A girl must have lived here, Before.
I return to the front. “There’s no one there. Nothing inside really.”
“Go ahead and kill me,” she says, as loud as I’ve heard her speak yet. “I don’t care anymore.” She stares at us pathetically.
“Why would I kill you?” Brenna asks. “It was just, you know, a misunderstanding.”
The woman turns her empty gaze to at the sky.
“Everyone kills everything,” she whispers. I look at Brenna, whose face is carved into a deep frown.
“This your house?” Brenna asks.
The woman nods.
“Kids?”
“Not anymore.” She closes her eyes. “We used to be three, and now I’m one,” she says flatly.
We stare at her, unable to respond to her sadness.
“My husband was bitten, infected. He killed our girl. Ate her. Now I hide in the cellar to keep him from killing me when he wanders back.”
She sits up and wipes her face angrily. “Take as much water as you want. I don’t care. I’m surprised the creatures aren’t here already, with how much of a racket you all are making.”
“Go back to the cellar,” I say. “We’ll leave soon, and you’ll be safe from the Floraes.”
Brenna holds out the pink brush to the lady. “I guess this is yours.”
The woman looks at it. “Keep it.” She turns and walks into the shell of her house.
“Wait!” I call to her, but she hurries into the house and disappears, though I see her peeking through a burned-out window frame. I leave the woman as many protein bars as I can spare on her front steps. “These are for you . . . for the water,” I call out to her.
She pokes her head out of the door. “What’s wrong with them?” she asks suspiciously.
“Nothing . . . please. Take them,” I tell her.
She bends down and gathers them up in her arms. “Thank you,” she says hesitantly. “I forgot . . . you know. That people can be kind.” She backs away and ducks inside.
I stare after her for a while, sad, but Brenna calls to me and breaks my trance. We stay just long enough to fill up our water bottles. Then, after bleakly surveying the ruined landscape, we get on our bikes and slowly ride away.
I’m quiet for a long time. Brenna, seeming to sense my mood, doesn’t bother to talk until we’re a few miles away.
“She’s been out there a long time,” Brenna says. “It’s hard to remember, isn’t it? That Florae are people. We’re so glad when they die, but those are ex-humans that get blown away.”
I don’t say anything. Actually, it isn’t that hard for me to remember. Because my mother started it all. Because I was forced to kill a Florae that used to be a friend.
And this is what Jacks doesn’t understand. Or Rice. Or anyone, really. I don’t have the luxury of starting a life in Fort Black. Or New Hope. Or anywhere. We used to be three, that woman said. Families have been torn apart because of what my mother did. I owe it to them to try and stop the cycle—to stop whatever Dr. Reynolds is pulling now.
But first thing’s first. I have my own family to think about. And Brenna’s helping me get closer.
“Hey, there it is,” Brenna says, pointing to an old strip mall next to the abandoned highway. “That’s where the mechanic’s shop is. . . . Dwayne said there were plenty of gassed-up cars.”
We pedal faster toward the strip mall, containing the auto shop, an old frozen yogurt shop (judging from the remains on the plastic chairs and tables, clearly a site of a huge Florae attack), and a sporting goods store, thoroughly looted. My pulse speeds up as I see the parking lot filled with vehicles. We drop our bikes, running from car to car. Most have keys in the ignition, but the gas caps are all hanging open. The fuel has been siphoned. There are plenty of cars but no gas to get them going.
“Shit,” she says, slapping the open door shut. “They got to this one too.”
I kick the tire of the car nearest me.
“Sorry, Amy,” Brenna calls from the last car in her row, and the last one on the lot. “I didn’t think a Scrapper would have gotten all the gas already. I wonder how he carried it back? He was really on top of that shit.”
I manufacture a smile. “It’s okay. I appreciate your help. I guess I’ll just go on from here on my bike. Are you going to be able to—What are you doing?”
Brenna has pulled a knife and is running straight at me.
