Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two

by Aria Michaels

  “That is what’s going on,” Jake said pointing out of his window.

  The cloud cover was even closer to the ground now. It hovered just above the skeletal tree line that surrounded the salvage yard. Though the sky had finally gone dark, the lightning trapped within the thick curtain was glowing the same shade of muddy green it had that night at Johnnie’s. Unlike that night, however, these clouds were not slow moving. They rumbled and churned against each other, winding themselves around a central point in the sky. God had finally pulled the plug on this thing he called civilization and was ready to watch it all go down the drain.

  “This is bad.” Falisha squirmed in her seat, staring out the window.

  “No kidding,” Jake growled.

  “How long till the light show nonsense stops and we can go?” I asked him.

  “Couple more minutes, I think.” Jake shuddered. Another bolt lit the sky a few yards past the salvage yard fence. “The strikes seem to be grounding farther apart each time.”

  “Good.” I climbed over the center console and wrestled my way into the back seat. I barely fit on the seat between Jake and Falisha but managed to balance there long enough to bang on the wall that separated the cab from the cargo bay. “Guys, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Grab everything you can carry and get ready because we have about two minutes until we need to bail.”

  “What’s going on?” Riley banged back.

  “No time to explain,” I yelled through the wall. “Just grab what you can and be ready.”

  “Got it!” Riley responded.

  The truck rocked back and forth as everyone in the back shuffled around. A few tires slid off to the ground. Muffled arguments and chatter echoed through the back of the cab, but we couldn’t make out who was saying what. I had no doubt they were just scared as we were.

  “Get ready,” I told Falisha and Jake as I wriggled back up into the front seat and started shoving my stuff back into my pack. “Falisha you give the signal to the back, okay? Jake, just say the word.”

  “Not yet,” he said softly, his eyes fixated on the tumultuous sky.

  Another lightning bolt lit up the sky, but this one was farther away and didn’t quite reach the ground. Jake was right. They were thinning out but the situation felt no less dangerous. In fact, it looked almost as though the sky was retracting the lightning back up into itself, storing the energy for something bigger…something dangerous.

  “Jake?” My heart was beating in my head.

  “Wait,” Jake growled, but he gripped the handle of the door and leaned forward. A second later, the sky lit up again. There was no exit wound in the cloud cover. The electricity was trapped behind them. “Go! Go now!”

  “Go!” Falisha screamed pounding hard on the back of the cab. “Everybody out!”

  The tailgate banged against the rear fender of the truck as Riley and the others flung it open and started piling out. I struggled to open my door, but it wouldn’t budge. I rolled the window down but the entire truck died half way through, and I was left with only enough room to get my head through. The tractor tire that had cracked my window earlier was leaning against my door.

  “Damn it,” I shrieked.

  “This way,” Zander held his hand out to me. I climbed across the gear housing and center console and wriggled my way out behind him through the driver’s side door. He caught me as I jumped to the ground. “We good?”

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here,” I said dragging him around the front of the truck.

  Though the lightning had finally ceased its attack on the ground, it was far from done putting on a show. The cloud wall that hung low in the sky above us was pulsing with it as if it were trapped there and fighting desperately to get free.

  “Lead the way, Liv,” Jake shouted over the loud crackling that filled the air. His face was tight, and his eyes were wide with the strain. “Let’s go!”

  “We are on foot from here,” I shouted to the group then nodded to Riley. “It’s less than a mile away, and we don’t have time for anyone to fall behind. Stay close and keep up!”

  Riley’s mouth settled into a grim line, and she grabbed my hand. Eli fastened the chest and waist straps on his pack, cinched them as tight as they would go, and nodded grimly. Ty had Christa on his back. He was struggling to get her situated while carrying both of their bags in his arms. Falisha and Jake rushed over, and each of them took a pack from Ty’s arms.

  “Wait. Y’all don’t have to—” Ty attempted.

  “We got your back, dude,” Jake said cutting short Ty’s protest. “You have enough on your hands already.”

  “Thank you,” Ty smiled. His eyes flashed as a streak of lightning flickered across his features.

  “Just get her there in one piece okay?” Jake clapped his shoulder awkwardly then stepped away. “She may be loud and a complete pain in the ass, but she’s all I have left.”

