When Stars Burn Out (Europa Book 1)

by Anna Vera

  “Eos,” Merope says, disbelievingly, straightening up. As she stands, so does Cyb. “He isn’t a specimen.”

  The walls of the hut rattle from outside as the Muted rile up against it, clawing and kicking and biting. Something falls off a shelf on the other side of the room.

  I pick it up to replace it and realize it’s . . . a necklace?

  No, dog tags. Military.

  XII VII IV XIII XXI

  PILOT

  “What’s that?” Merope asks. I’m spared answering when a bout of shrieking issues so loudly from outside, I’m afraid we’re in real danger of the wall falling.

  “Nothing,” I say hastily, tossing it back on the shelf and, in a swift motion, cocking my rifle. “Apollo’s in the barn—beside the bonfire. He’s invisible to the Muted. We can use him.”

  I rip open the hut’s door, glancing back at the pair.

  “Are you with me?” I ask.

  “Obviously.” Merope is still unsteady, but that doesn’t stop her from joining me at the door. Cyb eyes us both from the fire, a war waging within.

  “All right,” she says at last. “But I better not regret this.”

  15

  The second we leave the safety and seclusion of Rion’s hut, we realize the whole quarantine is in chaos.

  People run screaming, hordes of them pressing their backs to the walls, straining against the push of the Muted. The smell of decay is as thick as the panic in the air, leaving the hair on my arms perpetually raised.

  “The barn,” Cyb notes sharply. “Straight ahead.”

  “We can’t find the others until we’ve secured the perimeter on this side,” I say as we jostle through groups of wild-looking people, yelling and crying in horror. “Why,” I add on, “are these idiots not fighting?”

  “Are you joking? I wouldn’t trust a single one of these fools with a gun,” Cyb barks as we approach the barn—a three-story tall building looming behind the bonfire. “That has to be it.”

  I follow her gaze, finding a single door roped in chains with a series of padlocks dangling—

  “The locks are open!” I declare. A closer look confirms my discovery, each padlock’s mouth gaping wide. “Where did they take him? This is the only barn . . .”

  Just then a loud crack! calls for our attention.

  We whirl around, facing utter chaos: a large log in the wall has snapped in half. Instantly, the Muted take advantage—a set of strong, sinewy arms reach in and begin grabbing wildly.

  A man shoves his teenage son aside, getting himself taken by the Muted in the process. He screams viscerally as he’s pulled through the gap, the wood’s splinters raking into his skin, and his ribs snapping loudly as he’s yanked violently through.

  The Muted practically sing, tearing into the man like a pack of starving, rabid dogs.

  “Oh, to hell with Apollo,” I say, dropping the chain. “We’ve got to secure the perimeter—now.”

  “One step ahead of you,” Merope says, still pale and sweaty in the face, but otherwise balanced as she walks out from inside the barn’s shadowy depths—carrying guns.

  Cyb takes a loaded rifle. “There are guns in there?”

  “With prisoners?” I say, finishing her thought, but there’s no time to think on the logistics of it. The wall’s logs are strong, but not strong enough. They can’t withstand the Muted’s charge for much longer, especially without reinforcements.

  I try not to think about what will happen if the wall falls.

  “Okay,” I say. “Here goes nothing.”

  We walk in tandem toward the gap in the wall, stepping in sync with one another. My periphery is dominated by the whites of eyes and crooked teeth, bared, mid-scream.

  Nobody tries to stop us.

  “Persuade whichever Mute’s in the gap,” I order as we get close enough to fire, members of the quarantine parting with a surprising degree of cooperation before us.

  Cyb nods, totally focused.

  “Stand back!” I yell. The last few people do, revealing a gap much bigger than I’d originally thought—so big, it’s capable of birthing a whole, man-sized Mute.

  “Got him,” Cyb grunts as the first Mute’s face appears in the gap of the wall; it’s instantly frozen, twitching wildly, as if it’s aware of its own paralysis.

  I raise my rifle and fire a single round. It pegs the Mute in between its gouged-out eyes, ripping a hole through its skull like a dart through paper.

