by Kyla Stone
Horror clawed Gabriel’s throat. But he couldn’t help him even if he wanted to. To wade into that writhing mass of infected teeth and claws was a death wish.
Four fat black rats raised themselves on their haunches, snouts twitching. As one, their heads swiveled toward him.
Gabriel fled for the exit, the boy’s anguished wails echoing in his ears.
He took cover behind the wall to the right of the glass doors, the pulse gun clutched close to his chest. On the other side of the doors, Celeste and Horne cowered behind a potted plant.
“Why are you still here?” Gabriel hissed. The air was blurry, his eyes stinging so badly he could hardly see. He rubbed his face with the back of his arm. “Get the hell out of here!”
Celeste silently pointed outside, her pallor ashen.
He peered around the corner, sweeping the parking lot. It was difficult to make out anything through the sheets of freezing rain. The sky was black, the moon and stars hidden behind thick clouds. There were no other ambient lights, the city dark but for a few sputtering fires in the distance.
He took in the scene in an instant: a black van in the parking lot a few dozen yards away, three hostiles, their respiratory masks removed. Two stood apart; the third was engaged in combat with Jericho.
Alvarado, the Latino with the cowboy hat and the gold rings, was closest to Gabriel’s position. His back turned to the mall, his pulse gun aimed at the grappling bodies, but he wasn’t shooting. He was watching the fight. The female Pyro with the red mohawk stood ten feet past Alvarado on his right. She simply watched, her semi-automatic aimed at the pavement.
Jericho tangled with Sykes in close, hand-to-hand combat. Jericho had managed to saw the Pyro’s automatic rifle in two pieces with his pulse rod—which now lay a dozen feet from him, the length of it crackling and spitting with bluish lightning.
Gabriel could shoot through the glass and take out Alvarado, but that would release the rats. He and Jericho wouldn’t survive another battle fighting two enemies at once. And Celeste and Horne needed a clear path of escape. The rats had to stay inside.
He’d have to gamble that he could slip through the door and disarm the first Pyro undetected, that the hard rain pounding the pavement and the howling wind would hide his movements. Then Celeste and Horne could make a run for it.
He smashed one last scrambling, squealing rat with the butt of his rifle. He risked a glance back at the boy. He was no longer moving.
Micah and Amelia should have already made it out. He would hunt down every damned Pyro in this entire ruined city if something happened to them. But he couldn’t think about that yet. These two were his responsibility now. “I’ll take care of them out there. But you can’t lose it. You’ve got to be ready to run.”
Horne was a trembling, sniveling mess. Celeste stared at him, her cheeks streaked with soot and tears, but her eyes were clear. “I’m ready.”
The furniture store was engulfed in flames, everything blazing, burning, sparks flying, the smoke a dark, writhing cloud. A terrible roar filled his ears, the sounds of wood popping, things splintering, the building heaving, caving in on itself.
His lungs burned. He coughed, choking, his lungs seeking oxygen that suddenly wouldn’t come. But the fire wasn’t the greatest threat.
Dread filling him, Gabriel lowered his gaze to the sea of bristling fur, tails, and teeth flowing down the hall toward him.
Time was up.
13
Willow
“Pick her up!” Willow cried. “Hurry!”
“We can’t!” Micah knelt over Amelia in the center of the mall’s atrium. “We have to wait for the seizure to pass.”
“Oh, hell!” She whirled and took in the blazing inferno that was now Fieldwell’s furniture store. Sparks flew from the flames licking the wide archway. Thick coils of smoke billowed into the atrium.
The atrium boasted dozens of potted plants, tufted benches, and lush carpet. The fire was big enough, hot enough, that practically anything would burn. The fire would chew its way toward them in only a matter of minutes.
If the fire didn’t get them, the smoke would. Willow’s lungs burned. Her breath rasped in her aching throat. Her head hurt and her limbs felt sluggish and slow.
And then there were the rats. A few dozen of them scurried in crazed, haphazard circles, squealing in terror.
Willow paced, as panicked as the rats. At least Finn had Benjie. He would keep her brother safe. But what if he had an asthma attack? She fingered the inhaler in her pocket, cursing herself. She should have thrown it to Finn, should have done something else, something better.
