The Last Sanctuary Omnibus

by Kyla Stone

Something heavy plopped onto her shoulder.

  Something else landed on her head. A hairless, scaly tail brushed the side of her face. Faint and tickling, like a feather.

  Human speech failed her. Her scream died in her throat.

  She flailed at the creature clawing at her scalp. She jerked her head and flung the thing away.

  Dark, squirming shapes fell all around her. Rats dropped from a large grate in the ceiling, oozing out from the holes. More rats scurried along the pipes above their heads.

  Abruptly the entire tunnel was alive, writhing and squirming with thousands of bristling bodies.

  The rat clinging to her shoulder chittered angrily in her ear. She punched it off with the butt of her gun. But there were more. So many more.

  Li Jun was right. These vermin were smart. They’d pretended to flee, only to regroup and return through the ceiling, attacking from above. The cunning bastards.

  She cowered, attempting to cover her head and protect her face even as she thrashed wildly with the flamethrower, trying to knock the thing off. A wriggling rat tangled in her hair. She seized it and hurled it against the wall.

  She stepped on another rat, lost her balance, and fell to her hands and knees.

  A huge rat as large as a cat slammed onto Li Jun’s head. He stumbled, arms flailing. The grenade slipped from his fingers and rolled across the floor.

  Before he could regain his footing, rats swarmed him. A squirming knot tumbled from the ceiling and landed on his chest. They slithered over him in seconds, a mass of quivering bodies and gnashing yellow teeth. He beat at them, sending a pile skittering off his torso. But there were more, scrabbling at his feet, his ankles, digging their claws into his pant legs.

  Horrified panic coursed through her veins. Half of her screamed to run, get out, to survive, by any means necessary. The other half wouldn’t let her flee. She couldn’t just leave him behind. He wasn’t one of them. But he had still risked his life to save them all. Benjie would live because of him.

  Micah was right. There was more to surviving than staying alive. She decided who she was going to be. What she was going to stand for. Whether she was a hero or a coward. And she sure as hell wasn’t a coward.

  She hadn’t saved Zia. She hadn’t saved her mother. But she’d be damned if she left anyone else behind. She couldn’t abandon Li Jun to die.

  She forced herself to move. She scrambled to her feet and shot a blast of fire at the rats, aiming to either side of Li Jun. She couldn’t get too close or she’d burn him, too. She killed a hundred rats, two hundred, their death squeals echoing through the tunnel.

  A handful skittered away. They shied away from the blast, but they’d scented blood now. They were voracious, the virus boiling their tiny brains, forcing them to bite, bite, bite, even at their own peril.

  She backed away, searching desperately for any way that she could help Li Jun. A hot wave of fear and revulsion burned through her. There were too many of them. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t save him.

  Li Jun screamed. A rat clawed at his face and bit deep into his cheek. He shrieked in anguish as dozens of razor-sharp teeth sank into his hands, face, and neck.

  “Li Jun!” she cried. She stared, helpless, horrified, frozen in terror.

  Li Jun lifted his arm high into the air, his SmartFlex glinting. He intended to activate the grenade with his SmartFlex. But it had fallen on the ground nearby. There was no way to find it somewhere beneath the bristling sea of vermin. She only knew it was close. Much too close.

  Rats crawled over Li Jun, scratching, biting, gnawing. The entire squirming, writhing horde burst from the tunnel behind them. He moaned. “Run!”

  Heaven help her, but she ran. Ten steps, twenty, her heart in her throat.

  A flash of white-hot light blinded her.

  The blast knocked her off her feet and slammed her body against the concrete. Her forehead and nose struck the ground. Pain erupted in her skull, splintering through her brain, screaming through every nerve and cell in her body.

  The explosion shook the tunnel, raining gravel and chunks of concrete down on her head. Heat seared her exposed skin. Her ears rang. Blood filled her mouth.

  The world throbbed red, like a wound.

  She shook all over, gasping, struggling to breathe, to suck oxygen into her starving lungs. She scrambled to her hands and knees, waves of dizziness pulsing through her, nearly bowling her over.