  The next Mute presents itself. We do it again.

  With every one killed, we take a few steps closer, until we’re positioned right in front of the gap. Merope waves over the few members with their wits still intact, and they begin patching the wall with thick saplings.

  Cyb’s gotten the hang of Persuading each Mute so well, she is doing everything on her own: keeping them still and shooting them dead, one by one.

  Merope and I scout farther down the wall, finding ourselves back at the barn. It’s full of weapons, supplies. I trail my fingers along the wall, feeling my way in the dark.

  “Sense anything?” I ask her. “Empathetically?”

  “Whatever Rion’s crew is doing, it’s working,” she says in a voice so breathy, it worries me. I hear the clinking of things falling from the wall when she leans up against it. “They’re being lead away from the compound.”

  I rush to her side, picking up the things that’ve dropped off the wall behind her. “But how? If the Muted are drawn to groups of people, why would they follow just the handful of them?”

  My fingertips brush against something cold and edgy on the ground. I pick it up: a ring of keys.

  “We’ve got to get to them,” I whisper, holding the keys up in the firelight. “When Cyb’s got the wall patched, we’ll steal this vehicle—we’ll go out there and find them.”

  “Find them?” she croaks.

  “You’ll sense them with your skillset,” I say, dropping my unloaded rifle in favor of another—already preloaded, hanging on the wall with others.

  I take Merope’s rifle and give her another, along with a slew of glistening knives.

  I grip her arm, eyeing her severely: her lips are chapped and peeling, dark circles cupping her pretty eyes. It occurs to me that I’m risking her life. By asking her and Cyb to follow me, I’m risking their lives . . .

  I’m brash . . . hotheaded . . .

  Just like my Psych Eval reflected.

  Merope’s posture shifts. “You’re second-guessing yourself.”

  “Stay with Cyb,” I say suddenly. “Guard the wall.”

  “And let you go alone?”

  “This is my idea. I’ll go, get it done by—”

  “Shut up, Eos,” Merope says, marching out of the barn with her black hair swaying at her back. “I said I’m with you, or have you forgotten that already?”

  “I’m asking you to risk—”

  “You’re asking me to do what’s right,” she interjects, violet eyes glistening as she takes my wrist and drags me along. “You’re right about this. What better way to gain somebody’s loyalty than to risk your life saving theirs?”

  We hear footsteps approaching rapidly, turning just in time to see Cyb round the corner, gasping for breath. “The wall is up, the wall is back up!”

  I throw her a fresh rifle. “I’ve found something.”

  “What?” she says, skidding to a halt before us. I hold up the ring of keys for her to behold. “Car keys,” she adds, nodding with a genuine smile. “Where do we find their vehicles?”

  “Entry perimeter,” I say, recalling Rion’s orders to his group before he left. Don’t forget to get the keys to the truck at the entry perimeter while you’re at it.

  I sheath a knife in the belt loop of my pants. “Ready?”

  “More than ready,” Cyb growls as we begin to jog toward the entrywa
y. The padlocks locking the large, swinging door have been left locked, but Cyb uses a metal-cutter to destroy them.

  The Muted haven’t caught on to this entrance. They aren’t at the entryway in full force, but scattered. The night echoes with their cries, so shrill they settle and ring chillingly under my skin.

  I look to Merope and Cyb, my chest swelling.

  “We can do this,” I assert. “For Lios.”

  “For Lios.” Cyb’s lip trembles, eyes bright as moonlight.

  “For Lios,” Merope adds, cocking her rifle. And for a brief stretch of time, we stand together—truly together—aware of the fact that we could be facing death.

  And choosing to face it anyway.

  Together.

  Cyb smiles wolfishly. “Let’s do this.”

  I kick open the entry door, which groans as it swings wide to release us. Merope clicks new padlocks over the ones we’ve just destroyed behind us, and Cyb sets the metal-cutter aside, stashing it by a nearby tree for when we come back.

  If we come back.

  “They headed southeast!” Merope yells as we turn around the corner, looking frantically for the trucks, which are—almost too conveniently—at the exact spot Rion said they’d be.

