“Shocker right?” He crossed his arms protectively over his chest and smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “The smart kid is also gay. Who would have guessed?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly feeling guilty. “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t Liv,” Jake held his hands up. “It’s okay, really. Zander is just— he’s my Channing, you know?”
“Your what?” I laughed hesitantly.
“You know, Channing Tatum,” Jake flexed both arms. “He’s only the hottest man alive? Every girl and like half the guys if they were honest with themselves, dreams of him in a compromising position. I mean, did you see Magic Mike? Come on.”
“Guilty,” I said, and we both laughed. “But—”
“Okay, that’s beside the point. All I am saying is, we all dream about what we want and can’t have,” Jake said. “It’s how we survive while we wait for what we need.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, smiling down at Zander. I was almost as shocked by Jake’s admission as I was by the next thought that popped into my head.
Am I falling in love with this boy?
“You totally just pictured him naked, didn’t you?” Jake laughed, pulling me from my daze with a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“What? No,” I bit back, blushing hard as Jake laughed at me. “Shut up, I did not!”
Though he was not the most muscular one in our group, Jake may very well be the strongest. Not only was he the smallest kid in our school, but also he was brilliant, socially awkward…and gay. That was a lot for any one person to take on, especially in a small town mid-western high school run by bullies, religious zealots, and opportunistic popularity seekers.
“Liar,” Jake muttered under his breath, smirking at me as Riley wandered up out of the shadows. “You totally did.”
“What’s so funny?” she asked, looking back and forth from Jake to me.
“Oh, nothing,” Jake sputtered, snorting down a giggle. “Liv was just trying to deny that she was the one who stunk up the bathroom earlier.”
“Um, first of all, gross,” Riley said, scrunching up her face. “And second of all, Falisha is back.”
When it became clear that no one was going to save us, we sat down together and made a plan to save ourselves. There were lots of dangers to consider, not the least of which were the high temperatures outside. Falisha and I had experienced them earlier through the filter of a concrete building and had still barely lasted ten minutes. The air above ground had been next to impossible to breathe. Plus, there was a very distinct possibility that we were still dealing with toxic radiation levels. Unfortunately, this plan was still our best option and I knew my secret amendment to it would be the only chance Zander had.
Mrs. Proud’s property was only about two hundred and fifty yards or so away. I estimated I could get there in less than a minute and mentally ran through the plan in my head— the real plan. Jake and I were the only ones that knew about this version. Riley had barely agreed to let me do the cable run and she assumed I would be coming right back after attaching the wires. If she had any idea what I was really going to do, she would follow through on her earlier threat to murder me.
“Here you go, Sarge,” Falisha said dropping her harvest at my feet. She was still catching her breath, drinking down some water as she unwrapped the towel from her head.
“How was it up there?” asked Jake as he wound the blue cable into a coil around his arm.
“Not…bad,” she said between gasps, oblivious to the water dripping down her chin.
She ripped the towel from her head and threw it to the floor with a thwack, as she scraped a stray hair from her forehead. The cute hair-do Riley had created for Falisha had long since given way to a more functional ponytail. Her legs were still shaking, and her eyes were wild with adrenaline, but for the most part Falisha seemed unharmed.
“Okay,” she said, gasping after every few words. “I went fifteen minutes…this time it…it was definitely better.”
“Yeah, sounds like it,” Jake said, rolling his eyes as she downed the rest of her water.
“Okay, so it still sucks, like real bad,” she admitted, setting the cup down with the other empties. “I mean, it was still like walking through a damn oven, but it wasn’t as, I don’t know— crackly, I guess?”
She shrugged and Jake looked confused, but I knew exactly what she meant. The last time we went topside, the air had was thick with static electricity and felt unnaturally dry in our lungs. After living next to the Mississippi River my whole life, humidity was simply a given, even in the winter. Without the heaviness that moisture provided, the air felt foreign and disorienting. Icarus seemed to have sucked the life out of everything.
“Fifteen minutes,” Jake said, grinning as he cocked his head to the side. “Guess that explains the hair.”
