Page 125 of Us Defiant Few

Maybe that was love’s greatest gift.

31

I’m proud that I danced when all I wanted was to fall.

“Isn’t this great?” Winnie exclaimed, throwing her arms up as she leaned back in the truck bed, her long purple dress fluttering around her legs. The silver pendant she always wore around her neck—even in the Braderhelm library—gleamed in the sunlight.

The truck suddenly swerved, and Khalani unintentionally fell face-first into Takeshi’s lap. She quickly scrambled up, her cheeks flushing, but not before she noticed the dark glint in his eyes.

He sat with one arm draped over the truck bed as he casually twirled a blade in his left hand. He looked oddly at ease, as if they weren’t driving through foreign territory and death wasn’t on the horizon.

But his calmness didn’t fool her.

One moment, Takeshi looked like a man hopelessly devoted, who’d kill anyone who tried to hurt her. But in the next second, a shift of violence and resentment flickered in his eyes.

Toward her. Toward the whole world.

The truck jerked again, and he effortlessly caught the heavy gas barrel that nearly toppled over.

“Sorry!” Derek yelled from the front of the vehicle. “It’s a lot easier driving a transport than this thing.”

“Pull over and let me drive.” Brock seethed next to him.

“I’m good. It’s steadier now.”

“You should just let me take over,” Serene argued.

“No!” they yelled simultaneously.

They continued to argue as Khalani scanned the horizon.

Surprisingly, California wasn’t that different from the Death-Zone. The dry desert appeared endless as Derek weaved around abandoned vehicles all pointed in the direction leading away from the state.

It didn’t make her feel good.

“Winnie, did the Archives mention how many bombs were dropped here?” she shouted over the howling wind.

“Huh?!” Winnie cupped her ear, straining to hear.

Khalani scooted to the other side of the truck bed and sat beside Winnie, but the move put her directly across from Takeshi, with his full gaze fixed upon her.

Her throat bobbed, and Takeshi tilted his head, catching the nervous movement. She switched her focus back to Winnie, where it was safer, and repeated her question.

“If Winnie remembers correctly, California was a nuclear catastrophe. Bombs dropped on top of the major cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. And the wind carried radioactive fallout across the entire state.”

“Did they have any warning?”

“Not enough for everyone to get out. Imagine millions and millions of people trying to escape all at the same time. The chaos that must have ensued as they packed on the roads.” Winnie’s voice trailed off as Derek veered the truck off-road, avoiding the astronomical number of abandoned vehicles that stood in their way.

The farther they drove, the more dilapidated buildings they encountered. Some looked like rest stops littered with massive trucks ten times the size of the one they rode in, but the cars were all covered in scorch marks. She stared at smaller structures with all the windows blown out and strange-looking signs out front—one with an upside-down W and the other depicting a cartoonish figure of a girl with red pigtails.

“Fast-food restaurants,” Winnie called them, though Khalani hardly knew what that meant.

She just nodded, imagining what the world may have looked like before it was ruined. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, people smiled as they drove their cars with the windows down, heading to a beach she’d never seen and an ocean she’d never swam in.

Khalani was able to see everything, in near-perfect detail, as if she’d lived it. She told herself it was Winnie’s books that had fed her imagination.

But after the Chief’s revelation, she wasn’t sure anymore.