  “Understood,” Ty nodded hefting Christa high and grasping her legs firmly against him. “Hold on tight, Sugar, okay?”

  “’Kay,” Christa nodded nervously as she threaded her hands together tightly in front of Ty’s chest. She looked over at Jake and pursed her lips in annoyance. When she spoke, the shake in her voice betrayed her. “Be careful, jerk-face.”

  “You too, Princess,” Jake huffed and put his scarf over his face as he lugged the extra pack onto his shoulder.

  “Alright, guys,” I shouted doing the same. “Mask up and follow me!”

  Riley and the others trailed along in my wake as we ran away from the salvage yard and the dwindling banks of the nearby Rock River. The houses on Walnut Street had already been raided and tagged. Their doors lay on the ground or swung open in the breeze banging against the shattered frames. All that remained of the people in this neighborhood are spray-painted numbers on multicolored boxes full of pointless memories.

  The survival statistics were no better here than they had been in the other towns we had passed through since Icarus hit. Blood-red zeros dripped from their surfaces. Broken security gates and ornate front doors gaped back at us as we ran by.

  The captive lightning above was a double-edged sword; it allowed us to see but also to be seen. If anyone or anything were out there watching us, we’d have no way of knowing. The lightning had effectively put the kibosh on whatever advantages I had when it came to sensing other GRS carriers. Despite how much I hated what the virus had done to me, I suddenly felt incomplete and vulnerable without that piece of myself.

  “Liv?” Zander asked nudging my arm as he ran next to me.

  “Sorry, we need to go right. Up there by the brown house,” I gripped Riley’s hand tighter and pressed on. “Turn onto Blackhawk Drive.”

  I cut across the street, jumped the curb, and looked back over my shoulder to make sure everyone was still there. The way I was clamped onto her, Riley had no choice but to keep up with me. Zander and I were shoulder-to-shoulder, but the rest were a good ten paces behind. Despite carrying another person dangling from his shoulders, Ty was at the head of the pack. Jake and Falisha were right behind him. Eli had fallen behind considerably.

  “Get it in gear, Eli,” I shouted back. He shot me a nasty look but doubled his speed and soon caught up to the rest of us. “We are almost there!”

  Oh, God. We are almost there.

  Until that moment, it hadn’t really dawned on me that we were running towards, rather than just away from something. After everything my brother and I had been through…after all that we had lost, we were finally going to see each other again. Only four more blocks of death and destruction stood between us now.

  Just four more blocks.

  I picked up the pace without realizing it. Before too long, we were on his street. Chestnut Street looked like it was once a happy place. The houses were nice, and they all had really big yards. If I closed my eyes, I could easily picture the lush, green lawns that blanketed the ground around the wooden play sets, flower gardens, and basketball courts.

  Expe
nsive SUVs and minivans sat idle in their respective driveways or parked on the street, but only a few had the black spatters. I guess these people had stayed in their homes. Bicycles, scooters, and wagons scattered the decimated sidewalks and grounds. My breath caught in my throat. So many children died here. What if…

  No! I mentally slap myself and ran even harder.

  “Liv, please slow…down,” Riley gasped. “Some of us…have short legs.”

  “Sorry,” I said forcing myself to run a bit slower. Just a bit.

  “There!” I shouted pointing toward the end of the block. “There it is, 302 Chestnut.”

  Less than a minute later I found myself (and a very breathless Riley) standing in front of a nice brick house with a matching attached garage. A newer looking blue minivan sat in the middle of a smooth concrete driveway. The lane was lined with those expensive lava rocks that probably cost more than my parents’ house had. Thankfully, there were no signs of that horrible black spatter inside of the van.

  “Liv, look,” Zander panted dragging me toward the front entrance.

  The green door, which dangled precariously from its battered brass hinges, matched the vinyl shutters perfectly. The house had been tagged; a bright red 4/5 stared back at me. Hope sprang in my chest, and I lunged through the doorway, into the shadows beyond.

  Chapter 13

  So Close

  “Beans!” I yelled as I tripped and stumbled my way into the Fosters’ living room. “Beansie, I’m here!”

  “Is he here?” Jake ducked in through the doorway after us.

  “We don’t know,” Zander muttered. “I’m going to check for a basement.”