  She blinked away the stinging tears streaming from her eyes, rubbing her face furiously, desperate to clear the blackness wavering in the corners of her vision.

  Her hand came back streaked with red.

  Her thoughts were scattered and broken. What just happened? Why was she on the ground? Why couldn’t she get up?

  The rats. Li Jun, fighting them off. The explosion. The rats. Oh, hell. Li Jun.

  She vomited sour, burning stomach acid. Her trembling legs wouldn’t hold her weight. They were liquid, weak as water. She tried to stand and collapsed. Abrasions scraped her hands and elbows. The knees of her pant legs were ripped and bloody. More blood dripped into her eyes.

  Her head was on fire. No, that was the pain. She touched her forehead gingerly, felt split skin. Was that bone? White and scarlet and black swirled across her vision. Her mind went dark, came back again.

  Li Jun.

  She managed to turn, craning her neck. Her head splintered with the pain of moving. Everything was hazy and disconnected.

  Fire consumed the tunnel behind her, flames licking the walls and ceiling. Orange shadows writhed over stone and concrete. Hundreds—thousands—of small, bulging shapes littered the ground. Some of them burning. Most of them charred and blackened. None of them moving. A giant rodent lay a few feet behind her, its head missing.

  The rats were dead.

  She blinked through burning tears. She glimpsed an arm. A twisted leg.

  A devastated moan vibrated deep in her throat. Li Jun had died for all of them. For her, too.

  She didn’t know how long she huddled there in shock, curled on the ground, her mind sinking into blackness, into red fire, into pain like an axe shattering glass, shattering her body, her brain, her everything.

  Maybe it was two minutes. Maybe it was two hours.

  A large hand seized her arm. The voice sounded far away, so very far. “Willow…you’re safe now…I’ve got you.”

  Someone lifted her like a baby and pressed her against a broad, warm chest. She recognized the smell, dense and woodsy and sweet; recognized the heft of the person who carried her, both softness and strength somehow combined in one.

  Her vision dimmed, the darkness coming for her at last, but she knew the face looming over her, knew it like her own: mischievous eyes, rich brown skin, that goofy, lopsided grin.

  Finn had come back for her.

  32

  Gabriel

  Gabriel slogged through the snow. The bitter cold stung his face and throat. He checked his rifle with fingers he could barely feel. But he was alive. Everyone was alive. That was all that mattered.

  Cleo’s plan had been dangerous but brilliant. Two hundred Pyros hunting them, but in all the wrong places. No sane person would double back and infiltrate the very headquarters they were attempting to flee. No sane person would intentionally descend into the death trap of the sewer system.

  By the time the drones alerted the Pyros to their plan, it was too late. They were gone before the hunting parties returned. Even if the Pyros figured out the sewer ploy, there were so many tunnels and escape routes, they were impossible to track.

  The plan had cost Li Jun his life, and almost Willow’s. But it had worked.

  The snow fell thick and heavy. The tracks they’d left would be covered again soon. But even if their footprints were discovered hours or days from now, they would be long gone.

  They reached the AirRail station two hours before dawn. Elevator pods took riders from the ground to the slim, enclosed platform three stories above them, but without
power, they wouldn’t budge.

  They climbed up the service ladder built into the steel support columns to get to the tracks. Up here, there were no rat hordes or dog packs, no aggressive infected whatever creatures to worry about. They could spot potential hostiles from this vantage point, but the height also exposed them. Luckily, the night would hide them through the most dangerous part of the journey.

  They turned off their lights and walked in darkness, their way guided by the murky glimmer of moonlight. The snow blew into their faces, a cold wind nipping at their necks and cheeks. The city below them blurred into dark shadows and pale white shapes.

  Gabriel trudged along the snow-covered magnetic steel tracks, taking point with Cleo, who wore the only pair of night vision goggles. Silas and Micah guarded their rear. Amelia helped Celeste hobble along and held Benjie’s hand to keep him from the edge.