  “It’s the Chevy,” I say, referencing the keys as we approach the only truck—pale yellow, ringed with circles of rust—of that particular brand.

  We pile in, surprised by the luck of having picked the right key on the first try. None of us have driven before, but learning the basics of native-born transportation was a requirement for our studies, and given that traffic laws no longer exist . . .

  I take the driver’s seat and rev the engine, which booms to life in an echoing, thunderous roar. We take off, spinning out of the parking spot and onto a dirt road rolling along the perimeter of the whole quarantine.

  Cyb grips my shoulder. “Let’s check the east side again.”

  I nod with a smile, enjoying the thrill of driving—the air washing in through the window, the way speeding through the moonless night both tightens my chest and shakes something in it loose, releasing it.

  Merope shouts over the engine, “More up ahead!”

  I jerk the steering wheel, making a hairpin turn, and we’re back at the eastern perimeter. The Muted continue to claw and rile against the wall, moving with a startling agility.

  “Fire at will,” I say, revving the engine again in preparation to mow over the Muted still remaining. Cyb and Merope raise their rifles through the passenger side window, aiming to take out the ones crawling up the wall.

  I slam my foot against the gas pedal.

  Everything is in shadow, exposed only if it’s directly in front of our truck’s headlights. The golden glow from the quarantine’s always-burning bonfire lights up the wall’s cracks, illuminating the Muted scaling the logs.

  Cyb and Merope shoot off rounds; I can’t see the Muted die as much as I hear the echoing blast of gunfire followed quickly by the thud of falling corpses tumbling off their place on the wall. I gun the engine, clipping the Muted that barely dodge the truck as it passes by.

  “Look!” Cyb says, pointing at a ridge in the dirt road, where tracks visibly veered off to the left. “They went that way!”

  We fly to the left as I yank the steering wheel, peeling out of the path we were following and head into the moonless, pitch-black dark, trailing the tracks left for us but having close to no visual warning before abrupt twists in the path.

  The Muted are everywhere, thicker with every stretch we take deeper into the forest. My heart pounds like a fist against my sternum—alive and thrilled and terrified at once—as we do what we were specifically created for.

  Kill the Muted.

  Cyb laughs maniacally after Persuading a Mute to lie down in front of our truck as we blaze by, crushing its skull like a small watermelon. Her euphoria is interrupted by a searing light exploding in the night sky, hissing smoke.

  “A flare,” Merope identifies wisely. “For backup, I bet.”

  “Why do you say that?” I ask.

  “Too many,” she wheezes, pounding a fist against her chest as though in the effort of clearing it. “Too many. We’re almost there, now—they’re everywhere.”

  “Look!” Cyb says, nodding ahead of us. Several lights blaze through the night’s dark. “Torches! We’ve made it!”

  Merope takes our rifles and begins stuffing clips into their magazines frantically, reloading in preparation for a scene we are in no way mentally ready to face.

  The Muted. Everywhere.

  They are chasing a truck that’s going full speed over the hills and dips of the clearing. In the truck-bed is a large Mute lying flat on its back, strapped in. The Mute is the largest I’ve ever seen before, exceedingly larger than a man is physically capable of being naturally . . .

  Ten feet tall, at least. Muscular. Teeth falling over its lipless mouth in bloody, hooked fangs. And a roar that echoes over the landscape in haunting waves of undiluted fury.

  It doesn’t look like a man infected by the plague.

  It looks like a monster.

  “Is that, like, the queen bee?” Cyb asks, eyes narrowed.

  “Actually they—” Merope’s arrested mid-sentence by a second flare issued sky-high, and a series of yelling. The light of the flare reveals Rion steering the truck with the Mute strapped in the bed, Jac and Silas sitting beside it.

  A spread of armed men scatter in the blazing red light, all on foot, facing the Muted head-on. This side of the forest is not only alive with shrieks of those infected by the A-42, but by those not infected at all—screaming as they’re taken down.

  Devoured.

