No Shelter Trilogy (Omnibus, Books 1-3) Page 6

  “No. I’ll go alone.”

  I set off over the hill thinking that the moment I glimpse Isaac I’m going to turn right back. The grass is moist with dew and I slide down the hillside much faster nearly slamming into the craggily tree at the bottom of the hill. I pick myself up and I spot Isaac, but I don’t turn back.

  He’s standing at the top of the next hill. I climb after him partially because I want to see what he’s staring at and partially because I can’t stop myself. I reach the top and the view of the Salton Sea is breathtaking. I haven’t seen bright city lights in years and the way the lights twinkle and reflect off the lake makes my throat ache.

  “At night, it’s easy to miss the ten-foot wall,” Isaac says. “It’s an enormous prison.”

  “An enormous prison with no crime and a nearly endless supply of water and power,” I say.

  “Still a prison.”

  He stares at me and I hold his gaze. He keeps glancing at my lips as if he can see where they’ve been just by looking at them.

  “What?” I finally say.

  “You were right,” he says, as he turns his attention back to the city view. “I used Mary.”

  “I guess admitting it makes it all right?”

  “But I didn’t use her the way you think I did,” he continues. “And, at first, I really thought I was in love with her.”

  Hearing him say these words knocks the wind out of me.

  “As soon as I realized I wasn’t over you, I was honest with her about it. She was the one who kept coming back.”

  “And you couldn’t say no?”

  “I really screwed everything up, didn’t I?” he says, but he doesn’t wait for my answer. “Do you like him?”

  I don’t answer right away. I don’t know how I feel about Daedric. What does that even mean? Daedric’s an interesting guy to hang out with and, yes, he’s a great kisser, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life or the foreseeable future with him.

  “He’s funny,” I say.

  “I can be funny,” Isaac replies.

  “I’m not sure I can trust you anymore, Isaac.”

  “You can trust me,” he says, as he turns to face me again with a glint of desperation in his eyes. “I know you better than anyone. You can trust me, Nada.”

  He reaches up and brushes my hair out of my face and I can’t help but flinch. I shake my head and back away.

  “Okay. Take your time. I’ll be here if you need me,” he says.

  “You’re not coming back?”

  “I’m going to hang out a little longer. Unless you want me to walk you back.”

  “No, I’m fine. But don’t stay out here too long. The sun will be up soon and the Guardians will see you up here.”

  “Yes, Mother,” he says, and he pulls me into the most awkward hug Isaac and I have ever shared.

  I hold in my laughter as I slither out of his arms and make my way back to camp.

  CHAPTER 12

  “So, there are four gates into the Salton Sea, all of them strong with four Guardians,” Daedric says, as we feast on the last bit of almonds in the morning. “I tried getting into every one of them and got the crap beat out of me four times. Fun stuff.”

  “For them, I’m sure,” Isaac mutters.

  “Anyway,” Daedric continues. “The weakest gate is the north gate. Elysia and I scoped out all the gates for days before we tried to get in. The north gate is unguarded for about ten minutes every day.”

  “How is that possible?” I ask, before I crunch down on my last almond, possibly the last almond I’ll ever eat.

  “The guards change every hour exactly on the hour. I think they rotate from one gate to the next. There’s a ten-minute delay for them to get to the north gate when they change guards at the end of the day. A fresh set of guards comes in at the west gate to relieve them. It always takes about ten minutes for the guards to hand over their weapons and deliver the daily reports. It’s our only shot.”

  “Even if the guards are gone, isn’t the gate locked?” Mary asks.

  Eve tosses back the curtain of black hair over her eyes and she’s wearing makeup. “What?” she says, as we stare at her.

  I’m aware she has a supply of nail polish she uses like glue for her traps, but I didn’t realize she had blush, black eyeliner, and shimmering lip-gloss. The liner along her lash-line makes the crystal blue irises of her eyes appear almost clear.

  “You look really pretty,” I tell her and the pink blush on her cheeks blooms to a brilliant red.