  Finn strode resolutely behind Gabriel, blood seeping through his bandaged shoulder, his teeth gritted against the pain. He cradled Willow to his chest in his huge arms. She hadn’t regained consciousness since the tunnels.

  No one could dissuade Finn from carrying her, though both Micah and Gabriel tried. “You’re only hurting yourself. Let me do it,” Gabriel offered.

  “You don’t feel it now because of the stims,” Cleo warned, “but you’re causing further damage to your shoulder, tearing tissue, muscle, ligaments. Our doctor can only do so much without a real hospital. We don’t even have cell regeneration therapy.”

  Finn’s face was set in granite. “This is not up for debate. I’m doing this.”

  Their pleading was as futile as wind battering a mountain. He would not be moved.

  Finn may have been a pacifist, but he was huge and strong as a bear. Attempting force against him was a bad idea for all involved. “Leave him be,” Micah said finally.

  Finn carried Willow for long, dreary hours in the cold and wind. He uttered no complaints. He did not falter.

  They all trudged in silence, thinking their own thoughts, lost in their own private fear and grief and hope.

  Dawn finally came, the world gradually lightening to shades of charcoal and ash. Gabriel kept twisting around to take in the Atlanta skyline growing slowly distant, the skyscrapers jutting proud and unbroken, billowing smoke staining the fire-scarred sky.

  The further away they got, the safer they were.

  Northwest, the track hugged Interstate 75, toward the city of Marietta. Gradually, the tangled network of roads, highways, and overpasses thinned. The city gave way to dense residential areas; to suburbs, towns, and neighborhoods, the buildings and vehicles and streets blanketed in a shroud of pristine white.

  As the day passed, hunger burned in his belly. They hadn’t had anything to eat in thirty-six hours. Cleo had brought several water bottles to share, but it wasn’t enough.

  He was exhausted from the tremendous exertion of fighting for survival. Every muscle in his body ached. His bones ached. But he’d done his duty. He’d saved them. Jericho was gone, but he’d kept everyone else that mattered alive.

  It felt like they’d been walking for days. In the distance, a pack of feral dogs howled menacingly. He stiffened, then relaxed. They were safe from the dogs, at least. Humans, however, were another matter. He glimpsed a few dark shapes darting between buildings, but no one threatened them.

  Cleo had spoken little all day. Her eyes had gone wide and hard when Finn emerged from the dark tunnel with Willow limp in his arms, but without Li Jun.

  “He was a good Patriot,” she had said simply, her fierce expression closed and unreadable, then turned and marched off into the black subway tunnels ahead of them.

  “How many New Patriots are left?” Gabriel asked now.

  “Enough.”

  “Seriously.”

  She slanted her eyes at him. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  His jaw twitched. “What part of the last twenty-four hours wasn’t up to your standards?”

  She considered that for a moment. “What’s the New Patriot creed?”

  The words had the bitter, ashy taste of death on his tongue. He said them anyway. “For the honor of true patriots and the love of country.”

  She blew out a frozen breath.

  “Now do you trust me?”

  “Nope. Not even a little.” She flung her purple braids over her shoulder. “But I guess there’s no harm in telling you what you’ll find out anyway. We’ve gathered a community of over six hundred people.”

  Gabriel whistled.

  “But half of those are families—women and children, non-fighters. And most of them are survivors we’ve recruited over the last several months. Our rank of actual New Patriots is only ninety or so. Which is why we need you. ”

  A gust of freezing wind blasted them. He shivered. Heavy flurries of snow swirled down from the gunmetal sky. There was no visible sun behind the haze of thick clouds, but it had to be late afternoon by now. The shadows were deepening, the cold sharp and bracing.

  “How much longer?”

  Cleo wrapped her leather jacket tighter around herself. She pointed to a copse of barren trees around a raised platform in the distance. An American flag tied to a pole on the roof snapped in the wind. “Up there. Less than a quarter mile.”

  He cocked his brows. “That’s it?”

  She nodded.

  “Doesn’t look like much.”

