“Fish another what?”

  Her face scowled in rebuke. “You’re gonna have to get used to my humor, young man.”

  He almost protested again—she couldn’t be more than 10 years older than him—but he fell silent when her scowl deepened even further.

  “Now listen to me and listen to me well. What in the hell and what on God’s green earth were you going on about when you said you want to go live with the infected, live at the Crank Palace? I know we’re heading toward crazy, now, but we don’t seem too ready to get off the train just yet. Or at least I thought so, anyway. But if you’re gonna sit here and yap about wanting to go to that place, then you were crazy long before you got the Flare. Don’t come at me again with something so stupid.”

  She probably would’ve kept on going but now it was her turn to stutter to a stop when she saw his wide eyes.

  “What?” she asked. “You don’t believe me?”

  Newt stumbled through a few words of nonsense before he got out anything coherent. “Mainly I just wanted to leave my friends behind before I went off the rails. But maybe it’s the best place to go. Be with the other sorry saps who're infected. For one thing, maybe they have food and shelter, there, everybody’s in the same boat.” Newt didn’t believe a single word coming out of his own mouth. “What else am I gonna do? Go settle on a farm and raise cattle for the jerks in Denver?”

  “Raise cattle for the...” Keisha’s words trailed into silence as she shook her head in wonder at the apparent stupidity of his full statement. “Look, I’m just gonna have to treat you like my third child, okay? Deal? I don’t have time for this nonsense talk. Now, let’s get up and go. The sweeps will probably go all night ‘till they can’t find another soul to toss into those trucks. They don’t like dirty rats like us getting too close to their precious city.”

  She stood up, helped little Dante stand as well, holding him by the hand. Newt got to his feet, neither in the mood nor having any basis to argue with her anyway. Didn’t matter. He was away from Tommy and the others and that had been the main goal all along. Who cared what happened to him now.

  Keisha pointed in the direction of the sun, now sinking with earnest toward the horizon, which was hidden by houses and trees and distant mountains in the gaps. “From what I hear we just have to make it a few more miles and we can probably find a house to sleep in. Hopefully some food. Most of the crazies end up congregating like ants around the city so we should be safer the farther out we—”

  An electronic charging sound cut her off, a sound way too similar to the charge of a Launcher, which filled Newt with instant dread. He spun around to see three red-shirted soldiers standing there, all of them pointing the barrels of those unwieldy weapons at Newt and his new friend. The blue glow of the guns was bright even in the light of day.

  “I need those hands up in the air,” one of the soldiers said, the voice coming through a speaker in the helmet. A woman by the sound of it. “You look like decent people, but we need to at least test you and see if—”

  “Don’t bother,” Keisha said. “We’ve got the damn Flare and you know it. Just let us go. Please? I’ve got a kid for heaven’s sake. We promise we’ll just keep walking the other direction—won’t bother a soul. We’ll never come near the city again. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

  “You know we can’t do that,” the woman replied. “You came too close and you should know better. We want these streets empty.”

  Keisha made some kind of angry noise that Newt had never heard expelled from a human before, not even a Crank. Something from deep within her chest, like a growl. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? We’re gonna keep walking away from the city. You’ll never see us again.”

  “If that’s the case then you won’t mind us giving you a lift, will you?” The soldier hefted her weapon to make a point, stepped closer, the barrel now aiming squarely at Keisha’s head. “Ya know, this thing will knock you out no matter where it strikes, but shots to the head are especially bad. You’ll be puking and seeing double for a week. Now come along nice and easy, got it?”

  Keisha nodded. “Oh, I got it.”

  The next two seconds happened so quickly and yet so slowly that Newt felt as if he’d been transplanted to a dream, where nothing made sense. Keisha had pulled out an old-school revolver from seemingly nowhere, as though it had materialized through a magic spell. Even as her arm jerked up, even as it let out the pop-pop of two shots, the soldier who’d been talking ignited her weapon, firing that strange flash of lightning along with its thwack of thumped air, an almost silent thunderbolt that was felt more than heard. Blue energy arced across Keisha’s face and she screamed a bloody shriek of murder and pain. Her body collapsed to the ground, arms and legs shaking with spasms. Little Dante was less than a foot from her, and for the first time since they’d met, he began to wail like the child that he was. The combined sounds of their anguish—mother and son—was enough to ignite a cauldron of rage inside Newt, coursing through his veins like flooded pipes.

