I meet Cal’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Lou shoves a small tablet or phone into his hands, and Jewels catches the movement.
“Lou!” she says, exasperated. “I told you no devices.”
“He can play it without —”
Jewels twists around to snatch the device from Cal, though he doesn’t much resist her. She rolls down her window, allowing a suffocating wall of heat into the cab, then tosses the device into the overgrown ditch.
She closes the window, turning around to pin Lou with a fierce gaze. “Anything else?”
“You don’t have to be a bitch about it,” Lou snarls.
“And you don’t have to be here at all, Lou.”
Lou stiffens at that. “Cal might not be my blood, but I’m his family.”
Cal crosses his arms, head resting back against the seat as he fixes his attention out the side window. He doesn’t dispute Lou’s claim on him.
“Are we picking up anyone else?” I ask. I’m thinking of other possible birth mothers or even other siblings, but I’m being careful with my wording for Sara Ann’s sake.
Jewels grimaces. “Everyone else is … mostly … gone. It’s just us, really. Me, Lou, and Trixie are the kids’ primary caregivers. Among those who can be trusted, at least. And when I’m not … otherwise occupied.” Overseeing my captivity, she means. “Um … Trixie is in the other truck with her boy.”
Trixie is the other dark-blond shifter, currently tucked in the back seat of the vehicle Angie is driving. Wearing a bright-pink tank top and cutoffs that are much more flattering on her than me, she carefully avoided looking directly at me before our departure. And yes, though Trixie is lighter skinned than Jewels and Lou, I’ve already noticed that the Cataclysm seems to have a preference for golden-skinned blond women — like my aunt.
Jewels continues, “Trixie was … his … before me. So was Lou …”
Except Lou has Cal, not a child of her own blood? Not a surviving child, at least. I assume the Cataclysm wouldn’t have let her go if she hadn’t at least gotten pregnant.
My heart sinks. “Gone? By choice?”
“That’s the story. It’s true as far as I know.” Jewels clears her throat. “In a couple of cases.”
In the rearview mirror, I see Sara Ann as she asks for Cal’s hand. He doesn’t hesitate to give it to her. She cuddles into his side, and he bows his head to whisper to her. A genuine grin softens his face.
Five
“This isn’t the easiest way,” Jewels hisses for the third time since we departed the house, though I’m fairly certain the universe is steadily speeding our passage. Or maybe that’s just all my energy, all me and my eagerness to get home. “The border crossing here is … we’ll get stopped.”
I shrug. “It’s our way.”
The landscape has gotten greener as we’ve neared the border between the Federation and the Navajo Nation, but these lands are still sparsely populated. Mostly huge foothills and ranches speckled with roaming herds of cattle and a few horses, but nothing near the edges of the narrow highway we’re traveling.
We’ve been driving that highway without stopping for about six hours. Okay, it’s more of an overgrown and crumbling road masquerading as a highway as it twists through the hills. Only the center lanes are viable for driving, and the intermittent signposts are so riddled with bullet holes as to render them mostly unreadable. I can’t drive as fast as I’d like to, though the truck engine is more than capable of handling that speed. Hopefully, the optimized highways through the Navajo Nation and California will help shave hours off the rest of the drive.
A small outpost finally appears ahead of us, smoke curling over it from an unknown source. Scanning the skyline, I spot similar curls of smoke far to the north and south. Jewels clearly notes the same, and her hands curl into fists on her thighs.
Nearing the clearly abandoned outpost, I roll down the window. The heat has eased slightly, no longer quite as oppressive, most likely due to the elevation rising as we near the low mountain pass ahead. Though only someone born and raised in Vancouver would consider this section of the Rocky Mountains remotely low.
I slow the truck as I eye the half-destroyed gate ahead of us and the mangled chain-link fencing stretching out in both directions. “A secondary border checkpoint? Doesn’t that void some treaty with the Navajo Nation? They patrol this side of their own border, don’t they?”
The truck behind us, driven by Angie, is following so closely that I have to be careful not to brake too suddenly.
Jewels shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s set back enough that it doesn’t violate anything, just …”
“Polices anyone wanting to leave the Federation.”
“Navajo citizens just get waved through.”
I don’t ask her how she knows. It’s obvious enough that she’s done her own research. I nod toward the other two points of smoke in the distance. “Other checkpoints?”
