No Shelter Trilogy (Omnibus, Books 1-3)
Page 24
“To the warehouse!” Troy shouts from behind Daedric.
I turn around and race toward the food warehouse. The back door is still holding up, but more gunfire forces us flat against the walls of the corridor. A painful shriek cuts through the gunfire and rattles my bones. I look back in time to see Jessie collapse.
The gunfire stops and we rush to the warehouse just before the back door flies open. Troy, Daedric, and Jose slam the warehouse door and work together to push a large pallet of rice in front of the door to block it off.
The screams that follow are a mixture of terror and rage as Vic issues orders and some refuse to comply.
“Come with me,” I tell Eve, and I take her to the ladder Troy showed me yesterday. “You’ll get a better shot from up there.”
Eve climbs a few rungs up the ladder before she turns around. “Come with me.”
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m better off down here.”
Shots blast through the warehouse door and we stand back as the bags of rice on the pallet explode showering the warehouse with rice like a sinister wedding. The lock on the door is blown and someone tries to break down the door. The pallet is still too heavy to budge. They shoot the door again and more rice blasts across the floor of the warehouse. They attempt to bust the door in again, but it still doesn’t budge.
Then silence.
The silence lasts far too long.
“We have to let them in,” I say. “We can’t hide or they’re going to kill everyone out there.”
Adrenaline floods my veins as they push aside the pallet of rice. Eve stands poised with her arrow pointed at the door as we take cover behind towers of food.
The door swings open and I hold my breath as I peek at the doorway from behind a pallet stacked with crates of tomato sauce. I glance at Daedric who stands behind a pallet of canned beans. He looks at me and my heart bursts at the first sound of gunfire.
“Come out, come out wherever you are!” Mary’s voice shouts.
It seems Mina was right about at least one of our friends.
“Oh, come on, Nada!” she yells. “Let’s play. I promise I’ll play fair.”
Before I can stop him, Daedric bursts out from his hiding place with Mary’s machete drawn. I race out behind him in time to see the shot from Mary’s gun spin him like a top. Daedric collapses onto the concrete floor, but he’s writhing in pain. Mary snatches her machete out of his hand and plunges it into his chest.
Move, Nada. Don’t just stand there. Do something.
I pounce on her back and wrap my hands around her neck. She throws me off and I roll across the concrete floor. She charges at me as Vic enters the warehouse.
Mary raises her machete over her head as she prepares to end me. I roll out of the way and her machete hits the concrete with a sharp twang.
An arrow fires across the warehouse and barely misses Vic’s arm—the same arm that is now missing a hand courtesy of Mary’s knife skills.
Before Mary can regain her footing, I jump on her back and another gunshot rings out, but not in time to stop the arrow that hits Vic in the chest. I dig my fingers into Mary’s eyes and she screams as she attempts to reach behind to slash me.
A loud crash behind me draws my attention. Eve’s body is twisted on the concrete floor of the warehouse bleeding from a gunshot wound in her neck.
Mary throws me off her back again and Troy struggle with her for the machete. Jose darts behind her and plunges a kitchen knife into her lower back. She wrests her machete from Troy’s grip and flings it at me as I dart toward the warehouse door. The machete nicks the back of my arm, but I keep running. I burst into the corridor and collide with someone.
My heart stops when I see Isaac’s face.
“Hurry up!” he shouts, as he pushes me toward the back door. “We have to get out of here!”
CHAPTER 20
The parking lot is covered with fresh snow that glows in the predawn moonlight, but I plunge forward as if the snow doesn’t exist. The sound of Isaac’s breathing behind me propels me into the darkness and I don’t stop running—not even when we reach the woods.
I keep running because if I stop I’ll die.
“Nada, stop!” Isaac calls out.
I slow my pace for him to catch up, but I don’t stop.
He quickly catches up with me. “I told you to stop!” he yells, and I turn my head toward him as he plunges the jade knife into my back.
I fall face-first into the snow. The searing pain in my back is not nearly as excruciating as the ache in my chest. I can’t turn around to face Isaac. It hurts too much.
When love turns sour, we always question whether the bitter ending was our fault. As I lay here dying, I have no more questions about whose fault it was that Isaac and I never worked out. It was one hundred percent my fault for trusting him. As I lay here dying, I have but one question left.
“Why… now?” I whisper before a pocket of blood gushes from my mouth onto the snow.
Each breath comes more shallow than the last as my vision blurs with tears. My face is buried in the snow, but I don’t have the strength to lift my head.
I can’t breathe.
I grip the snow—a life preserver melting and slipping from my grasp. I’m sinking. The sound of snow crunching beneath Isaac’s boots fades to nothing.
Nothing.
EPILOGUE
The sound of the wind whirring through the gaps between the trees calms me. I sigh as I lay back on the frozen soil. I have visited this piece of earth every day for the past five years.
There is no trace of the sun through the dark clouds, but the snow won’t arrive for hours. As I stare at the mushrooming sky, her words form like storm clouds in my mind.
“No matter what happens, Elysia, you have to stay here.”
For five years, I’ve kept my promise to Nada.
For five years, I’ve watched Troy and Mina rebuild this community in the wake of the attack that stole my brother, my best friend, and the closest thing I had to a mother after the storm. They have managed to make our community even more peaceful and they continue to welcome strangers into our hoard. They haven’t given up.
For five years, I’ve dwelled on the lessons of the time I spent in the Salton Sea and the months I spent travelling across hundreds of miles of forgotten landscape.
For five years, I’ve kept my identity a secret, too afraid that I may once again become a prisoner and the cycle will repeat itself.
For five years, I’ve been a prisoner of my fears.
Today, I tell everyone who I really am. Today, the fear ends. Today, I let Nada go and trust that everything will be all right.
Because if Nada taught me anything it was that trusting someone might be a fatal mistake. It may also be the only way to truly live.
Books by T.S. Welti
No Shelter Trilogy (Post-Apocalyptic Love Story)
No Shelter (#1)
Left Behind (#2)
Buried Alive (#3)
No Shelter Trilogy Omnibus Edition (#1-3)
No Shelter Trilogy Prequel coming soon!
Carrier Spirits (Paranormal Romance)
Parallel Spirits (#1)
Darklandia (Dystopian)
Coming October 22, 2012!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T.S. Welti was born and raised in Southern California and has lived in three countries, three states, and a zillion different cities. T.S. writes mostly science fiction, fantasy, and romance for readers ages thirteen and up. In her spare time she loves traveling; misquoting mov
ies; consuming mounds of books and chocolate; obsessing over music and lyrics; and pretending to be a celebrity chef. She is incredibly humbled that she gets to do what she loves every day.
You can find out more about T.S. Welti and her books at http://tswelti.com.
NO SHELTER TRILOGY
Box Set Omnibus Edition
by T.S. Welti
http://tswelti.com
Copyright © 2012 by T.S. Welti
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
ISBN-13: 978-1478151357
ISBN-10: 1478151358
Table of Contents
NO SHELTER: Book One
LEFT BEHIND: Book Two
BURIED ALIVE: Book Three
Other books by T.S. Welti
About the Author
Copyright