Dead Last, Vol. 3

by Quaranta, Marc

  “Anything, Jack?”

  “Anything,” he repeated.

  “Would you take a bullet for me, Jack? Would you take a bullet for her?” She pointed to her mom.

  “Yes, I would take a bullet for you.”

  “Would you take it for her?” Her voice was deeper.

  Jack thought through his options, but the truth was the only option he had. “Yes, I would.”

  Elyse didn’t like that answer based on the look on her face.

  “I would take a bullet for him,” Jack said quickly. He was pointing at Scott. “I would. I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  “For him?” Elyse asked. She giggled. “For Scott?”

  “I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt, Elyse. Please.”

  She turned the barrel of the gun to her head and for a split second, we all thought she was going to pull the trigger. Instead, she scratched the side of her head and then pointed it right back to Jack.

  “You just want to help me?” Her voice was sweet. There was hope there.

  “Yes. You know that.” Jack stepped forward, not by much. “All I’ve wanted to do is help. I want to help you, I want to help these people. Anything that I can do for you.”

  “You really want to help me?” Elyse asked again.

  “Yes.” Jack stood tall and looked at her.

  “Do you love her?” Elyse asked.

  Jack looked back at Emily. Elyse’s mom had tears in her eyes, and I think I could see a few falling down Jack’s face as well. I think we all knew that if Jack didn’t answer correctly, this wasn’t going to end well.

  Jack smiled at Emily and nodded at her. He turned his focus back to Elyse and now the little tears were full blown drops. He sniffed and nodded.

  “Do you?” Elyse repeated.

  “Yes. I love her.”

  “You do?” Elyse asked again.

  “Yes. I love her very, very much.”

  Elyse nodded about a dozen times with the gun pointed at Jack. Elyse, Jack, Emily, Heather, there almost wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Some of us were sad, others terrified, others just overwhelmed.

  Elyse moved the gun slightly away from Jack and pulled the trigger. The bullet flew by us all, and just managed to fly by Jack without hitting him.

  I pulled Haylea into my chest and we both looked away. I expected more bullets. I expected Elyse to fire down the line and take us all out one by one.

  There were no more bullets. I lifted my head and Haylea and I stared at each other for a long couple of seconds. We wanted to say so much to each other. Surviving a life or death situation always made people want to confess, or simply reaffirm their love to others, but this wasn’t the time.

  We both looked over to the middle of the pack and saw the look on Jack’s face. His mouth hung low and he couldn’t catch his breath. His eyes were bloodshot and every muscle in his body was tight. It was like he had just been shot.

  But he wasn’t. He stared down at the ground in absolute shock at the love of his life, the mother of the shooter, trying to catch her breath as blood poured from her chest.

  40

  Haylea Meyers

  F or the second time in less than twenty days, a member of our original WTIX group had a bullet in their chest. For the second time in less than twenty days, I was stunned and in complete dismay.

  Jack dropped to his knees in slow motion. It was like watching the New Year’s Eve ball drop and thinking that it has to take longer than sixty seconds to go from the top to the bottom. He was never going to hit the ground, but when he finally did, everything snapped back to reality for me. Time sped back up.

  I turned to Elyse wondering if the next bullet was going to fire from the gun, but it never did. She dropped the gun to the floor, but nobody chased after it or her. We all stood in silence and shock.

  Elyse dropped to her knees, too, but this didn’t slow time down. Instead, it seemed to speed up. She cupped her hands over her face and I could hear muddled cries sneaking through the cracks of her fingers.

  Her cries became louder and clearer when she put her hands in her lap, but I learned there that she wasn’t crying. She was laughing. She was laughing like a lunatic patient that had just escaped from the insane asylum.

  “Emily,” Jack shouted. He pushed the palm of his hand down on the wound in her chest. Her eyes were open and she was breathing quickly, but she wouldn’t respond. “Emily, talk to me.”

