“Okay ladies… we’re here. Shenandoah National Park.”
Syd opened the back of the delivery truck, and sunlight flooded inside.
When I’d made the trip before with Heath, we’d come by hyperloop, which traveled at about 760 miles per hour. This time my friends and I had traveled the old-fashioned way-by personal vehicle on the highway.
It had taken nearly five hours to reach the park, and it was now just after midday.
Ketta, Jolie, and I crawled out of the cargo area, squinting and stretching as we looked around and took in the view. The sun was high in the sky, casting its light onto the multi-colored fall foliage all around us.
We’d pulled into a scenic overlook off of Skyline Drive, the only public road going through the national park.
It ran along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. From our vantage point, we could see the Shenandoah Valley spread out below, a color block quilt of red, orange, gold, and green. It was breathtaking.
“Wow. Mountains,” Ketta said, clearly delighted.
“Yep. Mountains and trees and hills and valleys. More than two hundred thousand acres of ’em,” Syd said. “Heath told me the place you’re looking for is somewhere out here, but I have no idea where, so from this point on, it’s up to you.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I assured him.
I didn’t know the exact location of the Haven, but according to Heath’s map, it was in an area of the park very far removed from the road. A long hike was in store for us.
“Thanks for getting us this far,” I said to Syd, and he extended a hand to shake mine then turned to continue unloading our backpacks and sleeping bags from the truck.
“Yes, thank you,” Jolie and Ketta echoed.
Syd smiled as he slid back behind the wheel. “You bet. You girls stay safe. I’ll be sure and tell Heath you made it here. Good luck. Hopefully we never see you again and I mean that in the best way.”
We thanked him and crossed the street, heading into the woods on a trail that would lead us to some of the park’s higher elevation areas, those the roads and marked hiking trails ignored.
I’d done my best to memorize the map before destroying it. Between it and my gradually returning memory, I hoped we’d be able to reach the Haven before nightfall.
It remained to be seen whether we’d be permitted entry.
Thanks to the mega dose of green pills, I was recovering more and more de- tails of the time I’d spent with Heath. There had been a beautiful waterfall here in the park, and we’d spent the night in a cabin and made makeshift s’mores for Daniel.
Other memories were far less pleasant-like an attack by Apollo Gideon’s vicious retrievers.
Would they be coming after us again? Looking around at the serene environ- ment, it seemed impossible any harm could come to us here.
As we hiked, the faint sound of birds chirping echoed through the air, and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the nearby trees.
“So how far do you think it is?” Jolie asked. “My feet kinda hurt.”
“It’s only been an hour, wimp,” Ketta said.
“I don’t remember exactly,” I confessed. “It took us a couple days to get there before.”
“A couple of days?” Jolie made a comical expression of exaggerated misery. “A couple of days of this, and I’ll be dead.”
“Hopefully it won’t take us as long this time since we have some clue where we’re going. At least I think I do.”
Now that we were in the woods, it wasn’t so easy. The map I’d memorized had seemed straightforward – it directed us deep into the park to the foot of Hawksbill Mountain and a collection of old, abandoned camp buildings.
That was where Heath and Daniel and I had made camp, sleeping under the stars.
Even if my friends and I didn’t make it there tonight, I kept reminding myself we were safer here than we had been back at the base. Ketta must’ve been thinking along the same lines.
“What do you think is happening back there?” she asked. “When do you think they realized we were missing?”
“I guess it depends on how convincing Luz was. She was going to make up a cover story and say she was alone climbing the tree. Although some soldiers did see us together right after we left the water treatment plant. Hopefully they didn’t put the two events together and it took till noon when Ketta’s parents went to check on us in the basement and discovered us gone. Even then, they might have assumed we’d just gone to the base canteen for lunch or something. Maybe everyone thought things were normal until this afternoon.”
“But now, though…” Jolie said, and she didn’t have to elaborate. We all knew what she meant.
By now, our absence had been discovered for sure, and the alarm had been sounded. By now they’d pinged our holoconnects and realized we’d left them behind at Ketta’s.
By now they knew we’d escaped-and the search had begun.
Heath was also supposed to be leading them away from this place. Who knew how successful his efforts would be?
It all depended on how much his father trusted him, I guessed. The two of them were spending today on an international flight and then attending a global summit. Hopefully his father hadn’t yet been notified about our escape.
Still, I picked up my pace. Getting my friends to the safety of the Haven sooner rather than later was critical.
We reached the camping area in late afternoon. I recognized the clearing, and the remnants of the stone fire ring Heath had built were still there.
It was eerie to be back here again. This was the spot where I’d sung Daniel to sleep and where we’d found footprints all around us in the dirt the next morning.
Daniel had been giddy about the prospect of meeting the “lost boys.”
It had sort of freaked me out, knowing people had watched us as we slept, though when I’d actually seen one of them-the boy who’d watched me bathing in the stream-he hadn’t looked hostile. Just… interested.
I hoped they’d be interested enough this time to make contact with us and take us back to their sanctuary.
If not, I had no idea what we’d do. We had some supplies but not enough to last for long.
Jolie stood near the fire ring, turning around in a slow circle. “What now? There’s nobody here.”
“That’s what we thought last time,” I said. “They were here – we just didn’t know it.”
Her eyes darted to the tree line nearby. “You mean they’re watching us?” “Probably. Can you blame them? It wouldn’t be much of a haven if they wel- comed in any old hikers. They have to be sure of us first.”
Ketta sat down on the stump Heath had dragged in front of the fire the night we’d stayed here.
