After the End

53 MILES

THE GUY WHO GRABS ME HAS ARMS THE DIAMETER of a telephone pole. So guess what? I don’t even fight. I let him drag me by the shoulder to the Jeep and stuff me in the passenger seat. He hops in the back and we’re off.

There’s a young guy driving. His hair is like Albert Einstein’s if Albert dyed it with black shoe polish. He looks kind of crazy, but in a good way. Like your favorite science teacher at school—brilliant but hanging out in another dimension. He had exchanged a few words with Juneau, but I couldn’t hear what they said.

The two guys in the back look like they were made from the same cookie cutter. Neckless boulders of steroid-fueled muscle. Both dressed in khaki, green, and camouflage like they think they’re in the middle of a war zone. But the one is giving himself a shot in the arm and bandaging the wound Juneau gave him, and the other is unbuttoning his shirt to inspect the dent Juneau made in his Kevlar vest.

I taste copper in my mouth and realize that I’m scared. And then it occurs to me that I’m not afraid of them. I’m scared for Juneau. I don’t think that Portman and Redding will hurt her, but these guys look rough. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were wearing weapons strapped under their flak jackets.

We pull up to a fork in the road, and the driver looks both ways. There’s no sign of Juneau and her captors. They had too much of a head start: we’ve lost them. He pulls over onto the sidewalk next to a Dairy Queen and puts the Wrangler in park. “Where’d they take her?” he asks, turning to me.

There’s something off about his eyes. Like one of his pupils is slightly facing the wrong way. It freaks me out because I don’t know which eye to look at.

“No clue,” I respond, and receive a cuff on the side of my head from one of the GI Joes behind me.

“Ow!” I yell, and swing around to stare at him.

“Answer the man’s questions,” he says in a thick voice, like his tongue’s on steroids too.

“I’m being honest. I have no clue who those guys are or where they could be taking Juneau,” I lie, looking at Einstein’s right eye.

“You’re the one I saw camping with her,” he says.

What? We didn’t see anyone else when we were camping, I think, and then all of a sudden I get it. He used the bird to see us. This must be Whit.

But how can it be? This guy’s in his midtwenties. Thirty, max.

As if reading my mind, he says, “I’m Whittier Graves. I’ve known Juneau since she was a baby. And I need your help to find her. She could be in grave danger.”

The men in the back chuckle like Whit’s cracked a really good joke, and he glances back at them, exasperated.

“You can’t be Whit. Juneau told me about him, and he’s some old guy.”

“Good guess. Fifty-three. So I suppose Juneau hasn’t told you all our secrets.”

And then it hits me. The no-aging thing. I believed her, as much as I could, when she told me this morning. But here’s the proof, sitting right in front of me. I have no question now that what this guy’s got is what my dad is after: whatever’s keeping him young.

No wonder he’s after Juneau. And no wonder someone invaded her village. An antiaging drug could make its owner a fortune.

I ask myself just what my dad would do to get his hands on it. How far would he go if he could be the richest man on earth? All of a sudden I no longer trust Redding and Portman with Juneau’s safety.