Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two

by Aria Michaels

  “Holy crap!” Christa’s eyes bugged. “How—?”

  “Hush, now and get on,” Ty laughed slinging her up onto his back.

  Christa giggled with excitement, and the rest of her question fell flat. With his hands hooked under her knees and her slender arms wrapped around his broad shoulders, Ty set to a gallop. He tromped right over the broken glass, and then jumped through the empty frame of the front door, and out into the orange sky. He skipped down the ramp with Christa bouncing against him, chuckling the entire way.

  Thankfully, Eli thought well enough to carry Bella out so she wouldn’t step on the glass. The second he stepped through the doorframe and set her down, she took off at a sprint leaving Eli in her dust. He walked down the decline walkway shaking his head at Ty and muttering under his breath about him being immature.

  Perhaps he was a bit childish at times, but Ty was a savant when it came to handling Christa and her many mood swings. As far as I could tell, with the exception of food and sleep, he was the only thing in the world capable of shutting that girl up. For that, I believe we all owed him a debt.

  “You wanna drive?” Zander dangled the keys in front of my face with a smirk. “I don’t mind riding shotgun, and you could definitely use the practice.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not,” I shrugged, and scooped a wayward hair back into my scarf.

  “You alright?” Zander asked, sliding his hand into mine.

  “Yeah, sure,” I lied, which was pointless.

  “Liv.” Zander wasn’t buying it. Even if he hadn’t been able to read my emotions thanks to our weird alpha-beta bond, a rock wouldn’t have believed my pitiful attempt at a half-truth.

  “I’m scared,” I rubbed the eagle’s wings between my fingers and swallowed past the lump in my throat. “What if—Zander, what if something has happened? What if we get there, and Beans is—?”

  “Stop right there,” Zander said grabbing my hand and tugging me toward the truck. “You don’t get to lose hope before you have even tried to find it, Liv. Just breathe, and take it one step at a time, okay?”

  “Okay,” I sighed trailing behind as we made our way to the construction site next door.

  It took much longer to unbury the truck than it had to hide it in the first place. The wind had kicked up quite a bit since we had retreated underground. Not only was the rust-colored sky thick with dust and soot but the gusts had shifted many of the pallets and boards we had used to shield the truck. Some had gotten wedged against each other at odd angles making them quite difficult to pry apart. In the end, Zander was forced to break several of them into pieces.

  By the time we finally freed the deuce from its dusty prison, we were all exhausted, dehydrated, and a bit battered. We had also lost almost an hour of daylight. While that gave us a much-needed drop in temperature, it would also mean a significant decrease in visibility. If we were going to get to my brother before dark, we had better hope the road to Byron was clearer than the one coming into Oregon had been.

  “Everybody in?” Zander asked. I nodded, and the engine rumbled to life beneath us. “Alright, then. Let’s go and get your brother.”

  It took some doing to navigate the truck out of the construction site without blowing any tires. Soon enough, Zander had us back the road and on our way out of the tiny township of Oregon. I stared out of the window as we rolled slowly along and did my best to ignore the path of destruction the scritters had left behind. I hadn’t seen even one of those little monsters since we had come out of the mall but the distinct tracks the hoard had left behind suggested they were either headed in the same direction we were, or they had come from there.

  Cars littered the streets at an increased frequency as we wove our way through downtown and headed toward the highway that would take us to Byron. From what Private Nicholas had told us, the most common presentation of the GRS pathogen, or the Gamma Virus as the military referred to it, was death. The horrible black spatters inside the vehicles told me these people had been caught on the road when Icarus hit, rather than fleeing after the fact.

  “All those people. I still can’t believe they’re just gone,” Falisha said softly as she pressed her hands to the window. “That could have been us.”

  She was half-right.

  Most who were infected were not fully compatible with the virus. The lucky ones died instantly, their bodies unable to withstand the radiation and parasitic virus as it tore through their systems. Others went through what was no doubt a painful metamorphosis from which emerged an animalistic creature hell-bent on destruction and death. My death to be specific.

