Page 2 of The Infinite Glade
He didn’t have to finish the thought—Kletter knew the state of rations—but when Juan stepped away from the captain’s wheel, she saw it. The truth of why they were lost at sea.
The unmanned wheelpulledto the left.
Kletter stared at the salt-crusted circle of metal, moving ever so slightly on its own.
Juan gave the captain a questioning look. Maybe food wasn’t their biggest problem anymore. Panic filled every weakness in Annie Kletter’s body to fuel her. She ran down the stairs to the lower deck and pulled the captain’s log out of her pocket. She flipped to the page with the island’s coordinates. Double-checked her calculations.
She knew it.
They should have reached the Immunes days, maybe weeks ago . . .
The wheel had a pull, probably from a damaged rudder. There was no way to calculate how many nautical miles they’d drifted. No way to course correct.
“Hell’s bells.” Kletter slammed the captain’s log shut. The crew couldn’t survive much longer without food on the boat, and this news just might topple them over the edge. They were already turning against her . . . and she had no idea how to get back on course. Someone had once told her that desperate times make for desperate measures. She did the only thing she could think of, her instincts telling her that the desperate time had come. Now.
She peeled back a board in the crawl space under the steps. A gun. Her secret gun. She grabbed the weapon and slid it into her back pocket, filled her front pockets with additional ammunition, then threw the now-useless captain’s log into the hidey-spot. She snapped the board back into place.
The cabin above shook from the pounding of feet on the deck.
Her instincts had been spot-on.
They were coming for her.
Time for desperate measures.
PARTONE
WICKED is Good
There are things I remember. Good things. Even inside the bad, embedded this whole time . . . good, brilliant, spots of brightness. But I can only see them looking back.
Maybe there is some good in this, too. All this writing of hard, brutal times.
Somewhere in the bad, there is always the good.
—The Book of Newt
CHAPTERONE
Fire and Fuel
Brutal, trying to keep up with Ximena. Hot and muggy, too.
As they hiked the tree-lined path leading away from the Villa, Isaac imagined it must be even harder for Old Man Frypan and Jackie—who still looked pale from her run-in with Lil Newt. Isaac tripped over tiny rocks, ridiculous and embarrassing, but his feet couldn’t keep up with his brain. Nothing made sense. They walked farther and farther from the Villa, leaving poor Ms. Cowan behind . . . and Isaac didn’t have a clue where they were going. He looked at Frypan and Jackie before asking Ximena again, “Hey . . . slow down. What did you mean about the Godhead being its own disease?”
Despite his exhaustion as they headed north, he’d walk a thousand more days if it meant finding Sadina and the others safe. He needed her and everyone else to be safe with the Godhead. He needed that and there was nothing else to think or say.
“You want me to spell it out for you?” Ximena turned around, her hand on her knife. “They’re not good people, Isaac.” She came to a full stop and Isaac, Jackie, and Frypan finally had a chance to catch up, catch their breath. “The Godhead will do anything in their power tostayin power.”
Her eyes cut through to Isaac’s core. Fire filled his belly and he imagined the inside of his body as a forge. Heat and flame.
She continued. “The Godhead isn’t a cure, and theyhaveno cure—I told you what happened to my village—it’ll be completely wiped off the map in twenty-five years. Your island, too.”
“B.S.,” Jackie said between a couple of heavy breaths. “How could you say that? Our island is safe, in the middle of nowhere, and plenty of people to defend it, anyway.” She turned to Frypan, who placed a well-worn comforting arm around her shoulders.
“Safest Safe Haven there is . . .” the former Glader assured her.
Isaac wanted to protest, but as the heat traveled up his throat he wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to agree with Jackie, insist that it was impossible for anyone to get hurt back home, but he also used to think the same of anyone everfindingtheir island. The impossible kept changing . . . and it made Isaac unsure what to believe.
