No, I’d never been around a real live bullet wound. I dealt in less physical crimes. But I’d seen a whole lot of crime movies, and I knew that there should be a lot of blood. Gunshots did a lot of damage and caused a lot of bleeding.
Then, I looked up at her face and almost threw up.
The bullet had entered right between her eyes, and a quick glance around her head told me that the back of her skull was actually gone. When I looked up, I realized that there was blood—all over the wall.
At that, I couldn’t help but retch for a minute in reaction. I hadn’t known her long. But she’d been here for me when no one else was, and she’d given me a sense of hope that no one else could have given me. She’d been my partner in crime during one of the most intense times of my life. She’d been brilliant.
And now, she was dead, that brilliant brain splattered all over the wall she’d been standing in front of. All because my insane uncle had decided to kidnap her and force her to come down here to be his captive scientist—who he then had absolutely refused to listen to.
My mind jerked on that thought, then skittered forward, and I started reaching some very quick conclusions. Simone was dead. My uncle had killed her. But I hadn’t killed him—I didn’t think—and the moment he regained consciousness, he was going to be after me, as well. Even worse, I was now without an ally, and would be fighting it out by myself down here, surrounded by loony men who seemed to think that hiding in this bunker was just as great as an all-inclusive vacation.
I had to get the hell out of here. It was even more important now than it had been before. And this was my one and only chance to get it done. Because I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I was going to be allowed to have any freedom whatsoever after what had happened tonight. And without someone to help me, I would never be able to escape them.
If my uncle woke up. If I hadn’t accidentally crushed his skull.
My gaze flew back to him and I stared at his chest. Still moving. He was still breathing, so that meant he was alive—if only for the moment. Beyond that… well, with luck, it wouldn’t be my problem.
I felt my heart break at the thought but put it quickly back together and silently shouted at myself to be strong. I had to get myself out of here. If I could do that, and things were still ticking along upstairs, maybe I could find someone to help me. Maybe bring them back here to pry my uncle and his friends out of this steel lair in the ground. That had to be my plan from here on out.
I got to my feet, bidding Simone a silent goodbye and my best wishes for her journey from here on out—and then my fervent thanks for being the friend I needed when I needed her—and dashed toward my uncle, dropping to my knees next to him. A quick check told me that yes, his chest was still moving, and he still had a pulse.
Great. Terrific. I’d just have to hope that meant he would make it. Yeah, he probably needed medical attention, but I couldn’t think about that. Not right now.
Because I’d also just realized that there was shouting coming from down the hall. I almost slapped myself in the forehead. Of course. Oliver and Bob must have heard the gunshot. They were no doubt making their way here at top speed, to figure out what the hell had happened.
I grabbed Jeff’s gun, shoved it into my waistband at the small of my back, and slid my hands under his armpits. Then, with a muttered prayer to the universe, I started to lift.
To my surprise, he was lighter than he looked. Probably should have been expecting that, with how old he was nowadays. He was losing bone density, and probably muscle mass. And thank the stars for that, because it meant I might actually get him across the room and up those stairs before his friends arrived.
I started pulling him quickly toward the stairs, letting his feet drag behind us, my eyes on that door. I just needed to get him high enough that his hand could reach the scanner, and then I’d be out of there.
I was on the third stair up when Oliver and Bob came busting into the room.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Oliver asked—no doubt striving for authority, but hitting full-on panic instead.
And no wonder. The room was covered in blood and brains, one of our team members was dead, and another was knocked out, his skull possibly crushed. The third and only conscious person in the room was dragging the unconscious one up the stairs, for unknown reasons.
Yeah, I could see why he would have started to panic. That didn’t mean I was going to allow him to dictate the rest of the scene here.
I jerked in his direction, keeping a hold on Jeff with one hand and yanking the gun out of my waistband with the other. I leveled it on his face.
“I’m leaving,” I said simply. “Don’t worry, I’m not taking Jeff with me. I just need to borrow his fingerprint.”
“You can’t!” Oliver snapped, the panic in his voice growing. “You heard what Jeff said! When you open that door, you’ll contaminate the whole place!”
I flicked the safety on the gun, taking perverse pleasure in the sound of that click.
“Unfortunately, you don’t get a say in the matter. You’ll either let me go, or I’ll shoot you. Your choice.”
When he didn’t answer, I cocked my head to the side.
“Smart. Don’t move. I’ll be out of your hair in a moment.”
I flicked the safety back on but kept the gun in my hand and grunted as I got Jeff back into motion. It took me about five seconds to get all the way to the top landing of the stairs—this bunker must not have been buried as deeply as I’d originally thought—and I grabbed Jeff’s hand and slapped it against the scanner.
“Do or die time,” I whispered, praying that it would work. It hadn’t occurred to me until right then that the scanner might not recognize his handprint, either.
What if he had locked us down here with a scanner that wouldn’t recognize anything, but would guarantee that we never left? The thought was horrific—but given what I’d seen of his state of mind, I wouldn’t have put it past him.