“Hush,” Falisha said, rustling Jake’s hair again. “Say what you want about my hair, but it was worth it. Not only did I make it all the way to the shop, but I managed to snag a few goodies along the way.”
“Oh?” I smiled.
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie and wiggled it in the air like a dealer to a junkie, smirking at her own resourcefulness. “Hey, Tinkerbelle!”
“What?” Riley barked as she stepped into the dim light of a nearby phone.
“Thought maybe you could use this,” Falisha smirked, shaking the bag in Riley’s face.
“No way…is that?” Riley said, shoving her face into the mouth of the bag. “Oh my God, it is! It’s coffee!”
She launched herself at Falisha, tangled her in a brief and awkward hug and then sprinted off towards the water stash, squealing with delight.
“That was awesome of you,” I said, smiling after Riley.
“No biggie,” she said, brushing me off. “After I got what I needed from the shop, I still had a few more minutes, so I made a couple extra stops. You know how that is, right? Sometimes you gotta take a little detour to make things happen.”
“Right,” I said, avoiding the suspicious look she was giving me.
“I got to thinking, we might need some more specialized supplies,” Falisha said, shrugging. “Check it out.”
She looked down at the floor, and nudged at a black garbage bag that rested near her feet. Jake dove to the floor as if he would find the internet, itself, inside the plastic.
“Jesus, Falisha, this stuff is—I mean, how?” Jake was dumbfounded. He slowly pulled out each item in the bag and set them at our feet. “Three Instant ice packs…rubber tubing, scissors. Let’s see…gum, another roll of duct tape.”
“Nice,” I said, elbowing her.
“Okay, we got six protein bars here, no seven, and some beef jerky.” Jake dropped it in the pile of food and reached back into the bag. “Sweet baby Jesus, is that a Twinkie? Dibs!”
He kept sorting, shouting out the inventory until he the whole stash was laid out on the floor. It was a pretty good haul, but the only thing on my mind at the moment, were those ice packs. My dad kept the same kind in our first aid kit. In order for them to get cold, you had to snap the block inside, shake up the liquid, and let the chemical reaction do its thing. The cold only lasted for about fifteen minutes, but that should be long enough to keep Zander’s fever in check until I came back.
If I came back.
The grating and unmistakable sound of metal scraping across concrete echoed through the weight room and everyone’s head turned at the noise. Curiosity brought Riley and Micah back over, as Jake reached in to pull out the last item in the bag.
An oxygen tank.
“No freaking way,” I said. I yanked the tank from Jake’s hands and hugged it to my chest like a soft teddy bear. “How the hell?”
“Okay, before you get all excited, I have no clue how full the tank is, but I figured it was worth a shot. The science classrooms were close to the shop and I remembered Mr. James using it last semester in A.P. Biochem,” Falisha shrugged. “It was pret
ty cool, actually. We did this whole series of experiments on oxygen’s effect on the turbidity of river water.”
“A.P. Biochem?” I asked, shocked.
“Turbidity?” Jake looked at her like she had grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead.
“What? You thought because I was a cheerleader, that I couldn’t possibly be smart?” She crossed her arms over her chest and kicked her hip out. “For your information, I got early acceptance to state my junior year, with a full academic ride.”
“Damn,” Jake said, clearly impressed.
“Damn right,” she smiled broadly, chin held high. “Who’s the idiot, now?”
When neither of us responded, she spun on her heel, her ponytail arcing wide over her shoulder. It swung back and forth across her shoulders as she strutted away into the darkness, clearly satisfied with having put us in our place.
“Well done, Soldier,” I chimed after her, shaking my head at her cheekiness.
“Soldier?” asked Jake, amusement in his tone.
“Inside joke,” I laughed, lowering the tank to the floor. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Chapter 18
Balance and Burns
After a tearful and argumentative goodbye, Riley finally agreed to stay below and keep an eye on Zander. I had tasked her with keeping Zander cool and hydrated in my stead. All she had to do was make sure the ice packs on his neck stayed in place and drizzle water into his mouth, but she seemed grateful to have a purpose. I knew that no matter what happened to me, Micah would be right there by her side and that helped me feel a little less guilty about what I was about to do.
