“We must be getting closer to a check point,” Samantha says, while raising up high enough to see out of the window.
The only windows in the utility vehicle are in the front and on the driver and passenger sides; there are no rear windows at all. Those of us that are stuck in the back have no way to see out unless you are sitting between the drivers and passengers’ seats like Mar, Eli, and Zac are.
Jake has been the one who has driven the entire time. He, Samantha, and Magi are the only ones of us who know how to drive. Eli and I have been rotating the passenger seat, so that puts me up front for the moment.
“No, I didn’t see anyone,” I say, ashamed that my daydreaming has gotten the best of me yet again.
“Do you think he’s a guard or a lookout?” Shawn asks, pulling up onto his knees.
“He didn’t look like it,” Jake replies, “but the only guards I have ever seen were dressed like the ones from The Force. It’s possible that he could be from The Elected, but I don’t know.”
We all become more alert, pulling our guns and bags a bit closer. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Mar and Eli gently waking Zac up for good measure. Magi pulls her sack onto her back, the one that Gavin gave to us when we left The Force Field. I would say at the moment, hers is the most important to make sure we have with us.
We all must be ready for the worst; however, we are hoping the sighting of another human only means we are coming closer to a town, but we couldn’t be that lucky…
Could we?
With each turn of the tire, we search for civilization, but there is nothing. As far as the eye can see, there is nothing but trees, desolation, and wasteland. I remember how dismal my section of the Corridor looked, but out here, where there aren’t any humans, the Earth is almost unrecognizable.
To our left is dense woodland full of odd-looking trees, and to our right is a huge crater in the earth. It may have been there for all of eternity, but some gut feeling causes me to think a bomb put it there. I shiver outwardly thinking about the people who caused this war. They are the same ones that plan to start a new one, the ones that have our family as prisoners, and have made the rest of us like zombies, dependent on a drug that we aren’t sure when we will run out.
“I can’t believe my father is a part of them,” I say quietly.
“Huh?” Jake asks sounding distracted.
“I can’t believe my father is a part of The Elected,” I say, again. “A part of all this,” I gesture around me.
“I know,” Jake whispers. “I can’t think about it, Liz, remember, my dad is a part of it now too.”
“For some reason thinking your dad was dead one second, and a bad guy the next…” I trail off thinking about the betrayal and how my mom will feel when she finds out, if she doesn’t already know. If she and Lydia are still alive that is.
“It does something to you,” he finishes my statement still looking ahead at the road. “I have seen it, Liz.”
Simultaneously, an alarm sounds accompanied by a pecking sound, odd sweet odor, and a small jolt every few seconds. It’s coming from the utility vehicle! Our conversation cut short as usual. I can’t say that I mind this time, I have noticed the changes in me for a few days now, I had hoped Jake never would. He and I are too much in sync for him not to have caught on.
Jake mumbles something under his breath that I can’t make out as he drives the vehicle off the road and into a cluster of trees.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, but before I get the words out, Jake puts the thing in park, leaves the engine on, opens the door, and jumps out of the truck, grabbing his M-16 at the last second. Shawn and Eli are close behind him, climbing out of the same door Jake went out of just seconds earlier, closing it behind them. Zac tries to follow, but Mar pulls him back.
I grab my AK-47 and open the passenger door, leaving my backpack in the seat.
“I will see what is going on and let you know,” I say as I look at Magi, Mar, and Samantha.
“Ok, I will have some fun with this guy,” Samantha says as she gives an evil look at Morimoto while rubbing her hands together mischievously. She looks like an anxious kid ready for it’s present.
I close the door before I can find out what that means.
“What’s going on?” I ask, as I round the front of the vehicle, but it is then that I notice the trail of orangish red liquid coming from under it. The boys have opened the hatch and are peering inside. Jake looks angry while Shawn and Eli look puzzled.
“What’s wrong?” I ask again. This time I approach the hatch and look inside. Not that I know what I would find or what I should be looking for. I am sure I look just as clueless as Eli and Shawn do.
“The transmission is shot,” Jake says with a grunt as he slams the hatch closed.
Shawn, Eli, and I look at each other, not knowing what he is talking about. We hadn’t seen any vehicles to speak of other than the vans that took us on the day we were kidnapped and the vehicles we have used to escape The Force. “What’s a transmission?” Shawn asks.
“It is one of the things that makes the vehicle run,” he answered, “and it’s not working, which