I blink, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing, but there’s no mistaking the look on her face. She’s trying to kill me.
No, not Brenna.
She can’t be working with Doc too. But they wanted me away from Jacks, and Brenna just coincidentally showed up to help. . . . Is she going to kill me out here, where no one will ever find me? Or was this just an elaborate trick to get my emitter? She always admired my synth-suit and asked what other gadgets I had.
Well, I won’t give it up without a fight.
I’ve been too slow to grab my own knife when Brenna is upon me. Except she flashes past, and I whirl just in time to see her tackle a man to the ground. I get it now—but there’s no time to feel guilty for thinking she’d betrayed me. She needs my help subduing the man on the ground.
Except she doesn’t. By the time I’ve tossed my pack aside, Brenna already has him in a chokehold and has pushed his head to the side with a bone-wrenching crunch. She releases him, and he slides to the ground, his head bent at an impossible angle. I swallow my horror and compose myself. I recognize him, despite his mangled appearance. Pete. Tank won’t be far away.
“We should go,” I say. “Now.”
“Why was he trying to kill you?” Brenna asks, unmoving.
“I don’t know—habit? He and Tank have had it in for me since I got here.” I frantically scan the auto yard. Tank could be hiding anywhere. I don’t have time to explain everything to her, and even if I did, it wouldn’t help her any. She still has to live in Fort Black. The more she knows, the less safe she’ll be there. “I didn’t think they’d follow me outside the walls.”
They’re guards, not Scrappers. How did they make it out here without the Floraes finding them? They must’ve followed us close enough to be protected by the emitter. I’d have seen them, though. Had they just gotten lucky, riding in the wake of the emitter?
I look down at Pete. “Tank must be here, too. He’s . . .”
“Right here, cupcake.”
I turn to find Tank standing ten feet away, a rifle leveled at me. His nose is swollen, his face purple. He looks like a monster, not a man.
“If you fire that gun,” I tell him, “the Floraes will find you and they’ll kill you.”
Tank harrumphs. “We’ve been trailing you since you left Fort Black and you two haven’t shut up once. I don’t see what all the fuss is about with the Floraes. If it’s this easy to avoid them, I could be a Scrapper. It ain’t that hard.”
It’s pointless to reason with him, so I try to pull my gun, but Tank doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. I’m on my back before I hear the crack of the gun echo through the air, pain exploding from my chest where the bullet hits my synth-suit, the wind knocked from my lungs.
I hear Brenna cry out, “No!” as Tank laughs.
“Drop it, girlie,” he says to Brenna. Her knife falls to the ground next to where I’d been standing. She takes a step back, but Tank yells for her to stop. “We ain’t in Fort Black anymore and this ain’t the Arena. I could kill you now and no one would ever know.”
I can tell he’s getting closer by the sound of his footsteps on the loose gravel of the parking lot. “You killed my buddy Pete, and I’m all tore up about it, so I need some cheering up. I was also looking forward to what I was going to do to cupcake there. I know you’d rather fight men than be with one, but we’ll see how much fight you have left after I’m through with ya.”
The pain in my chest is subsiding. My lungs scream for oxygen, but I make myself draw in a silent breath instead of gulping in air. I wish my g
un were still in my hand. I turn my head slightly, but I don’t see it on the ground. It must have flown off, out of sight, when I fell. But as soon as Tank’s familiar, foul smell hits my nose, I jump up, onto him, going for his rifle.
“What the . . . !” he screams. He’s shocked that I can move, that I’m not bleeding to death on the ground, so I do manage to get a hand on the gun, but he just covers both my hand and the rifle’s action with his enormous mitt and clamps me tight to him with his other arm.
“You ain’t dead?” he says, grunting. “Oh, cupcake, you’re gonna wish—”
A pair of arms wrapped around Tank’s neck cuts off his words, along with his oxygen. He needs at least one arm to fight Brenna off, and he’s not giving up the rifle, so he heaves me aside with his other arm and starts clubbing away wildly over his shoulder with it. He throws me too hard, though: Both the rifle and I are torn out of his grip, and I hit the dirt on my back again, this time accompanied by a horrible crack.