But there was nothing to do about it now. She had to worry about her own survival. It wasn’t looking good. She didn’t even have a gun, only her hunting knife. She pulled it out of its sheath at her side. “How long?”
“I don’t know!” Micah gently turned Amelia on her side. Her whole body had gone taut. She shook uncontrollably, her eyes rolling in their sockets.
Willow rubbed her stinging, leaking eyes. She crouched low to the ground, forcing herself to breathe the hot air. She’d never seen a seizure before. “Is she—is she okay?”
“I don’t know.” Micah’s expression was tense, filled with barely repressed panic.
Amelia was unnaturally stiff, her face blue-tinged, rigid and mask-like. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth.
Willow’s heart constricted. The girl looked like she was dying.
Micah gripped Amelia’s hand and bent over her, his mouth moving in a silent prayer. He squeezed her fingers and spoke so softly it was hard to make out. “I’m right here,” he whispered over and over. “You’re not alone.”
Willow looked away. Even surrounded by fire and killer rats and chaos, it was an intimate moment, one she wasn’t a part of.
A rat scurried at her. She kicked it away. Another one crept stealthily from behind a potted plant, whiskers twitching, beady eyes gleaming. Three more scrabbled down the escalator.
She coughed loudly and cleared her throat. “Uh, Micah? It’s time to go.”
“I think it’s over,” he rasped. He gathered Amelia’s unconscious body in his arms and cradled her like a baby. “My gun is in my side holster, beneath my jacket.”
“Oh, hallelujah.” She grabbed it and unlatched the safety. “Let’s go!”
Two more rats slithered closer, sniffing only a few yards from her feet. There were several dozen on the escalator now. They were still skittish of the fire, but seemed to think they were safe for the moment. If she had more bullets in her gun, she would blast them into oblivion.
Instead she went left, crouching, her body bent almost double to escape the smoke, following the main corridor. They ran past a bath shop, a makeup counter, a personalized home robot store, a SmartFlex repair place. They needed a store large enough to have its own separate exit; otherwise, they risked hemming themselves in. The store entrances were all too wide, with only the metal grate doors as a barricade, which the rats would easily squeeze through.
The more distance they placed between themselves and the raging fire, the easier it was to breathe. Willow heaved great gasps of sweet, sweet oxygen.
Unfortunately, the stupid rats could breathe, too. One of them nipped at her heels. She kicked it, but there were a half-dozen more right behind it. For such small, ugly creatures, they were incredibly fast. “We need a freakin’ door!”
“There!” Micah pointed three shops ahead and to the left—a narrow hallway with an ‘emergency exit’ sign above it.
She ran for the exit, making sure to stay just behind Micah. He wasn’t as fast with Amelia in his arms. She had the weapons. It was her job to keep them all safe.
They careened into the hallway. Heavy with shadows, it was hard to see, but she could just make out a metal door with a narrow, rectangular window at the far end.
Micah stumbled but righted himself, his glasses half-sliding off his face.
“I’ll cover you!” She whirled and shot,
taking out a massive rat about to leap at Amelia’s dangling feet. She took out two more skittering for Micah’s legs.
Another huge, hunched rodent climbed on a bench, ran along it, and sprang at Willow. She hissed as sharp claws dug into her right thigh. She slammed the butt of the gun against the creature’s bulging back.
The rat fell off. She sprinted the last dozen yards to the door, which Micah held open. “Go, go, go!”
She hurled herself through the door, spun, and slammed it shut—right on a squealing rat’s head. She shuddered at the sickening crunch of its tiny, splintering skull.
For a minute, the only sounds were her ragged panting and the roar of her heartbeat in her ears. Slowly, other sounds came to her. The wind, still shrieking around the corners of the buildings. The freezing rain, hard little pellets splatting her face and pounding the sidewalk. Micah, whispering a prayer of gratitude.
Her throat felt scorched. Her eyes and chest burned. Her legs were weak and trembling. Her stomach wrenched with anxiety for Benjie and Finn. But she stood there, her eyes closed, in the frigid cold, and simply took it all in.
They were beautifully, gloriously alive.
