Free H2O by Irving Belateche Page A

good. About a hundred yards in front of me, two Fibs had her backed
up against the side of a double tank truck that was loading up on water. Lily’s
backpack was on the ground and it looked like the Fibs were interrogating her.
They saw my van and one of them moved to the middle of the lane, drew his gun,
and motioned for me to stop. But I couldn’t just stop, and give myself up. I
had to help Lily. It was my fault that the Fibs had captured her and I was
almost a hundred percent sure that, this time, they weren’t going to let her
go.
    Lily was up
against the truck’s first tank, and the second tank was hooked up to a ten
million gallon storage tank. A pipe, made of industrial plastic, probably
Teflon fluorocarbon (like some of the pipes at Corolaqua), connected the two.
Teflon fluorocarbon was a tough plastic able to withstand the powerful pressure
of water gushing through it.
    That pressure
was going to be my weapon.
    I sped up,
hoping that Lily would know what to do.
    The Fib saw me
bearing down on him so instead of shooting at me, he raced out of the way to
save himself, and at the last second, I swerved my van toward the truck, aiming
for the second tank. I smashed into it and the air bag exploded from my
steering wheel so I didn’t actually get to see the pipe break lose but I heard
the deluge and I knew that this collision had sent hundreds of gallons of water
spewing.
    I scrambled
out of the van and ran toward the back of the storage tank. Water was flooding
the entire area, and I spotted Lily running through the spray. We both sprinted
past the storage tank, leaving the deluge behind.
    “We have to
get to the woods,” I said, running across a lane.
    “They’re
expecting that,” she said.
    She was right.
We ran between two storage tanks and I glanced back. A Fib was crossing the
lane, bearing down on us.
    “I’ve got a
better idea,” she said.
    “I’m all
ears.”
    “We need to
find a truck heading out. With rigging.”
    I remembered
the triple tank truck I’d passed minutes ago. It was probably still on its way
out. “I know just the truck.”
    We wove
between the massive storage tanks, heading in that direction, until we spotted
it.
    “When it
passes, we run for the rigging,” Lily said.
    The truck
rolled closer.
    “What if the
driver sees us?” I asked.
    “They have a
blind spot. Toward the front of the first tank,” she said. “Run straight to the
front of the tank. Don’t run alongside it, and he won’t see us.”
    We sprinted to
the blind spot, ducked under the tank, and crawled into the rigging beneath. We
were lying next to burlap sacks packed with onions. The sacks hid us from view
on the far side, but we were exposed on the near side, so we pulled some of the
sacks around.
    The truck
rolled forward and when I saw water flowing on the lane beneath us, I knew we
were passing the scene of the crash and close to exiting the facility.
    Two minutes
later, the truck picked up speed. We were out.

 
Chapter Fourteen
     
    The sound of the truck’s engine
was thunderous, so we couldn’t talk. After a couple of miles, the truck slowed
and I said, “I turned you into a fugitive.”
    “I
volunteered,” Lily said.
    I smiled. In
the midst of our near disastrous escape, she still had a sense of humor. “I
won’t be able to give you that ride to Clearview,” I said.
    “I kind of
figured that.”
    “If we stay on
this truck, we’re going south,” I said, almost as an afterthought, maybe to
assure myself that we were still in control somehow.
    “How do you
know?”
    “It’s a triple
tank and I didn’t see any triples or doubles when I came in from the north.”
    “Then they’re
headed east,” she said.
    “That’s
impossible.”
    “Well, I came
up from the south and I didn’t see any triple and double tank trucks either,”
she said. “And we know they’re not going west into the ocean. That leaves east,
right?”
    I didn’t
respond. Why would trucks go east? The