The Replaced

“Get off the road!” Thom yelled, and before Simon could react, I felt Willow climbing over the top of us, her boots gouging into my thighs as she clambered past us, and into the front seat between Thom and Simon.

She gripped one of the weapons we’d packed before leaving Silent Creek, a long black rifle-looking thing that was as foreign to me as one of Jett’s motherboards.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the one who had to fire the thing.

“I told you this was a bad idea!” Willow shouted as she shoved Thom against the passenger-side door.

Neither Simon nor Thom answered. Simon kept his head low as we barreled along; only his eyes were visible above the dash. Willow leaned over the top of him and aimed the nose of the gun out the shattered side window.

“Cover your ears,” she called out absently, and it was hard to tell if she was talking to Simon, who could only cover one of his ears since he was driving, or to the rest of us.

I didn’t take any chances, and stuck my fingers in my ears just as she pulled the trigger.

It turns out, fingers make poor earplugs, especially in tight quarters. The sound rattled the inside of the car, and my ears rang in a way that felt like I might have suffered permanent damage. Still, as long as Willow was playing Annie Oakley, I kept them plugged.

“Why are they shooting at us? Can’t we just surrender?” I yelled, wondering if anyone could even hear me.

We drove in a crisscrossing pattern that I assumed was meant to give whoever had ambushed us a less . . . stationary target. One second I was colliding against the glass on my right, and the next I was crushing Natty as she was shoved against Jett on the other side of her. I was grateful I’d never been prone to motion sickness because this was like being on the world’s worst roller coaster.

Willow, who was on her knees now as she crouched over the top of Simon and used his shoulders to support her elbows, hollered back at me, “That’s what we’re doing!”

It took me a second to process what she’d said. Surely I’d misheard her—maybe my ears really had suffered permanent damage.

There was a brief pause, and then Simon answered me. “Trust us—” he called back.

He was about to say more, but was cut off when a sudden jolt came from the front of the car. The entire vehicle shook, and then it wobbled hard, and eventually it just seemed to lose steam all at once.

Willow fell forward, smacking her head against the dash, and before she could regain her own balance, Thom reached around her waist and dragged her up again, so she was out of Simon’s way while he wrestled with the steering wheel. This time, when the SUV bounced over the rocks at the side of the road, we rapidly lost speed, and the roller coaster felt more like bumper cars.

“What was that?” Natty asked.

“Spike strip,” Simon replied. “They just blew out our tires.” He slammed the brakes and shoved the car into park, his fingers working deftly to unbuckle his seat belt as he whipped around to face us. “Everyone, out. Now!”

But before I’d even released my own seat belt, I saw them. Coming out of the dark, and not just a few of them. We were surrounded.

“Kyra?” Jett said, glancing over at me, my hand frozen in place on my seat belt. “What is it?”

The rest of them couldn’t see what I did. They couldn’t see in the dark the way I could, and didn’t know there was a legion of soldiers approaching, armed way beyond anything we had packed inside this car. “There are so many of them,” I whispered, my voice shivering as I worried that those people out there might somehow be able to hear what I was saying. “They have guns. A lot of them,” I relayed to my friends inside the car, not wanting anyone to get hurt.

“When you get out, keep your hands in the air,” Simon ordered. “Don’t make any sudden movements. These guys aren’t messin’ around.”

I studied those approaching us. Some were shielded behind bandanas that masked their noses and mouths, looking like Wild West bandits, and others wore nothing over their faces, just leers.

Thom added, “Do as he says. Get out slowly, arms raised. Follow their orders.” He opened his door, leading the way as he lifted his hands up in surrender. His last word was almost inaudible as at least five of those surrounding us descended on him. But I heard him call out, just before he landed on the ground, face first. “Submit.”

Me, Natty, Jett, and Simon got out on our own, and were all thrown down the same way Thom had been, and suddenly all that scenery I’d been admiring—the desert—was in my nose and my eyes and inside my mouth, tasting a lot like the modeling clay I’d once licked off my fingers in first grade.

Willow had to be dragged out, and even though she’d just told me we were surrendering, she went down exactly as I’d expected her to: combatively. It wasn’t pretty.

“They were warning shots, you idiots! Do you not know the difference?” she screamed when they finally pulled her, flailing, from the SUV. “Take your hands off me!”

I tried to see what was happening, but there was a knee digging in the center of my back, pinning me to the ground. All I could make out were the two front tires of our SUV, which were torn to scraps by the “spike strip” Simon said they’d used. I had to blink against all the sand being kicked around, scraping my eyes.

Above me, I heard the murmur of voices:

“ . . . Griffin won’t like this . . .”

“You freaks lost or somethin’ . . . ?”