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  And that may be another problem. The air had grown warm and sticky, and rain fell in fat, heavy drops. Peter knew nothing about natural weather, the kind that wasn’t programmed into a dome, but in all the time they’d been traveling, no other day had felt so...potent. The air hung ripe with tension, like the atmosphere was warding off an explosion. It made Peter’s skin crawl, and it kept him from trying to convince Joe to stop so they could eat.

  Besides, Peter had learned a while back that Joe wouldn’t take food if he was given a choice to turn it down where Devin wouldn’t notice. So instead, Peter pulled one of those revolting Insta-food bars from his backpack, broke it in half, and thrust one half in front of Joe, who took it and began to eat without a word. Peter bit down on his own half of the tasteless piece of tree bark and chewed it quickly so he could offer Joe another half. What he wouldn’t give for an apple. Or meat. His stomach rumbled, and Joe glanced his way.

  “You should eat.”

  Peter swallowed his mouthful. “Good idea.” He pulled out a second bar, broke it in half again, and when Joe turned his face back to their path, Peter maneuvered half of the second bar into Joe’s hand.

  Joe took a bite. Before he swallowed, he mumbled, “I don’t like the sky.”

  “It’s sort of yellow.”

  “That’s what I don’t like.”

  A bright bolt of light illuminated the sky, quick as a whip, there and gone. Lightning. Peter had seen it before, when he’d been safe in the belly of the dome. Lightning had been a curiosity when he was a boy, a pleasant break from the mundane. Out here, it was scary, striking the earth like a punch from the sky.

  The sky rumbled around them, dark and deep.

  Peter jumped and grabbed Joe’s arm and held on tight while the noise rolled over them. The sound seemed alive — moving, threatening. Some primal part of Peter wanted to drop to his knees and cower. When the rumbling stopped, he asked, “What was that?”

  “It’s thunder. The sound of the lightning, which was that discharge of electricity that lit up the sky.”

  Peter normally hated it when the others acted like he was an ignorant child. Right now, he couldn’t spare the distraction of indignation. “So it’s harmless? It’s just a sound?”

  “Totally harmless —”

  Peter sighed and relaxed his shoulders.

  “— it’s the lightning that’ll kill you.”

  “What the fuck, boss?”

  “Peter!” Joe stopped walking and scowled. “No swearing.”

  Peter meant the choked noise that came out of his mouth to be a laugh. The sky was about to electrocute them and Joe was worried about bad language? “You don’t tell Flix not to curse.”

  “Flix had a foul mouth before he became my responsibility.”

  “Why do you even care? Your boyfriend has the dirtiest —” The sky opened, and rain poured down in torrents so thick the world turned gray. Sharp lightning split the clouds to Peter’s left. He jumped even before the thunder roared overhead. “We need to go back.”

  Joe grabbed Peter’s arm and hauled him forward. “We’re closer to Ames than to where we started. Anyway, we can’t outrun a storm.”

  They slogged forward. Under their feet, the melting snow gave way to big, murky puddles. Peter’s shoes squelched, and water sloshed between his toes. All around them, lightning crashed. Thunder blanketed Peter’s ears until the sounds of his feet splashing in the puddles and the fabric of his jacket rubbing on itself and even his own breathing were washed away and only the thunder remained.

  Icy pain blossomed on Peter’s cheek. Something small pelted the arm of his coat and bounced off. Peter saw it on the ground, a ball of ice the size of a cherry. He picked it up and held it out in front of him.

  “Hail,” Joe yelled over the thunder. His normally curly hair hung straight in his face. Rain ran in rivers down his cheeks and over his lips. He grabbed Peter’s hand and linked their fingers. “Keep moving.”

  The hail changed the rhythm of the storm, drowned out the thunder until it was a lullaby melody under the high, energetic patter of the pounding ice. Peter covered his head with his backpack. He slipped a couple of times on the pavement, which had been made more uneven by the hail scattering like marbles on the hard wood floor of his old home, but Joe’s warm, strong hand in his kept Peter from falling.

  The storm hounded them for long minutes. Then, with a shocking suddenness, it stopped. The rain, the hail, even the lightning and thunder. The only sound left was the lonesome whine of the wind. Peter breathed deep and savored the fresh, clean smell of the rain.

