Partials

“I could get me in,” said Farad, shaking his head. “You’re too famous, and without the jeep to hide in I just don’t see it working. And even if I could get in, one guy wandering home alone is going to raise a lot more eyebrows than a full squad with a vehicle. I’d certainly be questioned, probably detained, and in any case would never be able to get to your friend in time. I definitely couldn’t get her out.”

“Let’s look at our options,” said Jayden. “We can’t just give up, and we don’t have time to go back.”

“We could find another Grid patrol and steal their jeep,” said Xochi.

“I meant realistic options.”

“We could probably get one of these other cars running,” said Gianna, but Farad shook his head.

“They’ll know the difference between a fleet vehicle and a salvage,” he said. “With enough time and the right equipment, maybe, but we have to do this now if we want to stop Tovar from a frontal assault. He hasn’t given us much leeway.”

“We’ll have to cross on foot,” said Kira. “That’s never been hard before—the border’s too big to patrol the entire thing.”

“East Meadow’s never been under martial lockdown before,” said Gianna. “We have informers on the inside, and we’ve scouted the perimeter. It’s as tight as a drum.”

Kira looked at the sky, guessing at the time of day—late afternoon. “We’ll try to slip through in the dark. Does your radio pick up the Grid channels?”

“Of course,” said Gianna, “just like their radios pick up ours. Anything important will be in code.”

“And I don’t know them all,” said Farad.

“Then we’ll have to make do,” said Kira, standing up. “Let’s find a weak spot in the border.”

They struck south on what a battered street sign eventually identified as Walt Whitman Road. They passed a long shopping mall on one side, and a few hours later a deeply wooded park on the other. Once, across a wide parking lot, they saw a group of Grid soldiers investigating a tall, shattered-glass office building. The soldiers waved and shouted a greeting, the noise echoing emptily across the expanse, and Farad waved and shouted back. The soldiers turned and went back to their work. Kira kept a steady pace until they got out of view, then hurried the group along to put as much distance between them as she could. They saw more border patrols as they drew closer to the eastern edge of the city, security getting tighter and tighter, until finally they saw in the distance a road completely blocked by cars—more than just the detritus of eleven-year-old traffic, these cars had been hauled into place and braced with sheets of wood and metal. Kira shook her head, muttering lowly.

“They’ve barricaded the city.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“That’s Gardiners Avenue,” said Jayden. “We’re very close.” He paused. “How far do you think the wall goes around?”

“It doesn’t make sense to build it here and nowhere else,” said Gianna. “Otherwise they’d just build a fort and guard the intersection.”

“Either way,” said Xochi, “we can sneak past them mid-block somewhere. They can’t have guards along the whole length of it.”

The others agreed, and they picked their way through the overgrown yards of a sprawling residential neighborhood. They worked their way down to a spot halfway between cross streets, and when Kira peeked out through the kudzu-covered fence, she saw that the barricade was lower here—just cars in a line, with no reinforcing boards or boxes. They haven’t had time to finish the whole thing. As if to balance it out, the far side of the street was not a row of houses but a strip mall with a wide parking lot—anyone watching from a post at either intersection would have that much more time to see them as they pelted across the extra open space.

“Curse this wretched island and its strip malls,” said Kira. “Everything on this island is covered with trees—how can there be this much open ground?”

“There’s some underbrush,” said Xochi, “but probably not enough to hide us all the way across.”

“Look down there,” said Gianna, pointing south. “That next clump of soldiers is at least two blocks away. The gap between guards is actually pretty big—when it gets dark, we’ll have a pretty good chance.”

Kira looked south, then north again, gauging the distance. “Flip around the radio and see if you can find what channel that checkpoint is using.”

Gianna started clicking the knob, tic, pause, tic, pause, tic, pause, searching for an active frequency. Each time she heard voices she stopped, listening for street names, and Kira felt a surge of relief when they heard a man mention Gardiners Avenue.

“That’s us,” said Kira, tapping her fingers on the wall. “Keep monitoring all three channels; we’ll set a watch, lie low, and wait for dark.” She peeked back through the fence, sizing up the distances to either guard post. At night, if we stay down, they shouldn’t see us at all.