Connor lets Hayden field that one.
“Days if we’re lucky,” Hayden tells her. “Hours if we’re not.”
58 - Trace
While Connor has his summit meeting, Trace breaks all speed limits racing back to the Graveyard. He had been called for an emergency meeting with his “employers,” to confirm that Graveyard AWOLs were responsible for the house fires in Tucson. There was enough evidence to lay the attacks on the Graveyard’s doorstep—it made no sense to deny it. What the suits from Proactive Citizenry wanted to know was why Trace hadn’t told them about these attacks ahead of time. After all, that was his entire purpose there—to let them know everything before it happened. They refused to believe that he had been just as blindsided by it as they were.
“Do you have any idea the position this puts us in?” they asked him. “The Juvenile Authority wants to clean the place out, and with these attacks on civilian neighborhoods, we won’t be able to stop them.”
“I thought you controlled them.”
The suits bristled in unison. “Our relationship with the Juvenile Authority is more complex than your simplistic boeuf understanding.” Then they told him they were ending his assignment, effective immediately.
But to Trace, this wasn’t an assignment anymore. And the time of playing both sides had come to an end.
So, preparing himself for battle, he sped off to the Graveyard like a surfer riding ahead of a tsunami.
Now, at dusk, he screeches to a halt before the locked gate and honks nonstop until the two teen guards on duty come out to see what the commotion is. When they see it’s Trace, they unlock the gate.
“Jesus, Trace, do you want to wake all of Tucson?”
The other kid on duty chuckles. “Ain’t nothing gonna wake Tucson.”
Poor bastards, thinks Trace. They have no idea what’s coming. He looks at the rifles they wield limply, like fashion accessories. “You got tranq bullets in those?” he asks.
“Yup,” says the first kid.
“Replace them with these.” Trace reaches over onto his passenger seat of his Jeep and hands them two boxes of the deadliest military ammunition made. Shells that could take the head off an elephant.
The kids look at the shells like they’ve been handed a newborn they’re afraid they’ll drop.
“Load them quick—and the next time you see someone headed for the gate, shoot first, and don’t stop until you’re out of bullets, do you hear me?”
“Y-yes, sir,” says the first kid. The other kid just nods mutely. “Why, sir?”
“Because the Juvies are right behind me.”
59 - Lev
It’s the fading edge of dusk when Lev and Miracolina arrive on the road that skirts the northern edge of the Graveyard. They’re on foot now. An old rusted road sign points ahead toward what was once Davis Air Force Base. The faint shape of aircraft can be seen rising in the desert more than a mile beyond the fence.
“An air force base? Your friend is holing up in an air force base?”
“It’s not a base anymore,” Lev tells her, “and hasn’t been since the war. It’s an aircraft salvage yard.”
“So the Akron AWOL is hiding in one of those planes?”
“Not just him, and not just one plane.”
The fence seems to go on forever. Every few minutes a car zooms past on its way to or away from Tucson. Lev knows that drivers must see them and wonder what two kids are doing way out here, but he doesn’t care. He’s too close to waste time hiding from headlights now.
“I know the gate’s up here somewhere. It’s guarded, but they’ll recognize me and let us in.”
“You sure about that? Not everyone in the world is like your worshipful tithes.”
At last the gate comes into view, and Lev picks up the pace.
“Slow down!” Miracolina yells.