Page 26 of The End of the World As We Know It

She held out her hand to Mollie. “Give me your flashlight.”

She was going to run. On her own. It was the only possibility for escape.

“What?” Mollie said. “No…”

Jesse understood. Gently he took the flashlight and passed it to Dani. “It’s okay.”

The water gushed, now ankle-deep. The voices in the dark, the rumblings, were louder.

Dropping his bike, too, Jesse pointed at the branching tunnel. Mere drips of water fell from it to the channel where they stood. “Different watershed. It runs uphill, and a mile along we’ll reach an exit.”

“Don’t go,” Mollie said.

Dani crouched in front of her. “Sometimes you brace. Sometimes you jump. Now you run.Run.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“I’ll see you on the other side. We’ll meet at…”

Jesse said, “I-15, exit 64.”

“That’s the place,” Dani said emphatically. It was pure wish, but might get Mollie moving.

She clasped the girl’s shoulders. “Remember the stick-on wings I gave you?”

Tears fell. “I lost them.”

“You didn’t.” She tapped Mollie’s chest. “They’re here. You understand?”

Mollie blinked. Clamped her jaw to stop her chin from trembling. Inhaled. Pinned Dani with her gaze.

“Fly,” Dani said.

They clambered into the branching tunnel and took off.

Dani stood in the channel for another moment, braced against the increasing rush of water, hearing engines. And chains. And voices.

A young woman’s voice, like radio static.

Dani aimed both flashlights at an arrow Jesse had drawn on the wall. The arrow that would let her backtrack to the big junction, where floodwaters would fill the tunnel to the top with pitiless force.

The arrow that would let her draw the gang away from Mollie.

She inhaled and shouted, loud and raw, then swung both flashlights around the tunnel, as if two people were running.

“This way,” she guttered, a sob in her voice. It wasn’t playacting.

Her greatest fear had arrived: that one day she would face trouble she couldn’t run from.

Fuck you, greatest fear. She spun and raced down the tunnel, splashing, the water now a foot deep. She crazily swung the flashlights. She heard bikes revving. Closer.

Dark, so dark, nothing but concrete, and she ran around a bend and knew the bikes were following her now—her, not Jesse and Mollie. Just her.

Amber didn’t know Jesse was with them.

Adrenaline jacked into her veins. She shouted again, desperate, straining. Ahead, far, far ahead, where the water was going to fill the tunnel to the top, she saw a faint light. An exit. She ran.

Hope. That’s what you need. That’s what she’d given Amber. Hope, and a chance.