  In a way, I sort of pitied them. They would never live as they had once lived. Leeches lost all that had once made them human; love, compassion, and even pain. The darkness that consumed them was akin to purgatory. What remained was a hollow shell devoid of possibility or hope. Was life really worth living in the absence of such things?

  Adaptives, like Zander and myself, were apparently ideal hosts for the parasite (lucky us). Both of us had fallen ill, but despite a few narrow escapes, and a growing list of unexplained mutations, the virus had not proven to be fatal for either of us. It had, however, created a connection between us, and all others (human or otherwise) with the virus.

  “Anything on the radar, you two?” Jake poked his head up between the seats. “Leeches, scritters, anything?”

  “A little tingle, but nothing big,” I said rubbing at the faint flutter in my chest. “Not since we left Morrison, anyways.”

  “Not so much as a tickle,” Zander shrugged, “and believe me, you’d know if I felt anything. If any of those things are out here, they are either way ahead of us or way behind. We should be okay, for now.”

  “Right,” Jake said, “but neither of you has your scanners set on rogue military kill squad either, so there’s always that fun little nugget to worry about.”

  “Ugh, Metz,” Zander growled turning to Jake. “I swear to you the next time I see that guy...”

  “Looks like you may not have to wait,” I said pointing straight ahead. “I think we just missed him.”

  “What the hell?” Zander slowed the deuce to a stop in the middle of the highway.

  He put it in park but left the engine running and we climbed hastily from the cab. Eli and Riley scrambled from the back of the truck and joined us. The road that lay before us looked as though it had been plowed. Vehicles lined both sides of the cracked pavement, their doors and windows scraped and crushed as each had been shoved free of the road.

  “What happened here?” Riley stared down the blacktop in confusion.

  “They painted something on that truck down there.” Jake shielded his eyes and pointed to an overturned trailer about a half a mile down the road. “Liv, would you mind?”

  “One, one, seven to Seco. What is that, Spanish?” I squinted against the sun. Even with the sunglasses filtering some of its rays, my newly enhanced eyes were particularly sensitive to light. “Below that it says FB35M.”

  “What does that even mean?” Riley scowled. “Is that some kind of code or something?”

  “The numbers might be coordinates, or an address maybe, but Seco?” Zander stared down the road. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Seco. Seco. Hmmm.” Eli shoved his glasses back up his nose. “Where have I heard that before?”

  “Hey, guys,” Jake poked his head out through the front door of the truck. “I don’t mean to rush you, or whatever, but we only have about thirty minutes of daylight left.”

  “Right, of course,” Eli said shaking himself. “We had better get moving before we can’t anymore. I’ll look through the journal and Gunther’s bible. Maybe there is something in there about this Seco.”

  Once Eli and Riley wrestled Bella into the back of the truck again, they both climbed in after her. Zander and I settled back into the cab, and we all set off down the freshly cleared highway. The path was wide enough for the deuce to drive straight down the middle with
a good three feet of clearance on either side. I hadn’t noticed any clear options for exiting the trench, but for now, I was grateful for the chance to get to our destination as quickly as possible. I scanned the vehicles for any signs of life as we slowly rolled through the trench of mangled metal but aside from the spatters of blackened remains that greeted me, there were none.

  “Slow down a second, Z,” Jake said pointing out our side of the truck. “Look at the river.”

  “Damn,” Zander whistled when I rolled down the window.

  “That seems really low,” I said squinting at the orange that reflected from its choppy surface.

  The once muddy banks of the Rock River, where I had spent many a summer swimming and fishing with my dad, had dried to a parched gray and cracked like the sands of the Sahara. The water had receded out past the first buoy. The bright orange marker that had once floated at a depth of five feet now lay on its side in the dust.

