She shrugs. “I’d think about it. Deke is a bully and a thief, but that doesn’t mean he should starve. And Tony, he’s just … wrong. Trying to be friends with the wrong person.”

“They ate twelve meals between them. They’re hardly starving.”

“Not today and maybe not tomorrow. But if we haven’t been rescued by the third day, we’ll take a vote on sharing.”

“A vote? The last one didn’t go so good.”

That makes Imani roll her eyes. “Didn’t go so good” doesn’t come close to describing what happened.

“Better keep moving,” I suggest. “You-know-who may be catching up.”

We find ourselves climbing along the edge of a higher ravine, looking down at the river below. Not as much flood debris as we saw before. What there is has been washed up at the sharp curves of the river. Piles of uprooted trees, heaps of gravel. Boulders that must have rolled for miles when the dam broke.

“Did you see that?” Mia says, pointing toward the river with her spear.

“What?” I ask, fearful that she’s spotted the enemy about to attack.

“Something shining. Under those logs.”

I squint at where she’s pointing. Yes, there’s something down there. Not a log or a boulder. Something that shines.

Metal.

Climbing down from the top of the ravine takes a while. Falling is not an option, so we’re forced to go slow. Using our spears as walking sticks. Helping each other along the trail, heading for the curve of the river.

The piles of debris loom bigger and bigger, the closer we get.

“It’s probably nothing,” I say, not wanting to get our hopes up.

Mia grunts. She hasn’t said much since pointing out the shiny thing, but she’s determined to find it, as if she thinks it might be useful, whatever it is. Imani is even more solemn than usual. Like she’s worried that it will be a bad thing or a sad thing.

It turns out to be a sad thing.

“There, under that pile!”

I climb over the splintered trees, lowering myself almost to water level. The river is still a river, even though it’s clogged with broken things. And what Mia spotted is as broken as it can get. So broken it takes me a while to figure out what I’m looking at.

Sky Hanson’s transport van, crushed like a soda can in a cement mixer.

20. A Sky Full of Stones

It’s hard to believe that we were once passengers in this crushed and ruined hunk of metal.

“Poor Sky,” Imani says. “He was a good guy. What they did was so brave.”