Samm led her away from the water’s edge, into the wooded park where they’d be harder to see. He moved quickly but carefully, his eyes darting back and forth, examining not only their flanks but the ground and the trees above them. Kira fell into rhythm beside him, watching for ambush, avoiding fallen branches. They passed a funeral home, and she studied it solemnly. Death seemed to hover in the air.

Beyond the trees they came to a highway, flanked on the far side by another row of thick trees. It cut through the forest like a hallway, and Samm peered down it in both directions—flat to the west, and climbing a small hill to the east. “We’ll make better time on this than next to it,” he said. “It doesn’t take us through the town, just around the edge, so there might not be anybody watching.”

“Will it take us to Marcus and the others?”

“They’ll have to cross it, too.” Samm nodded. He pointed toward a curve in the road, far to the east. “That’s the end of the peninsula, if I’m remembering correctly. If they haven’t already crossed, we can catch them there.”

They ran quickly, making up for lost time; the highway was raised, with extra layers of asphalt between it and the dirt below, and nothing had managed to grow through. No one crossed their path, ahead or behind them. Soon the road began to rise, and Kira realized with shock that the rest of the country wasn’t rising with it—it wasn’t a hill, just an elevated road. Smaller roads began passing underneath it.

“Stop,” she said. “We may have already missed them.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“We need to find them.”

“We’re almost to the base now,” said Samm, shaking his head. “We should go straight there and then send out a search party—they’ll find your friends better than we can.”

“Unless someone else finds them first,” said Kira. She looked out from the elevated road, trying to see through the gaps in the trees below. “We can’t just leave them out here for the rebels to find.”

“I don’t think they will,” said Samm, tapping his face mask. The link.

“Then you go,” said Kira, “and I’ll look for Marcus. Your search-and-rescue team can find me just as easily as they can find them.”

“We can’t split up again,” Samm insisted. His voice was low, barely audible through his makeshift mask. He seemed jumpy for the first time, and Kira felt herself grow nervous at the sight of it.

“What’s wrong?”

She heard the roar of an engine, a distant echo through the trees, and she went pale.

“You use cars, too?”

“Electric, mostly, but yes. There’s an oil refinery farther north.”

Kira glanced up and down the highway, trying to pinpoint the sound. “Behind us?”