  “The sky,” Jake said craning his head out the window.

  I mimicked his position and gaped up at the clouds. The gritty winds rushed through my hair. The cloud cover had created a wall high above us that stretched clear to the horizon. The formation was so thick and choked with dust and smoke that it appeared to be solid. The darkest clouds had begun to take on a greenish hue. They churned in on themselves converging toward the center.

  “I have a bad feeling about this, you guys,” Jake said rubbing furiously at his temple while he rolled his window back up. “Can’t this thing go any faster? We should go faster!”

  “Take it easy, Jake,” Zander said. “This thing is diesel. I promise you I am going as fast as I can without burning extra fuel.”

  “I don’t care how much fuel it burns, Z,” Jake lunged forward into the front seat and pointed out the front window to the large rear view mirrors mounted to sides of the hood. “We need to get to Byron, and we need to do it now!”

  In the mirror, we saw lightning split the sky less than a mile behind us sending a shower of sparks and flaming debris up into the air. A second later, another struck not too far from it. Whatever faint pull I may have been sensing in my chest ceased to exist.

  “Oh, hell no,” I ground out rubbing at the absence behind my ribs. “Not this again!”

  “Go,” Jake screamed. “Screw the fuel, Z. Floor it!”

  “Hold on to something,” Falisha screamed as she pounded on the wall between the cab and the back. “It’s going to get real bumpy, guys!”

  A loud crack echoed across the sky. An electric pole split cleanly down the middle like string cheese. It slammed to the pavement in two pieces less than a hundred yards behind us. Another jagged slash of light split the road at our backs almost as if it had targeted the fallen power line.

  Sparks shot into the sky, and the dormant lines crackled and surged with energy. Tiny jagged tendrils of lightning threaded their way around the wires, piggybacking along each stretch of cable between the poles. The streetlights along the riverside bike path began lighting one at a time. Each surged and flickered for a few seconds, then exploded into a million tiny pieces of glass and electrified metal.

  “Get us the hell out of here!” I yelled bracing myself on the dashboard.

  A transformer exploded less than twenty feet to our right. Because of the trench that had been created by the amassed vehicles and debris, there was nowhere for us to go but forward. Zander buried the clutch, threw the deuce into gear, and pressed the throttle to the floor. The engine roared in protest, but soon enough he had the truck barreling down the highway at about fifty-five miles per hour. The lightning licked at our heels, obliterating cars and trees in its wake as it raced to strike us down.

  Chapter 12

  Four More

  “Turn into the junkyard,” Jake said, pointing to a small lot to the left.

  “Where, Jake?” Zander asked his brows knit. “There’s no opening for me to turn into.”

  “Then, make one,” Jake pointed out the windshield. “There, knock that little car aside and go straight through the fence!”

  “If you say so,” Zander bit his bottom lip and slammed the throttle all the way to the floor. “Everyone get your heads down and hold on!”

  Despite the heavy chain and multiple locks that held it, the tattered chain-link fence was no match for the likes of our stolen military truck. The barriers held firm to each other due to the excessive amount of chains there, but the hinges popped free the second the front end collided with them. The gates flew through the air ahead of us then slammed onto the rough junkyard concrete. The deuce rolled over them as if they were nothing. Lightning struck the remains of the fence behind us starting a chain reaction that electrified the entire perimeter of the dump.

  “Straight ahead, Z!” Jake pointed to the mountain of black at the rear of the lot then pounded on the back of the truck and screamed. “Everybody brace yourselves!”

  Zander growled as he buried the front end of the truck straight into the side of the massive heap of old tires. A giant tractor wheel slammed down against my door and cracked the window. It left a streak of black as it skidded down the side of the truck to the ground. Tires in all sizes and states of disrepair toppled across the hood and roof of the truck’s carriage. The truck held its own under the onslaught and managed to climb over much of the fallen rubber but the farther into the mountain, we got, the less the deuce progressed.