  None of us knew what to do. I couldn’t move. My feet were stuck in cement and my breathing was slowed to a turtle’s pace. I felt the brush of Kurt’s fingers on mine, but neither one of us was strong enough or aware enough in that moment to clasp our fingers together.

  “Emily, please. Please don’t go. Don’t do this to me, Emily. Emily, I need you. Wake up!” Jack’s face was pressed up against Emily’s. He had his eyes closed and was kissing the side of her face.

  I watched as her breathing slowed and her eyes slowly closed. By the time Jack opened his eyes, she was already gone. He didn’t stop, though. He grabbed her by the chin and started shaking her face back and forth. He touched her cheeks. He felt her pulse. He picked up her hand and tried to pull her up.

  The blood from her wound was now all over Jack’s hands and shirt. He had wiped it all over her face and neck and arms. The simple bullet wound had left a pile of blood that looked like there had been a massacre of a dozen people.

  “No. No. No. No. No,” he kept saying. He trailed off. He pulled her hand into his chest and started kissing it. Blood smeared across his lips and his face. He held her hand against his cheek and stared at her.

  Elyse was still laughing. Jack’s cries and her psychotic laugh were the only two sounds in the room. But there were louder sounds from outside the house. There was an explosion outside that sounded like it was a few houses down. No more than five seconds later, there was another.

  “What the hell is that?” Kurt asked nobody in particular.

  The sirens, those same sirens that went off the night Kurt and the others came back, starting going off again. They echoed throughout the house. Over the constant vibration of that sound, we could hear another explosion. And another. Some were closer than others, but they all sounded like they were far away.

  “What is it?” Scott asked Glen.

  “It means there’s something happening around the perimeter.”

  “Glen, what the hell is going on?” Heather asked.

  “It’s okay. I just need to go,” Glen responded.

  “What?” Heather looked disturbed that Glen would leave her.

  “I’m sorry. I need to go.” Another explosion went off. And then another that was the closest yet.

  Glen got up and walked across the house. He passed by Elyse cautiously as if she would jump up and attack him like a stray cat. Once by her, he shot out of the room and out the front door. The others followed him.

  Heather went first and then Scott. Kurt tugged at my arm to follow.

  As he pulled me, I looked back and watched as Jack didn’t move. He had no idea what was going on around him. He continued to kiss Emily’s hand. Elyse was still kneeling on the ground, too.

  Kurt bent over and picked up the gun carefully while keeping his eye on Elyse. We stepped wide around her as if we’d get electrocuted for being too close.

  I looked back at Jack who was trying to wake Emily up. My heart was breaking.

  “We need to get to the Hub,” Glen said.

  “The what?” Heather asked.

  “Get in.”

  Glen opened the car door and Heather, Kurt, Ryan, and I hopped in the car. Scott looked at us and was waiting for his invitation to come alone.

  “Get the hell away from me,” Glen said to him. He closed the door and we sped off down the road.

  There wasn’t any destruction in the town. Nothing was blown up or even damaged, but from the sounds of things, there were things being blown up.

  It didn’t take us too long to pull up to the Hu
b. Simultaneously, we all got out of the car and slammed the doors shut. Glen left his open. Ryan was the fastest one down the stairs and into the Hub.

  We followed behind and when we got down there, there was nobody working. We were alone. There was always somebody scheduled to keep an eye on things, but not now. Nobody was monitoring District 7-1.

  “Oh my God,” Ryan said. “Look.”

  He pointed up at the top monitors. The screens showed nothing but smoke. The clear pictures on other monitors soon weren’t very clear. At the same time of a bomb going off, the camera cut out.

  “The explosions are at the gates,” Glen said.

  “What?” Kurt asked.

  “They’re blowing up the gates.”

  “Who?” I asked trying to connect all the dots looking at the monitors but I had no idea what was going on.

  “The entire perimeter is going down.” Glen brought his fingers to his mouth. I could see decades of hard work being destroyed before his eyes.