  He yelled–a primal, animal yell–and ran for the closest soldier, who stood there as if stunned, doing nothing, his weapon pointed at the pavement. The woman who’d shot Keisha was down on both knees, nursing a wound to her stomach. The third soldier lay flat on the ground, a crimson pool of blood widening beneath his or her bullet-shattered helmet. Newt dove at the only one standing, the one who seemed at a complete loss.

  Newt’s shoulder crashed into the person’s chest, even as the man—at least Newt thought he was a man—shouted a muffled cry for help into whatever communication system the soldiers used. Newt’s arms wrapped around him, the momentum of his dive catapulting both of them to the ground in a violent tackle, the other man’s weight cushioning the fall. On some level, Newt knew he was being reckless, that an irrational rage had consumed him, that he was being... unstable. But that didn’t stop him from screaming again, from sitting back on the soldier’s stomach, from reaching forward to grab the man’s helmet with both hands and lift it, slam it back into the ground. He lifted it again, slammed it again. This time he heard a crack and a whimpering groan of pain that faded like a last breath.

  The soldier’s entire body went still.

  Newt’s breaths were pouring into his chest like a bellows, his chest heaving so much that he almost fainted, almost swooned off the man. But then another kick of adrenaline burst through him. He felt invincible. Elated. Hysterically euphoric. While still tethered to reality enough to know that the virus was changing him more and more each day. This would be his life soon. Seeking the thrill and feast of enacted rage.

  But then something hit him in the back of the head and his brief stint as a warrior ended with him flopping to the ground like a collapsed balloon. He didn’t quite fade from the day around him—could just see Keisha lying on the ground with Dante beside her, panicked and bawling—but a few seconds later Newt vomited all over himself.

  Why the bloody hell had he ever left that Berg?

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  The next hour was a lifetime of headaches, nausea, and strange movements.

  Newt stayed awake for all of it; the hyper-enthusiasm he’d experienced for all of two minutes had completely vanished. Spent. He had no energy whatsoever, in fact, didn’t lift a finger to defend himself as reinforcement soldiers did whatever they wanted with him. At least they didn’t separate him from Keisha and Dante. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing the small connection he had with those two after so short a time.

  A truck rumbled up, much smaller than the behemoths they’d seen earlier by the massive walls of Denver. Two people picked him off the ground, with not the least amount of gentility, and threw him into the back of the open bed of the vehicle. He expected to land on a pile of writhing bodies, a dozen Cranks fighting and clawing and trying to get out. Instead he landed on the hard steel of the truck bed and lost his breath for a moment. Keisha came next, still no sign of voluntary movement in her limbs.

  But her eyes.

  Her eyes were lit with awareness and understanding, the purest panic Newt could imagine. But that eased a bit when Dante was plopped right next to her, offered a little more care than they’d been given. The kid still cried, but it had almost become a constant, a background noise, like the strong flow of a rapid, rocky river nearby. He laid his head down on his mum’s shoulder and wrapped his tiny arms around her neck. Tears leaked from Keisha’s eyes.

  “She’s okay,” Newt murmured, though he doubted the kid heard or understood. “She’s just... she’ll be okay soon.” Every word he uttered rang in his head like a broken bell.

  A soldier jumped into the back of the truck with them, squatted with his back to the window of the cabin. He held something that looked more like a machine gun than an energy weapon, and Newt figured they had less than one chance left for misbehaving. The next time would be rewarded with a few bullets in the brain to end things.