So I almost threw up in relief when I heard the click and slide of locks disengaging in the door. Moments later, it had popped open.
I dropped Jeff, shoved the door open, and rushed through it, slamming it closed again behind me. Then, I was running through the house, my mind rushing ahead of me and trying to figure out what I would find out there. I was miles from civilization. But I knew exactly where the city was.
And if I was going to find people, they were going to be there.
Chapter 20
The world above me was just seeing the other side of midnight, and it was cold and misty as hell. It was miserable, in fact.
But it was also the outside world. It was fresh air around me and the night sky above me. The real sky. The one that humans were supposed to sleep under.
Once I got out into the front yard, I took several moments to twirl around while I looked up at it. I couldn’t believe the plan had worked. Couldn’t believe I was actually out of that place. Well, it was only partially successful, given the fact that Simone was laying in that front room, her brains blown out.
That part took my mood down several notches.
But I’d made it out, just like I’d meant to. And now, at least for the moment, I was free.
I finally stopped twirling and shot a look back at the house, wondering if I should be worried about the men coming after me. But a quick check through my mental list of facts told me that no, I didn’t need to concern myself there. Those men might hate me—might even think I deserved to die. And I had no doubt that when my uncle woke up—if he woke up—he’d tell them that I was the one who’d shot Simone.
But there was no way they’d be coming out after me, even if they thought I needed to be punished. I’d seen the panic on Oliver’s face. I knew how terrified they were.
They would rather let me go, counting on me to die of VXM poisoning, than chase after me.
At that thought, I turned into the driveway, walked to the road, and turned left. I needed to see who else—and
what else—was still out there.
It took me roughly six hours to get back to the town on foot, judging by the sun rising, and I didn’t see a single living soul the entire time. The countryside was entirely deserted, with not even a rabbit to break the monotony. True, not many people actually lived outside of Ashland. My uncle had been an outlier there. And it wasn’t unusual to be on that county road and go for miles and miles without seeing anyone.
But the lack of animals was pretty weird. By the second hour, I was completely creeped out by it.
Add to that the fact that I was terrified of taking any sort of deep breath, and it was a very uncomfortable trip. Yeah, Simone had told me the VXM should have passed its half-life by now. It should have been completely harmless at this point. And, logically speaking, if it had been released as a powder, I didn’t see how it would still be floating around in the air. Even if it had been released as a gas, I thought surely it would have passed on by now.
At least, that was what my rational mind was saying. My emotional mind was having serious issues with the lack of any life, and the fact that whatever had killed everything could still be out there.
So, I trudged along the road with my shirt up over my mouth and nose. I probably looked like a complete maniac. Or a zombie, maybe. But it made me feel better, and when you feel like you might be the last person standing in the world, and that you might actually die at any moment, you do whatever it takes to make yourself feel better.
When I got to the outskirts of Ashland, I almost sobbed with relief. Dawn was starting to break on the horizon, the mist around me beginning to glow in that way that means the sun is somewhere out there. And here, I found signs of people—even if there weren’t actually any people around. Here was a whole town, just sitting here screaming that people had existed at one point, and that they’d been here and made this mark on the world. I leaned up against the first wall I came to and allowed myself deep, gasping breaths of relief.
Then, I started noticing how much the town had changed since the last time I’d seen it. Cars had crashed into the buildings and into each other, and there was no one here to use them. I grew very still and listened, but all I could hear was silence. That gray noise that meant you were in civilization—the sound of cars running and people talking and business going on—was completely gone.
Instead, I could only hear a dead, empty nothingness.
I started walking again, my eyes intent on finding any sign of movement, and when I came around the first corner, I started to see the bodies. Hundreds of them, laying across the sidewalks and in the street. Each person wore a hideous expression, as if they’d died in excruciating pain, and I could see that some of them were still clutching their chests as if they were trying to dig their hearts out with their own fingers. What was even more disturbing was the range of people around me. I saw mothers and their kids, older people, teenagers, even babies.
All of them dead. All of them laying forgotten on the streets of Ashland. A town that had always seemed too small to care about anything. A town that had been famous, at least among those who lived here, as the place where nothing interesting ever happened.
Well, something had happened here. But that left a big, gaping hole in the plot. Because why the hell would anyone have attacked Ashland? This place didn’t mean anything! It was barely a blip on the radar when it came to the bigger, wider world. No one had cared about this place—even the people who had lived here.
If Ilk Krallik was responsible for this carnage, and I didn’t see any reason to think otherwise, why the hell had they chosen this town for an attack? It didn’t make any sense.
Unless it wasn’t that they’d chosen this town, but that this town had been included in a wider area of attack. And right after that thought, I had another: If this town had been part of the attack, then the rest of the world might also have been on the list. Here, we were close to some larger cities. But we weren’t close enough to any of the really big ones. There was no New York or Boston or Dallas in the vicinity. No big target to have hit that would have made Ashland collateral damage.