I sit up and see that Tank has stopped struggling, and Brenna has stepped away from him. Both are looking with shock at Tank’s left shoulder and the spreading bright-red bloom on his dirty white shirt. He places his hand over his heart and looks up at me, confused. I look at the rifle, still in my hand. The gun either fired accidentally when I dropped it, or I pulled the trigger without even realizing it. Tank stumbles to the side, almost falling. He gives me one last look of pure hatred before loping into the distance, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
I hop up, trembling. Suddenly the feel of the rifle in my hand is repulsive. I set it down on the ground then, spotting my own Guardian gun on the ground, grab it. I look at the place Tank disappeared to in the distance. I’ve never shot a person before. I’ve killed Floraes, though, but it’s just not the same.
“Are you okay?” Brenna asks.
I shake my head. “He’s going to die out there.”
“Good. He should die.”
I try to tell myself that he’s a murderer and deserves to die. But what does that make me?
“You’ve never killed anyone before, have you?” Brenna gives me a look that’s almost motherly. It’s so out of character, it jolts me from my trance.
“I did. A long time ago.” I don’t recognize my own voice, it’s so eerily calm. I lick my lips and try to recover. “When everything first happened and I was just trying to survive day to day. I was alone and then had finally met another survivor. But he was going to hurt me, so I rigged a car alarm and set it off. The Floraes got him.”
“Well, Tank was sure as shit going to hurt you too,” Brenna says, her moment of tender concern gone. “He thought he did kill you. . . . Hell, I thought he killed you. Why aren’t you dead?”
At the mention of me being shot, the pain floods back to my chest. I touch the hole in the sweatshirt I am wearing over my synth-suit and wince. Pete pounded my chest with a knife, but the bullet was ten times worse. I’ll have bruises upon bruises. I cough experimentally, sending a sharp pain through my chest. It stings when I move, but I don’t think there’s any internal damage. I may have lucked out again.
“It’s that ninja suit you wear, isn’t it?” Brenna asks. “Where can I get one of those? That might be even more useful than that Florae repellent sound thing you have.”
The emitter. I frantically scan the ground for my pack, spotting it a few feet from where I’d left it. Someone must have tripped over it during the scuffle. I spring over to it, my chest burning as I bend over to grab the emitter. I let out a groan.
The emitter is broken in two.
It takes a few seconds for the fear to hit me, but when it does I can’t move.
“That doesn’t look so good,” Brenna whispers, looking around. “You think it still works?”
I stare at the broken emitter, my legs heavy. I’ve relied on it so much these past few months. Now it’s gone. We’re sitting ducks.
I will my limbs to work and quickly sling the pack over my shoulder and, ignoring the pain that shoots through my ribs, spin in place with my gun. “We need to find shelter, now,” I hiss. Two loud gunshots had gone off. Maybe there weren’t any Floraes around to hear them. Maybe we’re still okay.
Yet out of the corner of my eye—a flash of green streaks across the parking lot.
The world seems to slow. And now I see it—a full Florae. It rises slowly over a car. Its eyes are milky and unseeing, but its ears —or earholes—are a hundred times sharper than our own. I know it’s heard us. And if one has, there will soon be many more.
Brenna and I look at each other. Our instinct, of course, is to run. But that would only make things worse. We’d go in different directions, and the Florae, with all its inhuman speed, would hunt us down in seconds. Our only hope is to stick together.
The two of us stand there, as if time has stopped. I wish I could sign to her, like I did so many times to Baby. I hold up a hand to try and convey we should be still. She shows me she understands with a small, stiff nod.
And then everything happens at once.