  “What’s with the face paint?” Isaac asks.

  Eve’s hands trembles before she faces him with a fierce expression in her eyes. “In case I run into them.”

  “Run into who?” Daedric asks.

  Eve is referring to the guys who robbed her mother’s grave and left her for dead. Though Eve has never said it, I always figure her mother’s jewelry isn’t the only thing the grave robbers stole from her.

  With everything that’s been going on, I haven’t even stopped to ask Eve how she’s doing. I crawl around the dead fire pit and put my arm around her shoulders.

  “Don’t waste another minute on them, Eve. Don’t let them take any more pieces of you,” I whisper.

  She shakes her head. “I can’t let it go. If I see them, I’m going to kill them. Then it will be over.”

  She doesn’t tremble or cry as she says this. It’s the first time Eve has ever appeared confident and resolute.

  “I’ll help you, Eve,” Isaac says. “If we see them.”

  I look at Isaac, but his eyes are locked on Eve. He’s serious.

  “We’ll all help you,” Mary says.

  A tear finally breaks free from Eve’s eye, but she’s smiling.

  “What do we do if we’re able to get inside?” Isaac asks Daedric. “Do you know where they’re holding your sister? Have you been inside?”

  “The gate is locked, so we gotta figure out a way to pick the lock quickly,” Daedric replies. “Any suggestions?”

  Isaac, Mary, and I all turn Eve. She nods and begins rummaging through her backpack for her toolkit.

  “After we get inside, we gotta make it all the way to the southern end of the lake. That’s where they have Elysia,” Daedric continues. “I don’t know what happens after that.”

  “This is a suicide mission,” Mary remarks, as she slips her third and largest knife into the holster on her waist.

  “We gotta get cleaned up,” Daedric says. “Everyone in there is clean. Nice hair, clean clothes, all that jazz.”

  We pick out our nicest clothes and wash them in the last gallon of water we have aside from the water in our canteens. We use some water from our canteens to wash our bodies and Eve applies a touch of makeup to Mary’s and my face. Mary has trouble brushing the tangles out of her hair so I offer to help.

  She sits cross-legged in front of me as I carefully brush out each tangle. I try to be as gentle as possible because she has so much hair.

  “Nada?” she says. “I’m sorry for what I said about Isaac. He didn’t use me. I knew what I was getting into. It just… it still hurts a little, you know, to not be good enough.”

  I think of how Mary’s father left her to save himself in the middle of the storm. However hard it has been for me losing my sister and my mother, I still think it would be harder to be rejected by the one person who’s supposed to love and protect you.

  “Mary, Isaac didn’t leave you because you’re not good enough. You’re much prettier than me. Look at this hair. It’s so luxurious,” I say.

  She smiles. “Oh, shut up. Look at your hair. So long and black like an Indian princess. And your eyes. I’d kill for your eyes.”

  My mother’s parents were Irish and my father’s parents immigrated to California from China. I used to think I was cursed with slightly slanted green eyes, but I began to accept my unusual appearance after hearing Isaac call me beautiful a thousand times.

  “Can you braid my hair?” I ask her. “
I don’t want it getting in the way.”

  When Mary finishes braiding my hair, we brush our teeth and change into clean clothes. It’s the first time in over two years I feel totally clean and refreshed.

  “Look at you,” Isaac says, as he looks me over with a huge grin on his face.

  “What?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  As the sun begins to set, we find a ditch to hide our backpacks then we toss a bunch of leafy branches into the ditch to conceal the gear. We crouch low and try to stay hidden behind the small trees, bushes, and the few buildings left in the former resort town of the Salton Sea. There’s no one around. No one else is stupid enough to come this close.

  The dim moonlight barely illuminates the desert until we get closer to the ten-foot wall surrounding the city. Every twenty yards, bright spotlights propped atop the wall spin slowly, lighting up the surroundings.

  Isaac was right. This is no shelter. This is a prison.

  I try to imagine Lara locked inside these walls. I’d be overwhelmed with worry.