  “Glen.” Kurt nudged him on the back. “Glen, now what?”

  “It’s over,” he said softly.

  “We need to get back to the house,” Kurt said to me. “Right?”

  He was asking for my thoughts. He’d never done that in the heat of the moment, at least not that I could remember.

  “Right?” he asked again, louder.

  “Right.”

  “Glen, we need to go.” He pulled at Glen’s shirt and yanked him back. “We need to go!”

  I grabbed Heather’s arm and pulled her along behind me. Kurt and Glen were behind us and Ryan came out seconds after.

  Kurt pushed Glen into the passenger seat and took the wheel this time. We slammed the doors closed and started speeding off down the road. I hadn’t even closed the door before he gunned it.

  “All those guards,” I said.

  “No,” Ryan cut me off quickly.

  “What?”

  “There weren’t any guards at the gates,” Ryan said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because they’re doing this.” He looked at me and wanted me to think back to the conversations we’d had. “It’s Kendrick. It’s everything I said was going to happen.”

  We came to an intersection. Kurt stopped the car by slamming on the breaks. He reached over and kept Glen from flying through the windshield. Glen was out of it. He wouldn’t snap out of it.

  “What are you doing?” Ryan asked.

  “Look,” Kurt said. He pointed down the road and we all looked over.

  A semi-truck was speeding down the road. Behind it we could see four, five, maybe more, following behind it. The one in the front stopped suddenly and the others started turning off down different roads and heading in different directions.

  I squinted but could see the driver getting out of the car and staring at us.

  “That’s Zach,” Kurt said.

  “What?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “It’s fucking Zach,” he repeated.

  Zach waved and the smirk on his face was anything but a friendly greeting. He walked around to the side and pulled down a large lever. The back of the truck opened up and a big ramp fell from the top. He didn’t wait much longer. He sprinted off down the road and behind a building where we could no longer see him.

  Nobody said anything. We just waited. I could hear the engine of the car murmur, but other than that it was silence. We watched as every second that went by seemed to grow longer and longer.

  A straggler came down the ramp and around from the back of the truck. And then another. Another. Five came from behind the next one and then another handful. Within fifteen seconds, there were a hundred or more stragglers stumbling out from the back of the truck.

  “Holy Merciful God,” Heather said.

  We watched stragglers fan out in all directions. They walked toward people that had come out of their house minutes earlier just like we had to see what was going on. Within a split second, there was panic and terror. People started screaming and running. They were running to their houses and slamming doors, locking people out.

  “Kurt,” I said. He was staring. “Kurt,” I repeated. He heard me and looked in the mirror. “There were about a dozen other trucks.”

  Everyone in the car knew that there were about a hundred, give or take, stragglers that came out of that one truck. District 7-1 was about to be overrun. And we were stuck smack in the middle of it all.

  41

  Jack Scoville

  G ravity was pulling me to the ground. My knees were plastered to the floor and I couldn’t move. The tears stopped falling. I stopped begging. Stopped talking. I couldn’t move, but suddenly, everything inside of me ceased to function.

  Emily still looked beautiful. Through the sweat that had trickled across her forehead and the blood that had covered all of her visible skin. Her clothes were covered. He body was lifeless.

  I held her hand tightly until my fingers also followed suit and stopped working. Her hand inched out of my hold and dropped to her side. The small thud of her hand hitting the ground was louder than the siren blaring.

  This must have been what it was like to be hit by a paralyzing dart like in the movies. After what seemed like hours, I started to get feeling back in my body. The first place I felt it was in my neck. I started to tilt my head to the side and then was able to look to the left and the right. Off to the left, Elyse was still sitting on the floor. Her hysterical laughter had died down, but she was still chuckling.

  I could wiggle my fingers and started to feel the ache in my knees from kneeling on the hardwood. I rolled over to my side and then pulled my knees out and fell to my ass. I put my palm on the ground and rested the weight of my body on one arm.

