Tally felt the heat still rising from the bed, the straw mattress and thick quilts fuel for the conflagration.
But Az and Maddy had not been there. There was nothing in the room that could have been human remains. Tally sighed with relief and made her way back outside, rechecking every room.
She shook her head as she stepped through the door. "Either the Specials took them, or they got away."
David nodded and pushed past her. Tally collapsed on the ground and coughed, her lungs finally protesting against the smoke and dust particles she had inhaled. Her hands and arms were black with soot, she realized.
When David came out, he held a long knife. "Hold out your hands."
"What?"
"The handcuffs. I can't stand them."
She nodded and held out her hands. He carefully threaded the blade between flesh and plastic, working it back and forth to saw the cuffs.
A solid minute later, he pulled the knife away in frustration. "It's not working."
Tally looked closer. The plastic had hardly been marked. She hadn't seen how the Special had snipped her handcuffs in two behind her, but it had only taken a moment. Perhaps they'd used a chemical trigger.
"Maybe it's some kind of aircraft plastic," she said. "Some of that stuff is stronger than steel."
David frowned. "So how did you get them apart?"
Tally opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She could hardly tell him that the Specials had released her themselves.
"And why do you have two cuffs on each wrist, anyway?"
She looked down dumbly, remembering that they'd handcuffed her first when she was captured, then again in front of Dr. Cable, before taking her to look for the pendant.
"I don't know," Tally managed. "I guess they double-cuffed us. But breaking out was easy. I cut them on a sharp rock."
"That doesn't make sense." David looked at the knife. "Dad always said this was the most useful thing he'd ever brought from the city. It's all high-tech alloys and mono-filaments."
She shrugged. "Maybe the part that joined the cuffs was made out of different stuff."
He shook his head, not quite accepting her story. Finally, he shrugged. "Oh well, we'll just have to live with them. But one thing's for sure: My parents didn't get away."
"How do you know?"
He held up the knife. "If he'd had any warning, my dad never would have left without this.
The Specials must have surprised them completely."
"Oh. I'm sorry, David."
"At least they're alive."
He looked into her eyes, and Tally saw that his panic had faded.
"So, Tally, do you still want to go after them?"
"Yes, of course."
David smiled. "Good." He sat next to her, looking back at the house and shaking his head.
"It's funny, Mom always warned me that this would happen. They tried to prepare me the whole time I was growing up. And for a long while I believed them. But after all those years, I started to wonder. Maybe my parents were just being paranoid. Maybe, like runaways always said, Special Circumstances wasn't real."
Tally nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak.
"And now that it's happened, it seems even less real."
"I'm sorry, David." But he could never know how sorry. Not until she'd helped save his parents, at least. "Don't worry, we'll find them."
"One stop to make first."
"Where?"
"As I said, my parents were ready for this, ever since they founded the Smoke. They made preparations."
"Like making sure you could take care of yourself," she said, touching the soft leather of his handmade jacket.
He smiled at her, rubbing soot from her cheek with one finger. "They did a lot more than that. Come with me."
In a cave near the house, the opening so small that Tally had to crawl inside on her belly, David showed her the cache of gear his parents had tended for twenty years.
There were water purifiers, direction finders, lightweight clothes, and sleeping bags-by Smokey standards, an absolute fortune in survival equipment. The four hoverboards had old-fashioned styling, but they were fitted with the same features as the one Dr. Cable had supplied Tally with for the trip to the Smoke, and there was a package of spare belly sensors, sealed against moisture. Everything was of the highest quality.
"Wow, they did plan ahead."
"Always," he said. He picked up a flashlight and tested its beam against the stone. "Every time I came here to check on all this stuff, I would imagine this moment. A million times I planned exactly what I would need. It's almost like I imagined it so much that it had to happen."
"It's not your fault, David."
"If I'd been here-" "You'd be in a Special Circumstances hovercar right now, handcuffed, not likely to rescue anyone."
"Yeah, and instead, I'm here." He looked at her. "But at least you are too. You're the one thing I never imagined, all those times. An unexpected ally."
She managed to smile.
He pulled out a big waterproof bag. "I'm starving."
Tally nodded, and her head swam for a moment. She hadn't eaten since dinner two nights before.
David rummaged through the bag. "Plenty of instant food. Let's see: VegiRice, CurryNoods, SwedeBalls, PadThai…any favorites?"
Tally took a deep breath. Back to the wild.
"Anything but SpagBol."
The Oil Plague
Tally and David left at sunset.
Each of them rode two hoverboards. Pressed together like a sandwich, the paired boards could carry twice as much weight, most of it in saddlebags slung on the underside. They packed everything useful they could find, along with the magazines the Boss had saved.
Whatever happened, there would be no point in returning to the Smoke.
Tally took the river down the mountain carefully, the extra weight swaying below her like a ball and chain around both ankles. At least she was wearing crash bracelets again.
Their journey would follow a path very different from the one Tally had taken there. That route had been designed to be easy to follow, and had included a helicopter ride with the rangers. This one wouldn't be as direct. Overloaded as they were, Tally and David couldn't manage even short distances on foot.
Every inch of the journey had to be over hoverable land and water, no matter how far it took them out of their way. And after the invasion, they would be giving any cities a wide berth.
Fortunately, David had made the journey to and from Tally's city dozens of times, alone and with inexperienced uglies in tow. He knew the rivers and rails, the ruins and natural veins of ore, and dozens of escape routes he'd devised in case he was ever pursued by city authorities.
"Ten days," he announced when they started. "If we ride all night and stay low during the day."
"Sounds good," Tally said, but she wondered if that would be soon enough to save anyone from the operation.
Around midnight the first night of travel, they left the brook that led down to the bald-headed hill, and followed a dry creek bed through the white flowers. It took them to the edge of a vast desert.
"How do we get through that?"
David pointed at dark shapes rising up from the sand, a row of them receding into the distance. "Those used to be towers, connected by steel cables."
"What for?"
"They carried electricity from a wind farm to one of the old cities."
Tally frowned. "I didn't know the Rusties used wind power."
"They weren't all crazy. Just most of them." He shrugged. "You've got to remember, we're mostly descended from Rusties, and we're still using their basic technology. Some of them must have had the right idea."
The cables still lay buried in the desert, protected by the shifting sands and a near-total absence of rainfall. In spots, they had broken or rusted through, so Tally and David had to ride carefully, eyes glued to the boards' metal detectors. When they reached a gap they couldn't jump, they would unroll a long piece of cable David carried, then walk the boards along it, guiding them like reluctant donkeys across some narrow footbridge before rolling it up again.