Today's Reading
"That's very helpful. We need to get off the direct path that bird flew.
Which way?"
"North looks harder."
"North it is," Selene said. She got up, limping slightly the first few steps, angling toward a patch of trees on a hummock rising above the salt marsh. "Damn that girl."
"Yeah," Owen said, remembering his last glimpse of Krysta bolting through the crowd. "Maybe she's okay."
"I saw her go down, Kayl," Selene said, her gaze fixed ahead of them. "She was definitely hit at least once. But if they didn't kill her, they won't finish her off when they see she's not me. We can hope for that."
"I keep telling myself it's not our fault," Owen said, nearly twisting his ankle as a marshy bit of soil gave way under his foot. "And then I tell myself, yes, it was."
"We should have left her at Hamilton," Selene said. "Handed her off to Yolanda Thanh."
"Yeah."
"Did she give us any hint she was planning that? Something we missed?"
"I'm not sure she planned it," Owen said. "I think we didn't get any warning because Krysta acted on the spur of the moment. Which doesn't make me feel the least bit better." It didn't help to realize that if not for Krysta's impulsive sacrifice, neither he nor Selene probably would have made it out of Wallops alive. They might still get run to ground soon, but they had a chance. And that made him feel guilty as hell. "We didn't save her from that guy so she could die for us."
"No, we didn't. I hear sirens that way and that way," Selene said, pointing across the landscape. "That's Wallops back there. Is that a town over in that direction?"
Owen squinted to look. "Some of the buildings have collapsed. I'm guessing it's an old subdivision flooded by sea level rise."
"Good place to hide?"
"What are your feelings about mosquitoes?"
"You haven't cleared out mosquitoes yet in 2140?" Selene demanded.
"No," Kayl said. "It's a difficult problem."
"Why— Cover! Now!"
They'd almost reached the low trees on the hummock of land, so Owen followed Selene in a dash to lie down under that protection.
He finally heard the faint whine of the drone motors moments before a loose line of searchers tore past overhead. He waited, unmoving, until the drones were well past. "Good thing your ears are so much better than mine."
"Yeah," Selene said. "Being an alloy is so great. Let me know if you want to swap bodies. That search line looked too spread out and was moving too fast."
"I had the same impression," Owen said. "They don't seem to have had a backup plan if we made it off the spaceport, and now they're improvising and trying to run us down fast instead of taking time to organize a tight search."
"Which gives us a chance," Selene said. "Krysta sacrificed herself for us. We have to do our best to ensure that sacrifice wasn't in vain. Do you feel as guilty about that as I do?"
"Yeah," Owen said. "It's late afternoon, the sun should be in the southwest. That means we're headed roughly north."
"If we power up our burner phones, they might spot them," Selene said. "Do you have any idea what the geography is like around here? Which way should we be going?"
"I think we're on a big peninsula named the Eastern Shore. A lot of it has been turned into salt marshes by sea level rise." Owen looked about him. "It's a trap. We need to either break out to the north, which is a long hike, or head west and hope we can find an unguarded boat to carry us across the Chesapeake Bay."
Selene twisted and rose up a bit to look around. "They're going to assume the shore to our west is a barrier we can't cross. Same for the shore to our east. The search is going to focus on the north as soon as they figure that out."
"So we go west?"
"I think we should. We might get pinned on the coast, but that's still our best chance."
"Okay," Owen said. "Do we risk moving now?"
"Wait until the drones come back. I bet they'll run them out a dozen kilometers and then bring them back over this area on the return to Wallops." Despite their precautions, they were still far too close to Wallops and the center of the search. They would surely have been pinned down, Owen thought, if the Earth itself hadn't come to their aid.
Heavy clouds marshalling to the southwest swept closer and then overhead, the sky rapidly darkening. A flash of brilliant light and the crash of thunder seemed to trigger the deluge that followed, rain coming down in torrents.
Owen and Selene did their best to drink the rainwater as it fell, cupping their hands for it. There might not be any other source of fresh water available to them. With lightning tearing open the sky and the rain so heavy it pounded on their shoulders, Owen and Selene took the chance of racing as fast as they could across the marshy landscape, at one point crossing over a raised road still in use, the sporadic vehicle traffic on it slowed and nearly blinded by the weather.
By the time the rain let up, they'd covered a good distance west, and sunset wasn't far off.
This excerpt ends on page 13 of the hardcover edition.
Monday, May 26th, we begin the book Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto.
...
