and voices.
“No! Oh, no, no, no, no!”
“What?” Jack demanded.
“Can’t you hear it?”
“No!”
“Heard that,” Jack muttered.
A second thump shook our flimsy getaway truck.
“That too,” said Jack.
A huge Hopper head, mandibles scissoring, ducked into the window. I screamed and shoved the frying pan straight into its mouth. There was a hiss and a stench like burning hay, and the bug tumbled off into the dust.
“Got it!” I shouted.
Jack hooted and pounded the steering wheel.
A black hook curled around the window frame.
“Take that!” I banged the frying pan down on the hook. The Hopper howled and the hook vanished.
Jack gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles went white. “Hang on!”
He hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel around. The engine groaned, and the rickety Ford spun in a tight circle, rocking like a ship in a storm. The Hopper flew sideways, tumbling away into the dark.
Miraculously the truck didn’t stall out. I was ready to marry both Jack and Mr. Henry Ford as we went rolling over the dunes.
Then the engine coughed and the truck lurched.
“Come on, come on,” Jack pleaded, working the throttle and the choke. “Not yet!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Engine’s taking in dust,” he said grimly. “It’s gonna smother.”
I stuck my head out the window. There was just enough light to see the big black bug leaping from dust ridge to dust ridge, right behind us.
“One of ’em’s back there?”
“Yes!”
The truck coughed and staggered again.
“Okay.” Jack clashed the gears and cussed a blue streak, throwing the truck into reverse. The wheels spun and I was afraid he’d dig us into the dunes. But he just swung that truck around until the Hopper glittered in the headlights.
“What’re you doing?” I shrieked.
“Playing chicken!” Jack grinned like he was a Hopper himself and put all his weight onto the accelerator, almost standing up from the seat. The truck flew forward. So did the bug. I swear I heard it laughing.
“They can fly, you idiot!”
Jack said nothing. The bug jumped up and landed right on the hood with a hollow thump. It scrabbled at the glass, its mandibles and hooks digging into the spiderweb of cracks, ready to winkle us out of our tin shell.
It didn’t see the windmill looming up in the headlights behind it.
“Jump!” Jack shouted.
I kicked open the door and jumped, thudding into hot dust and rolling tail over teacup down the new dune. There was a crash and a scream and a big, juicy, buzzing squelch.
Coughing hard and spitting dust, I picked myself up.
The Model A had plowed into the windmill, and the Hopper, whichever one it was, was squashed between the twisted struts and the steaming guts of the wrecked truck. Yellow oozed out of its broken body and dripped onto the dust.
I looked at Jack. Jack looked at me. Above us, the windmill’s bent frame creaked and swayed in the wind.
I grabbed Jack’s free hand and dragged him behind me.
We ran until we couldn’t run anymore. After that, we walked. The wind was kicking up all the new dust. It stuck to my glaze-smeared skin and itched like a whole family of fleas. Jack coughed with every step, and I was ready to be sick wondering what I’d do if he started to suffocate. So when we saw the deserted tenant farmer’s shack sticking out of the sand, we didn’t even think twice, just stumbled inside and collapsed in the middle of the floor. Jack threw his coat over us both and we huddled close under the worn-out cloth.
After a while, we fell asleep.
9
An arm smacked me on the ear. I shouted and sat up. Jack’s coat slid off my head.
“Hannah! Hannah, stop!” Jack rolled back and forth, his eyes squeezed tight and his arms flailing in every direction.
“Wake up!” I hollered. “Jack, wake up!”
His eyes snapped open, and for a minute, it was plain he didn’t know where he was, or why his arms were stretched out like that. Slowly, blinking hard, he sat up. Sweat streamed down his brow, and he wiped it away with the back of his shaking hand.
“Nightmares?” I said, and he nodded. His face was so pale under the dirt, I figured it was better to change the subject. “Thanks for getting us out of there. Where’d you learn to drive like that?”
Jack fiddled with his shoelaces for a second. “Before they repealed Prohibition, my folks were bootleggers- bathtub gin, moonshine, stuff like that. Sometimes I had to drive the car on the deliveries.” He didn’t look too proud of that, which should have been a clue about how he felt about the rest of his time at home, and probably should have stopped me from asking my next question. “Who’s Hannah?”
“My sister. She’s dead.” Jack got to his feet without looking at me.
“I’m sorry.”
Jack shrugged and kept on not looking at me. Instead, he wiped his hands on his pants and walked over to the door to turn the handle. When the door didn’t open, he leaned on it. It didn’t budge.
“We’re drifted in solid,” he said.
The shack had two windows, one beside the door and one at the back. I tried squinting out the one beside the door, but it was too grimy to let me see much. From the sound of things, the wind had died down, but dust still pattered and pecked as it settled onto the shack’s tin roof, a sound enough like rain to make you cry.
Jack came to stand beside me, looking through the dust-covered glass. He grunted, wrapped his coat around his fist, and punched each of those glass panes in a no-nonsense way. He swept his arm around, clearing out the glass and splintering the mullions, which were already half gone from dry rot. As soon as the window hole was clear, we both climbed out onto the drift that had piled up level with the sill. Standing on that shifting dust pile, we looked at what the storm had made of Kansas.
I was used to being alone, but never like this. Hills and ripples of red sand spread under the glare of a pink- and-white sky. Nothing broke the smoky horizon, not so much as a fence post, let alone any sign of road or railroad track.
“Let’s get back in,” said Jack.
I nodded. The shack was rickety and the dust was piled in every corner, but its rusted roof shut out that empty country.
“So.” Jack rested his arms against his bent knees. “You gonna tell me what all that was with the Hoppers back there?”
“I don’t know.”
