Jack reached out to Maggie. “Here, let me carry that for you.”
Maggie’s lips formed a small smile.
Dean couldn’t keep his face from screwing up as he mumbled, “What a gent.”
“Dean!” Maggie scolded. It was the loudest she’d raised her voice since he arrived.
His gaze darted up to meet hers. He lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted apology.
“It’s fine, Mags,” Jack said. “I am a gentleman. Maybe he can learn a thing or two from me.” He pursed his lips and cracked his neck again, then announced, “We’re heading north, away from the city.”
“The highways out of town are jammed. All the stations are covering it,” Dean said.
“I’m aware. We’re going to have to take the smaller roads through the east side of town.” Jack dropped their bags by the door and began rifling through the kitchen. “I wish you’d gotten the groceries taken care of,” he mumbled to Maggie. “We hardly have anything to take with us. We’re going to need food.”
“And water,” Dean added.
Jack growled. “What is it with you two today? Your parents did a bang-up job teaching you how to show some respect. And I don’t know what Maggie here would do without me.”
Dean stood gaping at Jack, mildly shocked as Jack threw a few non-perishables into a duffel bag and placed it by the door along with two jugs of water. Then he went back into the kitchen and reached up to grab something from the top shelf of the cabinet. He set a box on the counter and opened it. He was putting in bullets and chambering one before Dean had even processed that he’d pulled a gun out.
A shiver ran down Dean’s spine as he watched the ease with which Jack handled his weapon. Dean wondered for a moment what he’d gotten himself into before he realized…it was probably smart to have. People out there would do insane, awful things in times of crisis and the protection would be nice.
“Would you like me to carry something?” Dean offered when he realized he was still gaping. Jack had already moved to the door and began gathering up the bags.
“Sure,” Jack said, tossing a bag his way a little too hard. Dean wasn’t terribly small or scrawny or anything, but he wasn’t all that tough and he knew it. Computers did little for muscle development. He dropped it at first, but caught it by the handle on the way down. Jack made a face and shook his head, as if Dean wasn’t already properly emasculated.
Thanks, Dean thought, trying to keep from rolling his eyes.
“Let’s go,” Jack said. He’d stuffed the gun into a concealed holster inside his jeans. The whole way to the car, Dean couldn’t stop stealing glances at the area that he knew it rested, even though it didn’t protrude or anything.
After they piled into the Honda, Jack pulled up a navigation program on his phone, checking for traffic warnings. He soon began driving, taking the back way out of the complex onto a smaller street. Instead of heading for the highways like the rest of the traffic seemed to be doing, he navigated toward downtown.
Dean checked his phone again, scanning the news pages. More of the same. He caught Jack’s gaze in the rearview mirror. He was caressing Maggie’s hand in the air between them. Her head leaned back against the headrest and Dean imagined her eyes were closed, judging by her posture. Why was she not freaking out? Dean was.
Dean leaned toward his window in his seat behind Maggie, peering out into the neighborhood as they passed through. In his peripheral vision, he noticed Maggie’s right hand was gripping the side of her seat so hard her knuckles were white. He glanced again to her left hand, joined casually with Jack’s. Intrigued even further by the disparity in Maggie’s left and right halves, he soaked in Jack. Perfectly calm. Eyes alert, scanning the road, the people in the neighborhood, the upcoming stop sign.
To Dean’s right, a commotion caught his attention. A woman stood at the front door of a house holding the screen door open while two men on a tiny front lawn threw punches at each other. Soon the bigger one tackled the smaller, landing firmly on top of him. The woman in the doorway was screaming. When the big man had punched the one on bottom enough times that his victim had stopped moving, the woman closed the door, and the assailant charged toward it, slamming his body into it. Dean gasped when the man burst through the door, and at that same moment he thought he heard a whimper from Maggie.
So she was watching. And she was freaking out like Dean, but for some reason, she didn’t want Jack to know it.
