But maybe, he had said, they’ll have their hands full.
She had tried pleading, the kids able to hear.
They had to stay together. They were a family.
She had to watch her words with the kids so close… her eyes were wet, trying to hide that from them. Until she didn’t care, as she wiped at them.
I’ll get through, he said. Somehow. Let them spot me first.
With the camp under siege, they could get on the roads and get out.
But if they were watching, he had to make them think that this was how they’d escape. Together.
He had put a hand up to her cheek.
I’ll get away.
He gave her a kiss. He hugged the kids.
Then another kiss.
And words meant for her ears alone.
If you hear something…
He held her tight.
You’ll know.
She couldn’t let him go. Couldn’t let him go.
But he pulled free.
And then he backed away, moving to the Explorer. She did as he instructed. Getting the kids down. Then she crouched down, even though she couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t get a look at him inside the car, pulling away.
Only when their car was gone did she get the kids inside the station wagon, with its ordinary glass, its ordinary wheels.
If they were escaping, they’d expect them all to be in the Explorer.
She started the station wagon. Then pulled around to the back of the parking area, and onto the service road.
She remembered his last instructions.
As fast as you can…
Despite the rutted dirt road, she pressed the accelerator to the floor.
Christie didn’t bother looking at what was all around her. People ran around, their fear sending them in all directions.
At one point, someone ran madly across the road that weaved through this upper camp, and rolled right onto the front of the car, then back, over the windshield, onto the roof.
Random Can Heads roamed around. The sound of bullets closer as people tried to spot them running through the upper camp.
That meant—
Might mean that the fence was still open, the electricity still down.
She tried to see where the winding road led to—a way out? A road to the other gate?
She drove over a huge rock.
The jolt made Simon yell.
“Mommeee…”
“Sorry, baby.”
Then she kept repeating, saying it.
Sorry, baby, sorry, so sorry…
She saw the road curve right, out of this upper camp, the car swerving as she took it fast.
She heard a noise like a hammer hitting the side of the car.
A bullet. Someone shooting.
“Stay down. Kate, Simon, you gotta—”
Another bullet, this one farther back.
No, she thought. Over and over.
No, no, no.
Not my babies…
The car careened crazily down the dirt road, bumping up and down, jostling left and right, feeling like it might fall apart into a jumble of pieces.
She saw lights. A turret. A gate.
As soon as she saw the gate, a bullet cracked the windshield, and now she could only see the whole scene through a fun-house quilt of shattered glass. But the windshield held together.
She had to ram the gate.
And if the electricity was back on?
All she knew was that she had to keep her foot on the accelerator, pressed hard, hands gripping the steering wheel.
Jack didn’t need to tell her what the gun beside her might have to be used for.
If she had to stop.
If they stopped her.
Then the gate, meters away. One guard there.
He raised his rifle to fire right at her.
From behind, two Can Heads jumped on him, dragging him to the ground.
She cried. Yes, she thought, yes!
In those last seconds before the car hit the gate, before it rammed into the metal barrier with enough force to send it flying, she heard it.
The explosion.
Massive. A tremendous boom that she felt in her stomach. So loud, and the bowl shape of the lake and the mountains magnified the explosion into a giant peal of thunder.
Except it wasn’t thunder.
The car plowed through the gate.
She thought: No.
She begged: No.
Metal pieces of gate and fence went flying to either side of the car. Her kids screamed nonstop behind her.
Christie blinked repeatedly to get her damn eyes to clear, to get them to stop crying so she could see the dark road.
I have to able to see, she thought.
I’m out. I got the kids out.
Safe.
Up to me now, she told herself. That’s right. Up to me now to keep them that way.
She turned on the headlights.
The kids sobbed in the back.
It wouldn’t be long before she would answer their questions and tell them what had really happened.
For now, all she could do was drive.
EPILOGUE
43. Scooter’s Mill
Christie hit the first checkpoint well before dawn. She slowed the car and pulled the gun onto her lap.
The kids sat up in the back.
Neither had fallen asleep, but they had stopped asking her the same question, over and over.
Where’s Dad?
She slowed the car. While most of the townspeople at the fence stayed back, one older man walked up to her, a lean man with a weathered face and eyes that squinted as he walked into her headlights.
Looks okay, she thought.
He came beside her window and signaled for her to roll it down.
Another look at the other men watching the scene.
They looked… okay as well. But then again, so did everyone at Paterville. They had all looked just fine, too.
She hit a button and the window started down. She stopped it when it was only about a quarter open.
“Evening,” the man said. She saw him look at the windshield, a spidery net of thin cracks.
She nodded.
“Kinda late to be out. With your kids and all.”
“Yes.”
“Any problem?”
She tried to think: How would Jack handle this? What would he say?
“We’re coming from Paterville.”
The man nodded. Another look at the kids in the back. Then she saw him glance at the gun in her lap.
“And?”
“There was break-in. Their fence. It failed.”
The old man looked back at his companions.
“Can Heads got into the camp?”
She nodded.
“Lots of them. We— I… didn’t feel safe. So, I got them out.”
A pause. The man thinking this over.
“All by yourself?”
No. No questions like that.
“Yes. It wasn’t—” she tilted her head as if she was explaining something so strange, so unbelievable—“safe. It wasn’t safe there.”
“Where you headin’, ma’am?”
She looked at him. The eyes that looked back, though sunken in that lined and weathered face, so human. Can he see what we’ve been through? Is it that obvious?
“New York City. Home.”
The word caught in her throat, her hands still locked on either side of the wheel.
The man nodded.