Delirium - Lauren Oliver [150]
But Alex obviously isn’t ready to give up. He cuts down the narrowest alley he can find, and two of the cars following us come to a skidding halt, smashing each other as they try to follow and blocking the entrance so the other cars are forced to stop as well. Horns blare. The sharp stink of smoke and burning rubber makes my eyes water for a second, but then we’re out again, bursting forward onto Franklin Arterial.
More sirens now, from a distance: reinforcements are on their way.
But the cove appears ahead of us, unfolding—calm and flat and gray, like glass or metal. The sky smolders at its edges, a growing fire of pinks and yellows. Alex turns onto Marginal Way, and my teeth clatter together as we bump over the old pitted pavement, my stomach yo-yoing every time we jolt over another pothole. We’re getting close. The sirens whine louder, like a drove of hornets. If we can just get to the border before more squad cars arrive . . . If we can somehow make it past the guards, if we can scale the fence . . .
Then, like an enormous insect taking flight, a helicopter wings up ahead of us, lights zigzagging along the darkened road, the whirring of its propeller deafening, beating the air to waves, to shreds.
A voice cannons out: “I order you, in the name of the government of the United States of America, to freeze and surrender!”
Tufts of long, sun-bleached grass appear on our right: We’ve made it to the cove. Alex yanks the bike off the road and onto the grass, and we go, half gunning, half sliding, down into the marshes, cutting a diagonal toward the border. Mud splatters up into my mouth and eyes, choking me, and I cough into Alex’s back, feeling him heave against me. The sun is a half circle now, like an eyelid partially opened.
Tukey’s Bridge looms to our right, black, skeletal in the half darkness. Ahead of us, the lights in the guard huts are still illuminated. Even from this distance they look so peaceful, just like hanging paper lanterns, like something fragile and easily dismantled. Beyond them are the fence; the fringe of trees; safety. So close. If we only had time . . . Time . . .
Something pops; an explosion in the darkness; the mud jumps upward in an arc. They’re shooting again, from the helicopter.
“Freeze, dismount, and put your hands on your head!”
The patrol cars have arrived on the road that encircles the cove. More and more cars screech to a halt, and police begin to pour down the grass toward the marshland—hundreds of them, more than I’ve ever seen at one time, dark and inhuman-looking, like a swarm of cockroaches.
We’re up again now, in the short strip of grass that separates the water from the old torn-up road and the guard huts, weaving around a tangle of bushes so quickly, the branches sting as they slap against my skin.
And then, just like that, Alex stops. I slam up against him, biting down hard on my tongue, taste blood in my mouth. Above us the light from the helicopter wavers a little, trying to locate us, then fixes us in its beam. Alex raises his arms above his head and climbs off the motorcycle, turning to face me. In the solid white light his expression is unreadable, as though he’s been transformed, in that second, to stone.
“What are you doing?” I scream, over the noise of the propellers and the shouting and the sirens and beneath it all, the constant, everlasting groaning of the water as the tide slurps back into the cove—always there, always sweeping everything away, wearing everything to dust. “We can still make it!”
“Listen to me.” He doesn’t seem to be shouting, but somehow I can still hear him. It’s like he’s speaking directly into my ear even though he’s still standing there, arms raised. “When I tell you to go, you’re going to go. You’ve got to drive this thing, okay?”
“What? I can’t—”
“Citizen 914-238-619-3216. Dismount and put your hands above your head. If you do