I shivered as I imagined the town sinking in from the centre outwards, and we were trapped in the epicentre. After she removed the grate, Bonnie started messing with wires and I absently wondered who the hell this woman was. It was obvious she didn’t work for my father, but had done so in his eyes for some reason. Who the hell did she work for?
‘Ten minutes to detonation.’
‘Is it broken?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Bonnie replied through clenched teeth. ‘I was able to restart the count, but…’
But she couldn’t stop it.
Bonnie stopped and stood, dug her hand into her pocket, and retrieved a mobile phone. She dialled a number and pressed it to her ear, shouting over the noise.
‘I can’t stop it, sir!’ she waited for a reply. ‘Yes sir. Yes. I understand. Consider it done.’
Bonnie dropped the phone and crushed it under her foot. Then, she slowly turned, her eyes narrowed at me.
Well shit.
‘Sorry, Lucas,’ she said. ‘My orders were to keep you alive until you changed, that’s why it was easy to follow your father’s orders, his were the same. Only you have something my employer needs. It doesn’t matter to them if you live or die.’
Awesome.
Bonnie’s hand reached into her pocket again and brought out a plastic package. She stared into my eyes as she fiddled with it, assembling the empty syringe. I could see the determined look that glinted in her eyes, but I was fast, and when she pounced, I sidestepped and knocked her to the ground. I reached for my gun and aimed at her head as she got to her feet. She laughed.
‘Come on, Lucas,’ Bonnie chided. ‘Are you really going to shoot me? I’m not some monster, condemned to death anyway. I’m a regular old human.’
She was right. It was like with my father, I couldn’t shoot her. Before I could think of anything else, something metallic and heavy smacked the back of my head and I dropped my gun as I hit the floor. Someone had hit me with the metallic grate. I groaned in surprise and tried to face my attacker, but standing over me with my own gun was Grace, a maniacal look on her face.
‘Thought you’d never see me again, huh?’ she spat. ‘Well, I am here to fulfil my own destiny and I won’t have my revenge stolen by some traitor bitch!’
It happened fast, the gun was aimed on me and then it was raised and fired. I turned in time to see Bonnie slide to the floor, shock etched over her features as her eyes glazed over and she died. I used that time to lift my leg and smack the gun from Grace’s hand, sprang to my feet and grabbed the sword at my waist. I had tucked it through one of my belt holes and I held it against Grace’s neck.
She paled instantly, the complete opposite from Bonnie, but I knew I couldn’t kill her, any more than I could my father or Bonnie. She didn’t seem to realise that, but my brain worked a mile an hour and something she said filtered in.
‘You said traitor at Bonnie?’ I shouted.
‘Yes,’ Grace smiled finally. ‘Can you believe it? I infiltrated your little band of survivors for your Dad. I blocked your path and started that car alarm for him. I killed the doctor and caused as much trouble as he asked for and eve started to drug Paul. I did everything he asked me to, plus more, for your precious trials but still, still, he leaves me here to die with her.’
‘It was you?’ I gasped.
‘Oh don’t act so surprised,’ she spat.
‘Six minutes to detonation.’
I needed to move. If the bomb couldn’t be stopped, then I had to at least try and escape. I thought over my options and Grace. What about her? I stared into her wide eyes and saw a man with a kind smile, a man who loved his family and they were ripped from his life. A man that had lost it all and still tried to do what was best.
Grace had murdered Terry like he was nothing.
No, I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of killing her, but neither would I save her.
‘You keep calling everyone traitors and hellspawns,’ I ground my teeth in her face, ‘but really, you’re the traitor, bitch.’
I turned, dropped the blade and sprinted through one of the exits. I heard her scared and pleading voice echoing after me, and even though my heart squeezed, I left her there.
*
I searched, sweating and wide-eyed for an exit to the surface, a ladder running up. My mouth was dry and I swallowed. What if I was trapped?
‘Two minutes to detonation.’
Shit. Fuck, SHIT.
After all the trials and heartache I would be buried there, lost amidst the rubble of a town hidden in the mountains. Even with my abilities I couldn’t magic a way out for myself, and the walls of the tunnels felt like they had already begun to close in. I rounded another corner, right next to the rusted rungs that led up. I thanked whatever force smiled on me and grabbed the metal.