Dean suddenly realized they’d been at this stop sign for much longer than necessary. When he looked up, he realized why. More people had begun fighting and they’d moved into the street, too many of them to count. The roads were blocked in two out of the three possible directions.
Maggie was shaking.
Jack began to turn left and Maggie gripped his wrist. “If it’s this bad here, it’s going to be even worse in that neighborhood.”
Jack pulled out his handgun and slipped it between his legs for easy access. Then he finished turning left.
Someone spotted them and made a break for the street, blocking Jack’s path. Soon more followed. Jack had no choice but to bring the old Honda to a stop.
Dean moved his hands to the lock on his door and flipped it, then subtly locked Maggie’s as well. His hands were trembling. People were shouting. Maggie was wheezing. Jack was…revving the engine, Dean realized a beat too late. A gasp escaped his lips as Jack shifted into gear and plowed through the mob that had gathered around their car, some of them striking the vehicle with baseball bats and sticks.
A loud bang drew Dean’s eyes behind him to a fresh bullet hole in the rear windshield. This was insane. What had he gotten himself into?
Dean put his hand on Maggie’s shoulder.
“She’s fine,” Jack said. “Right, Mags?” Chin tilted down, he looked up at her through his lashes and flashed her a charming smile that would assure a terminal cancer patient she was going to live forever. She smiled back, straining to steady her breathing. Dean’s chest tightened as he watched his sister. He wished she would look him in the eye so he’d know she really was okay and not just take Jack’s word for it like his parents always did.
As they approached a main road that was home to a high school and a ton of apartment complexes, traffic got a whole lot thicker and eventually came to a stop. All four lanes, plus the turning lane, were filled with cars heading in the same direction. This couldn’t have been Jack’s plan, but Dean wasn’t about to say anything.
When Jack threw the car into park and got out, Dean did too. Even on tiptoes it was hard to tell what the commotion ahead of them was. Dean stepped onto the doorframe to get higher.
“They’re yanking people out of their cars.” His voice came out sounding more curious than what he really felt: terrified. Another throng of people wielding makeshift weapons—baseball bats, crowbars, fireplace tools—attacked drivers and took off with their cars. And the mob was moving toward them.
“They’re stealing cars!” Dean shouted when he realized the true danger. “Attacking the drivers!”
Just as he said the words, he saw too clearly a man pull an elderly woman from a Buick and push her so hard toward the sidewalk that her head struck cement…and she stayed down.
Jack was back in the car shouting at Dean to close the door. “Right now!” he demanded. “In or out.”
Dean got in. Jack threw the car in reverse but slammed on the brakes soon after. Dean looked behind them. They were already trapped. Blocked in by other cars.
“Oh no,” Maggie whispered.
“What are we going to do now?” Dean asked.
“Grab the bags. We’ll go on foot,” Jack said without a moment’s hesitation. Dean found himself obeying before he could give it any thought.
“Why are they taking cars?” Dean asked.
“This part of town relies heavily on public transportation. They don’t have cars to get to those big, safe government buildings.” Jack’s voice was so calm. Dean would have envied Jack’s composure if
it weren’t so unnerving. “This way.”
The three of them began to move toward the high school. Dean wanted to know the plan. He wanted desperately to check his phone. He also kind of wanted to call his dad and beg him to come find them. But he knew that wasn’t an option.
Jack led the trio into a courtyard behind the school’s main building. Sidewalks jutted out in three different directions from where they stood, surrounded by tall, deep-red brick buildings. Dean wondered if they were really all that safe here. It was technically pretty out in the open.
Jack pulled a tablet device out of his backpack and Dean snuck a glance—Jack was looking at the navigation program again. When he noticed Dean peeking, he tilted it away so Dean couldn’t see.
“Just sending word to where we’re going,” Jack said. “Making sure they’ll be ready for us.”
