“I’ll tell you in the van,” I said. “Can we get out of here? I don’t know how long we have before the cops come back down the road.”

“Your wish is my command, literally,” he said, and opened the front passenger door for me. There was only one seat up there with him. Refusing to take it seemed unwise. I still glanced back at Graham, waiting for him to say something before I got in.

He nodded.

I got in. The others climbed into the back; Jeff started the engine, and we were away.

Chapter 7

Portland, Maine: July 20, 2031

Eighteen days pre-invasion

1.

Jeff was silent until we reached the bottom of the hill and merged onto the local highway. It was a two-lane road, with a number instead of a name, and there was enough traffic that we would no longer stand out as a lone vehicle where it had no business being.

Once we were safely rolling along, passing houses and rickety gas stations, he glanced at me sidelong and said, in a low voice, “I wasn’t sure you were really real.”

“You texted me.”

“I could have been texting … anybody. You could have been literally anybody. But you’re you. You’re the girl from the forest, and you’re real and here and in my van.” His cheeks turned red, the skin around the bandage showing its color patchily, like something was interfering with the blood flow. “I’ve never met anyone like us before.”

“Like us?”

“You know … us.” He glanced at the rearview mirror. The van was partitioned inside, with the passengers sharing bench seats that put them too far from the driver for reasonable conversation. I got the feeling that wasn’t an accident. He didn’t want them involved in this moment. He didn’t want them anywhere near him—or near me. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have let them in the car. He would have just left them in the woods and driven away.

I thought of Toni’s wall of pictures, of the labels reading DECEASED and the calm way she’d talked about the mortality rate among people like the two of us, and I couldn’t blame him. I might want to, but I couldn’t do it.

“Oh,” I said softly. Then: “Neither have I. Before I saw you in the forest, I wasn’t even sure there were others.”

Jeff scoffed. “Of course there are others. That’s how plants work. They drop a million seeds and hope one or two will sprout.”

“Not a million,” I said, unable to stifle the slow twisting feeling in my stomach. Not a million, no, but the logic was sound. What was the point in an invasion that started with only one spy?