  The truck roared its engine, then set off from the quiet neighborhood—probably quiet because the sweep-up of Cranks had already been through that area. Newt had the distant thought that spying eyes might’ve reported them from within the windows of one of those seemingly innocent homes, frightened eyes that spied from the darkness, from behind torn curtains and broken glass. Surprised at himself, Newt found that he didn’t care. Maybe the virus had eaten that part of his brain first—the part that worried and agonized over what lay in his immediate future. It just didn’t matter. Madness awaited him at the end of the track, and there was no slowing that train. He couldn’t bring himself to care how bumpy the ride might be.

  Newt relaxed onto his back and looked up at the sky as they drove. Blue and white, more clouds than not, the kind with no shape or substance, just scratched across the azure heavens by a painter with no discipline. Some people said the sky never had quite the same color once the catastrophic sun flares struck a couple of decades earlier. Newt would never know, could never know. What he saw seemed natural enough, and despite his sudden indifference to the world, it gave him a small squeeze of comfort that saddened him a little. Saddened that he’d never have a chance to live a full and meaningful life under the skies above.

  The truck jostled to a stop sometime later, how long Newt didn’t really know. Maybe a half hour. They had parked between two platforms of cement, both seeming to hover just a few feet above the lip of the truck bed, bordered by steel railings. Several people stood up there to each side, dressed in bulky, overbearing protective gear that looked like something you’d see at WICKED on a bad day. Newt quickly glanced at Keisha, who had her back to him, her arms wrapped around her son. She might’ve been asleep—he saw her back rise and fall with even breaths. He sighed in relief.

  Glancing skyward at the strangers staring down, he shifted his elbows to prop himself up. He opened his mouth to say something—ask something—but a firehose appeared at one of the railings, its nozzle pointing in his direction. It was enough to silence him.

  Water—he hoped it was water—abruptly flushed out of the hose in a torrid stream, wetly smacking into him so hard that he slammed against the truck bed, yelping at the slicing, biting cold of the onslaught. The force of it was painful enough, but the frigidity made it feel acidic, stinging like a million slaps against his skin. He tried to scream against it, but water filled his mouth and set him off to choking and coughing instead. The person above directed the stream at Keisha and Dante, then, just as he thought he might drown. Keisha seemed completely back to normal because she squirmed and kicked and shielded Dante as best she could. The hose set upon Newt again, then back to Keisha, then back to Newt. This torture lasted another minute or two before some angel turned it off. Newt and Keisha were left to sputter and spit and catch their breath, all amidst the backdrop of Dante’s high-pitched screams.

  “What the hell was that for?” Keisha yelled, sounding like someone who’d just swam 50 feet underwater and finally came up for air.

  A mechanized voice responded, filtered by the hazard suit. “That’s the best we can do out here to disinfect. Sorry. We don’t have a helluva lot of choices anymore. Hope the kid’s okay.” With that compassion-dripping statement, he gave a wave of the hand. The truck jolted and the engine squawked, and they were off again.

  They picked up speed. With their wet clothes, it felt as if the temperature had dropped 30 degrees. Keisha fully grasped her maternal role and pulled Newt close to her, cradling both him and her son. Dante had gone silent, perhaps shivering too violently to cry. Newt had no complaints, snuggling into Keisha’s grasp for as much warmth as possible. He had flashes of a woman in his mind, shadows made of light, no features, more a presence than anything. His mind was loosening, he knew that now, the irony of it so thick it seemed possible to chop at it with an axe. He would remember his mom soon, remember her fully, just in time to forget her in the madness of the Flare.

  A few minutes later they drove through the opened doors of a gate, providing entrance past a huge wall of wooden planks, a sign on one of the doors that flashed by too quickly for Newt to read the words printed there. Several people stood around, scratches and bruises on their faces, all of them holding Launchers. Not a one looked too thrilled to have visitors. Then there were trees, half of them dead, half of them green and bright and hale. The world was coming back to life, slowly but surely, especially in these higher elevations.

  The truck came to a stop again. Barely enough time had passed for Newt’s skin to dry, much less his hair or clothes. Both doors of the vehicle opened and closed, and something told Newt their journey was over, that they might never be in another car or truck for the rest of whatever remained of their lives.

