Maggie and I once watched a MythBusters episode that dispelled the widely held notion that we use only 10 percent of our brains and if we could tap into the other 90 percent, we’d be superhuman. Yet now I felt like I finally was using those extra reserves of brain and body power. It was as if everything I’d ever known—and some stuff I hadn’t—was immediately available, right there.

What would my dad say when he saw me? He’d flip out probably and demand to know what I was doing at the plant in the middle of the night. But I was the one who should be angry. Mom and Charlie had been airlifted away after our house burned down, and he was nowhere to be found. I was sixteen, technically a minor. He was supposed to take care of me.

The dad I knew would have found me by now, made sure I was safe. Where the hell was he?

I needed to focus. He could help me help Maggie, too. He knew about whatever radiation had leaked. Maggie hadn’t been sent to the sick camp, because she wasn’t in the path of the cloud emitted from the plant. Plus, we’d been told that we were returning to a safe town, so Maggie shouldn’t have come into contact with any radiation.

She couldn’t have cancer.

No.

I didn’t know whether what I was attempting was brave or foolish, but it was the only thing I could think of to help Maggie, especially if we weren’t going to involve her mom, who was a veterinarian and not an oncologist, anyway. Had Maggie actually been exposed to radiation and gotten cancer, and if so, how could we get her to a real hospital?

Maybe we’d have to go through the forest on our bikes. Dozens of trails lined these woods, and the military couldn’t be guarding them all. We’d go out into the wilderness, get to Canville, show up at the hospital, and not use our real names. Maybe we’d break the quarantine, but I didn’t care; the point of the quarantine was to keep us safe and healthy, and that’s all I wanted to do for Maggie. Besides, if the town was safe, why was it under quarantine?

When I reached where the trail crosses Route 93, a two-lane back road, I hit the brakes. I heard something, maybe metallic? I didn’t know what, but something on the road was trying to be quiet.

Whatever it was, it was far ahead of me, silent and cautious. My hearing, I realized, had grown as sharp as my eyesight. I moved to the side of the road and down an embankment.

Near the bridge a coyote emerged from the trees and trotted onto the pavement. It sniffed the air and zeroed in on me. With a growl and one lip raised in a snarl, it slowly approached.

Another animal attack—great. I gripped my handlebars, ready to swing the bike wheel at its head.