“Where do you find explosives out here?” asked Jayden, still following him with his rifle. “I thought the military gathered up all that kind of stuff years ago.”
“They got the weaponized stuff, yeah,” said Tovar, “but this is used commercially all the time.” He pulled back the heavy canvas tarp on his wagon and pointed to a white plastic package, like a ration bag of water. “I got this at a construction site; the activation powder’s on the other side of the cart. And I swear I haven’t sold any of it to anyone.”
Kira looked back at Jayden. “If this is a lie,” she said, “it’s the most convoluted, well-acted lie in the history of the world. We’re all headed back to East Meadow anyway, so let’s just put down the guns and let them deal with it. If they decide he’s guilty, then they can put him in jail, but I won’t let you kill him here.”
“That is the second worst idea I’ve ever heard,” said Tovar, “but since the first worst is you shooting me in the face, I’m all for it.”
Jayden stared at Kira, his eyes burning into hers like smoking coals. After an eternity of waiting, he lowered his gun. “Fine. But if he tries anything between now and then, I don’t wait for your approval: He’s a Voice, and he dies.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kira slept fitfully, listening to Marcus and the others as they shifted and snored and muttered in the darkness. The camel made odd, semihuman moans all through the night, and the house creaked in the rain. Even the mice, ubiquitous in every home she could remember, seemed louder and more bothersome than usual as they skittered through the floor and walls. Rats, maybe, or something bigger.
Through it all, she couldn’t stop thinking about Tovar’s words. Was there really a war coming? Was the Voice really that desperate—or that organized? The Senate seemed to paint them as half-wild terrorists, raiding and running and killing indiscriminately, but then, she supposed, the Senate would want to paint them that way. If there were actually enough of them to mount a serious front, and start a real war, then they were a bigger threat than she had ever imagined.
RM would slowly strangle humanity, one death at a time, with no new generations to replace it. A war, on the other hand, could snuff it out in weeks.
Kira pressed herself deeper into the couch, willing herself to fall asleep.
In the morning she was tired and stiff.
Tovar led them out the back of the house and through his maze of safeguards: over a temporary bridge, through another house’s weathered patio, and back to the road nearly half a mile down. The rain had stopped, and Dolly pulled the cart swiftly, so they kept a good pace. Kira tried to force herself not to look behind, not to focus on the hundred phantom Voices she imagined behind every tree and broken car. They had to stay visible, in case the Defense Grid backup came looking for them, but that visibility made Kira feel vulnerable and exposed. Even Jayden seemed anxious. They broke for lunch when the sun was high overhead, and Kira drank the last of her water while she watched the rows of ruined houses. Nothing moved. She rubbed her aching feet and checked Lanier on his stretcher; he was unconscious, and his temperature was dangerously elevated.