29| Radio Static

I can't stay here. Propping myself up on the tree, I get my legs under me. My right leg still aches like it's been shattered all over again. Throwing a wary look around for telltale red, I limp for the road. The plan, if the numb-brained fixation that got me out here could be called a plan, has changed. I have to get back to Amiah's house.

I hit the asphalt and hobble as fast as I can. The luxury of time is gone, I can't take the whole day this time.

And I don't.

As it turns out, running—a close approximation of running—gets me places faster than sluggish ambling. Little houses begin to pop up. I come to the place where the single snake starts sprouting more snakes, and stall.

Where...?

I slow but don't stop, sticking to the snake. It keeps going, winding on and on, branching over and over. None of the landscape is familiar. Damn my foggy brain. Damn it!

A car whizzes past and I flinch half into some stranger's yard. The house is bright red, doesn't invite any memories. I think I've come too far down the snake. I would remember a house this color, right? Then which of the branches before here was the right one? My fingers work their way up to the burn. I'm wasting time. I step back towards the snake.

The right direction?

My skin breaks under my nails. It's not familiar. The other direction; not familiar. Where am I?

Movement in the corner of my eye wrenches my attention back to the red house. A crooked door set in the face of the house creaks open, a withered prune waddles onto the stoop.

"English?" I call to her, "¿Español?" Anything other than Russian? The prune plants her wrinkled hands on her hips and waddles back inside. Dead end, like every other cursed route in this cold, dead land! I whirl to the road, biting hard on a curse when my knee buckles.

"Ah! Boy!"

I turn back to the sound. A different withered prune shadows the stop now. "English." He juts a stern, wobbly chin at me.

"English," I repeat, "yes, do you speak English?"

He narrows his droopy eyes. Flapping his hands at me, he scoffs and shuffles into the safety of his home.

"Why would you ask if you don't speak it!" I shout after him. The house blurs and fades for a second, like a power flicker, and suddenly my breath is gone. Oh, ugh.

I blink away static. Coming back to the stable world, I see the second prune shuffling out into the open again.

"Boy, fight."

"Yeah, sure, I fight," I say.

A loud click announces the entrance of a rifle. The first prune steps out from behind her partner-in-crime, a long black gun that looks heavier than both her arms combined nestled in the crook of her shoulder. Aimed at me. I lift my hands above my head.

"No move," man prune says, "Militsiya come, you no move."

As if I time for this.

"Please, I'm not going to hurt you," I say, slowly, "I'm trying to find my friend."

Man prune crosses his arms, woman prune scowls. I don't know if they understand a single word I'm saying.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I repeat, searching for any inkling of recognition on their faces. I slide one foot back, and the woman prune barks an order, brandishing the rifle.

"Okay." I still. I don't think I'm supposed to be feeling my heart beating in my palms or seeing the edges of my vision blur in time with my pulse, but I am. The sun beats down on us. Midday, already. I look around the yard for something—anything—to use as a shield or a weapon. The best option is a tiny pointy... man... thing. I could kick it at them, if I reached it before the woman could squeeze the trigger. And I could swim on the moon, too.

Vehicles thunder closer, bright lights glinting off the metal shells. Red and blue. I hear the grumbling engines slow as they draw near. Squeezing my eyes shut, I focus for a moment on steadying my trembling hands.

What next? I have to wonder. Are the cars full of Redcoats? When I open my eyes, the man prune is waving to the cars behind me. The red and blue lights reflect off the house's windows. A car door slams, then another, and a couple more all in quick succession. The woman prune lowers her rifle but keeps her finger on the trigger, as soon as it's down I turn sideways. Prune and rifle to one side, flashing cars to the other. My heart seizes at the sight of other people, also leveling their guns at me. Their uniforms aren't red but that hardly matters. They look as determined to lock me up as any Compound worker.

One of them breaks from the others, coming closer to me. She says something, it sort of sounds like a question. The man prune barks a sentence that ends in "English" and makes the uniformed woman frown. Keeping her weapon trained on me, she reaches one hand up to a black box hanging off her shirt pocket and, bringing it to her mouth, speaks into it.

Almost immediately, the box crackles and spits out a gravelly voice. The sound of the static makes my skin crawl. Whatever the box voice says gets the woman to holster her gun, and she strides even closer, holding out the box instead. I shrink away. The static is loud loud loud.

"Hello?" The gravelly box voice speaks.

