The Exiles Read Online Free Page A

but what was left to say? “I didn’t mean to lash out.”
    Across the street a yield sign stood tall and firm and sunny in its bold yellow affirmation. Emily squinted down the street. It was hot today, hot for October, hot for evening time, and the air waved above the pavement.
    Then a car, so new that its glare hurt the eye, pulled up, drove past the space, and began to back into it. The compact hot rod had high-performance wheels and rust-proof weather stripping, features from the future. Its engine was nearly silent, emitting only the muted electric purr of a hybrid. The driver shut off the ignition and got out, locking the doors, Nate noted, before glancing at Nate and Emily and Trevor as if maybe he knew them. Then he turned and made his way down the sidewalk. When he was out of earshot, Emily motioned to the silver sedan. “You want me to hotwire it?” Her voice had its strength back and she appeared to be on the verge of smiling. “It seems we’re owed a car.”
    “And then some,” Nate said. Because honestly, he thought as he held Emily’s hand tighter and pulled her close, the car was the least of their problems.

CHAPTER 2
    The Tally
    E VERYTHING IS IN THAT Jeep,” Emily Latham said. She leaned toward the cop and strained to be heard over Trevor’s cries. The boy’s deep wails cut through the police station’s surrounding din with the sporadic ceaselessness of a jackhammer. It was all too much: the wails, the buzz of the intercom overhead, the ringing of distant phones, the brush of Nate’s arm against hers, the patient grin of the uniformed officer across the counter. The officer was strapping but soft, like a high school baseball coach who hadn’t run the bases himself in at least a decade. Emily felt light, nearly high. “We’d packed all of our things in that Jeep.”
    Nate was quiet beside her. A month ago, his reticence would have surprised Emily. But now? She wasn’t sure. Over the past month, Nate, who had always been so good with talk and so eager to take the lead, had gradually begun to go mute, to burrow deeper inside himself. He’d adopted a noiseless diffidence, as if he had shifted slightly, like a door off only one of its hinges. Finally, in the past week, he’d completely stopped lookingEmily in the eye. She blamed stress. The move. The new job.
    “Nate?” Emily pleaded as Trevor continued to wail. The boy arched against the Bugaboo’s slick nylon chest restraints and screamed. The precinct’s hard surfaces (linoleum on the floor, cement on the walls) amplified the noise. “Hey, Nate.” Nate was the free one. Emily was fully engaged with the officer.
    “You bet.” Nate leaned down and lifted the boy from the stroller.
    Everyone in the building was in a rush, sporting crisp uniforms and insistent tones of voice. When Emily had entered through the precinct’s heavy glass front door, two uniformed cops sped past and shoved her out of the way, hard. A full arsenal hung from their belts and narrowly missed clocking the stroller and the helpless Trevor within it. Oh God! Emily had held her breath. At least she still had her child. She’d seen all the headlines, nearly weekly, it seemed.
Carjacking in Supermarket Parking Lot, Toddler Still Strapped in Backseat.
It was the epoch of public fear: carjackings, avalanches, suicide bombings, tsunamis, subway fires, lightening strikes, hurricanes. In the years since 9/11 (three years, enough time for the world to feel both semi-recovered and still tremendously perilous—enough time for Wall Street to be hitting record highs again, trumpeting the survival of capitalism with each day’s closing bell) it seemed that history—both man-made and geological—was aiming to prove that survival was merely a matter of luck.
    “Really, all of our things were in the car,” Emily said to the cop behind the counter.
    “We need to document your belongings specifically,” the cop said, nodding.
    “Sure,” Emily said—while grabbing her