Free Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You) by Rachel Carter

the pointed heel into the plastic box under the steering wheel, prying it open to reveal a tangle of wires. Thank God this is an older model of car, and it still has a steering wheel, still has the capacity to be driven off the grid. It means we have a chance.
    Twenty-two bends down, ripping through the hardware with her hands while Wes uses my heel to force open the dashboard. He starts fiddling with the wires there too, a mess of red and blue and green and white lines. Twenty-two is successful first and the engine sparks, catches, and rolls over, humming underneath us. But we’re not moving. Wes is taking longer to override the system, and I see his hands start to shake, the vibrations traveling all the way up his arms until it seems that his whole body is trembling.
    “Shit,” Tim breathes, and I turn to see a dark-suited member of the Secret Service standing just inside the broken window of the hotel. She raises her gun and points it at the car.
    “Hurry, Wes.” I try, but cannot keep the panic out of my voice. “You can do this. Just breathe.”
    Sweat falls from his forehead, sliding down into his hair, and finally the shaking subsides. I hold my breath as he connects two wires. “Do it now.” His voice is strained.
    Twenty-two steps on the pedal and the car surges forward, just as the gunshots start. I hear the bullets crack against the pavement behind us.
    “Go, go, go,” I whisper. Twenty-two yanks us into the road, swerving around the frozen, stalled cars. I turn to look out the shattered back window. Three Secret Service agents have emerged from the front doors of the hotel and are now climbing into their own black car. In less than two seconds they are following us, easily breaking out of the grid.
    “They’re right behind us,” Tim says. Shots ring out again, ricocheting off the back of the car in a torrent of metal on metal. Tim and I both duck down, folding our bodies in an effort to stay out of range.
    “Faster!” I shout at Twenty-two.
    She swerves us to the right, left, right again. There are parked cars everywhere and it’s like we’re in a post-apocalyptic world, trying to navigate a suddenly abandoned civilization. But these cars aren’t empty, and the people inside stare at us as we pass. I wonder if the I-units of these strangers are being monitored even now, telling the Secret Service exactly where we are. A human tracking system.
    We leave the new city and pick up speed on the highway. In the distance I see where the ocean has risen, where the old city is crumbling into the sea. A few buildings remain, their windows broken and empty, half buried in the water at their base. In the distance, the Washington Monument rises out of the waves, a single beacon left standing in the ruins.
    I slump down farther. With the back window gone, the air whips through the car like a funnel, ringing in my ears and sending my hair flying around my head. The black car isn’t far behind us, and now another has joined it. They’re both gaining speed.
    Wes glances back at me. His hands are clenched in front of him, and I know it is killing him that Twenty-two is the one driving, that he is not in control. “Keep down. Your hair is like a bull’s-eye.” Every word he says is shouted over the wind.
    “I’m trying.” I hear more gunshots, loud even over the whipping air, the roaring engine. One flies through the car, cracking the windshield, and now it is a spiderweb of glass with a neat hole where the bullet has flown back into the night. Twenty-two shifts her body, trying to see through the side that’s still clear. Tim, hunched over, his muscled frame pressed against his knees, turns his head toward me. His eyes are too hidden to see in the darkness of the car, especially now that we have left the city and the streetlights are gone, but I know he is scared. He puts his hand out on the seat between us. Like mine, it is spotted with blood. I stare at it for a second, at how broad his palm is, open and