In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds, #3)(25)

“Well...” Cole said, looking at the sad camp set up around us. “Y’all tried.”

“I’m just wondering...” Lucy stepped out in front of us, her braided blond hair swinging over her shoulder. She was wearing an oversized 49ers sweatshirt and black leggings that were shredded at the knees. “What are you guys doing here? When did you leave East River?”

Oh, damn—of course they wouldn’t know. They couldn’t have found out. I glanced over to Liam, but he was looking down at where Zu clung to his hand.

“Save story time for later,” Cole said. “Pack up whatever you guys want to bring with you.”

“Wait, what?” Liam said. “Hold on—they don’t even know what they’re getting into.”

Cole rolled his eyes and turned back to the other kids, clapping his hands together. “I’ll break it down for you. We used to be part of a group called the Children’s League. Then the president decided he wanted to destroy us, the Federal Coalition, and all of Los Angeles. Now we’re heading up north to set up shop and figure out new, fun ways to kick his ass. Are there any questions?”

Tommy raised his hand. “They destroyed Los Angeles? Like, literally?”

“I don’t think we speak figuratively anymore?” Cole said. “It’s a flaming heap of rubble. You guys are welcome to park yourselves here, but the military has control of the borders and freeways, and they’ve likely got a new stranglehold on what gas and food is out there. Meaning life is about to get a hell of a lot harder if you don’t find yourselves a safe place.”

I think the kids were actually too shocked to cry. They traded stunned glances, clearly struggling to process this.

Starvation doesn’t help much on that front, either, I thought, looking at the way the rain made Kylie’s shirt cling to her sharp hip bones.

“And where we’d be going, that’s a safe place?” Pat asked.

“Tell them the truth,” Liam said sharply. “It may be a safe, secure location, but we’re always going to have targets on our backs. You’ve never done anything just out of the goodness of your heart, so what’s the catch, Cole? They come with us and they have to fight? They have to work for their food and beds?”

“Well, realistically, we’ll probably all be in sleeping bags,” Cole said, irritation simmering under each word, “but no, no catches. If they want to be trained, then we’ll train them. If they want to fight, then who the hell am I to stop them? But I have a feeling they’re just as invested in finding out what caused IAAN and learning more about this so-called cure. And I also have this here little feeling that they’ll be hard-pressed to find another group willing to help them get back to their parents.”

“Don’t manipulate them into thinking this is—”

“This is what?” I asked quietly, pulling him aside. “A way for them to survive? Liam...I get it, fighting is dangerous, but this kind of life is dangerous, too, isn’t it? Being sick and starved and constantly on the run? They don’t have to stay at the Ranch forever. We can get them out once we figure out a safe system for it, if that’s what they want.”

He looked pained; if he had struggled with the idea of me being trapped with the League, what were the chances he would ever accept this for Zu? No matter how much he wanted to see the camps freed, to see a real cure out there, his first instinct was always going to be to take the road that was safest for the people he cared about the most.

“When all of this is over,” I said, my eyes sliding over to where Cole was helping the other kids eagerly pack up their things, “we can go anywhere we want. Isn’t that worth it? Having her come with us now is the only way we can guarantee she’s safe. We can take care of her.”

We should never have let her go in the first place.

He let out a rush of breath. “Hey Zu, how would you feel about helping us start a little war?”

She looked up at him, and over to me, her eyebrows drawn together as she considered this. Then Zu shrugged, like, Sure. Got nothing better to do.

“All right.” Liam released the words on the tail end of a sigh, and I felt the tension escape my body with it. With one arm around my shoulder, and his other hand on Zu’s, we started back through the trees to where the others were waiting. It was grounding, the familiarity of it—like I was finally tethered back to the world again. “All right.”

By the time we made it back to the cars, Chubs and Vida were there, leaning against the side of the truck. But while Chubs was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, firing off a hundred questions to Zu that he had no chance of getting answers to, Vida took one look at her, crossed her arms over her chest, and came toward us.

“Hey, Vi, this is—”

She didn’t stop, not to let me finish, not to take Zu’s hand when she held it out to shake. Vida’s eyes flashed as they met mine, and the accusation there was as silent as it was baseless. Her jaw clenched with the venom she was clearly fighting to keep back. “Can we get out of this f*cking dump now?”

And just like that, the feeling of security was gone. A sick unease crept in, tearing my attention in two. Half of me wanted to go after her into the woods and the other half, the louder, more demanding one, wanted to stay exactly where I was, happily caught up in my love for the three people around me. My heart was swollen with it as Zu wrapped her arms around Chubs’s narrow waist again and he patted the top of her head in his usual awkward way.