“You did good,” Micah croaked. His glasses were a fogged, dripping mess.
She grinned at him. “Can you even see me right now?”
He shrugged. “It would be worse if I took them off. I’d walk into closed doors.”
“I’d like to see that sometime. Not today, though. I guess I’ll lead then.”
“Great. It’ll be like the blind leading the blind.”
“Hardy har har. Keep working on your poetry skills, ‘cause your comedy isn’t exactly cutting it.”
He glanced down at Amelia, his face growing serious, concern etching the skin around his eyes. “She’s still out.”
She watched him for a moment, the way he cradled Amelia so carefully, like she was something fragile and precious. She hadn’t missed the way he’d looked at her during the seizure either, like he felt every excruciating second of her suffering, as if he were dying right along with her.
Micah was falling in love with Amelia. She was too numb to feel envious or irritated or even pleased. She’d figure out what it all meant later. “She’s been through too much to quit now,” she said simply. “We all have.”
They left the parking lot and made their way down a street lined with naked oak and maple trees, their branches white and bare, gleaming like bones. Shadows thickened all around them as they maneuvered between the hulking shapes of cars, vans, and transports looming out of the darkness.
As they walked, the freezing rain turned to snow.
14
Gabriel
The rats poured down the hallway toward Gabriel. Adrenaline shot through him. “Follow me out!”
He spun, pried open the doors, and shoved his way through. Celeste and Horne were right behind him, trembling and terrified but moving fast. He slammed the doors closed. Several dozen bristling, hunch-backed rodents smashed against the glass.
He sucked a single cold, oxygen-infused breath into his starving lungs and launched himself at Alvarado. There was no cover in the wide-open parking lot. The nearest vehicle was the van twenty yards away. The only cover he was going to get was human.
The man started to turn, sensing movement, but Gabriel reached him first. He slammed the butt of the gun against the man’s skull, hard enough to stun him, not hard enough to knock him out. With one hand, he jammed his knife against the man’s throat, with his other, he pointed his gun at Mohawk.
“Drop your gun and kick it away,” Gabriel croaked. His throat was seared. He needed air. He couldn’t gulp in enough oxygen.
Alvarado obeyed. His voice was laced with hatred. “You’re dead, you hear me? You just don’t know it yet.”
“Not today.” Gabriel had to bend his knees and partially squat to keep his head from becoming a target, keeping as much of Alvarado’s short, meaty body between himself and the female Pyro’s bullets as he could.
The woman with the mohawk swore. She dropped into a crouch and aimed her rifle at him.
“Run!” Gabriel shouted hoarsely. Horne and Celeste edged out from the mall’s entrance into the freezing rain. Mohawk’s gun swiveled toward them.
“I’m the one who’s going to shoot you!” Gabriel unloaded a blast at Mohawk’s feet. Chunks of asphalt sprayed her legs. She leapt back, her weapon swinging back to him.
“Come on!” Celeste yelled. Horne froze like a deer in the headlights. She shoved Horne, almost knocking him over, but it got him moving. Celeste and Horne sprinted into the darkness. Safe, at least for the moment.
Gabriel turned his attention to the task at hand. He clenched his jaw. He should kill Mohawk. She had no cover, nowhere to hide.
An image flashed through his mind, sudden and uninvited. Simeon instructing him in an old, graffiti-scarred gym, teaching him how to kill ruthlessly and efficiently. Training him to become a mindless, unthinking soldier, able to kill enemy combatants and innocent collateral alike.
This woman wasn’t innocent. She was the enemy. She’d nearly burned them alive. Still, he hesitated.
He thought of Micah. He thought of Nadira. He remembered the square of blue cloth in his pocket, remembered the dirt beneath his nails from burying the girl who’d given her life for his. He’d sworn to seek redemption, to earn her sacrifice.
Was more blood on his hands the way to do it?
“Drop the weapon!” he shouted. He offered her the same deal he’d given to the boy. “Leave now and we’ll let you go, unharmed.”
“Do what he says, damn it!” Alvarado gasped.
The Pyro shifted, and Gabriel dug the knife deeper into his throat, drawing blood. The blade was slick in his hands. He adjusted his grip, blinking water out of his eyes. “Put the gun down, and we can all walk away.”