  “They’ll be changing in about twenty minutes. You got everything ready?” Daedric asks.

  Mary pulls out her medium-sized blade, the one with the picture of a dove carved into the ivory handle. I pull out my jade knife, though I’d probably do much better without it. Eve removes three steel pins from her hair and hands them to Isaac. Eve may be good at building traps, but Isaac is great at cracking locks and picking pockets. The proof is hanging around my neck.

  Apart from the minutes after I found Lara, these are the longest twenty minutes of my life. I crouch behind a dried up Mexican palm tree, watching the gate and tapping my hand on my knee. Isaac puts his hand on mine to stop the tapping.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he says.

  As he says this, the Guardians in their black bandannas and combat boots begin to walk to the next gate leaving the north gate completely unguarded.

  We creep across the two hundred yards between our hiding place and the gate. As the spotlight turns, we scatter to dodge the light. Once it passes, we meet each other at the gate.

  The gate is ten-feet tall, like the concrete walls, and each rung is topped with a sharp spike that glints in the moonlight. Isaac goes straight to work on the lock, but it’s not an easy lock to crack. Beyond the gate, a small boy wearing a knit cap and pajamas passes us. He spots us at the gate and he seems perplexed.

  I wave at him and he runs away. “Great. All we need is to get ratted out by a four-year-old.”

  “Hold this, Nada,” Isaac says, placing my fingers around one of the pins. He sticks the other two pins just below the pin I’m holding in place and soon the lock clicks.

  I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief. Just as Isaac pushes the gate open, the last person in the world I want to see rounds the corner.

  CHAPTER 13

  Vic is even more muscular and menacing than the last time I saw him almost a year ago. The Salton Sea lifestyle suits him well.

  “Well, hello there, friend,” Vic says in his unnaturally deep voice.

  Though he’s about the same height as Isaac, his thick biceps and bald head make him appear stubby.

  “Hey,” Isaac says. “Long time no see.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call two weeks a long time,” Vic replies. “I mean, it’s not as long as two years, is it?”

  He’s directing this question at me. “Definitely not as long as two years,” I reply.

  “Yeah, two weeks is nothing,” Vic replies. “Nada.”

  “Why don’t we discuss this somewhere else?” Isaac says.

  “Discuss what?” Vic says, tilting his head. “The fact that you stole from me, the fact you’ve been hiding a big secret from me, or the fact that all your friends are about to be killed?”

  “This is my necklace,” I say. “He didn’t steal it.”

  Vic grins wide showing all thirty-two of his perfectly straight, white teeth—the true mark of a privileged Westerner. “The little woman is still defending you,” Vic says. “It seems Nada still doesn’t know the truth about Isaac Faulk.”

  “I think we should take this discussion somewhere else,” Isaac says. “Like you said, we’re all going to die anyway.”

  He takes another step toward the gate and Vic slams him against the wall. He holds his football-sized forearm against Isaac’s neck and gets in his face.

  “Why don’t you tell Miss Nada the truth?”

  “Vic…” Isaac croaks under the pressure of Vic’s arm.

  Suddenly I’m back in the hallway at Whitmore and Vic has me against the lockers. My vision is clouded with tears, but I can still hear everything. Vic is laughing. So are his cronies, but someone else is yelling. Every person in this corridor is yelling, “Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!”

  But one person’s voice is louder than the rest.

  Isaac’s voice punctures the melee of screams. “Give me the matches!”

  Vic drops Isaac and he crumples to the floor. Vic’s rumbling laugh is the same laugh that haunts my nightmares.

  “Don’t listen to him, Nada,” Isaac says, still choking on the words.

  I realize my hand is gripping the blade of my knife instead of the handle and I release my grip. The knife hits the floor next to multiple drops of my blood. The new set of guards show up behind us. Daedric grabs my arm and forces me to run with him. I glance back at Eve and Mary as they run behind us. The Guardians are a few paces behind them, but Isaac and Vic are nowhere.