  “No,” Merope breathes, averting her eyes to the gruesome scene of a man running out of bullets, crab-walking backward as he’s pursued by three of the Muted. Their maws drip with blood and saliva and phlegm, vocal cords clicking with excitement as they corner their prey.

  Merope glances at Cyb. “Do something!”

  “That’s Tex,” she replies with disgust, a hint of satisfaction in her expression as he screams shrilly. “Let’s just let him—”

  “We can’t,” I groan. “As much as I’d love to let him die, he’s one of us if we get into the quarantine.”

  Rion’s truck explodes in a spate of bubbling, choking noises as it putters, then stops.

  Jac launches himself out of the truck—Silas springing wildly out behind him—the pair shouting in unison, “NO FUEL! WE ARE OUT OF FUEL!”

  “Who do we save, Eos?” Cyb asks, turning to me with those sparkling, overcast eyes—always sharp with challenge. “Do we save that asshole, Tex, or do we save Rion?”

  I swallow. Across the way, the truck chugs forward a few feet only to stop seconds later. Its fuel has run dry. Additional flares fly, whizzing and tearing through the black night sky, but we all know help isn’t coming.

  We’re the only backup they’ve got.

  I look back at Cyb. “We save both of them,” I say and drop my foot on the gas pedal once more. “Starting with that undeserving prick, Tex.”

  We blaze through the clearing, gleaning the attention of all those still fighting—they pause, squinting in the dark, trying to identify the three girls who came to save their asses.

  Our truck peels out, skidding to a halt in front of the tree that Tex now leans against. The Muted close in tight and unforgiving around him.

  “DRIVE,” I tell Merope, spilling out of the truck to head the rest of the way on foot. “Cyb—back me up!”

  Merope drives the rest of the way across the clearing, engine growling low and booming, to help the others.

  Cyb presses a fingertip casually to her temple, Persuading the first Mute in front of Tex to freeze. In mere seconds, we’ve taken all three of them out, their foreheads gaping with bullet holes so flawlessly aimed they look like t
hird eyes.

  Tex staggers, straightening up. “You—you!”

  “Yes, us,” Cyb replies dully.

  “Fight hard, big man,” I add sardonically, tossing him one of the knives I’ve stolen; it lands right between his feet. “You’re on your own now.”

  Cyb and I take off, plunging into the clearing. Merope has both Jac and Silas in her truck, trailing behind Rion’s as it keeps sputtering forward, only to stop shortly after.

  The Muted are closing in.

  “They want that bigger Mute,” I observe curiously, lunging through the thick, tall-standing shrubs poking through the layer of snow carpeting the clearing.

  Cyb raises her rifle’s scope for a better look. “Rion’s getting out of his truck. It’s completely empty now.”

  “Where is he going?”

  “Oh . . .”

  “What?” I say, ducking into the shrubs, trying to stay out of sight from a swarm of the Muted still buzzing around us, shrieking and dodging in the shadows.

  They seem . . . riled up, distracted.

  “That Mute—the big one—it’s getting free,” Cyb relays in a deathly whisper, and sure enough I see the scene unfold through the scope of my rifle.

  Rion leaps out of the truck at the worst possible time.

  The smaller members of the Muted chase the big one while it’s going right after Rion. The larger Mute’s strides are three times as long as its smaller counterparts, gaining on Rion fast and effortlessly.

  I throw myself into a sprint.

  Cyb’s footsteps pound behind me. “You’re insane!” she says, voice breathy, as she runs. “We can’t stop that Mute with rifles and a few knives, Eos!”

  “Exactly,” I shout over my shoulder. “It’s a good thing we’ve got more than that.”

  “What’re—”

  “Follow my lead,” I yell, diving into the chaos—a torrential storm of snarling Mute faces and teeth. Distantly, I hear Merope and Cyb shouting—maybe even Jac and Silas.

  I don’t care. I’m right. I can solve this.

  Trust yourself, Eos.

  Rion’s completely surrounded. The Muted disinterested in the bigger one shrink their ranks around him, closing in like the tightening of a noose.