The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(73)

“I’m looking for the right key!”

“Amanda, you have to promise me you won’t leave this van until I tell you it’s safe!”

“Okay, Mia! I won’t! I promise!”

Hannah screamed as a door hinge came loose. Patches of rust grew along the edge of the windows.

“They’re not crushing the van,” David said. “They’re aging it.”

Cursing, Zack isolated the failed keys, then held the ring out to Hannah. “Take over.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m undoing! Just go!”

Hannah grabbed the ring and bent uncomfortably toward the ignition. Her door let out another rusty groan. She tried not to think what would happen if the twins got an open line of attack on her.

Zack concentrated on the windshield, reversing away the clouds and cracks. He could see the blue-suited brother in front of the van, raising a palm at the hood.

“Shit. He’s going for the engine.”

David pressed against the metal mesh. “Open the gate!”

“What?”

“I can take him, but you need to open the gate!”

Zack slid the grating. David squeezed his upper body through the opening and aimed a hand at the attacking twin. Suddenly the man’s head became enveloped in seven-year-old construction noise, localized and amplified for maximum effect. The twin covered his ears, wincing in agony.

“Good, David. Good!”

“Just get us out of here!”

“I’m trying!” Hannah screamed.

Fortunately, her sixth key was the right one. The electric motor came to life with a loud whirr.

“I got it! I got it! Go!”

Zack reflexively reached for the space where a gearshift would be. There was nothing there but a cup holder. He scanned the wheel and dashboard. “Where the hell . . . ?”

“What’s the problem?”

“The gearshift. I can’t find it.”

Hannah searched with him. “Did you check the other side?”

“I’m looking everywhere. I can’t see it.”

The second hinge rusted away. Hannah’s door fell to the asphalt with a loud crash. The green-suited twin stood fifteen feet away. He aimed his hand at the actress.

“Oh God!”

She shifted into high speed and clumsily hurled a walkie-talkie. It shattered at the man’s feet, cutting his ankle with a bouncing piece of shrapnel. He lost his concentration.

The window behind Theo crumbled with age. “Zack, why aren’t we going?!”

“The controls are all weird! I can’t find the gearshift!”

Mia snapped to attention and opened her journal. She’d been so busy worrying about Amanda that she forgot the other notes she received.

“The steering column is the gearshift!” she yelled. “Press the white triggers on the wheel to—”

The rear doors suddenly flew open. Mia screamed as a bloody glove grabbed her arm.

The Motorcycle Man was out of patience. His cracked helmet had been removed, revealing his gaunt, leathery face. By official records, he was twenty-nine years old. A lifetime of shifting had done a number on his body, not to mention his mind. The six people in the van all looked like Hannah to him. He was fairly sure he was hallucinating again, but what did it matter? Rebel said they all had to die. If he killed them one by one, he’d eventually get to the bitch who broke his ribs and took his sword.

The moment he seized Mia, Amanda’s mind went white.

“NO!”

A geyser of tempic force erupted from her palm. It split evenly around Mia, converging on the Motorcycle Man in the form of a twenty-inch hand.

The tempis shoved him with enough force to knock one of the rear doors off its hinges. It crashed to the driveway. The Motorcycle Man crashed harder.

Amanda stammered in shock as she eyed her broken victim. She’d acted without a single thought and yet somehow the tempis knew who to save and who to hurt.

Zack pressed the white triggers on the steering wheel and pushed the column forward. He floored the pedal. The Salgado van peeled away, its one rear door swinging loosely on its hinge.

Nobody spoke a word as Zack navigated the long and winding path to the exit. Hannah looked out her empty door at the moving trees. Mia gazed at the shrinking building behind her. David peered ahead to the front gate. Amanda stared down at her bloody, trembling hands.

Only Theo glanced around at the others in the van, his fellow survivors. He’d lost his memories of the apocalypse they’d endured. Now he had a strong idea of what he’d missed.

“Jesus,” he said, in a croaking rasp. “Jesus Christ.”

—

Gemma Sunder screamed.

She’d been in the middle of a calm sentence, a theory as to how the breachers might have been alerted to their attack, when her head snapped back and her face contorted with sudden terror.

“We have to get out of here! We have to go right now!”

Ivy took a step back. Her niece didn’t just see the future. She lived it one minute at a time. Her nonlinear lifestyle made her a strange and difficult child, but she was rarely one to panic.

“What are you talking about, Gemma? What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t have time to explain! Just make a door and get us out!”