Jake and Falisha were with me, all decked out in their wet towels and clothing. Each of them carried rolls of cables, cautiously uncoiling them as we headed to the main foyer. By Jake’s estimation, we had just enough cable to run from the balloon to the men’s locker room, so the laptop would have to be set up just inside the door to the showers, rather than the basement.
Of the three of us, I looked the most ridiculous by far. In addition to the dingy gym-towel turban on my head, I was sporting a pair of very pink yoga pants, which were hastily tucked into the tops of my combat boots. I had protested at length to wearing pants in the stifling heat, but Jake insisted. The thin fabric would breathe enough to keep my body cool while protecting my legs from the sun’s unfiltered rays, he said. For the most part, the wound on my scalp had not been bothering me much, but the dripping headdress was pressing into it. The soaked terry cloth felt like wet sandpaper scraping across my tender skin every time I moved.
The lime green long sleeved shirt I had scrounged from the stash was really not my color, but it was light and didn’t cling to me. Unfortunately, the two chem-lab aprons Falisha had confiscated for me to wear, did. The rubber one strapped across the front of my body was about an inch thick and hung down to about the middle of my shins. The weighted hem banged uncomfortably against my legs with every step and smelled like a dusty balloon. Still, it was better than dying of radiation poisoning. The second apron was made of aged leather and hung down my back like a cape.
Thanks to the twenty-pound weight that was strapped to my back, the cape would not be flowing dramatically on the breeze. With a few modifications and the last of our duct tape, Jake had rigged up the oxygen tank to fit into an old back pack. We didn’t have a mask to go with the tank, but with a plastic cup, some rubber tubing, and a whole lot of duct tape, we managed to rig one up that fit easily over my mouth and nose. It looked horrible and I would have to hold it in place, but it worked.
Being one-handed hardly mattered if it meant I could breathe.
“Ready, Sarge?” Falisha asked, clapping me on my shoulder.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, taking a deep breath as we stepped out through the locker room exit.
I paused just outside the locker room, rubbing at my eyes as I allowed a moment for them to adjust to the drastic change in light. The late day sun shone through balloon’s parachute and cast the foyer in a vibrant orange glow.
“Be careful, Liv,” Jake said, grabbing my arm as I stepped forward.
“I will,” I said.
“I mean it, Liv,” he said, squeezing tighter. “We are counting on you to come back in one piece. We need you. Zander needs you.”
“I got it,” I said, nodding to him.
“Tic-toc,” Jake said starting the stopwatch on the cell phone as he slipped it into the front pocket of the apron; a reminder I was on borrowed time.
“On three?” I turned to Falisha.
My heart was beating frantically, echoing so loudly in my own head I barely heard my own voice. Adrenaline rushed into my veins as Jake reached over and turned on the oxygen tank. He draped the coil of remaining wire over my arm, and said, “Mask up.”
“One…two…three,” Falisha shouted, throwing the door open wide.
I smashed my lids shut, and dove out into the sun before I could change my mind. The door slammed shut behind me before my feet had even hit the ground. Once I had my bearings, I stole a glance over my shoulder. My friends stood side by side in the frame of the glass door, watching me with wide eyes. They both looked as scared as I felt. Jake gave a tentative thumbs up, Falisha a stiff nod. I waved them off, dropped the coil of wire to the ground, and turned to face the task at hand.
The air sizzled around me, making my skin tingle and the hairs on my arm stand on end. It was ungodly hot outside, but nowhere near as bad as it had been on that rooftop the previous night. Still, if I somehow managed to get myself stuck out here….
Stop thinking about it and move!
I focused on the ground in front of me and shuffled my way across to where the concrete sidewalk met the edge of the parking lot. It was only about fifteen feet, but the extra weight on my back made it feel like I had traveled a mile by the time I reached the front of Zander’s bike. Unfortunately, it had sunken further into the blacktop and one handle bar was fully submerged in the goo.