  “Move. Now.” Joe’s strong grip turned painful as he dragged Peter toward the side of the road. “Get in the ditch.”

  Peter tripped over a chunk of highway and fell to his hands and knees. Before he could even check to see if he had hurt anything, Joe gripped him under the arms and hoisted him to his feet. He got pushed toward the shallow ditch and toppled right in, landing on his face.

  “That wasn’t necessary.” Peter lifted his head to finish thumping on Joe for being so rude, but Joe’s hand clamped onto the back of his neck and held him down.

  “Stay.”

  Peter jerked against Joe’s grasp but couldn’t move. He opened his mouth to tell Joe all the curse words he’d learned, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the wind. What was that? He tried to free himself so he could look, only to have Joe scramble around and lie right on top of him.

  He was cold and wet and uncomfortable, and that horrible whine of the wind kept ratcheting higher. Even as he started to move, Peter knew he shouldn’t, knew something was wrong or Joe wouldn’t be doing this to him, but he still shoved hard into the sloppy mud and managed to throw Joe slightly off his back.

  He barely heard Joe’s surprised “oh,” but he had no trouble hearing the horrible, resonant collision of solid metal with Joe’s body. He spun around and saw a thin sheet of metal whirling through the air, tumbling on the wind. Joe lay a meter and a half away from the ditch, not moving.

  “Shit shit fuck fuck damn.” He didn’t hear his own words, either, and he didn’t care, because he saw it then, undulating toward them like a fat, mesmerizing lie: all hypnotic, false laziness — a coiled black snake ready to strike.

  Tornado.

  His teeth chattered, and all he could do was stare. He remembered the earth scraped raw in Kansas City; the monster that had enough power to shatter the dome. He wanted Momma. Dad. He wanted Joe.

  The snake was getting closer, headed right for them. Its tip hid in a field of dirt and garbage, and Peter watched it, frozen, until he saw a cow twist around the fat column of the storm. Joe had wanted them in the ditch; he’d known what was coming. Peter would be fine if he just lay down, kept his head down. That was what Joe had been forcing him to do.

  Peter looked at Joe, then back at the tornado. It was so close now, one field away, and Joe wasn’t moving. He’d get up soon. He would.

  Peter waited for Joe to come around. Seconds passed without any movement. Soon the tornado would be so close Peter wouldn’t have a choice. Now or never.

  He scrambled out of the ditch and grabbed Joe’s ankles. The wind bit at his back and tore at his coat. He tugged and pulled so hard his muscles burned. The noise from the tornado sounded like it was inside his brain. His ears popped. He slipped and slid in the mud and cursed and begged and finally, finally, Joe’s body moved.

  He dragged Joe into the ditch and covered him with his own weight. He didn’t dare look again at what was coming for them. Instead he thought of his Momma and his father and Sadie. He felt the steady pulse in Joe’s neck and cupped Joe’s head to keep his face out of the mud. He dragged his fingers through Joe’s hair and sang him lullabies, the way Momma had when he was little and had nightmares. He tried to be brave.

  The tornado passed. It was there, coming for him, one moment, then it was like it had never existed at all. The noise died. The wind stilled. The world just...went on.

&
nbsp; Peter sat up and peered over the edge of the ditch. Nothing. No scraped earth, no death and destruction, even the cow was gone. The thing that had hit Joe hadn’t stuck around either. The rain started again, slow and lazy, like the tornado had leached away all its energy.

  Joe coughed, and Peter grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him upright. When Joe’s back touched the side of the ditch, he winced but still seemed out of it. After a few minutes, Joe shook his head and opened his eyes. “Peter. Hey.”

  Peter let out a choked laugh and fell back against the other side of the ditch. He looked to the sky and saw that even the light rain had given way and the sky had turned a pearly blue-gray. He breathed deep. “I thought we were going to die.”

  Joe twisted his neck and winced again. “I’ll protect you every time I can.”

