“It doesn’t do anything.” Georgia watched the scenery roll by, a blank expression on her face. “We’re dead. The United States, everything good about it. It’s gone. And it’s not coming back.”
Elle sighed. It was easy to believe that. Very easy.
The question was… was she going to believe it?
Jay rolled onto a freeway ramp that veered left, keeping onto the Interstate 5 freeway. It would take them straight to Sacramento if they weren’t stopped by Omega patrols. That, of course, was the trick. None of them knew where Omega was coming from or where they were keeping their forces. If they stumbled across an armed force of soldiers…
Well. It would be bad.
They drove until it was too dark to see the road. Jay decided that using the lights on the jeep would be too risky — they could be spotted a mile away — so they voted against traveling at night. They pulled over to a sheltered area on the side of the road, unrolled a piece of canvas over the roof and hunkered down for a dinner of cold canned food and stale crackers.
And then they slept.
“Pix’s missing!”
Flash was panicking. He circled the jeep twice, the color drained from his face. Elle sat up, grabbing the door handle. She had fallen asleep slumped across Jay’s knees. Realizing this, the blood rushed to her cheeks. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.
Jay was wide-awake already, jumping out of the jeep.
Good. He hadn’t.
“Missing?” Georgia practically screeched. “Again? How many times is she going to do this to us?”
Elle climbed out of the jeep, onto the gravel. They were parked behind an overgrown bush on the side of the freeway. It was cold — low thirties. She shivered and looked around. Flash was right; there was no sign of Pix.
“Why would she wander off?” Jay said, and Elle could see that he was angry. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Maybe she just had to pee,” Georgia suggested. “She might be right back.”
“No. I’ve been calling and calling for her,” Flash replied, adjusting his glasses.
“She must have gotten turned around,” Jay said.
Georgia gestured to the sprawling, flat landscape around them.
“How could you get lost here?” she demanded. “It’s impossible!”
“Anything is possible,” Elle said. “The grass is high and there are lots of shadows. Jay’s right… she must have gotten lost when she got up. When did you notice she was gone, Flash?”
“Just now — I woke up and she wasn’t next to me.”
He seemed embarrassed that he had managed to sleep through his sister’s disappearance.
Jay answered, “We need to find her. She doesn’t have any food or water with her. She’ll get dehydrated fast.”
“Let’s split up,” Georgia suggested, sighing. “We’ll be able to find her faster.”
Jay pulled the map out of the side door of the jeep and spread it flat against the hood. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and marked their location with a small X. “We don’t go more than two miles away from this spot,” he said. “We’ll meet here in two hours.”
Elle looked at the map. Georgia was right — it would be difficult to get lost with the miles of flat freeway and grassy plains on each side of them. It would take hours to reach the top of the coastal hills on their left… and Pix hadn’t been gone that long. Besides, why would she wander that far in the first place?
She wouldn’t. Not if she was in her right mind, anyway.
No, something was wrong.
They each headed in a different direction. Elle liked being alone, separated from the rest. It gave her time to think, to get in touch with her surroundings on a different level. She’d hardly had a moment of silence since she’d joined the group.
Silence was something she missed.
She walked through the tall, golden grass until the jeep and the bush were specks in the distance. The grass was taller than her in most places, and Elle realized that it would be easy for Pix — who was short — to get lost here. She quietly called her name but received no reply.
I can’t believe it, Elle thought. Why am I even here? Wasting my time, looking for a kid that doesn’t even have enough common sense to stay in the stupid jeep while we’re all sleeping…
Elle tried to put the anger out of her mind, but it was still there, simmering under the surface. For the second time, she was sticking her neck out for Pix — for this group of kids. And for what reason? They hadn’t done anything for her. So far, she’d been the one who had helped them stay alive.
Stop overthinking, she thought. Just look for Pix.
An hour passed. Elle searched through every stretch of tall grass that she could find, calling Pix’s name. She came up short, checking the time.
Where was she?
At the hour and a half mark, Elle turned around and started heading back to the jeep. She hoped someone else had found Pix. If not, they would be stuck in this godforsaken strip of wilderness forever. She hopped across a dry creek carved into the terrain, shielded by tufts of six-foot tall grass.
Elle stopped and bent down. What looked like a pile of discolored rags was crammed on the side of the creek. She tilted her head. It was an odd shape. She got closer, realization dawning.
“Pix?”
She splashed through the shallow creek bed and grabbed the pile. It was Pix, and she was unconscious. Her little face was slack. Elle checked her pulse. Pix’s heart was still beating. But why was she unconscious?
She bundled the girl in her arms and struggled up the creek bed, through the grass. Pix was small, but so was Elle. Carrying Pix was like carrying a small bag of bricks. The jeep was a quarter of a mile away, and every step was difficult.
Elle kept going, stopped to rest, then picked Pix up and continued again. Finally, Interstate 5 came into view. She all but dragged Pix the remaining distance to the jeep. When she arrived, the others were already there.
“You found her!” Flash exclaimed, rushing to Elle’s side. “What happened to her?”
“Don’t know,” Elle huffed, trying to catch her breath.
“Here, let me help,” Jay offered. He picked up Pix’s limp body and laid it across the backseat of the jeep. “Wow, she’s really out.”
Elle grabbed a canteen of water and drank.
“She looks sick,” Georgia stated.
Brilliant observation, Elle thought.
“What do you think happened?” Jay asked, studying Pix’s face.
“I think she wandered off, got lost and dehydrated, and I don’t know what else happened to her,” Elle shrugged. “Can we just keep going, please? It’s not safe to stay in one place this long.”
Georgia was standing to the side, digging through her backpack. She removed a new package of cigarettes. It seemed like they were the only things Georgia had taken the time to salvage from the city.