I suppose that’s barely a wait for most people at a border crossing. But my skin is crawling with the need to keep moving by the time the guard’s side of the phone conversation grows intermittent as he listens. Then it grows increasingly shaky as he gets his orders.
The moment the guard raises his head, squares his shoulders, and sets down the phone with a hard swallow, essence shifts around us. Around both trucks.
The second border guard, having clearly eavesdropped during the long series of phone calls, looks a little pale and a lot sweaty.
The gate rises. I roll up my window and drive through, not waiting to be waved forward by either guard. Given their current state, it would probably take another ten minutes for them to remember to even move from the booth.
As we cross through the border wall, entering the Navajo Nation and leaving the Federation in our wake, other guards run back and forth around us, crossing to and from buildings, climbing in and out of vehicles. Mobilizing. But ignoring us.
Seemingly ignoring us.
“What the fuck?” Jewels whispers.
“Sorry,” I say with a shrug. “If I could have remembered a name or had my phone on me, that would have gone smoother.”
“Remembered a name …” she echoes in disbelief.
The guards are clearly fortifying the border crossing behind us, pulling up a half-dozen armored vehicles to block the road. I see what looks like a tank in motion before we’re too far down the causeway, then picking up speed to merge onto a highway. It’s as if they’re worried who — or what — is going to come through after us.
They’re not wrong to worry. And that is exactly why owing a person like me a favor is often too high a cost.
Except there is no one else like me. I’m the only one of me in the now. Now.
I brush away the remembrance of Disa’s hand disappearing from under mine and focus on the road. The greenery is denser here than anywhere in the Federation, verging on lush in places. After the people of the Navajo Nation reclaimed this territory, they spent decades propagating native plants and purging invasive flora and fauna.
A heavily armored helicopter, keeping back but easily within weapons range, catches up with us just before I pull off the highway into the first gas station we come across. Not that any of those weapons would be trained our way.
“That’s what took so long,” I say as I spot it. “You’d think they’d have had a helicopter on-site. Though maybe it was getting the pilot that took the time.”
Jewels glances at me, wary and looking a little shaky. As if she’s only just figured out who it is sitting beside her. And how dangerous claiming a favor from me might be.
The fuel gauge has been hovering at empty for the last thirty minutes, but the truck doesn’t stall out until I turn off the road. I glide the vehicle up to the pumps. Angie pulls up to the second row of pumps next to me.
Not one of my traveling companions addresses me directly for the entire time it takes for us to refuel both vehicles, use the facilities, and mow through a late-afternoon snack of some seriously tasty fry-bread tacos — mine with bites of crispy halibut — at the tiny take-out-only cafe that adjoins the station.
When we’re done eating, I head into the small gas station convenience store. Cal follows in my wake, watchful but pretending to just be looking around. Behind us, Trixie is switching off with Angie as the driver of the second truck, the two of them getting the other kids moved around and reorganized with treats and other distractions. Lou launches into another argument with Jewels. It isn’t difficult to pick up her pitch for ditching me.
Inside the small store, I finally get my hands on some fucking sunglasses. The frames are a white polymer that will look terrible on my already ghostly pale face, and the lenses aren’t as tinted as I’d like. But they’ll shield my eyes.
I eye the cheap pay-as-you-go phones behind the counter as I approach.
“You getting one of those?” Cal asks, stepping up to the counter and standing as close to me as he can without touching.
“I don’t have anyone’s contact information,” I murmur, even as I contemplate trying to remember one of Coda’s old code sequences. I think those are all specific to my own phone, though. Which is to say, the phones Coda programs and gives to me.
“You don’t know phone numbers?” Cal asks mockingly.
“Do you?”
That shuts him up for a moment. Then he slaps a few chocolate bars and small bags of chips on the counter and says, “I’m twelve. Who would I call?”
“Good point.”
He shoves a wad of cash at the cashier. The older woman with beads braided through her long dark hair has been trying to ignore us the entire time we’ve been in the store. No doubt a phone call, and probably more than one, preceded our stop.
“It’s on the house,” the cashier mutters, more tentative than angry.
Cal cocks his head and narrows his eyes at her. “What? Free?”