I raise my arm and shoot the creature with my silenced Guardian gun before it can figure out exactly where we are. It falls, but there’s no time for relief. Another appears to our left from another car, attracted by the minimal noise. I turn to Brenna and put my fingers to my lips. She again nods her understanding.
We can make our stand here; there are plenty of abandoned cars to hide behind. But I don’t know how many are coming, and they could attack us from any direction. It would be pointless to use the rifle, as the sound of the shots would just bring more. They are only a few now, and far enough away for us to find someplace to hide, someplace where we can be quiet and wait for Them to disperse.
I point behind us, to the shelter of the strip mall. We need someplace secure that we can hide.
Another creature appears a few hundred feet behind Brenna, listening. I take aim and silently mouth one word at her.
Run.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
We sprint past rows of cars toward the strip mall. I run silently, like I used to years ago, in New Hope, my mouth gaping. Brenna, on the other hand, makes a lot of noise, loping heavily along. She’s fast and strong but not light on her feet. Her loud shoes banging on the pavement will only bring more Floraes. I shoot three before we make it to the auto shop.
The door is already wrecked, the wood shattered by Florae claws. Whoever tried to hide in here before didn’t last long. The floor is covered in rust-colored bloodstains. Auto parts are scattered everywhere inside. A car is perched high up on a lift—a great place to hide, but I have no idea how to get us up there.
“Can you shoot?” I ask Brenna.
She gives me a hard look. “I am from Texas.” I hand her the gun, and she aims it at the open doorway. There’s about twenty bullets left in the clip, and I hope Brenna doesn’t waste them. A Florae appears and she gets off two shots before bringing it down. She grins. “See, no problem.”
I pull a knife and search the shop for a ladder or anything of use to fight the Floraes or help us hide. At the back is an office separated from the shop by a counter used to transact business with customers. Useless. I look wildly around for another advantage, and then it hits me.
Whoever used to own this place would want to lock up their money at night. There’s got to be a way to barricade this office. Then, looking up, I spot it—a metal gate that can be pulled down from above.
I hop up on the counter and slide into the office. The actual office door is solid, made of steel, not wood. The outside windows are high up, a Florae couldn’t get through those. Leaping back on the counter, I stretch for the handle at the bottom of the sliding door. I jump and miss it, landing with a blinding shockwave of pain in my chest.
Chest throbbing, I check on Brenna. She’s holding a shooter’s stance, gun trained
on the doorway. Two more Floraes lay dead on the threshold. She’s no taller than I am, but she’s more athletic. Maybe she can jump higher.
“Brenna, I need you here,” I whisper-yell, my voice echoing through the shop.
She backs toward me, gun still on the doorway, as I hop down from the counter. I take the gun from her and motion with my head at the gate. “Pull that down. It’s too high for me, but if we don’t get it, we’re dead.”
Brenna swings herself up onto the counter, eyes the handle, and leaps, grabbing it on her first try. The door comes crashing down, metal runners shrieking, but it jams to a stop halfway.
I run to help her, only to miss the trio of Floraes drawn by the screeching of the metal. I drop them each in turn with a headshot, but the closest one made it to within ten feet of us—and two more are jostling with each other in the doorway.
“Get that thing down,” I say, growling.
“I’m trying.” She slams it with the bottom of her fist in frustration, and it falls another few feet. I duck down to continue to shoot Floraes through the opening. It’s a bad angle, though, and one makes it all the way to us, slamming into the counter and wedging its head and neck between it and the bottom of the rolling gate. Its black-blue tongue flicks out of its mouth and it thrashes its head, razor-sharp teeth bared. It’s so close, it can almost taste us.
I shoot it and it slides back off the counter as another creature rams the gate. I pull the trigger but nothing happens.
I’m out of ammo.
There’s no time to retrieve another clip from my pack. I draw my knife and am just about to stab it in the eye when Brenna pushes the Florae away and jams the door down the last few inches. She closes the mechanism on the counter and locks it in place, grinning.
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