  Peter was shocked to realize he trusted that. Expected it. Somewhere between the hell of Austin and the hell of Ames, Iowa, he’d put his faith in Joe’s hands. Joe wasn’t Momma or Dad — Peter would never have that again. No one could replace what he’d lost. He didn’t even want that. But he had an adult he could trust to care for him. He would never take that for granted again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Joe needed twice as long as normal to walk the last few miles. He could blame it on the slushy, melting snow or his aching back and head where something had hit him during the tornado, but if he were honest, he’d admit it was because he was so tired he could barely stand. It didn’t matter. Medicine was in Ames, so that’s where he needed to be.

  Except Ames didn’t look like a place where they’d find medicine, or anything else useful.

  It had people — more than they’d seen in Dallas or Purcell or that cruddy O’Klansas town with the restaurant. More than all the tents at the makeshift Maze-On city.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Peter asked.

  “I double-checked.”

  “But these people...” Peter trailed off like he didn’t know what else to say.

  Joe understood. He wasn’t sure what to say, either. People of indeterminate ages staggered about dressed in rags, their hair unwashed, their feet bare. With dim, glassy eyes, they watched Joe and Peter as they passed. Every so often a pack of cyclists, better dressed and groomed, would whiz past.

  Joe clutched the rifle tighter. He chose what he thought was an old man, grizzled, maybe nearing thirty, who sat on a low concrete slab and was at least lucid enough to be wearing shoes. Keeping a safe distance, he asked, “Can you tell me where the university is?”

  The man regarded him with a lazy, toothless sneer. A dribble of pus from a sore on his cheek snaked toward his chin. “Who’n wants to know?”

  “My friend got hurt and —”

  “You’re one of them Fed pricks, ain’t you?”

  Joe glanced at Peter, who shook his head. “No, sir. I just need to get some medicine —”

  “Fed pricks,” the man yelled. “Fucking Fed pricks gone to take all our pills. You nasty, white-assed dome whore, we need those pills!”

  Joe grabbed Peter’s arm and backed them both up as the man continued to rave nonsense. A crowd began to gather, twenty, thirty people with listless eyes and bared teeth. They looked from the old man to Joe and Peter, and Joe searched their faces, trying to find one that seemed sane.

  Something solid smacked his thigh, and pain shot through his leg. A rock as big as a baseball.

  “Monster!” a woman shouted. She picked up another rock and took aim. “Dome-whore monster! Haven’t you taken enough? Stay away from our drugs!”

  “We’re not —” Peter shouted, but the woman threw her rock, and his words were cut off by Joe jerking him out of the way.

  Joe leveled the rifle and swept it in an arc all around. “Stay back.”

  The crowd shuffled, and latent awareness seemed to make its way into some of their eyes. Too many, though, seemed not to know or care about what the rifle could do, and Joe wasn’t willing to kill strangers when he had a sinking feeling they were as much wronged by New America as he was.

  A childish ding-ding-ding cut through the air, and the crowd parted to admit two men on bicycles. One trilled the silver-domed bell attached to his handlebars while the other swerved to a stop in front of Joe.

  The man eyed Joe’s body and flashed a broad smile. “Hop on, dome daddy, before the masses rip you apart and suck on your bones.”

  Joe scanned the man. He didn’t smell. Had clean, sil-fab clothes like Devin had. Like people with money had. He had all his teeth. His sandy-blond hair was held back in a ponytail, but wisps had broken free and curled around his ears. He could be a student.

  Another rock hit Joe, this time in the bruised part of his back.

  Joe motioned to Peter, then gripped the man’s shoulders and perched his feet on the pegs attached to the bike’s rear axle. As soon as his second foot hit the peg, the man pushed off the pavement and sped away. The obnoxious bell of the second bike came close, and Joe caught Peter’s wide-eyed terror as he clung to the bell-ringer’s shirt.

  “Yeah! Hang on, babe,” the man in front of him on the bike said at the crest of a hill. He cranked the pedals hard, then as momentum carried them down so fast it felt like falling, he flung his legs and arms out to the side so only his ass touched the bike.

  Joe swallowed hard and gripped the man’s hips with his knees. If he had to, he could jump and roll. It’d hurt, but whatever crash this maniac might get into would hurt worse.

  Peter screamed beside him, and Joe saw the bell-ringer mimicking his friend. Peter scrabbled at the man’s clothes and hair, finally settling into a crouching bear hug. Joe laughed and was horrified at himself for doing it.

