Free The Survivors by Will Weaver Page A

second trip; he had to pick up Sarah from her stupid sleepover. For some reason he wasn’t supposed to arrive at the Phelps house, so they met downtown. But Saturdays are good for riding. There are more people around that day—the grocery stores are busier, and there’s more traffic—which makes it easier to blend in with the locals.
    â€œWe’ll get groceries on the way home,” Miles says over his shoulder and through his bandana.
    â€œOkay,” his mother says, her voice muffled against his back. She hangs on for dear life; Miles knows that she hates the dirt bike, but she’s a businesswoman and not dumb. The bike is the perfect solution for now: It gets close to a hundred miles to a gallon of gas and has knobby, off-road tires for escaping into the woods if needed. A dirt bike and a gun: two things he never would have owned back in the suburbs.
    On the highway, the bike leaves a dark stripe in the pale ash. Pumice dust rolls up behind them like a contrail of jet exhaust in the sky. He can only see gray in the little rearview mirror—not that there is much traffic to worry about. Soon the nose of a pickup grows in the oval glass of his mirror, and its rumbling V-8 comes on fast. Miles veers onto the shoulder to let it pass. When the truck streams by, the highway in front is gone—lost in a rolling, gray dust cloud. Disorientation hits—like a pilot losing which way is up—and he concentrates on keeping his handlebars straight. When the air doesn’t clear, he looks straight down beside his right boot and picks up the seam where the shoulder meets the main highway. A line, somewhere between gray and brown—enough to keep them on the road—unwinds ahead. Gradually the wider highway returns to view. Behind, his mother coughs and presses her head tighter against his back.
    He takes the back route into town, passing the high school and the entrance to a juvenile lockup. He goes over a railroad crossing and up a grade to the traffic light by the post office, where they pick up their mail once a week.
    PLEASE REMOVE DUST MASKS AT THE DOOR , a sign reads. Miles waits on the motorbike while his mother goes in. She’s out in two minutes, thumbing through a handful of letters and clutching a couple of packages—book manuscripts probably—under her other arm.
    â€œLet’s roll,” Miles says. “You can look at that stuff later.”
    â€œâ€˜That stuff’ is how we make a living, thank you very much,” his mother says.
    â€œHow you do that is a mystery to me,” Miles says as he stashes her mail in the right-side saddlebag. His mother playfully squeezes his rib cage as they motor off. It’s one more thing they would never have done in the burbs: get his mother to ride on the back of a dirt bike.
    The next stop is the library, a modern, one-story building with outthrust roof angles where Nat does her e-mail and internet thing once a week, plus charges Artie’s iPod.
    â€œSee you here later,” she says.
    Miles nods, then chains the Kawasaki to a bike rack, after which he walks over to the Alternative Education Center. It’s a low brick building open on Saturdays, which only makes sense. And that’s what he likes about the AEC—there are no bells. No principals.
    Inside the waiting area the old couch is occupied by two girls, one with a lot of piercings and raccoon-style black eye makeup, the other with a real baby under a small blanket. “Hey,” Miles says.
    The young mom smiles tiredly. She’s about Miles’s age and pretty in a skinny, pale kind of way; it’s as if all of her physical powers went into her baby, which makes smacking and sucking noises under the blanket. As she shifts the baby, the white top of one breast curves upward. Miles quickly looks away (the dark-eyed chick gives him a disgusted look). Carrying his packet, he slides past her to the check-in desk.
    â€œMr. L in?”