After the End
Page 22
Joy. I pull the car out onto the pavement and begin driving south. “I guess that means you can’t jump-start my iPhone,” I prod after a few minutes.
She doesn’t look at me but stares straight out the window and then down at the speedometer, looking anxious. I step on the gas and she relaxes slightly. “Alaska,” she replies.
It takes me a second to realize that she’s one conversation back, but I catch up and say, “They’ve got to have GPS in Alaska. With all that wide-open wilderness and . . . tundra, or whatever they have there.”
She considers that for a second. “I’ve been living in a tiny community outside the major cities. When you described me as ‘back to nature’ before, you pretty much hit it on the head. It was just nature and us.”
“But I bet you’ve seen on TV—” I begin to say.
“We didn’t have TV,” she cuts in. “Or electricity, for that matter.”
“And you lived there for . . .”
“My whole life,” she replies.
While I try to wrap my brain around this, it occurs to me that, in this light, she suddenly doesn’t seem quite as crazy. If she was raised in some kind of hippie commune out in the middle of nowhere, no wonder she was freaking out in Seattle. I see her fiddle with the window, trying to fit her fingernails through the top of the glass as if she thinks she can push it down with sheer force.
“It’s the button next to the door handle,” I say, and she wiggles the control back and forth for a second until her window goes down and she leans her head to the side so the cold morning air hits her in the face.
“What? You don’t have cars either?” I ask, remembering the way that she leaped out while the car was still moving yesterday and forgot to close the door after she got back in.
She shakes her head.
I look at her incredulously. “How did you get around?”
“Dogsled,” she replies matter-of-factly. “Of course, our sleds were fitted with wheels when there wasn’t snow on the ground.”
“Of course,” I respond, one eyebrow cocked. She looks at me to see if I’m making fun of her, but I grin my goodwill and she does her lips-closed smile back.
She actually doesn’t look half-bad when she’s not scowling. I mean, that haircut still makes her look like a deranged pixie. But that’s definitely an improvement from evil elf girl, shoving skewers through dead animals’ body cavities.
“So why did you leave?” I ask tentatively. “I mean, now that we’ve established that it wasn’t an insatiable craving for Big Macs,” I add to lighten the mood.
Juneau leans her head back against the headrest, as if speaking more than a few words at a time is exhausting. She talks less than any girl I know. Uncomfortable silences don’t faze her. In fact, I’m not even sure she knows what uncomfortable is. She’s like a robot. Or an old person.
She sighs deeply. “When I said I was looking for my father, it’s because he went missing. Actually, not just him, but it seems my whole clan was abducted.”
“What? Why?” I ask, although as I say it I think, Wait a minute, Miles. It’s just more paranoia-speak. But she looks so sincere that I decide to swallow my doubt for just a few minutes. Even if she is spouting a load of crap, it’s obvious that she believes what she’s saying.
“I honestly have no idea,” she responds. “If I hadn’t been out hunting, I would have been taken too.” Her eyes flit to the backseat, and I see that she has placed the loaded crossbow within arm’s reach. I decide to ignore the fact that I am driving with an oversize crow and a dangerous weapon behind me and take advantage of the fact that she’s actually talking to press her further.
“And so you think the guys who took your father are the same ones who are following you? And they”—I can’t believe I’m about to say this—“sent the bird to spy on you?” I peer into the rearview mirror and see that the bird is treating my balled-up T-shirt from yesterday like a nest.
“Them . . . and my old mentor,” she says in almost a whisper.
“Your mentor?” I say, genuinely surprised, because I have no idea who she’s talking about.
Her face scrunches up like, if she were the kind of girl who cried, she would be blubbering about now. But she’s not the kind of girl who cries, thank God, so she just grinds her teeth and looks back out the window, focusing on a tiny shack with an enormous American flag in its garden, whipping and snapping in the wind. Cows lie sprawled out underneath, fast asleep like they had been whooping it up all night at some crazy bovine Fourth of July party.
Juneau’s eyes take in the landscape. Her mind is somewhere else. And all of a sudden it dawns on me. There could actually be people after her. Hell, I was after her. So were Dad’s goons before she shook them. If Dad’s trying to track her down so urgently, his competitors must be after the prize too.
That realization shakes me. I mean, it’s not like we’re in a Hollywood film where people will do anything for the chance to get their hands on a new drug. We’re not talking international espionage.
Or are we? Dad said that calling her an industrial spy was close enough to the truth. She’s obviously got valuable information.
This is getting complicated. When I thought she was a total nut, it was easy—I didn’t believe a word she said. But now that what she’s saying is starting to make sense, I have no clue what to believe.
25
JUNEAU
WE DRIVE MORE THAN AN HOUR, DOWN WINDING mountain roads and past sprawling barns topped with so much moss you can’t tell what color their roofs were originally. Mountains fold in the distance like puffy mounds of rising dough. We pass rusted-out buses and trailers grouped for eternity—or until someone cares enough to tow them away—around a burned-out campfire.
The landscape is both magical and menacing. For every abandoned grocery store advertising beer and wine, fishing tackle, and “Xmas tree permits,” we pass a crystal lake that looks like it has sat unspoiled by man since the dawn of time. As we drive along white-capped rivers, logging trucks roar by, stacked high with enormous stripped trees.
I am reminded of Denali, and my heart aches for what once was. For my life shrouded in a fiction. Why did I feel safer in a postapocalyptic world than in this functioning, civilized world?
