Free Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One by Melissa de la Cruz, Michael Johnston Page A

thoughtfully as he ate. Nat became worried that maybe he would think she was flirting with him—even if she wasn’t. Besides, she thought with a secret smile, if she was flirting with him, he would
know.
She was about to say something else when Shakes released a yelp from the front seat that startled everyone, including Nat.
    “What is it?” demanded Wes.
    “Drones in the sky; they sent a seeker team out,” Shakes said, pulling out his scanner, which was beeping. He shook his head as he peered out the window at a small black plane circling the distant horizon.
    “Where?” Wes asked, sticking his head out the window.
    “Not sure. He’s off the radar now.”
    “Fine, we’ll take the back roads,” Wes said. “Seekers stick to the main highway. We’ll have to loop around, take us close to MacArthur, but it’ll be okay. We should be able to shake them once we—” Wes never finished his sentence, as a blast of cold air hit and a cloud of silver flakes filled the cabin.
    “What now!” Daran yelled, as the flakes flew up his nose. They were everywhere. A second gust of wind sent more snow pouring through the openings.
    The boys yelped and Nat batted at the flakes, feeling them fall on her eyelids, her ears. “Burglar alarm,” Wes said tightly. He explained the silver cloud wasn’t smoke or snow. Crossing the fences had released nanos—machines no larger than a grain of dust that sensed and recorded human pheromones. Nanotechnology was old hardware, just like the fusion batteries; it was from the last global war before everything started breaking down. The military didn’t know how to upgrade the system, only how to maintain it.
    “They’re like robo-bloodhounds,” Farouk said excitedly. “They catch your scent and then feed it into the defense network.”
    Wes cuffed him in the shoulder. “What are you so hopped up about?”
    “I’ve never seen one before, is all,” Farouk said. “A nano cloud, I mean.”
    Wes gestured out across the garbage-strewn landscape. “The locals call ’em pop-cans. The bombs are usually hidden inside old soda cans, and the Pile is littered with them.”
    “What do they do?” Farouk asked.
    “They pop,” Shakes said, cutting in. “You get close enough for one of them to sniff you, to make a match for one of the pheromones that just got transmitted into the system, and they blow, taking out whatever part of you is closest to it.”
    “We’ve never been in the system before,” Daran complained. “I didn’t sign up for this. I ain’t losing an arm or a leg to a soda can.”
    Nat shuddered as Wes stared out at the snow-covered landscape. “Look, I wouldn’t think less of you if you wanted to turn back,” he said. “We snuck you out, we can sneak you back in. You can have your credits back, less a percentage for our trouble, of course.”
    “I’m not turning back,” she said, annoyed. Was this his way of trying to scare her out of the trip? Get her to change her mind? Pop-cans didn’t scare her like her nightmares did.
    “You’re sure about this?” he asked again, his voice gentle.
    She realized then that he wasn’t trying to wriggle out of the job, he was simply being decent; she felt another rush of affection for this impulsive, good-looking boy.
    Nat gripped his forearm and nodded. “I’m not scared. I’d rather take my chances with what’s out there than go back.”
    “All right then.” Wes sighed. He put a hand on top of hers and held it tightly. “Nothing wrong with being scared, you know. I’ve seen a lot of things that have scared me on this side of the fence.”
    She nodded. His hand was warm on hers, and it lingered there for a while before he took it away. She wasn’t sure which one of them was more embarrassed about that tender moment.
    He cleared his throat and addressed his team. “I’ll drive. We take the back roads. It’ll be a five-day drive to the coast, but once we hit the Pacific we’ll pick up speed and we’re back by