I don’t scream out. I can’t do anything. I am frozen to the ground. I fear lifting my head above the barrier because I have just seen how well the enemy can shoot.
Lester dares to lift his head up. He ducks down quickly as a bullet ricochets off the concrete inches from him. “They’re coming in closer.”
The caravan is moving now, revving the engines toward a back exit at the other end. We should have had Ryan and Josh cover the back, just in case, but this mission hasn’t worked out like we planned. I try to take another shot at the caravan, but it’s no good. Shadowface has escaped us again. Only this time, we’re going to die for it. I let out a curse. This was supposed to be the time we got him. This is when we were supposed to end this.
I keep low and fire toward the greyskins at our backs until the pursuit seems to lessen. Lester lifts his head to get one more good look at the exiting caravan. It is his last time, as a soldier’s bullet finds its mark and he drops to the ground with a hole in his head.
With the soldiers firing more rounds, the greyskins turn their attention to them, so I hold my M-4 close to me. I dare not lift my head to see the soldiers coming at us. In a matter of seconds, we have gone from six members to three. I feel something against my arm. When I look to my left, I see Ashley gripping it tightly. I’ve never seen such fear in her eyes. It disturbs me in a way that I’ve never felt before. I don’t really know how to react.
The soldiers stop shooting at us and the silence is more shocking than the onslaught of bullets. I hear them shouting orders—something about looking behind them. The firing starts as quickly as it had stopped. This time I pop my head up only to see that the soldiers have their backs to us, fighting off the greyskins that have begun to overwhelm them. I waste no time. With a single shot for each person, I take down soldier after soldier, capitalizing on the distraction. Shadowface might be long gone from our reach, but the three of us just might survive the day.
My father and Ashley continue to keep the greyskins at bay as I finish off the soldiers. A few of them realize that I’m taking them out and offer some opposition, but they are too late. By the time they realize that they are now the ones trapped, I’ve already killed them.
The silence comes again once I can’t see any more of the soldiers, but I keep my eye fixed down the sight of the gun, scanning the compound for any sign of movement. Then I see it. I’m about to pull the trigger on the four people that are coming out of the building below, but I hold off when I notice they aren’t wearing the black getup of Shadowface’s soldiers. I lift my finger from the trigger and pull my head away from the sight.
Led by a female, a group of people walks out into the open with their hands up in the air. They carry no weapons. I count them. There are four. One woman and three men.
I stand, my M-4 still pointed at them.
“What are you doing?” my father asks. Ashley says something too but I don’t pay attention to them.
“Who are you?” I shout to the small group moving toward us. “Stop walking.” A look of fear is spread across their faces. They don’t belong here.
“We’re from Elkhorn,” the bearded man says.
“What are you doing here?” I shout.
“Shadowface was holding two of my men,” the man says. “I was negotiating their release when you showed up. We don’t mean you any harm.”
“Elkhorn?” my father asks, now standing next to me. “We’re not taking them back.”
“You’re not making the decisions anymore,” I say, looking at him with as fierce a stare as I can give. My eyes then travel to the three dead bodies on the ground next to us. “Look what your decision-making has done for us today.”
He says nothing and turns to walk toward the truck. He lifts a pistol and shoots a lone greyskin through the head before getting into the passenger side.
Ashley now stands beside me and I take a deep breath. “What are your names?”
“I’m Stephen,” the bearded man says. He motions toward the woman. “This is Remi. These two are Jim and David. It looks like our vehicle was destroyed in the blast.”
I lower the gun and look all around me. I am sickened by the death of Lester, Josh, and Ryan. The group has been cut in half by a single, stupid decision. As far as I am concerned, I’m finished with them. Most of all, I’m finished with my father. If I want Shadowface to die, then it will be on my terms. But even then, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort anymore.
“We would like some shelter and food,” I say to them. “We will take you back to Elkhorn if you are willing to offer those things to us.”
“Of course,” Stephen says, his hands lowering.
“We should really hash out the details later,” Remi snaps. “Unless you want to deal with more greyskins.”
I motion for them to get into the back of the truck. As we walk toward it, I offer an introduction. “I’m Mitch, and this is Ashley. The man in the truck is my father. His name is Jeremiah.”
Chapter 3 - Waverly
It feels like the morning sun refuses to heat the outside. It has to be fifteen degrees cooler than last night, a testament to the storms that tore through the region. I press my palm against the window and it feels like ice. Part of me longs to travel north for the winter where the snow will fall heavily. In this area of the country, there will be no shortage of cold days, but instead of big snowflakes and slippery ice, there will only be miserable drops of water to soak us and chill us to the bone.
Rain doesn’t slow the greyskins down. Snow and ice can, but then there are other factors. Without electricity, there’s very little to keep you warm. Everything is a tradeoff. Maybe in the snow, a greyskin might be slower, but so are your joints. Sometimes a blade might stick to the sheath. A handgun might be harder to shoot because your fingers feel numb. Greyskins already feel numb, so they have the upper hand in that case.