“Don’t!” Alvarado cried.
Gabriel caught the shift in her eyes, the twitch of her finger. She fired a short, controlled burst. The bullets ripped into Alvarado’s thick body, tearing through flesh, muscles, organs, shattering bones. Gabriel felt the juddering vibration in his own body.
Alvarado began to slump, his arms and legs useless.
Time seemed to slow. Gabriel felt the throbbing of his own heart. The icy numbness of the rain and the cold. The searing burn in his lungs and throat. The roar of his blood in his ears.
Kill or be killed. Sometimes it was that simple. He pulled the trigger.
A streak of red, crackling energy struck the woman in the chest. Bulletproof vests did nothing to stop the firepower of a plasma pulse.
Her eyes widened in shock. Her rifle clattered to the wet pavement. She clutched at her chest. “You—you—”
But she had nothing more to say, not then or ever. She toppled to the ground, twitched, and lay still. The gaping wound in her chest sizzled in the freezing rain.
Gabriel rubbed the wetness from his face with a trembling hand. His body was ice. His blood was fire. He’d given her a chance. He couldn’t feel an ounce of guilt for doing what he had to do to survive and keep his people alive.
He turned to Jericho and Sykes. They were locked in battle, wrestling furiously for Alvarado’s dropped pulse gun. Gabriel leveled his own gun, looking for his opening, but it was too risky. He was just as likely to hit Jericho as the Pyro.
Sykes struck a flurry of blows against Jericho. They exchanged feints and dodges and attacks. Sykes was clearly skilled. But so was Jericho. He just needed an opening.
You could just run. He could leave Jericho to his fate and flee, saving his own skin. No one would ever know. Jericho was the one who’d captured him and locked him in handcuffs. The one who swore to turn him in to the Sanctuary to be executed for his crimes.
Without Jericho, Gabriel would be free.
Slowly, Gabriel lowered the gun. His free hand curled into a fist. He stood there for a long, torturous minute, doing battle in his own mind. He owed Jericho nothing. He had everything to gain�
��his freedom, his life. All he had to do was walk away.
Nadira’s scrap of cloth burned in his pocket. There were people he answered to now. One was already dead, but that didn’t matter. His life was not his own. It was not his to destroy. It was not his to live as he pleased.
He knew what he needed to do, what he had to do.
The shadows grappled in the dark and the rain. Jericho’s shadow was darker than Sykes’. It was the only way he could tell their shifting, blurred shapes apart.
Sykes punched his fist beneath Jericho’s ribs, right at the kidneys. Jericho grunted, doubling over. For a moment, their shadows separated.
Gabriel aimed his gun. He adjusted his target and pulled the trigger. A coughing fit seized him. The plasma blast went wide.
But Sykes reacted, ducking and flinging himself to the side.
Jericho took his chance and threw an open palm strike to Sykes’s forehead, bouncing his head back and exposing his neck. Quick as lightning, Jericho’s left hand darted in and struck the man in his throat.
Sykes staggered, clutching his neck and gagging, eyes bulging.
“Jericho!” Gabriel grabbed the pulse rod and tossed it.
Jericho seized it with one hand and spun back for his adversary. He swung it at the Pyro, who managed to dodge, but just barely. The pulse rod caught his billowing coat, slicing a two-foot rent in the fabric.
Gabriel darted in, gun up, ready to pull the trigger, but Sykes whirled and landed a kick to his ribs. Pain exploded in his side. He recovered, spinning to attack, but Sykes was already on him.
Sykes threw back his arm and aimed a vicious punch at Gabriel’s face. He couldn’t avoid it. He had a fraction of a second to lower his head. The blow landed on his forehead, the hardest bone in the body.
Gabriel staggered back, stunned, his vision blurring as stars exploded behind his eyes. But the move worked.
Sykes cursed, clutching his bruised, possibly broken right hand to his chest. His gaze flitted from Jericho to Gabriel. They flanked him, Gabriel with the pulse gun aimed at Sykes’ head, Jericho’s pulse rod humming at his side as they closed in on either side.