A small stick about the size of a pencil lay a few feet away on the sidewalk. I tucked the end of the blue cable into the leather ties of the apron, grabbed the twig, and tentatively touched it to the surface of the parking lot. It sunk into the tar with just the slightest amount of pressure.
Damn it.
The CPU sat there taunting me, a cubic island amid the sea of black. According to Jake, that hunk of metal was our ticket to the Promised Land. While that was good enough for me, I had no clue how the hell was I going to get to it without getting swallowed up by the tar. I tossed the stick down in frustration and watched as the black slime swallowed it up.
“Damn it,” I yelled, and it felt good to say it out loud this time.
The CPU was so close. The jellyfish bobbed languidly in place, daring me to risk it, but I knew better. There was nothing about this situation was not dangerous. I craned my neck around the balloon, at the fires raging down the block. Bright orange flames licked freely at the sky, as they digested an entire block of homes— homes that may have people trapped somewhere inside them. The ground past the parking lot, now covered with a thin layer of gray ash and debris, was as dry and cracked as it had been out front. The contrast from the previous day was absolutely surreal.
There were no longer tiny chutes of pale green grass struggling up towards the spring sky. No leaves fluttered on the breeze, no birds rested in their branches. No dogs barked at squirrels as they ran across the power lines, tittering at each other. The only thing more unrelenting than the stifling heat was the eerie silence. My heavy breaths in my makeshift mask and the crackling sound of burning wood were to be the only soundtrack to my misadventure.
At the end of the burning block sat a small green car. It was wedged up to its windshield through the front a white house. Tire tracks sliced trenches through the soil as if the car had driven straight into the building without slowing down. I squinted, but the sun was just too bright for me to get a clear view. I was unsure if there was anyone inside that car because the w
indows were completely black. I hoped it was just a shadow, but the ache in my chest told me it wasn’t. Despite my frantic scan, there were no signs of life.
Tic-toc, I reminded myself.
I closed my eyes to the horrors around me, slowed my breathing and redirected my thoughts. I needed to focus on what was directly in front of me, on what I could control. I had to get to that CPU. Baking in my skin, I ran through my memories in search of anything that might help. Despite my current costume, I was clearly no super hero and I sure as hell could not fly, so I would need another way to get across this lake of goo to the stupid balloon.
Across the lake…Duh, I needed a bridge.
I spun on my heel, momentarily excited by my problem solving skills. The extra weight of my pack and the tug of the blue cord threw me off balance and I nearly toppled over into the tar. Thankfully, Falisha and Jake were no longer standing in the door, so they hadn’t seen my near miss. Hopefully, they had retreated to the basement to catch their breath and assure Riley I had not yet been a victim of spontaneous human combustion.
I had ten minutes before Jake and the others would be back at that door, ready to drag me in. Ten minutes before Falisha (who swore on her grandmother’s soul) would come after me without protective gear, if I hadn’t returned. Ten minutes to save Zander’s life, or watch it slip away.
No pressure.
A pile of boards lay along the wall by the skywalk. I ran as fast as I could to the innocuous pile of lumber, dragging my weight across the dry ground. The heat was making everything more difficult, and the tank banged against my tailbone with each step. It took two trips, seeing as I only had one hand, to drag the boards over to the sidewalk in front of Zander’s bike. I hunched over, grabbed one of the boards, and slid it across the ground. I pressed my foot onto the end, anchoring it to the sidewalk so I could spin the board around.
“Sorry about this, Zander,” I said.
With an audible groan, I wrestled the other end of the board onto the body of his fallen motorcycle, scraping away a long strip of the sleek black paint in the process. I tapped the two-by-four with my foot a couple times, pressing it until it was wedged firmly behind between the seat and the gas tank. When I was fairly confident the board wouldn’t slide out from under me, I scooped the other one under my arm, careful to balance it at the center. I breathed deep from my mask, ignoring the new string of splinters on my arm as I stepped up onto the beam.
Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1) Page 16