It's the End of the World

Chapter 18

Sam was sleeping heavily. He didn't even wake up when Justin was chewing me out.

"What was the one thing I told you. The one thing!"

"Not to leave school."

"And what did you do?"

"I left school."

"And look what almost happened! All because you didn't listen to one simple rule."

"Well would you rather have had me go to federal prison? Because that was my only other option! Maybe if you didn't want me to leave, you should've told me that Catherine was going to try and kill me!"

"So that's what she meant by a distraction."

"How did you even know where I was?"

"I was worried all morning about Catherine trying to kill you, so I decided to check on you. Of course you weren't there. I checked the security footage, and I saw Catherine leaving. Then I fast-forwarded it and saw her friends taking Sam hostage. I also saw you hugging Abby."

Okay, fine, I admit, I gave Abby a hug before I left because I thought I was never going to see her again.

"You're lucky I got here in time. If I had came just a few seconds later..." He wouldn't let himself finish the sentence.

Eventually, Sam woke up.

"So, what do we do now?" I asked, now that everyone was awake.

"I've been thinking about that," Justin said, "What we need to do is have you go to Mt. Shasta while I go to the Bancroft headquarters in New Jersey."

"Can I go?" Sam asked.

"No," Justin said, "Oh, and that's another thing. What were you thinking telling a non-Cahill about the 39 clues?! Look what happened today! Sam almost got killed because of you!"

Sam turned to look at me, "Yeah! I just realized that! I almost got killed because of you!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't think it was that big of a deal! They told Evan!"

"Well Evan was actually useful! Sam's-" He paused because he didn't want to offend Sam. "Anyways, even if he could go, how do you think he'd be able to go without his parents knowing?"

"We'd probably be back by this afternoon. Please, just one more mission?"

Justin thought about this. "Fine. Let's go to the airport."

We made it a good ways across the country before the plane had to stop. Apparently all across the world, planes were having trouble flying. It was no doubt caused by the Vespers electromagnet. No wonder the turbulence on the plane was horrible.

"Great," Sam said, once the plane had landed, "Now we're stuck in the middle of the country with no way to get back home. We don't even know what state we're in!"

"I think we're somewhere in Nevada."

"How do you figure?"

"See that road sign over there. It has the Nevada state shape on it."

"Yeah, well, how do we get back home?"

As I was looking around, I saw the Amtrak station.

"How do you feel about trains?"