She doesn’t look at me but stares straight out the window and then down at the speedometer, looking anxious. I step on the gas and she relaxes slightly. “Alaska,” she replies.
It takes me a second to realize that she’s one conversation back, but I catch up and say, “They’ve got to have GPS in Alaska. With all that wide-open wilderness and . . . tundra, or whatever they have there.”
She considers that for a second. “I’ve been living in a tiny community outside the major cities. When you described me as ‘back to nature’ before, you pretty much hit it on the head. It was just nature and us.”
“But I bet you’ve seen on TV—” I begin to say.
“We didn’t have TV,” she cuts in. “Or electricity, for that matter.”
“And you lived there for . . .”
“My whole life,” she replies.
While I try to wrap my brain around this, it occurs to me that, in this light, she suddenly doesn’t seem quite as crazy. If she was raised in some kind of hippie commune out in the middle of nowhere, no wonder she was freaking out in Seattle. I see her fiddle with the window, trying to fit her fingernails through the top of the glass as if she thinks she can push it down with sheer force.
“It’s the button next to the door handle,” I say, and she wiggles the control back and forth for a second until her window goes down and she leans her head to the side so the cold morning air hits her in the face.
“What? You don’t have cars either?” I ask, remembering the way that she leaped out while the car was still moving yesterday and forgot to close the door after she got back in.
She shakes her head.
I look at her incredulously. “How did you get around?”
“Dogsled,” she replies matter-of-factly. “Of course, our sleds were fitted with wheels when there wasn’t snow on the ground.”
“Of course,” I respond, one eyebrow cocked. She looks at me to see if I’m making fun of her, but I grin my goodwill and she does her lips-closed smile back.
She actually doesn’t look half-bad when she’s not scowling. I mean, that haircut still makes her look like a deranged pixie. But that’s definitely an improvement from evil elf girl, shoving skewers through dead animals’ body cavities.
“So why did you leave?” I ask tentatively. “I mean, now that we’ve established that it wasn’t an insatiable craving for Big Macs,” I add to lighten the mood.
Juneau leans her head back against the headrest, as if speaking more than a few words at a time is exhausting. She talks less than any girl I know. Uncomfortable silences don’t faze her. In fact, I’m not even sure she knows what uncomfortable is. She’s like a robot. Or an old person.
She sighs deeply. “When I said I was looking for my father, it’s because he went missing. Actually, not just him, but it seems my whole clan was abducted.”
“What? Why?” I ask, although as I say it I think, Wait a minute, Miles. It’s just more paranoia-speak. But she looks so sincere that I decide to swallow my doubt for just a few minutes. Even if she is spouting a load of crap, it’s obvious that she believes what she’s saying.
“I honestly have no idea,” she responds. “If I hadn’t been out hunting, I would have been taken too.” Her eyes flit to the backseat, and I see that she has placed the loaded crossbow within arm’s reach. I decide to ignore the fact that I am driving with an oversize crow and a dangerous weapon behind me and take advantage of the fact that she’s actually talking to press her further.
“And so you think the guys who took your father are the same ones who are following you? And they”—I can’t believe I’m about to say this—“sent the bird to spy on you?” I peer into the rearview mirror and see that the bird is treating my balled-up T-shirt from yesterday like a nest.
“Them . . . and my old mentor,” she says in almost a whisper.
“Your mentor?” I say, genuinely surprised, because I have no idea who she’s talking about.
Her face scrunches up like, if she were the kind of girl who cried, she would be blubbering about now. But she’s not the kind of girl who cries, thank God, so she just grinds her teeth and looks back out the window, focusing on a tiny shack with an enormous American flag in its garden, whipping and snapping in the wind. Cows lie sprawled out underneath, fast asleep like they had been whooping it up all night at some crazy bovine Fourth of July party.
Juneau’s eyes take in the landscape. Her mind is somewhere else. And all of a sudden it dawns on me. There could actually be people after her. Hell, I was after her. So were Dad’s goons before she shook them. If Dad’s trying to track her down so urgently, his competitors must be after the prize too.
That realization shakes me. I mean, it’s not like we’re in a Hollywood film where people will do anything for the chance to get their hands on a new drug. We’re not talking international espionage.
Or are we? Dad said that calling her an industrial spy was close enough to the truth. She’s obviously got valuable information.
This is getting complicated. When I thought she was a total nut, it was easy—I didn’t believe a word she said. But now that what she’s saying is starting to make sense, I have no clue what to believe.
25
JUNEAU
WE DRIVE MORE THAN AN HOUR, DOWN WINDING mountain roads and past sprawling barns topped with so much moss you can’t tell what color their roofs were originally. Mountains fold in the distance like puffy mounds of rising dough. We pass rusted-out buses and trailers grouped for eternity—or until someone cares enough to tow them away—around a burned-out campfire.
The landscape is both magical and menacing. For every abandoned grocery store advertising beer and wine, fishing tackle, and “Xmas tree permits,” we pass a crystal lake that looks like it has sat unspoiled by man since the dawn of time. As we drive along white-capped rivers, logging trucks roar by, stacked high with enormous stripped trees.
I am reminded of Denali, and my heart aches for what once was. For my life shrouded in a fiction. Why did I feel safer in a postapocalyptic world than in this functioning, civilized world?