  “That’s the point. Don’t worry. They received my message. They’re coming.”

  “So who’s in charge of this place?”

  She looked at him askance, sizing him up. “General Reaver.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  She smiled dryly. “General Reaver is the founder and leader of the New Patriots. Only the captains of the city-wide chapters knew the regional lieutenants, who knew the state colonels, et cetera. To protect the leadership and sanctity of the cause. Who was your captain?”

  Gabriel’s blood pressure rose. Instinctively, he curled his free hand into a fist. He never thought he’d have to deal with the New Patriots again. They were a blot on his past, the stuff of his nightmares, his deepest shame. Yet here he was, about to speak the name of the man who’d mentored him, who’d loved him and treated him like he was worth something, then betrayed him and everything he thought they stood for.

  And Gabriel had killed him for it. He swallowed. “Simeon Pagnini.”

  “The name sounds familiar. General Reaver would know it.”

  “Are you close with him?”

  She flashed that enigmatic smile again. “You mean her. General Reaver is my mother.”

  Before he could react, a sound came from somewhere above them. An electric engine whine and the heavy whirr of thumping rotors filled the air.

  “Look!” Benjie cried, pointing.

  Amelia and Celeste gasped.

  A military-grade Vortex hoverjet appeared over the tree line, zooming toward them through the thickly falling snow.

  He’d grown up seeing planes and drones and choppers and hovercrafts of all kinds in the sky every single day. But after months of wondering if the whole world had died, the oblong aircraft hovering above them was disconcerting and strangely alien, like it was too good to be true.

  Buffeting wind hit him like a slap. He bent against it, shielding his eyes with his hand.

  The Vortex hovered over them then lowered slowly to the ground, rotors blasting swirling air, blowing away the snow and spitting up clumps of dirt and rock beneath its churning blades.

  The Vortex settled on the ground about twenty yards ahead of them.

  “Let’s go, Miss Amelia!” Benjie cried, yanking on Amelia’s hand.

  “No running!” she admonished, though he was already pulling himself free of her grasp.

  Cleo turned to Gabriel, her arm outstretched, that sly smile twitching her lips. “Your chariot awaits you.”

  33

  Gabriel

  Three hours later, Gabriel sat at one end of a large, battered-metal table fac
ing the surviving leadership of the New Patriots. They sat at the far end of the table, well outside the ten-foot infection radius. Several armed guards were ranged around the room. A woman in a hazmat suit stood ready to decontaminate every inch of the place as soon as the meeting ended.

  Gabriel and his people were segregated in the isolation block due to quarantine, assigned their own barracks at the far east end of the compound. Everyone who came in contact with them remained several feet away and wore gloves and masks at all times. But they weren’t treated with fear, only caution.

  Gabriel’s eyes were bleary from lack of sleep. After this meeting, he would sleep for two days. But now, he remained alert as he faced the New Patriots.

  He shifted uncomfortably in the metal folding chair. There were five men and four women at the opposite end of the table, ranging from their mid-twenties to their mid-sixties, all armed and staring at Gabriel in open suspicion. Most of them wore gloves, but their masks were pulled down around their necks.

  They held tablets and wore SmartFlexes. Cleo had explained that a tower at the top of the mountain gave them a secure, enclosed network for communication and tech support within the compound.

  Cleo leaned against the far wall, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression impassive. A thick cigar was clenched between her teeth, a tendril of white smoke drifting toward the low ceiling.

  Micah sat tense and fidgeting on one side of him, Amelia equally tense but completely still on his other side. The New Patriots had wished to speak solely to Gabriel, but he’d insisted Micah and Amelia join him.

  “How are your friends settling in?” General Reaver asked, her voice deep and throaty as a smoker’s. She was a stern but attractive black woman in her late forties. She and Cleo shared few physical characteristics, but they had the same haughty jaunt to the chin and the same cold, cunning eyes. She was dressed in a tailored navy blue wool coat buttoned to the collar. Her gloved hands were folded neatly on the table.

  “Very well, thank you,” Amelia said politely.