I step away from the window and walk to the door on the other side of the room. I feel the doorknob and twist. This is probably my sixth time. I do it thinking that maybe at some point the door will just open for me and I will no longer be locked in here. Though, I’m not sure what I would do if the door did open. I would have nowhere to go. It’s not like I wish to leave. This is where Remi is.
My heart beats fast at the thought. For the past three years, I have been sure that I was the only one in my family left. I heard my father die over the phone. I saw my mother’s blood ooze beneath the crack of the door when the greyskins were on top of her. I can’t begin to guess how many times I tried to reach my sister on her cell phone without any luck. With Elkhorn being as far as it was from Oakridge, there was no chance of going there to find her. If she had survived, she would have fled the Epicenter as quickly as possible. If she died…well…
All these thoughts rush through my mind without having seen her yet. She might not even be my sister. I have only ever met another person in my life that went by Remi, and that was because her parents had named her Remember. She didn’t like her name, so she changed it. I always thought it was odd, but I liked it. It was different, which I thought the world needed.
But my Remi, was always just Remi. It wasn’t short for anything. I don’t know where my parents got the notion, but once the idea formed in their minds, they stuck with it. I wonder if they ever thought she would turn out to be a difficult daughter to deal with. To say that my parents and Remi didn’t get along is an understatement. She always accused them of living a life as though they didn’t have children. With all their parties and business trips that sent them to places like Venice and Paris for weeks at a time, I can see where she was coming from, but I always thought it was a bit unfair. My parents loved us, and took care of us. Sure, they hired Hattie to watch us when they were away, and yes, Hattie had become more than a nanny or housekeeper to me, but my parents made sure that they had someone trustworthy.
Something I know, that Remi won’t understand, is that my mom and dad’s last thoughts were of their children. My father called me to ma
ke sure I got into the basement with Hattie. My mother burst into the house, shouting my name when she knew something bad was happening.
I can feel the tears start to sting my eyes as I dwell on them. It’s hard to think about the people I’ve lost. My parents…Hattie…Lucas… But the hope within me that I might see Remi again is almost too much joy to bear. I just hope it isn’t someone else. Perhaps I’m just so hopeful that I’m deceiving myself.
When Gabe told me about Remi, I had started to shake. It was as if I was afraid, but it was something different—an overwhelming desire for good news, perhaps. Everything had been going badly for us. The moment we ran into Scarecrow and his raiders, everything went downhill. Lucas was killed…the greyskin attack on the school in Foley…my inability to save Gilbert. Hearing that my sister might be alive just seems too good to be true. I had Gabe describe everything about her—from her appearance, way down to how she talks.
“She’s beautiful,” he started. “Her green eyes are as vivid and bright as a field of grass. She has dark hair. Long. She usually keeps it in a ponytail. Her nose is—”
“Pointy?” I asked.
“Not in a bad way,” he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Looks a lot like yours actually. You two have very similar faces. But your eyes are blue, aren’t they?”
I nodded yes. “I take after my dad.”
He then described that she put on a tough front all the time. He didn’t know if she had always been that way, or if it was a characteristic she had gained since the outbreak, but she seemed to be a person that liked to take care of herself.
“No,” I said. “She’s always been that way. “She’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever known, though it has gotten her into trouble in the past.”
“That sure would be something if it is her,” Ethan said. He sat close to me in the back of the SUV. I looked at him and smiled hopefully. It was good that Ethan was with me. I’m not sure what I would have done over the past week without him. Though Gilbert had just made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, his temperament would have been unbearable for me if Ethan had not been around. Since Lucas died, Ethan has been by my side, ready to help me.
But thinking of him only makes me think about this weird new ability that I gained the same time we came across Scarecrow. For some reason or another, when I touch someone, I can see into his or her future. Only, so far I have been unable to control what or when I see. For Lucas, I saw only seconds into his future. For Gilbert, I had seen days ahead. For Scarecrow, I saw minutes. Only then had I been able to change what I saw, giving me the confidence to know what I needed to do for Ethan.
I had held his hand, but only for a second. A second was enough. I saw him walking through a street that I have never seen before, but these days they all look the same. He was holding a rifle and was alone. The sun was behind him and he had a look of determination on his face. Then, without warning, a loud gunshot blasted and a bullet passed through his chest. He fell to the ground and closed his eyes. I don’t know if he was dead or alive. The vision didn’t linger enough for me to see if he was breathing.
What disturbs me the most is that I never saw a shooter. I know I can change the future now if I see it beforehand, but this situation eludes me. How can I change it if I have nothing else to go on? I could try to never let Ethan out of my sight, but I know that won’t work. I can’t stay on him every hour of the day. Besides, there is no way to know when this will happen either. It could be tomorrow, next week, next month, or two years from now for all I know.
I haven’t told him about it. He and Gabe now know about my ability, but there has been little time to talk about it. We drove through the night and stopped to rest in the middle of Elkhorn. Each of us fell asleep in the car. Gabe leaned a little in the front seat, while Ethan sat up straight as I rested my head against the window. When I woke a few hours later, Ethan’s jacket was over me. He later told me that I was shivering in the middle of the night, but I don’t remember being too cold.
