The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(45)

Something cold and brittle wrapped itself around my chest, forcing me back out of the haze of smoke once I confirmed Zu wasn’t in either car. I waited until I cleared the heaviest of the smoke before falling to my knees and throwing up what little food I had in my stomach.

It was only when I looked up that I finally saw her, sitting on the road just beside Betty, her back slumped forward, her head bowed, but alive—alive and safe. My mind clung to those two words as I tried calling for her again. Zu looked up, panting. As I stumbled closer, the smoke revealed her in pieces: bloodshot eyes, a cut on her forehead, tears streaming down her dirt-stained cheeks.

My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat as I knelt down in front of her, and for several agonizing seconds, it was all that I could hear.

“O…kay?” I asked, my mouth feeling like mush.

Her teeth chattered as she nodded.

“What…happened?” I squeezed out.

Zu curled down on herself like she was trying to vanish from my sight. Her yellow gloves were beside her on the ground, and her bare hands were still up and facing forward, as if she had only touched the truck a second before.

I didn’t know what to say to get her to calm down—I didn’t even know how to calm myself down. This girl, this Yellow—she’d destroyed two vehicles and one life in a matter of seconds. And, by the looks of it, she’d done it with a single touch.

But even knowing that, she was still Zu, and those hands? They were the ones that had pulled me to safety.

I lifted her back into Betty with shaking arms. Zu was hot, well past the point of feeling feverish. Dropping her into the closest seat, I pressed my hands against her cheeks, but her eyes couldn’t focus on me. I was about to roll the door shut when she grabbed my wrist and pointed toward her gloves on the ground.

“Got ’em,” I said. I tossed them to her, and then turned to confront a heavier load.

Chubs was still passed out in the passenger seat, his body hanging out of the open door. The truck driver hadn’t been able to maneuver his long limbs farther than that, thank God—otherwise Chubs probably would have been in the grass with the driver. His limp sack of bones smacked against the door as I slammed it shut behind him.

I tripped over the tips of my tennis shoes as I made my way around the front of the van. With a cloud of bright spots bleaching out my sight, I pulled the driver’s door open the rest of the way. Liam was also still out cold, and no amount of shaking was able to stir him up into consciousness. Zu began to whimper, her cries muffled as she pressed her face against her knees.

“You’re okay, Zu,” I said. “We’re all okay. We’re gonna be fine.”

I untangled Liam’s arms from the gray seat belt and half pushed, half rolled him off the driver’s seat. I wasn’t strong enough to deposit him into one of the back seats, not right then. So he ended up on the ground, wedged between the two front seats. With his face turned up toward me, I could see the muscles around his mouth twitch, every so often turning the corners of his lips up in an unnatural smile.

I stared at the wheel, trying to bring to mind the right steps to getting the van to work. Trying to remember what Liam had done, what Cate had done, what my father used to do. Sixteen, and I couldn’t even figure out where the goddamn parking brake was, let alone if it was actually on.

In the end, it didn’t matter. I could drive with it on or off, apparently, and all I really needed to know was that the right pedal was go, and the left was stop, and there really wasn’t a whole lot more to it than that.

Betty tore through the thickest heart of the smoke, and chased it down the open road until we were finally, finally, finally free of the wreckage, and the air coming through the vents no longer carried the echo of the White Noise into our heads, or smell of smoke into our lungs.

ELEVEN

I GOT MAYBE TEN MILES BEFORE the boys began to rouse. With Zu still crying in the backseat and me having no idea where we had been headed in the first place, to say I was relieved was an understatement.

“Holy crap,” Liam croaked. He pressed a hand against the side of his head and startled, sitting straight up. “Holy crap!”

His face had been inches away from Chubs’s feet, so his hands went there first, yanking at them like he was making sure they were still attached to something. Chubs let out a low moan and said, “I think I’m going to be ill.”

“Zu?” Liam crawled toward her, earning another yelp out of Chubs as he kicked his leg. “Zu? Did you—?”

She only cried harder, burying her face in her gloves.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—I—” Liam sounded agonized, like his guts were being torn straight out of him. I watched him press his fist against his mouth, heard him try to clear his throat, but he couldn’t get another word out.

“Zu,” I said, sounding strangely calm to my own ears. “Listen to me. You saved us. We wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Liam’s head jerked around, as if just remembering I was there. I winced, but how could I be upset that he would check on his real friends first?

I felt his eyes on the back of my neck as he worked his way back up to me. When he reached the driver’s seat, he collapsed into it, his face drawn and pale. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice rough. “What happened? How did you get us out?”