  We race down a long corridor between two rows of tiny stucco abodes that wouldn’t be tall enough for Isaac until we reach a lush garden. The four of us sprint toward the center of the gardens and I wonder if we’ve just trapped ourselves. If we make it to the lake, we’ll be surrounded.

  We keep running through the maze of corn and tomato plots, the well-fed Guardians lagging further and further behind us, when Daedric disappears down an open shaft three paces ahead of me. I stop just short of plunging into the same hole in the concrete. He’s sprawled out at the bottom of a sewer hole.

  “You okay?” I call out to him.

  He lifts his head. “I’m fine. Hurry up and get down here.”

  Mary, Eve, and I slide down the slippery steel ladder and Daedric climbs back up to pull the manhole cover closed over us. The blackness is absolute and the sound of water gurgling surrounds us. The stench makes my lungs recoil.

  “Great. How are we supposed to see in this?” Mary whispers, her voice muffled as she covers her face to block the stench.

  “Give me a minute,” Daedric says and I can hear him rustling around in his pockets.

  A moment later, a beam of light shines from his hand.

  “What’s that?” I ask, as Daedric points the light around the hole.

  “Look,” he says, showing us the tiny four-inch flashlight with a compass attached to the side. “Just a little somethin’ else I found with the baseball bat.”

  “Great. Now we can see that we’re stepping in crap,” Mary says.

  Eve smiles. “That compass can take us to the prison, if this sewer runs underneath it.”

  Daedric smiles at her. “You’re a genius.”

  I can’t glimpse her face through the murky glow of the flashlight, but I know Eve is blushing. Daedric holds the flashlight and leads us in the southerly direction. I try to keep Eve calm as the frantic sound of footsteps booms above our heads.

  The sewer pipes become smaller and, though I don’t say it aloud, I begin to sense we’re going in circles.

  We hit a dead end and Eve vomits her breakfast into a puddle of human sewage.

  Mary squeezes the condensation dripping from her curls. “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”

  “We must have hit the lake,” I say. “What do we do now?”

  “We have to go around,” Daedric replies.

  “This lake is fifteen miles wide and over thirty miles long!” Mary cries. “We’re gonna starve down here!”
>
  “What about Isaac?” I say, though I can’t hide the shame in my voice.

  I shouldn’t care what happens to Isaac. He set the fire that killed my mother. Still, he saved my life—and not just at Whitmore. He brought me back from the brink of starvation twice. He’s my best friend.

  “We can’t leave him behind,” I continue.

  The pause that follows tells me everything I need to know.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll just—”

  “I’ll help you find him,” Daedric interrupts me. “Once we find Elysia I’ll help you find Isaac.”

  He shines the flashlight into another dank sewer tunnel, but he doesn’t look at me.

  “Thank you,” I say, as we continue after him.

  After ninety minutes of walking and listening for some sign of prison activity, we stop to take a rest. I help Eve pull her sopping, sweaty hair into a ponytail before she vomits again. I squat in the sewage to rest my legs and immediately pull my shirt over my face. The stench multiplies at close range.

  “Are we almost there?” Eve asks in a weak voice.

  Daedric kneels next to me and cups his hand around the flashlight to get a better view of the compass. “I don’t know. I thought we’d be there by now,” he says. “Maybe the sewers don’t run under the prison.

  “Maybe we can’t hear it down here,” Mary says. “Maybe we passed up the prison a long time ago.”

  “We didn’t pass it up,” Daedric replies defensively.

  “Hey, no need to get pissy with me,” Mary shouts.

  “Well, maybe I wouldn’t get pissy witchoo if ya stopped gettin’ pissy with me!” Daedric shouts back and I immediately spring to my feet and step between them.

  “Shut up!” I whisper. “They’re going to hear us down here.”

  “Daedric?” says a small voice and everybody turns to Eve.

  “What?” he says.

  Eve looks up at us from where she’s squatting. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Daedric?” the voice calls out again, but this time we turn toward the dark sewer tunnel. “Daedric? Is that you?”

  CHAPTER 14

  I pull Eve up and we race toward the sound.