“Well they’re welcome to watch me sit on my butt for a nice, long time. I am beat.”
She lifted her water bottle to her mouth. Only a few drops came out.
“Great. I’m so thirsty. What I wouldn’t give for a glass of ice water right now.” Ice water. That was it.
“There’s a mountain stream nearby. We can get a drink there, and that’s where I spotted one of them before. Maybe they’ll see us there and make con- tact. Follow me.”
The stream was exactly where I’d expected it to be, which meant this was indeed the spot where I’d almost met one of the other Gebby escapees.
Ketta stood on the bank, peering into the flowing water. “Is it safe to drink?” “We drank it before with no problems,” I told her. “Besides, they bottle this stuff up and ship it into the cities where people pay a fortune for it.”
She nodded and squatted to fill her water bottle. Jolie wasn’t so delicate about it. She stripped to her underwear and splashed into the water, plunging under the surface and coming up again beaming.
“This is the coldest water I’ve ever felt,” she announced.
I laughed. “There could be people watching, you know.”
“Let them watch,” she dared. “It feels great. Come on in.”
“No thanks. I’d rather not be naked when I meet the leader of the Haven.”
It wasn’t that long ago I’d skinny-dipped in these waters myself, hoping the icy temperature would relieve my fever and pain from the injury I’d sustained at the hands of Gideon’s Retrievers.
Of course I’d assumed total privacy at the time.
Movement in my peripheral vision drew my attention to Ketta, who was stripping off her own clothes. She charged forward and jumped, landing near Jolie with a loud splash.
“Wow,” she yelled. “It’s freezing.”
But the two girls were in no obvious hurry to get out of the water. They laughed and played in it until I succumbed to the temptation myself and got in. Every once in a while, I scanned the trees and vegetation bordering the stream, hoping to see someone from the Haven. But after about a half hour of swimming, we still had seen no one.
We got out, shook ourselves off, and allowed the sun to dry us a bit before putting our clothes back on.
When we got back to the campsite, I began gathering dry wood to make a fire. Ketta helped me, but Jolie stood there looking confused.
“What are y’all doing? Aren’t we going to the Haven tonight?”
“Love to,” I said. “But we don’t know how to get there. I suspect it’s near here, but it’s going to be dark soon. It’s too late to go wandering off into the woods. We could get lost and end up farther away from the sanctuary instead of closer to it.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Make a fire and set up camp while we wait for someone from there to find us. It might take a day or two.”
Her face crumpled, and her eyes held a hollow, frightened look. “We’re really going to sleep… outside? All night?”
“It’ll be fine,” Ketta assured her as she dropped her load of wood next to the fire ring. “All the bears and wolves died in the Calamity, remember? It’ll be fun. It’ll be an adventure. Unless you’re scared of chipmunks.”
I loved seeing my best friend’s fiery personality and strong spirit returning. Had I been similarly repressed these past few months before the green pills had taken effect?
Who knew what my old friends back at the base would have been like had I been allowed to see their true personalities?
That made me think of Luz. I hoped she’d been treated and healed by now. I hoped there was enough left of her true personality that she’d be able to talk to the other kids and warn them of the fate Dr. Rex/Apollo Gideon had in store for them.
Jolie tugged her jacket more closely around her shoulders and sank to the log in front of the fire, darting fearful glances around us. Like her, I hoped the Haven’s residents would find us as soon as possible, but for a different reason. I wanted to ask them for advice on how to help our friends escape.
Maybe they ran rescue parties to the various military bases. How else were the other kids getting out and finding the sanctuary? They didn’t all have Apollo Gideon’s son helping them.
My friends and I made a fire and finished drying off in front of it then pulled our MRE’s from our packs and ate them. After that, we unrolled our sleeping bags and prepared to try to get some sleep.
It didn’t come quickly for me. I stared up at the starry night sky, thinking about Heath and the things he’d said in his video message.
The best way I know to keep you safe is to stay as far away from you as possible.
Well, he was on the opposite end of the world right now, so hopefully that meant we were safe.
The flickering firelight was comforting and kept my right side toasty warm. Ketta and Jolie were stretched out on the other side of it. I couldn’t tell if they were sleeping, but they were both still and quiet.
“What if they don’t want us?” Ketta’s voice drifted to me in the dark.
She sounded uncharacteristically meek. “What if we find them and they won’t let us in?”
“We can’t think like that. It’s called the Haven for a reason, right? They have to let us in,” I said.
Jolie bolted upright to a sitting position. Her head whipped back and forth.
“What was that?”
Ketta and I sat up as well. “What?” she said. “Did you hear something?” “No, but I think I saw something.”
Jolie sounded terrified. She pointed into the woods in front of her. “Over there, through the trees. I swear something moved and it wasn’t a chipmunk. It was much, much bigger.”
Throwing off my sleeping bag, I grabbed the light streamer from my bag and shined it toward the spot she’d identified. I saw nothing but tree trunks and bramble.
Moving the swath of bright light back and forth, I searched for any sign of visitors.
“Are you sure you saw something?” I asked.
“Yes! I didn’t imagine it.” Her eyes, already round with alarm, went wider.
She pointed. “There I saw it again. There’s someone out there.”
I walked over to put a reassuring hand on her head.
“Okay I believe you. Don’t be afraid. This is a good thing. It’s what we wanted, right? To be found?”
“Depends on who’s doing the finding,” she muttered. “If they’re the good guys and want to help us… why are they hiding from us?”