My surroundings lurched viciously and I was thrown backwards into the wall. If I had been normal, the impact would have broken my back, but as the alarm cut off, a sound like a rock fall took its place. The bomb had started. Everything moved and shook, the town coming apart at the seams.
I grabbed the ladder again, and with the world moving, tried to climb. It was difficult, each time my arms left the metal the movement threatened to pitch me back into the darkness below. I wondered whether even if I made it to the surface, could I outrun the town as it sank and crushed itself? Metal scraped against stone and the ladder shifted. It erupted from the wall and I stopped, trying to push it back with my weight.
It jumped again and I knew this was it, there was no way out for me. I could only hope the others made it to safety.
‘Anna, I’m sorry,’ I whispered.
As if in answer, the metal above that led out scraped away and a fiery halo took its place.
‘Get your ass up here now!’ Anna screamed.
I laughed and reached up, her hand grabbed mine and another set clasped on too. Chris and Anna heaved with all their might and lifted me onto an empty street, bar a running car. I gasped for air and Anna pulled me to my feet and wrapped her arms around me.
‘You fucking idiot!’ she sobbed. ‘You didn’t think you could just send me away did you!?’
I held her tight and Chris coughed.
‘Guys we have to go, like, now!’ he said.
I nodded and we ran for the car.
‘How did you know where I was?’ I asked as we climbed in and Chris gunned the acceleration.
‘Chris knew,’ Anna replied.
I looked at him confused and he shrugged.
‘That’s the closest entrance to the bomb, one of the only in fact, once the alarm chimed through the town, I guessed. You have some sort of hero complex, figured you’d try to stop it. It was a hit or miss,’ he explained.
‘You knew about the bomb?’ Anna rounded on him.
‘I didn’t actually think it would be used!’ Chris flustered.
We sped through the empty streets of Greystone as the ground trembled beneath the car. We had to avoid overturned chunks of vehicles and shredded bodies, but the living had left, and the town was leaving too. We reached the dirt road that led out of the surrounding mountains and drove toward freedom.
Shit.
I couldn’t help but sigh with relief. The ground didn’t stop moving, but we were clear, we were finally free from the town, from my father. I buried my head in my hands and couldn’t stop the onslaught of salty tears. Anna asked if I was alright, but I just grabbed her and placed my lips to hers.
The Beginning
A month after the town collapsed, I stepped from a shop, a scalding coffee in my hands. The air was cold and snow drifted from the sky, late, but finally there. We had headed over to the nearest city and booked a hotel room once we were free. Chris explained how reporting what had happened would be useless. The government hadn’t intervened in the first place, they would probably lock us up to keep us quiet.
I walked across the street and I felt surreal. The novelty of walking amongst people who smiled at you instead of lun
ged for your throat hadn’t worn off yet. Chris and Anna stood at the window of an electronics shop, staring at a dozen televisions playing the same news broadcast. I took Anna’s hand, sipped my coffee and listened to the voice, muffled behind the glass.
‘Still no confirmation on the events that happened in the mountain town of Greystone,’ the reporter said. She stood near the edge of a crater in the ground, helicopters circled the scene and men rappelled into the chasm. ‘No bodies have been recovered yet, but the tragic circumstances of the town have been linked to domestic terrorism, but from who, and what happened, there is no clue.’
‘No clue,’ Chris scoffed. ‘Not that they’d share it anyway, not without revealing their own fingerprints.’
I nodded and drank.
‘If we aren’t going to rat them out,’ Anna said. ‘What do we do?’
‘We stop my father,’ I answered as Chris remained silent. ‘We find your brother, my sister if she exists, and we stop him from doing something like this ever again. The government won’t, we can see that, so we have to. This is just the beginning.’
‘For all the people who died, for them,’ Anna sighed and I squeezed her hand.
Her free hand rested on her stomach, a small insignificant movement, but to me it wasn’t. I could hear her heart, her breaths. I could hear the smaller flutter of a second heartbeat inside her body.
I turned to face her wide-eyed, but before I could speak, a truck jumped the pavement and came crashing towards us.
Still have lots of questions? Check out the next entry:
Child of Recklessness (Out Now)
Fear of God (Trials of Strength Book 1) Page 15