Wakers by Card Orson Scott

Author:Card, Orson Scott [Card, Orson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, thriller
ISBN: 9781481496193
Amazon: 1481496190
Goodreads: 56980245
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2022-02-22T08:00:00+00:00

9

THE ATTEMPT TO walk to Burlington didn’t get far. The overpasses were all intact, and despite the BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD signs, the weather wasn’t cold enough at night for that to be a problem. The problem was the number of cans they were trying to carry with them. They ended up opening half of them, leaving the dogs to eat their brains out, and walking back to Greensboro to find some kind of cart.

They found a bike trailer meant to carry children in the same bike store that had the solid tubeless tires, and after a while it was rolling smoothly enough. They rigged up a makeshift grip and each of them was able to pull it one-handed, even when it was fully loaded with about ten times the canned goods they had been able to carry in their overloaded backpacks.

Also, the Pack of Four hadn’t followed them back into the city. Either they got eaten by something bigger than them—Laz’s thoughts went back to the hunting lionesses—or they didn’t care where Laz and Ivy went. Either way was fine—it’s not as if they had bought the dogs as pets or paid for them to be wormed. But Laz realized that he missed StarKist. What ever happened to loyalty? After all the secrets Laz had spoken to StarKist, now the dog was probably going to go blabbing to everybody.

This time they got a lot further, past several freeway interchanges. It turned out that getting the bike trailer up the slopes on the freeway was hard work—it took both of them gripping the handle with one hand, and when it was steepest, or the pavement was somewhat broken up, they both had to grip the handle with both hands and walk backward, or, on the steepest hill, Ivy pushed it from behind while Laz pulled backward.

StarKist rejoined them at an interchange labeled ELON UNIVERSITY, and if Laz had been alone and there hadn’t been the whole business of the cart, he might have checked to see if there were any books left in the university library. But since there weren’t any living people visible yet, no lights at night, nothing, he figured it would be a waste of time taking a side trip.

“Can’t you just side step to a timestream where we did take a side trip?” asked Ivy.

“We’re deciding right now,” said Laz, “which means we couldn’t have taken a side trip yet. So my side step would be to right here. This isn’t time travel, please remember. I can’t step into the future, that wouldn’t be a side step, it would be a giant leap forward and that’s not my talent.”

“Got it,” said Ivy. “I probably knew that, I was just wishing.”

“Here’s what I think we’ve learned,” said Laz. “They don’t care if we go to the next town. Elon looks like it’s a big enough place that if there were people here, we’d see them.”

“They might be hiding,” said Ivy.

“They might be watching us from invisible balloons overhead, too,” said Laz.

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