CHAPTER 13
Vic is even more muscular and menacing than the last time I saw him almost a year ago. The Salton Sea lifestyle suits him well.
“Well, hello there, friend,” Vic says in his unnaturally deep voice.
Though he’s about the same height as Isaac, his thick biceps and bald head make him appear stubby.
“Hey,” Isaac says. “Long time no see.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call two weeks a long time,” Vic replies. “I mean, it’s not as long as two years, is it?”
He’s directing this question at me. “Definitely not as long as two years,” I reply.
“Yeah, two weeks is nothing,” Vic replies. “Nada.”
“Why don’t we discuss this somewhere else?” Isaac says.
“Discuss what?” Vic says, tilting his head. “The fact that you stole from me, the fact you’ve been hiding a big secret from me, or the fact that all your friends are about to be killed?”
“This is my necklace,” I say. “He didn’t steal it.”
Vic grins wide showing all thirty-two of his perfectly straight, white teeth—the true mark of a privileged Westerner. “The little woman is still defending you,” Vic says. “It seems Nada still doesn’t know the truth about Isaac Faulk.”
“I think we should take this discussion somewhere else,” Isaac says. “Like you said, we’re all going to die anyway.”
He takes another step toward the gate and Vic slams him against the wall. He holds his football-sized forearm against Isaac’s neck and gets in his face.
“Why don’t you tell Miss Nada the truth?”
“Vic…” Isaac croaks under the pressure of Vic’s arm.
Suddenly I’m back in the hallway at Whitmore and Vic has me against the lockers. My vision is clouded with tears, but I can still hear everything. Vic is laughing. So are his cronies, but someone else is yelling. Every person in this corridor is yelling, “Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!”
But one person’s voice is louder than the rest.
Isaac’s voice punctures the melee of screams. “Give me the matches!”
Vic drops Isaac and he crumples to the floor. Vic’s rumbling laugh is the same laugh that haunts my nightmares.
“Don’t listen to him, Nada,” Isaac says, still choking on the words.
I realize my hand is gripping the blade of my knife instead of the handle and I release my grip. The knife hits the floor next to multiple drops of my blood. The new set of guards show up behind us. Daedric grabs my arm and forces me to run with him. I glance back at Eve and Mary as they run behind us. The Guardians are a few paces behind them, but Isaac and Vic are nowhere.
We race down a long corridor between two rows of tiny stucco abodes that wouldn’t be tall enough for Isaac until we reach a lush garden. The four of us sprint toward the center of the gardens and I wonder if we’ve just trapped ourselves. If we make it to the lake, we’ll be surrounded.
We keep running through the maze of corn and tomato plots, the well-fed Guardians lagging further and further behind us, when Daedric disappears down an open shaft three paces ahead of me. I stop just short of plunging into the same hole in the concrete. He’s sprawled out at the bottom of a sewer hole.
“You okay?” I call out to him.
He lifts his head. “I’m fine. Hurry up and get down here.”
Mary, Eve, and I slide down the slippery steel ladder and Daedric climbs back up to pull the manhole cover closed over us. The blackness is absolute and the sound of water gurgling surrounds us. The stench makes my lungs recoil.
“Great. How are we supposed to see in this?” Mary whispers, her voice muffled as she covers her face to block the stench.
“Give me a minute,” Daedric says and I can hear him rustling around in his pockets.
A moment later, a beam of light shines from his hand.
“What’s that?” I ask, as Daedric points the light around the hole.
“Look,” he says, showing us the tiny four-inch flashlight with a compass attached to the side. “Just a little somethin’ else I found with the baseball bat.”
“Great. Now we can see that we’re stepping in crap,” Mary says.
Eve smiles. “That compass can take us to the prison, if this sewer runs underneath it.”
Daedric smiles at her. “You’re a genius.”
I can’t glimpse her face through the murky glow of the flashlight, but I know Eve is blushing. Daedric holds the flashlight and leads us in the southerly direction. I try to keep Eve calm as the frantic sound of footsteps booms above our heads.
The sewer pipes become smaller and, though I don’t say it aloud, I begin to sense we’re going in circles.
We hit a dead end and Eve vomits her breakfast into a puddle of human sewage.
Mary squeezes the condensation dripping from her curls. “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”
“We must have hit the lake,” I say. “What do we do now?”
“We have to go around,” Daedric replies.
“This lake is fifteen miles wide and over thirty miles long!” Mary cries. “We’re gonna starve down here!”
“What about Isaac?” I say, though I can’t hide the shame in my voice.
I shouldn’t care what happens to Isaac. He set the fire that killed my mother. Still, he saved my life—and not just at Whitmore. He brought me back from the brink of starvation twice. He’s my best friend.
“We can’t leave him behind,” I continue.
The pause that follows tells me everything I need to know.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll just—”
“I’ll help you find him,” Daedric interrupts me. “Once we find Elysia I’ll help you find Isaac.”
He shines the flashlight into another dank sewer tunnel, but he doesn’t look at me.
“Thank you,” I say, as we continue after him.
After ninety minutes of walking and listening for some sign of prison activity, we stop to take a rest. I help Eve pull her sopping, sweaty hair into a ponytail before she vomits again. I squat in the sewage to rest my legs and immediately pull my shirt over my face. The stench multiplies at close range.
“Are we almost there?” Eve asks in a weak voice.
Daedric kneels next to me and cups his hand around the flashlight to get a better view of the compass. “I don’t know. I thought we’d be there by now,” he says. “Maybe the sewers don’t run under the prison.
“Maybe we can’t hear it down here,” Mary says. “Maybe we passed up the prison a long time ago.”
“We didn’t pass it up,” Daedric replies defensively.
“Hey, no need to get pissy with me,” Mary shouts.
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t get pissy witchoo if ya stopped gettin’ pissy with me!” Daedric shouts back and I immediately spring to my feet and step between them.
“Shut up!” I whisper. “They’re going to hear us down here.”
“Daedric?” says a small voice and everybody turns to Eve.
“What?” he says.
Eve looks up at us from where she’s squatting. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Daedric?” the voice calls out again, but this time we turn toward the dark sewer tunnel. “Daedric? Is that you?”