The Countdown (The Taking #3)(50)

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if that message you heard is right, then we’ve done something wrong. We could be facing a war. And if that happens, no one is safe. We could be extinct within a week.”

I glanced at Thom, who looked as sick as I felt. “What do we do?” I asked Agent Truman.

“We need to stop them from coming in the first place.”

We only stayed at the motel long enough to scrub the room of signs we’d ever been there in the first place. On our way out, we slid two more fifties across the front desk to Mabel, hoping the extra hundred would work like that flashy-thing in Men in Black, erase her memory. Then we stopped at the nearest Walmart, where Thom and I ran in and grabbed the first things off the hangers that looked like they might fit. We changed in the car.

Thom now wore a Bob Marley T-shirt and a pair of stiff new Dockers (khakis, of course), and I’d grabbed a Kiss Me I’m Irish tee off the clearance rack, a garden-variety navy hoodie, and a pair of black stretch pants. I kept Blondie’s boots, not just because I didn’t want to waste extra time searching for new shoes, but because they were surprisingly comfortable. I did my best to flashy-thing my own memory so I wouldn’t have to think about Blondie, and the last time I’d seen her.

Agent Truman said he knew a guy, which I assumed meant someone who might be willing to help us. Thom didn’t ask, and neither did I. Mostly because I was so totally focused on that other thing he’d said, back at the motel. You know, the one about a war coming to Earth.

Even if I’d had other questions, which I was sure I did—things like where were my dad and Tyler and the rest of the Returned right now?—our impending doom was enough to shut me up. To consume me. To eat me alive.

War.

Coming to Earth.

And if it did, humans would become extinct.

Was it possible he’d been exaggerating that last part?

I sneaked a sideways glance at the agent who sat stiffly behind the wheel, hands at ten and two. Nothing about this guy struck me as the exaggerating type.

So if he wasn’t exaggerating, what did that mean for us?

How would they do it? Would they invade in waves, destroying everyone and everything that stood in their way? Would innocent people be sacrificed because they were incapable of fending for themselves? I imagined my mom and my little brother, ravaged by the perils of war. I imagined starvation, untreated diseases, festering injuries, and people turning on each other just to survive.

Or would the aliens just end it all at once? Destroy everything, the entire planet in one fell swoop?

That would be simpler, it seemed. More efficient.

My eyes slid downward to the watch dangling loosely around my wrist. Even fastened at the shortest notch, Chuck’s beefy arms had been giant-sized compared to mine, but that didn’t stop its rhythm from settling my rattled nerves.

Blinking about a million times, I tried to focus on the city whirring past in the dark—businesses of all shapes and sizes, some packed together in neat little strip malls and some freestanding with drive-throughs or giant parking lots. We’d driven all day and now neon signs flashed, and billboards and streetlights glared, all backed by hillsides dotted with houses and churches and more businesses, some lit and some not.

Whenever a car pulled alongside us, I’d dropped my head, keeping my chin low so whoever was in the other vehicle wouldn’t see me. The last thing we needed was for someone to notice my eyes—eyes that glowed in the dark and could probably be seen even from behind the tinted glass.

It wasn’t right to be here, with Agent Truman, when I’d been avoiding this . . . running from him for so long.

We’d stopped once so he could call “his guy” in private. His guy put him in touch with the next guy who knew how to reach a group that was not only unlisted, but was even deeper underground than the Daylight Division.

It didn’t surprise me that clandestine was a language Agent Truman was fluent in. But whoever he’d gotten in contact with seemed willing to help.

It was that same willingness that made me uneasy. That and the secrecy. If it weren’t for the whole brink of extinction thing, I’d be worried Agent Truman had another agenda . . . maybe planning an auction of his own so he could sell me off and spend the rest of his days on the beaches of Bali sipping mai tais.

But, so far he hadn’t taken us into custody, and I couldn’t help thinking he was genuinely concerned over the possibility we were facing an alien invasion. I mean, of course he was concerned, right?

Still, every time we asked where we were headed, Agent Truman said our destination was on a need-to-know basis, deeming that neither Thom nor I had that kind of clearance.

He was such a jerk.

I’d tracked our progress anyway . . . as we’d traveled through Oregon into California. I’d noted the names of cities on road signs along the way—places like Portland, Eugene, Medford, then Sacramento. I felt feverish, my limbs trembling, as the number in my head had rolled from eleven to ten somewhere just past Redding.

Now the midmorning sun was high as we veered onto the more isolated roads that led into the California hills.

Ten.

If we were counting down days, did that mean there were only ten left? Just over a week?

I was reluctant to share what I suspected, because what if I was wrong? What if it was something else, this crazy obsession with numbers? What if it had nothing at all to do with a possible impending war?