The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

El Día de los Muertos

"I need a jet!"

We burst through the door of the Winters' house in Survivors' City. Adelaide and Anthony had been sitting quietly, enjoying a meal. They leapt to their feet, scrambling to complete my request.

 

            "When?" Adelaide asked.

 

            "As soon as inhumanly possible," I laughed, overjoyed that we were going to find him, and then I'd finally know a way to end this. My first though, my primary thought was realizing that I'd have an escape, if I wanted it. And though it should have hit me first, my second thought was that we'd have a way to defeat the rogues.

 

            Mark gathered our things, and Everett collected everyone. I stood in the kitchen, thinking. If Raven had the right information, this could all be over. The war avoided. The misery ended. The beach vision a reality.

My life again my own.

 

            I went back to my computer, searching frantically to decide where in Oaxaca to go. It was an entire state in Mexico, and even the city of Oaxaca, the capital, had tentacles of villages reaching far into the mountains. I couldn't rely on sensing him on the ground since I had never sensed him before, so we had to know where to look. I found a photo of the inscription over the entrance to the Oaxaca city cemetery: "Aquí la eternidad empieza y es polvo aquí la mundanal grandeza." It meant, loosely, "Here eternity begins and the worldly grandeur is dust."

The most  spectacular photos I found were of a cemetery in the hills outside the city, in a place called Xoxocotlán. Partly because of the skulls on the headstones of the graveyard in Salem, partly because of the graves in the celebrations of El Día de los Muertos, and partly because I just felt it in my bones, I believed we'd find him in a graveyard. I made a list of all the major ones.

 

            "There will be a jet at the Kalispell Airport in under an hour," Adelaide announced, quite proud of her accomplishment. The airport was only twenty minutes from the Survivors' City, running at top speed.

 

"You're amazing."

 

"Where are you going?" she asked.

 

            "Oaxaca."

 

"Mexico?" Anthony asked. "Do you need us to come with you?"

 

            "Even odds that it will be peaceful or violent," Everett told him.

 

            Anthony weighed the options. "I'll go. Adelaide stays."

 

I scoffed audibly. "Why don't we ask Adelaide what she thinks?" I said, my voice thick with teenage-style disdain. Anthony and Adelaide both raised their eyebrows. Even Everett looked at me in disbelief. What? I mouthed. Was this where the Winter boys learned to try to control their women?

 

            Adelaide narrowed her eyes at me, but spoke to Anthony. "You'll be an invaluable resource to them if there's a fight, but we do have to put my safety into consideration since I'm not built the way all of you are. I should stay. And since you won't know what you're up against, so should Madeline." He nodded. I looked back at the table, embarrassed that she so vehemently disagreed with my disrespect of Anthony.