Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

Now I was sitting in a booth with the very kids I had watched enviously and I was about as familiar with them as anyone could be, but everything was different now.

For a minute, a short minute, I felt the unfairness of it all. We should be sitting there after a long night out partying. Jake should razz me about coffee and I should come up with something sharp to say back and everyone should laugh and Astrid should put her head on my shoulder.

But the world that could have happened in had been wiped away. Scorched and gassed and washed away.

The waitress brought our food and Niko came back to the booth.

“There’s a trucker going to Kansas City,” he said excitedly. “That’s close to Mizzou.”

He started shoveling the plain eggs into his mouth. Didn’t seem to mind there was no butter or jam for the toast.

Astrid and Jake each had a single container of maple syrup for their French toast servings.

Never mind, we ate and were happy for the food.

“He says cash or barter,” Niko continued. “We get up there, we’re really close.”

“Hey man, what’s the plan for getting Josie out, anyway?” Jake asked him.

“I’m going to go to the authorities and show them the letter to the editor and see if I can get her out the easy way,” Niko said. “But in case they won’t let me do that, I’m also going to get a good look around, to see if I can find a way to break in.”

Jake was sitting back as he listened. He didn’t look entirely open-minded, but Niko didn’t notice.

“I figure there are deliveries. They’ve got to bring in food and supplies, like at Quilchena. I mean, think about it. Who’s going to be checking for someone breaking in ?”

“What if you got stuck in there with her?” Astrid said. “What if you couldn’t get back out?”

Niko took a sip of his coffee.

“Then I’ll be with her and I can keep her safe until she’s released,” he said.

He wiped his mouth on his napkin.

“While you guys finish eating, I’m going to see if I can find the trucker.”

“Wait,” Jake said. “Hold up a minute. We need to discuss the plan for a second.”

Niko looked surprised. “I know there are some aspects that are vague, but you know none of you needs to go with me to get her out of Mizzou. I mean, that’s not even in any version of the plan.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I protested. “I mean, obviously Astrid wouldn’t go, but I could go to help you—”

“I don’t think we should go with you at all,” Jake interrupted.

Niko looked at him, startled. We all did.

“What do you mean?” Niko asked.

“Look, we’re less than a couple hours from where my mom lives. Her place isn’t a palace, but it’s nice enough.” He turned to Astrid. “And it’s safe. I know she’d be over the moon to meet her grandbaby girl. Make us a place there to live with her. Her new husband’s pretty nice. They’d make sure you have a really good doctor,” he said to Astrid. “I think you should have family looking after you.”

Jake Simonsen. Always playing some kind of angle. Trying for the advantage.

“I’m sure I , for one, would be really welcome there,” I said. “Here’s your long-lost son. Here’s the mother of his child. And here’s her boyfriend!”

“You could go with Niko and then come back for Astrid when it’s safe,” Jake said.

“When are you going to get it that Astrid and I are a real thing?” I asked.

“I don’t think you get it. I’ll never be able to have another kid. What the compounds did to me is irreversible. That baby is my baby,” Jake said. His blue eyes were flinty and serious. His mouth set in a line.

“It’s mine, too, if I remember correctly,” Astrid said.

“I’m just saying, I want what’s best for you and the baby, and Dean wants to take you on some doomed rescue mission.”

The waitress refilled our coffees.

“Jake, I’m sorry that you’re type B, that you’ll never get to have kids, I really am. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be a good dad. Just because it’s your only shot doesn’t mean you’re actually fit for the job.”

“Screw you, Grieder!” Jake snarled.

“Guys, please!” Astrid said.

“We need to take this outside,” Niko said. “People are looking at us.”

My blood was pounding in my ears. Maybe this would be it. Maybe we would have it out for once and for all.

“If you really loved her, you’d go home to your mom and let me get her safely to the farm!”

“I’d leave Astrid over my dead body,” he spat.

“That’s how I feel,” I answered him.

“GUYS! You don’t get to fight over me like this! You don’t get to decide where I go or what I do! Just ’cause I’m pregnant doesn’t make me property!”

A deeply tanned woman with too much makeup lifted her coffee cup. “You tell ’em, honey!”

“I’m going with Niko,” Astrid continued. “You guys do what you need to do.”

I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

I looked older, bigger. Less than two months had gone by since the hailstorm that started it all, but there were huge changes written on my face and body.

“Do you ever feel different?” I’d asked Astrid one day, out on the green.

“How do you mean?” she asked me.

“Like… stronger,” I answered.

“I don’t know,” she had said. “My body feels so weird, it’s hard to tell what’s what.”

I didn’t know how to bring it up, the changes I’d experienced in my body. My muscles had somehow filled in during the time at the Greenway, like I was on Miracle-Gro. Neck, arms, chest, all wiry as heck before now had real muscle tone.

I wasn’t sure if it was some residual effect from the compounds or if it was the demi-steroids that Jake had convinced me to take after he nearly bashed my face in. But I only took those for a couple days.

There was something else—my eyesight.

It was fixed. Cured. I’d arrived at the Greenway in glasses, nearsighted. My vision was bad enough that my parents had started a Lasik fund for my eighteenth birthday gift. But since I’d gone O, I saw fine. Really—my vision was perfect.

It had to be some benefit related to exposure to the compounds.

I wondered if that’s what the Army scientists were researching.

I also wondered about Astrid’s baby. The way the first doctor at Quilchena said it was too developed for a four-and-a-half-month-old baby. And then Kiyoko had said the same thing, two weeks later. Was the baby stronger and bigger because of Astrid’s exposure?

I leaned in closer to the mirror. My nose had a lump on it, from where Jake had broken it. The break made me look tougher. Maybe handsome, even. When I looked in the mirror I expected to see the kind of underweight-yet-also-puffy face that had stared back hopelessly for my sixteen years. My new reflection showed strength. And yet… it was hard to look that guy in the face for too long.

I was shifty, even to myself.

Maybe that’s what happened when you killed someone. Maybe I’d never be able to look at myself again.

Jake came in.

“Niko’s found a ride,” he told me. “So wrap up your beauty regimen.”

I could not like the trucker, who introduced himself as Rocco Caputto. That was his real name. I don’t see how anyone could like the guy. Rocco was medium height, and pretty thin with gangly loose joints. He tried to be tough, which was dumb, because he looked about as threatening as Batiste. He had a thick mustache and a Jersey-gangster-ish accent that was almost cartoonish.