CHAPTER 95
MEADOW
We walk in silence.
Zephyr staggers, but he won’t let me help him. My mother walks ahead of us, never looking back.
I decide that today, I will not take my life.
I will get my revenge on the Initiative. I will die killing every last one of them. If they run and hide, I will find them. If they beg for mercy, I will slit their throats.
I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Walking with Zephyr. I will get him out of here, safe, before I do anything else. We say nothing, following my mother. I do not know where we are going. I don’t think I even care.
They finally come at us from all sides.
An army of the mindless. The good soldiers of the Murder Complex. They fill the hallway like rushing water.
“Don’t look in their eyes, Meadow,” my mother says. “We’ll be okay if you don’t look in their eyes.”
I don’t want to obey her. But I do.
We press against the walls and I keep my head down.
I squeeze Zephyr’s hand, will him to hold himself together.
“I’m alright, Meadow. Keep going,” he says.
I pull my strength from somewhere deep within. I listen to my father.
“Silent strength, that’s what you were born with, Meadow.”
The hallway is blocked by a gate that has dropped down from the ceiling.
“What now?” I ask, and my mother shakes her head.
“That door,” she gasps, pointing to our left. “Open the door!”
It’s some kind of supply closet. I flip the light switch and a dim light fills the space. I grab a broom and shove it under the door, like a stopper. It will buy us some time, maybe.
Zephyr settles down on the floor, his head in his hands. I crouch near him and whisper, “We’ll be okay.” I am surprised how easy it is to lie.
But he knows. He has always known how this is how it would end.
I turn to my mother. “What now?” I ask. “Where are we?”
“It’s over, Meadow.”
I sink to the floor and let my head fall back against the door. “You don’t know that.”
She smiles. “Don’t I, dear? They’ll never stop until they have you. You’re special, Meadow. Very, very special. You have me to thank for that.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I wanted more,” she says.
She offers no apology. No acknowledgement that she loves me or wants what’s right for me. She closes her eyes.
Zephyr moans. “I can’t fight it twice in one day,” he whispers. “Not when you’re so close, Meadow.”
My mother slumps down beside me. “The creation takes the creator,” she says. “Marvelous. I always knew it would end this way.”
She watches Zephyr in silence. I watch her. I can almost imagine a trickle of sunlight spilling across her face, the gentle rock of the houseboat. I can almost taste the sea breeze, and I wonder how many years she has longed for it it as well. I wonder if she feels anything at all, or if her heart is too dead to have wants and desires.
Her head lifts. She tilts her chin upward. “Can you feel it?”
“Feel what?” I ask, but she is right. The air in the closet has grown cooler.
“Behind me,” Zephyr chokes out.
I pull him gently to the side, and clear off the shelf as fast as I can. Paint cans. Old rags. A tornado of dust.
And a breeze, like the taste of cool freedom on my lips. I shove aside a roll of wire and that is when I see a vent leading directly outside.
“Zephyr! Zephyr, give me your club!”
I swing hard into the metal grate. It puckers, so I do it again. Again and again and again, until the bolts pop loose and a small window to the outside is staring back at us.
Freedom.
The door splinters. They’re pounding on it.
My mother stumbles past me and drops to her hands and knees.
She turns, just before she crawls through. Our eyes meet.
“Zephyr, let’s go,” I say. I turn to him. When I look back, my mother is gone.
The pounding on the door grows louder.
“You first,” he says. He reaches his hand out to help me. Instead of taking it, I place my gun in his palm and close his fingertips around the cool metal.
“Meadow!”
I lean down and hold his face with shaking hands. “You’ll find my family, won’t you, Zephyr? You’ll find a way out, and you’ll go to them?
“Of course,” he says. “Now let’s go, Meadow, we need to go now!”
“I love you, Zephyr James.” I kiss him once. “Go on.”
He crawls through. It takes all my strength not to follow him.
As soon as his feet disappear, I fit the vent grate in place. I lever the club across it, then the shelf, and everything else heavy enough. I can hear Zephyr’s fists pounding the metal, hear him screaming my name.
I unsheathe my dagger and face the door. I imagine Peri running up to me on the beach. I imagine Koi, his focus and his love. I remember the one thing I have always known all along. I am not my mother’s daughter. I do not run from fear, but dive into it headfirst, the way my father taught me.
The door splinters. I close my eyes.
Count to three. Relax your mind. Now survive.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LINDSAY CUMMINGS lives in Texas with her family, including two dogs, one wolf cub, a draft horse named Dan the Man, and a silly little quarter horse named Clue. This is her first book.
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CREDITS
Cover art copyright © 2014 by Matt Roeser
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE MURDER COMPLEX. Copyright © 2014 by Lindsay Cummings. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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ISBN 978-0-06-222000-4 (trade ed.)
EPub Edition October 2013 ISBN 9780062220004
14 15 16 17 18 TK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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The Murder Complex Page 23