All I could think about was making sure Hayden was going to be okay. Thankfully the others had heard Hayden’s orders and were following them, grabbing all the water, meals-ready-to-eat, and blankets in the camp. Four men dressed themselves in soldier uniforms and took over the driving. Mike made a big sacrifice, leaving behind his car he claimed he’d never liked anyway and driving Hayden’s truck instead behind the bigger khaki colored military trucks. I had no clue why Hayden would care about his truck, but Mike insisted he would when he recovered. Maybe it was a guy thing. Or maybe Mike just wanted a chance to drive Hayden’s hot off the line hybrid truck.
I couldn’t care less about the stupid truck. All I cared about was seeing Hayden wake up.
Except he didn’t.
At first, all the rest of the group cared about was getting as far away from the camp as fast as possible. But once Pamela stabilized Hayden, I was able to calm down enough to start thinking more clearly about a long term solution for our group.
We stopped after an hour at a bus station, where roughly half the outcasts left us. Apparently they had their own plans for where to hide. But the rest of them didn’t have the money to escape, or else they had nowhere safe to go. Even those who had contacts didn’t want to risk endangering those relatives or friends by asking for their help.
They might be free, but for so many of our group, these prisoners were still just as trapped by the situation as they had been before escaping the internment camp. They were lost refugees with no one else to turn to for help or hope. And for some strange reason, they seemed to believe that Hayden had some sort of plan to get them to safety, judging by how they kept whispering and staring at him with a combination of gratitude and desperation. Maybe it was because he'd gotten them out of the internment camp. I was guessing it was because of who his dad was, though. They probably thought he could pull some strings with Senator Shepherd to get all their names cleared.
Considering all that they had been through already, I didn't have the heart to tell them the truth, that Hayden was just as lost and on his own as they were. He was the only hope they had left. How could I take that away from them?
So I made the difficult decision to tell everyone the tiniest of lies.
“Uh, to be honest, I don’t know if Hayden’s going to be able to get his dad to clear our records,” I said, wincing as fear returned to make their already pale faces even paler. Several women hugged their children closer, pressing kisses to the little ones’ heads or turning their faces into their husbands’ shoulders.
“But, um, I’m sure Hayden does have a place for us to go where we can figure it all out,” I stammered, praying I wasn’t getting us in too deep here. “I’m just…not sure where it is.”
“He had to have written down the address somewhere,” someone cried out.
“Uh, right,” I said, mentally scrambling now. This was why I always tried not to tell lies. It was too hard to cover my tracks. The truth was so much easier. “Can someone radio Mike and ask him to check Hayden’s truck? Maybe we can find something there.” He had to have a phone with a list of friends and relatives or something.
“What about this?” Pamela held out a thin black leather wallet. “One of the guys said it fell out of Hayden’s back pocket while we were loading him.”
Holding my breath, I sent a silent apology to Hayden for violating his privacy then dug through the wallet, nearly weeping when I found a credit card wrapped in a piece of paper with the name "Grandma Letty" on it plus an address and phone number. It was worth a shot at least.
“Anybody got a phone?” I asked.
Dad surprised me by holding up a hot pink phone that looked suspiciously familiar. “Apparently the soldiers had a huge pile of all our personal belongings stashed in their building. Including your phone. We left the others, assuming they would be traceable by now. But since they just nabbed you tonight…”
I hesitated, weighing the odds and the risk. But we had to have a place to go to, and no way was I going to tell the drivers to take us across multiple states without first making sure we would be welcome.
Taking a deep breath, I made the call.
A few minutes later, I could breathe a little easier. Smiling, I tapped the screen to end the call and said, “Tell Mike to plot us out a new course. Looks like we’re headed north.”
Our truck full of weary passengars erupted in cheering.
Having heard my entire side of the conversation with Grandma Letty, Dad didn’t need any filling in. While Pamela used the walkie-talkie neck band things to relay the address to our caravan’s lead driver, Dad cleared his throat and leaned in closer at my other side.
“You have noticed there’s still approximately fifty, or more, people in this group, right?”
I nodded, focusing on making sure the blanket rolled up beneath Hayden’s head by my hip was still in place to protect him from the hard, cold metal truck bed.
“Just where do you think his grandma’s going to put all of them?”
“You mean us.” I hadn’t realized I was going to say that until I actually did.
Dad’s eyes blinked behind his glasses like an owl’s in the flashlight’s indirect beam for at least twenty seconds. “No. You are not going with them. And neither am I. As soon as we have them headed in a new direction, you and I are getting on a bus and heading straight back home before your mother goes nuclear.” At my raised eyebrows, he added, “I read her text messages that you missed. She’s worried sick about the both of us now.”
“We can’t go home, Dad. Homeland Security and all those other agencies will be looking for us. But you could arrange to meet her somewhere. You guys are going to have to go into hiding for awhile, unless you want to be dragged right back to that internment camp to start drugging the next batch of lab rats they haul in.”
He grumbled under his breath. “Fine, I see your point. But you’re coming with us.”
“No, I’m not.” I took a deep breath. “I’m staying with this group until they’re safe.”
“Tarah, these are not our people!” he hissed, his words lost to the rest of our truck’s passengers thanks to the roar of the road noise the huge wheels made on the asphalt.
I winced. Like I needed a reminder of how very unspecial I was. Still, I got the point he was trying to make. Logically, I wasn't from the Clann and I had no special abilities whatsoever, so this wasn't really my fight.