I glance from the box to the woman, she shakes the box at me.

"Do you speak English?" the box voice asks.

"Yes." I answer warily.

"Who am I speaking to?"

The answer is the first easy thing in a long time.

"My name is Trick, I'm nineteen years old, I—" the thing I'm about to admit sticks in my throat.

"Can you tell me what's going on, Trick?"

I work my jaw, my mouth is desert dry and the flashing lights turn my brain to mush.

"I don't know." My own words sound far away. "I need to find Delilah."

"Where are you from, Trick?" box voice asks.

A lab. Puerto Rico. Nowhere. Do they have to keep those lights on? The box crackles, I cringe.

"Can you hear me? I need you to tell me where you're from."

No, I can't do that.

"Hello?"

The uniformed woman waggles the box again, saying something.

"What?" I squint. The lights are too bright. Someone from the Compound could see them, it could lead them straight here. I step back, I have to run. The woman matches my step. The box voice scrapes at my ears, I don't make out the words.

"Don't come any closer," I say. I think I say. Wait, that's wrong. I should get her closer, I need her within arms reach. Like the soldier in the forest. Get her close. Grab her. Use her as a shield. Right?

The lights flash. Redblueredblueredbluered. Blinking makes it worse. Shutting my eyes isn't an option.

A car leaps as if from thin air. Suddenly there, roaring past, loud like a gunshot. I recoil hard, expecting the bullet, but it's my knee that betrays me. I hit the dirt, skin stinging.

The woman shouts. Suddenly uniforms are surrounding me. Guns in my face. Shouting.

Static. Static from the box.

I cover my ears. It's all I can do to make it stop.

One of them shoves me and he ends up on his back on the ground, wailing. His bone sticks out of his arm. The shouting gets louder. Something hard cracks across the back of my head and at once my face is in the dry, cold grass. And someone is on me. Wresting my arms back. I twist, throwing the uniform off. I don't know where he lands. I'm already reaching for the next nearest uniform. My hands close around a leg. Driven by panic, I yank.

Bang! Dirt explodes next to my face, biting, blinding. And the next thing I hear is ringing.

Just ringing.

The ground in front of me is nothing but a blur. There are hands splayed below me, palms down, tips pointed away from me like I'm laying on someone and their arms are spread out flat.

Ringing, blur. Touch the ground beneath my belly. Blur, ringing.

Something deep inside begins to ache.

Blur. Where am I? Blur. Someone must have handed me my butt in the dome. Or maybe it's them I'm laying on. I touch the ground underneath me again.

"Get up." The first sound to break the ringing. "Hendrix, you need to get up."

That's my name. I look up and realize the blur is because my glasses are somewhere not on my face.

"What the hell happened to you?" The voice. Delilah. I must take too long to answer because she says, "never mind, tell me in the car. Where are your—ah."

The glasses reappear on the bridge of my nose. Delilah is a little to the left, bent over to be face level with me. Although I don't remember sitting up. Her expression is pinched, like someone put their hand flat on her face and scrunched. Her eyes are stormy. Glinting. Redbluered.

"Broken bones?"

I shake my head.

"Stand up." She offers her hand and I take it. I don't ask where the uniforms went. It doesn't matter. Not here. In their flash-y cars, maybe.

I blink. We're in a car. Amiah sits in the driver's seat, watching me through the little mirror hanging off the roof. I catch a glimpse of my reflection. Blood seeps from hundreds of thin nicks, glasses cracked, eyes red. My right ear is a skinless sort of red. I touch it gingerly, snap my fingers next to it. Nothing but ringing. I try not to think about how close that bullet was to nuking my off switch.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

Amiah lurches onto the road and taps one knob of an array of buttons and knobs.

"You were on the police station."

"I was on the ground."

Her reflection rolls its eyes.

Delilah nudges me to get my attention, "have you seen Sky? He went looking for you."

Her question hits like a sucker punch, crushing all the air out of my lungs. One look at me and any hope she had flees her expression. Dread replaces it.

"We have to go back to the Compound," I say, "the Redcoats got him and—"

And they were going to torture him like they did Dieter.

And he could barely stand on his own when they caught him.

And I mangled his hand.

"Trick?" A faraway voice speaks my name.

I blink.

The car is stopped.

I blink.

We're standing on the stoop of a quiet greenhouse. Delilah follows me inside, the click of the deadbolt sliding into placeis the last thing I hear before I collapse.

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