I’d come up here hoping to find society again. Hoping to find people and get back to work, maybe even help find the Ilk Krallikers. But if everyone in Ashland was dead, I was starting to think that the attack might have been bigger than I realized.
I was starting to think that coming back up here had been a mistake.
But then I remembered what I left behind—and that I would probably already be locked in the pantry if I’d stayed—and I straightened my spine and strode forward. I’d survived. Surely, someone else had as well. I just had to find them.
When I rounded another corner, though, I came suddenly face-to-face—or foot-to-face—with Parker, my old boss. He was on the sidewalk, his body contorted and his face frozen in a horrible grimace. He’d also bled. A lot. It was all over the sidewalk, and it looked like he had actually crushed his skull somehow in his fall.
I lost it at that. The other dead people had been horrible, yeah, but I hadn’t known them. This guy…
I’d known this guy. Worked with him, gone to him for advice on stories. We’d laughed at the coffee pot, been in meetings together. He’d approved my stories—or told me how he thought I could make them better.
When I'd found out this attack was coming, I’d asked him for help.
Shockingly, that was the thought that brought the strength back into my spine again, and I stepped over him, careful not to step in any of the dried blood.
“Bet you wish you’d been brave enough to listen to me now, huh, Parker?” I asked as I walked away. “Bet you wished it with the last thought in your brain.”
Okay, so it was petty. Maybe even childish. But he could have helped me stop this attack. Instead, he’d chosen the safe route. And it had left him dead.
I just hoped there were other people out there who’d been smarter than he was.
The further I walked, the more convinced I became that no one had actually been smart enough to prepare for something like this. I didn’t see anything. The streets were covered in leaves and other detritus—and bodies—and the cars that might have still been running were long since out of gas and dead.
I tried one of them, just to see, but although the starter worked hard to turn the engine over, it didn’t have any luck.
Not that it mattered. I could have gone to a gas station and gotten one of those handheld tanks of gas, I supposed, but what was the use? I wasn’t sure where I would have gone, even if I had transportation. I’d come up here with a plan, but now that I was actually seeing the above-ground, my mind had gone horribly blank.
Then, I saw motion down an alley. Not a person—not quite—but more like movement where there should have been stillness.
I drew to an immediate stop, balanced on my toes and ready to sprint in one way or another, and stared into the alleyway. What was that? An animal? Just some trick of the light?
A person?
I slid up to the wall next to me and peered down it, my eyes struggling with the glowing mist as I tried to figure out what I was looking at. And finally, just as I was about to give up—or give in to the terrible fear that this attack had somehow created zombies, and that was what I was looking at—I realized that I was seeing…
A family of cats. A mother and her babies, walking across the alleyway like they owned the freaking place. Like cats do.
Look, I’d never been a cat person. I wasn’t even an animal person, really. You didn’t have a lot of time for that when you spent 99 percent of your life glued to a computer screen. That whole not-moving-from-your-desk lifestyle really did restrict your ability to care for things like animals.
Hell, there had been weeks when I'd had trouble remembering to feed myself.
But the sight of something else alive was so surprising, so wonderful, that it sent a surge of joy flooding through me, and I started toward the cat family, making sounds that I thought would be comforting and maybe even welcoming. I
crouched down a bit, calling to them, wanting with all my heart to be able to touch them.
I knew it was crazy. But in that moment, all that mattered was that I’d found life. I’d rushed up into the world again, hoping to find answers and allies and actual society, and instead, I’d found nothing but death and chaos.
And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was terrified. Scared out of my freaking mind. You never realize how much you depend on society and all those other people out there—people you spent most of your life hating—until they’re gone, and suddenly you’re alone.
So there I was, practically crawling on my hands and knees toward a group of cats who must have thought I’d clean lost my mind, hoping that they’d let me get close enough to touch them.
Those cats must have been really frightened and really hungry, because in the end, they did let me get that close to them. A mother and six kittens, and boy were those things tiny. I didn’t know how they might have survived the attack, but I figured maybe they were still at that not-really-getting-around stage, and she’d had them hidden somewhere really airtight. Now that they were out in the world, they’d discovered a city that was completely dead.
Amazing that they’d survived at all. I wondered how much longer they could possibly hang on.
Something in me twisted at the thought, and I started rifling through my pack, wondering if I had anything that cats would want to eat. Like I said, I was acting crazy—but it was a unique sort of wonderful to see that anything had survived. Somehow, it gave me hope that I might find other people.
And that made me want to see the cats continue to survive.
After quite a bit of digging, I came up with a can of tuna, and then another.
“Right, cats like fish, don’t they?” I asked them.
I popped the tops on both cans and dumped them onto the ground, and the mother cat immediately started chowing down on the food. A moment later, I was dragging a tin I found at the side of the alley across toward the cats and getting a bottle of water out to give them something to drink.
Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall Page 12