The girl is still yanking on Seth’s shirt, so hard it’s starting to tear. He resists her and looks down the road again. The van has made its way through the circle. It’s starting back down the road after them.
What the hell? he thinks. Seriously, what the hell?
The girl makes a frightened yelp, lets him go, and flees into the structure.
And that’s what makes Seth finally move. Her fear.
He runs after her into the darkness.
The shadows inside are so deep and black, Seth goes sun-blind for a minute.
“Quickly!” the girl says, pulling him down after her, over the low wall and into the small alcove, made even smaller by the boy and the bikes. Seth takes a moment to wonder why he never thought of finding a bike.
“This is ridiculous,” he says. “It’ll see us –”
“It’ll think we followed our tracks back out,” the girl says, “if we’re lucky.”
“And if we’re not lucky?”
She holds up her finger to stop him.
And he can hear it now, too.
The engine of the van. Almost here.
The boy lets out a whimper. “It is coming.”
The boy and the girl press back farther into the blackness of the little alcove, which now seems pathetically small to protect all three of them, tight against the bikes, sweating, panting, trying not to make a sound.
The van stops outside. Seth hears the door opening.
An arm moves across his chest. The boy, reaching for the girl. She takes the boy’s hand and holds it tightly.
No one breathes.
Seth hears footsteps, crunching across the ash. One person, Seth thinks, just one pair of feet.
And then he sees it, stepping into the shadows of the structure.
Impossibly in this heat, every inch of its skin is covered, fingertip to neck, in a black, synthetic-seeming material, almost like a wetsuit. Its face is hidden by a sleek helmet with features molded for nose and chin, but completely blank otherwise, just a smooth, metallic blackness.
Like the coffin on the top floor of Seth’s house.
Seth hears a slight breath at his right. In the shadows, the boy has his eyes squeezed shut and his lips are moving furiously, like he’s reciting a prayer.
The figure stops almost directly at their feet, its side turned to them. It only has to look in the right place, it only has to bend down and take one farther glance –
It steps past the alcove, out of Seth’s line of sight. He feels the girl exhale, but she holds her breath again as it walks back the other way. It stops once more, looking at the disturbances in the ash, disturbances that Seth is sure will lead it right to them. In its hand, Seth sees it’s holding an ominous black baton, one that looks for all the world like a serious, serious weapon.
The figure – the Driver, the boy called it – is inexplicably terrifying. It’s got a man’s shape, but something about the blackness of its clothes, something about the way it holds its body –
Isn’t quite human, Seth thinks.
There is no mercy in it, that’s what it is. Nothing to appeal to. It might kill you, like the girl said, but it would do so without you ever being able to convince it not to and without you ever knowing why you were dying.
It steps toward their alcove.
Seth feels the boy’s hand grip the girl’s more tightly across his chest –
But the Driver stops. It’s motionless for a second, then it steps back, walking quickly out of sight. Seth hears the door to the van slam, hears the engine rev, hears the van drive off.
“Thanks be to God,” the boy whispers.
After waiting another moment to be sure it’s gone, they crawl out of the alcove. The boy and the girl stand in the slanted sunlight, the boy looking sheepish, the girl defiant.
“Who are you?” Seth asks. “And what the hell was that?”
They look at him for a moment. Then the boy’s face scrunches up with tears. The girl rolls her eyes, but she opens her arms. The boy falls into her, grabbing on to her tightly, weeping into her embrace.
31
“Who are you?” Seth asks again, still staring. “What’s going on?”
“He’s kind of emotional,” the girl says, holding the boy. “I think it might be a Polish thing.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know that’s not what you meant.” She lets go of the boy, whose chin is still wobbling. “We’re good, Tommy. We’re good.”
“Safe?” the boy asks.
The girl shrugs. “As safe as we can be.”
She’s English, Seth notices, and her eyes are tired and baggy, her clothes that same combination of brand new and ash-covered as his own. She’s quite tall, taller than Seth, and her hair is pulled tight across her scalp by a clip at the back of her head. As for the boy, he’s so short it’s almost comical. Seth notes, too, the way his hair is that same spectacularly messy pile that Owen always wore. For a moment, he feels an unexpectedly deep pang for his brother.
“I’m Regine,” the girl says. “This is Tomasz.” She pronounces the names Ray-zheen and Toh-mawsh. Both she and the boy look at Seth expectantly.
“Seth,” he says. “Seth Wearing.”
“You’re American,” Regine says. “That’s a surprise.”
“How do you know he is American?” Tomasz asks her.
“The accent.”
Tomasz smiles bashfully. “I still cannot tell. You all sound the same to me.”
“I was born in England,” Seth says, his confusion growing again. “I was born here. Wherever the hell here is.”
The girl starts pulling the bikes out of the alcove. “You’ll have to ride with him,” she says to Tomasz. Tomasz groans loudly but takes a bike from her. “Come on,” the girl says to Seth. “We really can’t hang around.”
“You expect me to come with you?” he says.
“We don’t have time to fight about this. You can come with us or not –”
“Regine!” Tomasz says, shocked.
“ – but if you stay here, the Driver will find you and you really will die.”
Seth doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know what to answer. The girl stares back at him, and he sees her looking at his running clothes, his lack of water, sees her considering the way he was running, furiously, with purpose. She glances behind him, out to the landscape.