  “Oh yeah, you like the rush, huh, sugar baby?” the man tossed over his shoulder, wind whipping his hair back so it sprinkled like the rain over Joe’s face.

  “Yes.” And Joe did. His brain flipped off, and he was a runner again. He loved the thrill of the chase, the mad surge of adrenaline in living on the edge, the spike of heat in his belly and groin that before Devin only vibrated inside him during times of speed and fear.

  His dick plumped, and the only thing that kept him from grinding up against the body in front of him was that the neck was all wrong. This neck was slender, almost delicate. The space between the trapezius muscles was soft. Devin’s neck was a mass of muscle, thick and powerful. When they slept together and Devin laid his head on Joe’s chest, Joe would knead that spot, try to work out the tension, ease Devin’s pain.

  Devin, who sat in a crumbling building, wretched and hurting, mostly blind, probably scared, while Joe got a thrill-ride hard-on.

  The ground leveled out, and Joe watched renewed rain patter against his hands until he got his breathing and his body under control. He had a vague notion that Iowa State lay to the west, but they were headed north, roughly parallel to the highway.

  “Thanks for helping us,” Joe said. “We need to get to the university. Are you a student there?”

  “Graduated last year. Got a company all my own now. Name’s Rip.”

  “Great. So if you could drop us off —”

  “Nah. Me’n my buddy Belton are gonna take care of you.” Rip turned his head and looked up at Joe. The bike swerved. “I heard Derangered Rick back there say you need some pills.”

  “My friend got hurt, and we need medicine.”

  “I got the hookup.”

  The road sloped upward, and Rip followed it into a parking garage at the base of a mammoth black metallic glass structure. He wound through the garage, dodging crumbling pillars and wrecked self-driving vehicles, before stopping abruptly at an elevator.

  “VIP entrance,” Rip said.

  “How do we know we can trust them?” the bell-ringer, Belton, asked. His deep voice gave Joe shivers.

  “We’re not Feds.” Joe wanted to make that clear. Whatever fear of the government had set off the scraggly group outside wasn’t something he wanted a part of. He didn’t want a part of this, ei
ther, but he didn’t have much choice.

  Rip produced a key, unlocked a panel on the elevator, and placed a hand on the small of Joe’s back to usher him inside once the doors opened. With four people and the two bikes, the fit was tight, but not tight enough to explain why Rip stood so close.

  “Oh, sugar baby, I know you aren’t Feds. Government wouldn’t send someone with a sixty-year-old gun. Plus you’re too young and skinny.” Rip’s hand drifted from Joe’s back to his ass, the touch light, before his fingers slipped under Joe’s shirt and skimmed up and down his hip.

  Joe turned to the side to break the contact. “You said you have medical supplies?”

  Rip smiled and pointed to the square access hatch in the ceiling. “We gotta climb.”

  Fabulous. Joe glanced at Peter, who looked like he was hanging on by a thread. At least Belton wasn’t anywhere near him. “Lead the way.”

  “Nah. I think you should go first, then me, then your boy, then mine.”

  No way was Joe letting Peter out of his sight with either of these men. “How about Belton goes first so he can open things up, then my associate, me, and you?”

  Rip smiled like he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. “You’re the customer.”

  The ascent on the access ladder was slow and tricky. Most of the steps were solid, but every so often, Belton hit one that creaked under his weight. He climbed nimbly for a larger man, and thank God, Peter didn’t seem to be afraid of heights. On the fourth floor, Belton jimmied open a doorway grate and led them into a corridor lit dimly with emergency lights.

  “What is this place?” Joe asked.

  “Hospital,” Rip said. “Used to be the largest in the Midwest ’til shit went bad, according to my pops. So what’s your story, morning glory? Not enough thrills in the dome? Slumming it for kicks?”

  Rip thought Joe was from the dome? What an asinine conclusion. Wet, filthy, and skinny, Joe was hardly the picture of privilege. But he wasn’t about to admit where he’d really come from. “You get a lot of us?”

  Rip shrugged. “Some. Mostly punks on Vespas and shit, looking every bit the big old mess you do, trying to see if it’s really as bad out here as mommy and daddy said.”