“They already killed the Wardens who were trying to help them,” David said flatly. “Mob mentality. Just don’t get close. If you don’t share their beliefs, they’ll kill you, too.”
“What beliefs?”
Kevin didn’t need to ask the question, because we topped the next hill and saw the first of the crowds that David was talking about. They were filthy, ragged, wild-eyed, and armed with rifles, axes, sharp sticks—I didn’t see a single person who didn’t have some kind of weapon, even if it was just a stone to throw. A few were carrying badly painted signs that looked like they might have been written in dried blood.
REPENT OR DIE.
Oh man.
“You want to know the biggest joke?” Whitney’s voice said, echoing through the silence in the car. “These are the Episcopalians. You don’t even want to run into the hard-shell Baptists right now, brothers and sisters.”
Kevin crossed himself. He did it in a rush, like it came from someplace deep within him, and I wondered how he’d been brought up, in his early days. Catholic, probably. Cherise and I had both been churchgoing girls, too, until recently; I wasn’t what I could call committed, but I had always honored God. Wardens never doubted the presence of higher powers. Heck, we had a direct line to something, even if it wasn’t the Head Bearded Guy.
But this . . . this was people clutching at straws, using religion as an excuse for murder and destruction. And it made me sad and angry.
“We avoid them,” I said. Some of the crowd had already caught sight of us and were streaming in our direction. “If we can’t stop them, we have to stay out of their way.”
“But they’re just people,” Cherise said. “The same people who’d help you out if you had a flat tire. What happens to them? What happens to us?”
“Survival,” I said softly. “It’s selfish, and it’s dark, and we’ve always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.”
The Djinn had taken a sharp left turn down a side road and rocketed along it at insane speed, dodging falling tree branches, a wrecked and still smoldering SUV, and some things in the road that it took me long-delayed seconds to realize were actually dead bodies. I started to ask, but then I realized that I didn’t want to know how bad this was, how far it had gone. I just wanted to stop it.
And I didn’t see any way to do that.
Misery crept up on me, and I swallowed hard against an ache in my throat and stomach. I wanted David. I wanted his arms around me, his strength beside me.
“Jo,” his voice said, and I closed my eyes and pretended he was here, physically here. It was easier than I’d thought. Maybe I was going crazy. “This has happened before. It’s happened in other countries, to other people; it’s even happened here, in some areas. Riots, purges, wars, genocide. There’s never a moment on Earth when someone isn’t suffering and dying at the hands of others. You know that. Human nature isn’t your fault.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But it feels like it is.”
Maybe he would have tried to offer me more therapy, I don’t know, but right then, Cherise screamed and yelled, “Stop the car!”
David must have been the one in control, because there was no debate about it. The Djinn braked the Boss to a stop on the damp pavement in a noisy slide.
“Uh, Cher, that mob is still heading this way,” Kevin said, sensibly checking out the rearview mirror. “Might take them a few minutes, but—”
Cherise wasn’t listening. She bailed out of the car and darted out into the glow of the headlights, and I saw her scramble over debris toward the side of the road. “Dammit,” I said. “Kevin. Go with her. Hurry.”
He was already on his way, and shot me an irritated look. “Like I wasn’t going to anyway,” he said. “Thanks, Mom.”
I was so glad he wasn’t my kid. It felt like cowardice, but I stayed behind. I was nothing but a liability right now, and at least one of us needed to stay with the car. Kevin didn’t seem to mind that decision in the least. In fact, he grinned fiercely as he passed through the headlights, plunging after Cherise to the side of the road.
It seemed to take forever. I watched anxiously through the back window. The mob was coming, and I could hear them screaming. It was a deep, animal roar, and I imagined this was how those soldiers throughout history had felt, holding their ground and waiting while the enemy charged.
It wasn’t good.
I got so focused on the approach of the crowd that it surprised me (complete with yelp) when Cherise yanked open the back door and climbed in with something bundled in her arms in a dirty blanket. It squirmed. Kevin piled in after, looking grim, and yelled, “Go go go!”
Off we went, leaving the swiftest of the mob to clutch at a spray of gravel and dust.
The bundle in Cherise’s arms wailed. It wasn’t the cry of a hungry or tired baby; this was more—aware. A toddler, maybe two or three years old. Cherise unwrapped the blanket, and I saw a small, round face capped by shiny, thick black hair. The child looked as miserable as I felt.
“Cher,” I said. “We can’t—”
Kevin leaned forward, cutting me off. “There was a whole family back there,” he said. “Mom, dad, two other kids. This one’s the only one still breathing. So shut up, okay?”
I swallowed. “What happened to them?”
“What do you think happened? They had something. Somebody else wanted it. Probably a car; they didn’t look like they’d been walking, and they didn’t have any bags.”
Kevin was right. I couldn’t say no to helping this kid. Maybe I should have; maybe Lewis would have. Maybe he would have said something about the greater good and saving the most number of lives.
All I could say, looking at that little face, was, “Okay.”
Whatever David thought, he kept it to himself. The Djinn proxy driver guided us through a winding set of back roads, turning left, then right at intersections until we arrived back at a main highway again. I didn’t know where we were, and I wasn’t sure maps had much relevance anymore. Cherise and Kevin had something to do now; they had found some crackers and juice boxes in their stash of snacks, and were now arguing over whether a kid that age wore a diaper. I didn’t add any insights. They both seemed very earnest about the whole thing, which was a little endearing.
The night passed quietly enough. We’d outrun the worst of the storms, for the moment; no wildfires chased us through the silent trees. It almost looked normal. I rolled down the window, and night air fluttered over my face like a damp veil. I breathed it in and felt, for a moment, a little calmed. This still exists. There’s still hope.
David said, “We should have good travel for the next few hundred miles. This part of the country’s still relatively unaffected.”
“Yeah, why is that?” Kevin asked.
I already knew the answer to that. “It’s rural,” I said. “And the trouble is focusing on centers of population first. That doesn’t mean it won’t spread fast, but for now, people out here are as safe as they can be.”
“It’s more than that,” David said. “There’s a black corner near here—a small one. It’s been here for a thousand years or more. But it tends to keep the Djinn and the Wardens well away.”
I blinked, because I hadn’t known that. It made sense, though—black corners were places that canceled out supernatural forces, all kinds of supernatural forces. It was wasting energy to go near one.
Which made them perfect for hiding people who didn’t, and couldn’t, tell the difference.
“Pull over,” I ordered.
“It’s better if we—”
“David, pull the car over now!”
He did. There was no use trying for Google Maps or GPS; I went at it old-school, rifling the glove compartment for maps. There was a road atlas, years out of date but good enough. I flipped through it until I found a map of the entire continental USA.