  “Are you going to kill us?” Keisha asked the empty air above them in a shaky voice, the first time Newt had seen her show genuine fear. “Please don’t hurt my children.”

  Children. Was it her fleeing mind, imagining that Newt was her daughter, come back from the dead? Or did awareness still cling to her strongly enough to hope for more leniency granted a mother and her kids? Before anyone bothered to answer, the three of them sat up, letting go of their temporary cuddle of warmth. Two soldiers stood at the tailgate of the truck, the gate still closed. They were helmeted, their faces nothing but shiny black glass, as soulless as robots. That now-familiar, muffled, slightly mechanized voice came from one of them, a low growl that sounded almost like static.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” it said. “Especially after killing my friend. So if you complain I’ll beat the living hell out of you. I swear it on all your dead relatives.”

  “Wow,” Keisha said. “Harsh. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” Newt was amazed that she had the guts to make even the slightest of jokes.

  The soldier who’d spoken gripped the upper edge of the tailgate with gloved fists, the leather creaking as he squeezed. “Say another word. Just one more word. You think this would be the first time we’ve accidentally broken an order? Sure would be a shame for that kid if his mama died because she wasn’t... cooperative.”

  To Newt’s immeasurable relief, Keisha didn’t respond. She looked at Dante, finding all the strength she needed in his eyes, in his life.

  “Just get out of the truck,” the other soldier piped in. “Now. You’re gonna spend the rest of your life in this hellhole so you might as well make yourselves at home.” She pulled on a latch and the tailgate flopped down with a heavy metallic crack.

  Newt had a sudden and almost overwhelming rush of panic, the uncertainty of his life now, all at once, taking on meaning again. He moved to deflect it, scooted himself forward until he could jump down from the truck bed onto the ground, a mishmash of dirt and weeds. A quick look around showed a lot of trees and dozens of tiny cabins and tents, as haphazard as the early days of the Glade. Newt felt a longing for his friends and old days past, as hard as those old days were.

  Keisha handed Dante to Newt, then jumped down and landed right next to him. It was the first time Newt had held the child, maybe the first time he’d ever held someone so young. To his surprise, the kid didn’t cry, probably too enticed by his new surroundings, probably still feeling a false sense of elation from the absence of a raging firehose. Even Newt felt that. It was fresh on his mind, and oddly made everything in the world seem a little brighter because he didn’t have a rushing explosion of ice-cold water battering his face.

  One of the soldiers closed the tailgate, secured the latch. Then they headed for the doors of the truck without saying anything, opened them, readied to step up and onto the seats.

  “Wait,” Newt said, handing Dante back to his mum. “What’re we supposed to do?”

  The soldier on the passenger side ignored them, got in, slammed the door. The driver paused with a foot on the instep, but didn’t turn around to face them when she answered.

  “Like we said, just be glad you’re alive. Hardly anyone’s being sent here anymore. Almost full. Most Cranks are just... you know. Taken care of.”

  The Crank Palace. A sicker version of Newt would’ve laughed. He’d ended up here after all, even after Keisha’s less-than-subtle declaration that it had been the dumbest idea ever.

  “But why?” Keisha asked, gently swaying with Dante in her arms. “If you’re offing most of the infected, then why not us? After what we did?” There was no apology in her voice. None at all.

  “Are you complaining?” the soldier countered. “I’d be happy to take you to the flare pits if that’s what your heart desires. It’s what you deserve.”

  Newt quickly spoke up. “No, no. Thank you. We’re fine.” He gently grabbed Keisha’s arm, tried to pull her away from the truck. He wanted nothing to do with these people ever again. But she resisted, seemed intent on getting them killed or burned in the pits.

  “Why?” she asked. “What’re you not telling us?”

  Even though they couldn’t see the soldier’s face, every inch of her armored body screamed out what her facial expressions couldn’t. Frustration. Annoyance. Anger. But then she relaxed, all of her muscles slackening at once, her foot dropping back to the ground. She turned toward them and spoke with that mechanized voice, void of feeling.