Page 125 of Ember Rising

“Good.”

I open the door and she pushes me through the doorway, closing it behind me.

For a few seconds, I just stand there. I’m numb.

I imagined so many different ways this could go wrong. But not this. This is a waking nightmare I couldn’t have foreseen.

There’s a voice talking in my ear, but I’m not paying attention. I force my feet to move, reaching the end of the hallway.

Something’s not right. A flicker of hope ignites as I consider that it could have been a clone of Mae, like the one of Marcus.

But she knew exactly what I was doing to that guard, and she described it the same way our father did when he taught us.

Sadness wells deep inside me. That’s definitely my sister, and she doesn’t want to leave.

41

“Officer Macon Nesbit died of an apparent heart attack while serving his country with valor. He will be remembered as a hero.” – public announcement by New America President Soren Whitman

Amira

This really is Big Sky Country. It’s been twenty-two days since we left our cozy cabin hideaway in the 1965 Ford F-100 someone painstakingly restored and cared for. It’s no longer pristine, but it’s an absolute beast we’ve become attached to.

Evander’s grandpa was a mechanic and car lover who restored many vintage vehicles before the virus, and he taught his grandsons a lot.

We’ve been slowed by searching for fuel to refill the six gas cans we carry in the back of the vehicle, and by stopping for Evander to work on the engine.

I love seeing him tinkering with the truck. Not only is he knowledgeable about it, but it’s something he’s great at that has nothing to do with killing people. He’s cleaned the carburetor and changed tires more than once, and he knows just how to baby the two-tone blue-and-white pickup to make it start on cold mornings.

It takes us days to find gas sometimes, because we have to make sure we don’t get too low and run out in a place where we can’t find fuel. We’ve found rural airports to be a good source of gas, but he usually has to filter it to make it usable.

Food has been hard to come by. He’s lost some weight. I’d love a hot shower, a warm bed, and a good meal, but there’s also something magical about this trip I wouldn’t trade for anything.

The rural areas are wild and overgrown, and we’ve passed herds of elk, lots of horses, and a few zebras. When I see horses running free, manes and tails flying, I sometimes think about Thunder, Raisin, and Jane. I hope they found a herd to roam with.

“How close are we?” I ask, admiring the nearly cloud-free sky from the truck’s passenger side window.

He shoots me a quick, amused glance. “About thirty minutes closer than the last time you asked.”

I roll my eyes. “Just humor me. It’s been a journey, and we’re almost there.”

“Less than an hour.”

I take a deep breath, my heart pounding with excitement. Knowing today is the day we’ll arrive at the mountain vault, I’ve gone back and forth, starting to doubt myself.

“If I get the password wrong, I’m dooming all of civilization.”

“If that password’s wrong, our former president doomed civilization. I’ve asked myself so many times why he used a clue instead of just giving the designated successor the password. They’d get a bombproof briefcase with the country’s nuclear activation codes and a cryptic password.”

“But you don’t know that. It’s like a game of telephone. You said when the secretary of agriculture was dying, she could barely get any words out. What if there was more?” I drop my brows, my worry increasing. “Oh god, what if there was more?”

He puts his hand on my thigh, squeezing it gently. “No one who knows more about it survived. The ILF is out of options. It’s either going to stay sealed up, or we can shoot our shot.”

I’ve been mentally scrolling through everything I remember about The Odyssey and Apollo. Knowing Marsyas didn’t work, the password should be Eurytus. But I can’t know without using the last attempt.

A faint sound, different from the noises we’ve heard in a long time, which are from animals, grabs my attention.

“Someone’s coming,” I say.