Dean debated whether to call him on his lie, but Jack was the one with the plan and the gun. Dean could tell that Jack didn’t want Dean to know his original plan wasn’t working out. Who cared that Jack had to reevaluate and figure out a new route? Why did it matter so much to Jack to hide it? They were surviving a national crisis, for Pete’s sake.
Dean wondered just what in the world they were actually surviving.
“All set,” Jack announced as he clicked the lock screen button on his device. Dean assumed he’d found a route he was good with, not that he’d actually contacted anyone, but who knew. He wasn’t going to call the man’s bluff.
“Hey!” a harsh voice called from the edge of the courtyard. A twenty-something-year-old man held out a hockey stick toward Jack. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he said. All of a sudden, he charged toward Jack so fast that he was actually able to catch Jack off guard, knocking him to the ground, sending the tablet tumbling from his grip. “Give me the keys, douchebag!”
“Do something!” Maggie screamed at Dean.
Do something? What in the world was he supposed to do? He stood there frozen, just staring at the brawl. When the fight had escalated to where it looked like the guy was no longer just trying to get Jack’s keys, but actually throwing punches, Dean sprang into motion.
“Stop!” he shouted. He grabbed the discarded hockey stick, adrenaline fueling him past any nausea attempting to set up camp in his belly. At first, he gave the man’s shoulder a nudge, as if he could just knock him off Jack.
Up closer now, Dean could tell that when Jack had fallen, his right hand had been pinned beneath his body, and he tried desperately to get it free.
“Do something!” Maggie shouted again.
“Hit him,” Jack growled, his eyes fierce, scary.
Dean looked at the stick in his hands and down at the attacker’s head while the man delivered another two punches, one to Jack’s face and the other to his ribs. Could he do this?
He never got the chance. A gunshot rang out, so loud Dean’s body jolted. Something wet hit his face. Then he felt something hard hit his shoulder. He blinked, still stunned, eyes not really focused.
“Coward,” Jack growled, yanking the hockey stick from Dean.
Dean looked down at his trembling hands, then further down…where the body lay. Dean wiped his face with both hands and pulled them away covered in red. His breathing escalated as he realized what had happened. He used his sleeve in a panic to wipe the blood from his skin. He could taste it. He pulled up his hoodie and used his undershirt to wipe his mouth.
“Let’s go,” Jack said. No sign at all that he’d just killed a person. Self-defense, sure, but he ought to react in some way.
Maggie touched Dean’s shoulder and ushered him after Jack toward the woods on the edge of the campus farthest from the street.
Jack glanced at his phone a few times along the way. They kept moving for over an hour before stopping to rest. Dean took the opportunity to check his phone, but knew he needed to use his remaining battery life wisely. He was already down to 28%. His breath caught when he saw CNN’s latest headline.
“The president is on the air,” he mumbled.
“Right now?” Maggie asked. Jack seemed uninterested. It wasn’t lost on Dean that Maggie was slowly becoming more and more vocal than when he’d first arrived at her apartment.
“Yeah.” Dean followed the link to the live broadcast. His signal was a little shoddy but he got it to play.
The president’s stress-deepened voice came over smoothly despite the pixelated video. “We can’t explain this phenomenon. All we know is people worldwide are being killed in vast numbers. For now, our technology can keep the American people safe, but only if you come to us. Go to any of the government buildings listed on the screen and we will keep you safe. As your president, I urge you, let us all band together now. Stay safe. God bless.”
The president walked off the stage as CNN cut to their live news anchor. “We are just receiving word on another mass suicide. Do we…” She pressed her fingers to her ear, listening. “We have footage,” she announced.
The screen flipped over to a live helicopter feed of a skyscraper in a city Dean didn’t recognize. The caption across the bottom read: Beijing, China. Hundreds of people stood on the rooftop, all crammed in tightly together. They moved mechanically in multiple directions, lining up into rows as they reached the roof’s edge. Then all together, one row at a time, the people leapt off and plummeted toward the ground. It was the middle of the night in China, so the camera didn’t show what happened to the people who fell, but Dean could pretty much guess.