In the morning, Gabe spotted a lot of debris that looked like a barrier. When we drove up, we were met by guards with rifles pointed at us. My first thought was that we had come up on a group of raiders. I wasn’t prepared to deal with it, but it soon became apparent that these were just people like us. Their leader was away, but they eventually let us in, and I hoped they would let us stay for the night. The guards separated us, and now I’m in a room alone. I assume Ethan and Gabe are in a room like mine—mostly empty but for a cot and a window. The only security is a deadbolt on the other side of the door.
I told one of the guards that we were looking for someone named Remi. I was shocked when he said that she was here, but gone with their leader, Stephen. I asked what that meant, but they refused to tell us more. I’m okay with it. Remi will be back, I’m sure.
It’s weird to think that while I was in Crestwood, Remi had just left. Gabe told us that she was kicked out for stealing something important. That didn’t sound like Remi, but what do I know? I haven’t seen her in three years. He then went on to say that it wasn’t what it sounded like. She was trying to learn about someone that calls himself Shadowface—the same person that hired Scarecrow and his men.
Shadowface wants the canister.
I reach into my pocket and pull it out. It’s small and metal. It unscrews in the middle and inside is a glass vial of liquid that looks like blood. I was afraid the guards were going to take it away from me when they searched us at the gate, but they didn’t see it as a threat, nor did they ask what it was. Yet this little object was enough for Paxton to kick us out and let the raiders do what they wanted with us. It was enough for this Shadowface to track us down. I wish Gilbert would have never found it in the first place. At one point, it was meant to be kept as a bargaining chip against the raiders, but now it’s little more than a liability. Just because Scarecrow failed to get the canister, doesn’t mean Shadowface is going to stop looking for it.
The thought makes me shiver. I don’t like the sound of the name Shadowface. Someone that wants to keep his identity a secret and employ people like Scarecrow has to be dangerous. I would be happy to just give him the cylinder in exchange for a promise that I will never hear from him again. I just want to live in peace.
I almost laugh at the thought. No one lives in peace anymore. The closest thing I’ve seen to peaceful were the people at Crestwood, but I’m slowly getting the feeling that it wasn’t real. Paxton is in league with Shadowface and that’s bad enough. The people might be fine now, but with Shadowface lurking in…well…the shadows, there is no way things will remain peaceful for them. I see a future of war and violence with people like Shadowface running things.
But people seem to forget that the real enemy is the greyskin virus. Why can’t we be working to get rid of the greyskins instead?
Because there are bad people who want nothing more than to take advantage of good people.
The thought makes me angry. Despite what the world is like, greyskin virus or no, there will be and have always been people that prey on the innocent. All anyone else is trying to do is survive, but it isn’t enough for some. There are always those that crave more.
For the next couple of hours, I’m lost in my thoughts. I press my palm against the window again and it feels just as cold as it did earlier. When I look out onto the parking lot below, I can see people huddled together around little fires, talking about something. I wonder why they aren’t inside. Their clothes flap in the wind and they bunch up so tightly they look miserable.
I turn my head when I hear footsteps down the hallway coming toward my door. I’m not sure whoever it is will stop, but when they do, my heart leaps. The doorknob twists open and it is the same guard that brought me to the room earlier this morning.
When he opens the door, he looks at me awkwardly for a moment. “I uh…I was just ordered to come and get you,” he says. “You have a visitor.”
I feel numb, but not in a bad way. My stomach has butterfli
es like the feeling of jumping off a hundred-foot cliff into deep water. I don’t know why I feel nervous to see her. Maybe I’m just afraid of what I will see. Maybe I’m afraid that despite the accurate descriptions of her, this Remi isn’t actually my sister.
The guard leads me through the hallway and down a flight of stairs. We go through another corridor until we reach a door at the end.
“You can go ahead,” the guard says. “She’s in there.”
The lump in my throat won’t go away. What if it isn’t her? What if it is someone else that I don’t know? What would I say?
I reach for the door and open it slowly. The girl stands in front of me, her eyebrows twisted and her forehead crinkled as if she’s about to burst. She brings her hands to her mouth and water forms in her eyes instantly. Of course, I can barely see any of this through the tears in my own. Remi, my sister, stands in front of me.
We don’t speak. The only noise we hear are the quiet sobs that pass by our lips. Remi walks toward me with her arms wide open, ready to embrace me, but I am forced to take a step away from her. She gives me a strange look and kind of cocks her head to the side in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Remi, it’s so good to see you, but I can’t hug you right now…I…I can’t explain.”
I can’t tell her that it’s because I’m too scared to see her future. I can’t handle seeing another vision right now. It would ruin the moment. It would take me away from the feeling of happiness.
Remi lowers her arms and shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s really good to see you.
We sit together at a table, and at first, neither of us know where to begin. We talk about the crazy chances of our ending up here together, but the conversation inevitably comes to our parents. I tell her everything I saw on their last day.
The Starborn Ascension: Books 1, 2, and 3 (The Starborn Saga) Page 26