42
Five Minutes Earlier
Christie sat up in Tom Blair’s car.
She looked back at the kids.
“Okay. Just stay down.”
Nothing.
“You hear me?” she said.
Kate answered first, her body pressed down as close to the floor as she could. “Yes, Mom.”
Then Simon, following his sister’s model: “Yes.”
She turned the key, hands shaking with the thought that the car wouldn’t start, even though Jack had tested it.
He had been so clear in his instructions; so precise in his plans.
To watch the time. Because when it was the
If they were expecting them to leave, it would be the front gate. They’d look for the Explorer.
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.
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.
He gave her a kiss. He hugged the kids.
Then another kiss.
And words meant for her ears alone.
He held her tight.
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.
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—
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.
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.
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.
In those last seconds before the car hit the gate, before it rammed into the metal barrier with enough force