Dean and Maggie gasped, her fingertips drifting toward her gaping mouth and hovering against her top lip. Neither could break their gaze from the tiny screen.
The station cut back to their news anchor. “We just want to reiterate the president’s instructions. The government buildings listed on our site have means of protection against this…threat.” She shook her head. “We don’t yet know what is causing these mass suicides, but we get the feeling the US government knows, and we strongly urge you to heed their warnings and make your way to safety. We will be going off-air momentarily to do just that. Be safe out there, friends. This is Lisa Stevens, signing off.”
The feed ended and routed Dean back to a landing page.
“Maybe…”
“Let’s get moving.” Jack took a gulp of bottled water and screwed the lid back on. Dean realized his throat was parched, but didn’t want to ask for any of Jack’s water.
“Jack, we don’t even know what this is,” Dean began. “We could—”
“That video is the exact reason we should avoid cities and the government. Those are mass suicides.” Jack didn’t wait for them to follow this time when he started walking away. “Let’s move, Maggie. Now.”
Dean wondered if he should have left Maggie and gone home. He couldn’t believe he was siding with the masses on this one, but the truth was, he was terrified. Even government protection sounded better than being out here with Jack. Dean didn’t understand how Jack had been in Maggie’s life for so long without Dean or his family seeing this side of him.
The trio hiked for half the day. They were now passing through the edge of another city. From what Dean could tell, the streets were a cluster of abandoned cars. He assumed people had ditched them to go into the government buildings. He could do the same. But getting away from Jack didn’t change the fact that Dean’s dad had told him to avoid the cities.
Like it or not, Dean was stuck on this path regardless of where it would lead. And he honestly didn’t want to leave Maggie behind.
He had just turned his back on the city to follow Jack and Maggie when he heard someone begin to scream, probably not more than two blocks away. The three of them turned, Dean and Maggie’s eyes alight with concern.
Jack gripped Maggie’s elbow and shook his head. She looked to Dean.
“Someone’s hurt,” Dean said, already turning toward the sound. That scream had definitely belonged to a child.
“A lot of people are hurt,” Jack snapped. “I am not going after tha
t person, and we all know the two of you can’t do anything to help. You can’t even help yourselves. You’d both be dead by now if not for me.”
Dean’s jaw was hanging slack, and something clicked. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. You’re just making this up as you go. You could get us killed just as easily as anybody else.” He really hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but he did. And then Jack’s fist was flying through the air right at him; almost as if in slow motion. It connected with Dean’s chin like a ton of bricks.
Dean’s hand flew to his face, gingerly rested it over his chin. Maggie’s face was blank, completely blank, as she stared wide-eyed at Dean. She blinked. Dean backed away. He glanced back and forth between Jack and Maggie.
Then he turned his back on them and ran. Toward the screaming child. He heard Maggie’s voice but couldn’t make it out. Didn’t care. He heard feet falling behind him, following him. Didn’t stop. And then he did—when he turned the corner and found the source of the screaming. A small boy was strung up by his wrists in the middle of the street, hanging from the mechanical arm of some kind of construction vehicle.
“Help!” the boy called when he saw Dean.
Dean surveyed the situation, not sure how to get the boy down. He couldn’t reach him from the street. He didn’t think he could reach him even if he climbed the vehicle. He glanced around, looking for anything to use and spotted a trashcan. The metal screeched against the pavement as he dragged it over. He climbed atop it and reached for the boy’s bound wrists.
“Dean!” Maggie shouted from behind him.
His gaze darted over his shoulder, and he saw her standing at the corner with her hand against the brick wall of a little shop. A second later, Jack caught up, and his face was completely unglued. All composure gone, all façade forgotten. His skin was red, his neck splotchy, his chest heaving. He grabbed Maggie by the throat and slammed her into the wall. He pulled back his hand, threatening her with it as he shouted, “You ungrateful little slut! You do not walk away from me. Ever!” He slammed his fist into her cheek.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 16