  My other hand went up to my face. I pressed my index finger and thumb into my closed eyes pretending that this was all a bad daydream. I dragged my palm down to my chin and then away from my face. I could see a blur of red in the corners of my eyes and tasted the blood on my lips.

  I could have sat there forever. I just knew that if I sat there forever, she would eventually wake back up. She had to. She was going to open her eyes, I just had to wait.

  But the animal inside of me was uncaged. I was ready to break away from the bars and attack. I leaned over and kissed her on her forehead. I didn’t say goodbye or that I loved her. I didn’t say anything. She couldn’t hear me. And she already knew how I felt.

  I slowly stood up.

  “This is all your fault,” I mumbled. “You did this.”

  I took one step away from Emily and thought about falling back down to her side, but I couldn’t. The thought didn’t cross my mind again and I turned to see Elyse still chuckling. She was covering her mouth trying to hide the laughter, but I could hear it. She was crying. Tears of sadness or laughter I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.

  “This is all your fault,” I said again.

  I started slow, but then my pace picked up. I walked faster and faster right by Elyse and then sprinted out the door. I jumped off the porch, flying over all four steps, and landed hard on the concrete. My leg buckled and I fell onto the hard service. I scraped my hands and probably bruised my knee but I popped right back up.

  “This is your fault!” I screamed. I sprinted through the pain in my knee and ran straight toward Scott.

  He wasn’t paying attention to me. He was staring off into the distance and listening to the explosions. Every time one went off, it scared him. I was going to scare the piss out of him.

  “You did this!” I yelled again.

  He turned and saw me out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t have enough time to dodge my punch. I connected my knuckles to the side of his face. He staggered backward but was still standing. I hit him again.

  I swung again but hit his forearms. He’d thrown both arms up to protect his face. I bent over and grabbed the back of both legs. I pulled them toward me and tripped him onto his back. The back of his head slammed into the concrete of the street.

&nb
sp; He was still conscious. He was still in there. He was still aware of every little thing I was doing. So, I kept going. I lost track of how many times I hit him. I wasn’t giving him any breathing time between punches. At that point, on those last few punches, I didn’t know if he was awake, unconscious, dead, or what. I didn’t care.

  “I should have killed you.” I was out of breath. I stopped punching but continued to sit on top of him. “I should have just killed you.”

  The sirens stopped. The explosions stopped. The wind blowing was the only sound I heard. It was the only thing I felt. He was still conscious, but barely alive. His face was covered with his blood, my blood, and the blood that had been on my hands already, Emily’s blood.

  The engine of a big truck broke up the sound of the wind. I looked up. A soldier was hopping out of a truck and leaving it on at the end of the street. He didn’t notice Scott and myself lying on the ground. He walked around to the back and pulled a lever. The back ramp dropped down and stragglers started walking out.

  This was what I was worried about. This was the moment I had been warning everybody about. This was the moment Ryan was talking about. Kendrick had gotten to everyone. This place wasn’t safe. This place was dangerous. I’d known it all along.

  If only they had listened to me.

  Stragglers were falling out of the truck like loose rolls of toilet paper falling to the streets. The block was covered, overrun with them within half a minute.

  I couldn’t count how many were walking toward me. They were running into each other, bumping, falling. It was every straggler for itself coming toward Scott and me to get a bite.

  As they bounced side to side with every step, I could have sworn I saw Emily through them out in the distance. She was smiling at me. She wanted me to walk toward her. I could have. I could have walked right over to her and it would have been over.

  I could have gone to her and only in a few minutes we would be back together.

  I knew it wasn’t her, though. She was gone. As much as I loved her and needed to see her again, I wasn’t ready to give up.

  I stood to my feet. I grabbed Scott’s hand and pulled him to his feet. I held on tight because I knew he’d be weak and would need my help to stand. Once he regained his strength in his stance, he looked at me. His eye was swollen shut already.