  We were half buried by a pile of cracking rubber and surrounded by white-hot bursts of lightning when the truck finally collided with an obstacle that it couldn’t scale. Something metal clanked to the ground beneath the truck’s belly. It ground against the pavement and wedged itself beneath one of the back wheels. My seatbelt snapped taut as the impact threw me forward, slicing a track across my neck and collarbone in the process.

  “What the hell,” I shrieked unbuckling and glaring back at Jake while I rubbed at the injury. “We are stuck in the middle of this shit now!”

  “Just watch,” Jake bit back, pressing himself against the cracked glass.

  Blinding flashes split the sky all around us creating a barricade of white-hot electricity that crackled and fizzled in the air. The hair on my arms stood on end and my fingers and toes tingled with its energy, but the rubber tires had created a sort of force field against the worst of what Mother Nature was throwing at us.

  “It can’t get to us in here,” I said. “That’s genius, Jake.”

  “I told you rubber was a good insulator,” Jake shrugged, rubbing anxiously at the back of his neck.

  “Check on the back,” I said tapping on Falisha’s knee and turning back to Jake. “You okay, Jake? You look a little pale.”

  “Yeah, just amped up I guess,” he forced a laugh while his fists clenched obsessively. “Get it? Amped up? You know, because…lightning?”

  “Wow,” Falisha rolled her eyes then banged hard on the wall that separated the cab from the carrier and yelled. “Everybody still in one piece back there?”

  “Barely!” Riley yelled back. “What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s the lightning again. Everyone stay inside and keep your heads down,” I said as loud as I could without deafening the entire cab. I lowered my voice. “Jake, how did you know?”

  “As soon as we left Conover, I—,” Jake flinched as another massive bolt of lightning severed the tall signpost and sent the junkyard’s neon crashing to the ground. It slammed into the concrete just a few yards from where we sat buried in rubber. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I don’t think this storm will last nearly as long as the last one anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?” Zander asked cringing as one of the tires fell from the roof of the truck onto the hood.

  “Because this isn’t a lightning storm. It’s just the beginning of something else. It’s foreplay.” Jake stared nervously out the window. “As soon as this crap stops— and I mean the very second it’s over we need to get the hell out of here. How far away is your brother’s house, Liv?”

&n
bsp; “What’s going on, Jake?” I asked.

  “How far, damn it?” He blurted, his brows knitted tightly.

  “Jesus, hold on,” I scowled as a reached for old phone directory I had stashed in the truck. I had marked the page that contained the address of Beans’ foster family, so it only took a second to thumb my way to it on the town map located in the index. “Okay, they live here, at 302 North Chestnut.”

  “Great, that’s our point B,” Jake winced craning his neck as if it were cramped. “Now, we need point A. Where the hell are we?”

  “Walnut Street Salvage Yard,” Zander said.

  He pointed to the sign that lay, sparking, just outside of our rubber force field. Another bolt of lightning struck dead center of the building on the north side of the lot. The blast split the peak in two, sending shingles and flaming shards of wood raining down onto the pavement. What was left of the building’s roof was in flames now.

  “Walnut Street, Liv,” Jake ground out. “Hurry!”

  “Right, right. Walnut Street.” I traced my finger along the streets that led away from my brother’s home and headed toward the river. “Umm. Okay, there’s Chestnut, 2nd Street, Union Street, Blackhawk Street— there! Walnut Street. So about six or seven blocks—three turns and we are there. We can get there in no time.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Zander said tapping the gages on the dash. “We are on empty, and the transmission fluid is completely empty. I am about ninety percent sure we busted an axle when we hit the tires, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the tranny is shot, too.”

  “Damn it,” I pressed my hands against the glass. “How the hell are we going to get there, now?”

  “On foot,” Jake said with his hand on the door. “And as quickly as possible.”

  “What is going on with you,” Falisha said to Jake. “You are acting crazy even for you.”