  “Hello? Is anybody here?” I cupped my hands together and screamed. “Beans!”

  I yelled out for my brother as if he were lost beyond the gates of Hell, rather than hiding somewhere inside a single story ranch in the middle of the burbs. The census numbers on the house told me he might be here. 4/5 it had said, but had he been the one?

  “Whoa,” Falisha said gaping at the destruction around us as she stepped through the threshold and into what had once been a very nice home. Bella ran past her and started sniffing at anything that couldn’t bat her away. “What the heck happened here?”

  “This place is totally trashed.” Christa shook her head as she looked around the room. “No way there’s anyone here after all this went down.”

  “Hush,” Ty whispered.

  She was probably right, though. The furniture was bare to the frames. The cushions and pillows were strewn carelessly about the room. Pictures, papers, and broken knick-knacks lay shredded to pieces on the floor. Every single drawer and cabinet was flung open and stripped clean. All that remained were a few cracked dishes and empty wine bottles. The refrigerator lay on its side, the door left wide open. The last of its contents, which wasn’t much aside from a few half-empty condiments, had spilled onto the kitchen tiles and dried to a filthy brown crust.

  I stepped over a pile of discarded magazines and books and made my way over to the large entertainment center that held the Fosters’ now useless plasma television. Someone had raked each shelf clean leaving shards of broken glass and metal frames in a heap on the floor. I crouched down and flipped over the largest of the frames, shaking it free of the broken glass plate.

  “Maybe, it’s the wrong address. It could be a mix-up or something.” If Jake was trying to reassure me, it was not even close to working. He was more on edge now than I was and kept rubbing anxiously at his neck. “You know how those state places are. Employees are overworked and underpaid. Always making mistakes and stuff. I mean, they could have said Chestnut Street instead of Chestnut Avenue, or Chestnut Place, or maybe Chestnut—.”

  “Oh, my God,” Christa cut him off. “She gets it, you spaz. Jeez.”

  “It’s the right place, Jake,” I said holding up the scratched photo.

  Had it not been for my brother’s cherubic little face staring back at me, the picture could have easily been mistaken for one of those stock images that come with the frame when you buy it. You know the ones. The perfect family, wearing perfect clothes, smiling their perfect smiles in the middle of an open field of flowers.

  But there he was; my little brother. He looked happy and well fed (though still very much in need of a haircut). He was under the arm of someone who was not my mother, standing next to a man who was not my father. An adorable little girl who looked she may have Down’s Syndrome hugged his arm. Her smile beamed back at me from beneath two perfectly parted little braids. A cute Asian boy stood smirking with his arm perched on Beans’ other shoulder in front of a man with a sincere grin.

  My brother’s foster dad was tall and lean with broad shoulders and jet-black hair. He had one of those bright smiles that you can’t help but notice and striking brown eyes. He was pretty handsome for an older guy, actually. He and his wife (literally) made the picture perfect couple. Mrs. Foster was slight and slender with blond hair and kind eyes. Judging by the rather large diamond studs in her ears, and the Tiffany necklace she wore, my brother’s new family had apparently been rather well off.

  Beans looked so happy in that picture, so completely carefree. I suppose I should have been grateful that they had taken such good care of him. They were probably amazing people with hearts of gold, but I found myself hating her all the same. I hated her for all those months she shared with my brother; months that had been taken away from me. I hated her for her easy smile and her perfect family.

  But mostly I hated that she looked so happy.

  It was unreasonable and immature, I know, but after all this time away from Beans, I was past the point of being logical about any of it. We had come all this way, made it through so much and lost so many, and for what? My brother wasn’t even here. I knew it in my bones the second I walked in the doorway.

  “Where the hell are you?” I yelled at the ceiling and kicked the pile of shattered frames. The pieces scattered across the floor and skittered to a halt at Zander’s feet as he strode back into the living room. I rushed to his side, my last ounce of hope dangling from a thin thread.

  “Z?” Jake said nervously as he stared out through the front door. “Please, tell me you found a basement.”

  “I did, but— well, it was completely empty.” Zander put his hand on my lower back. “I’m sorry, Liv. There’s nobody here but us.”

  My heart shriveled in my chest.

  “That doesn’t matter, right now,” Jake shrieked rubbing furiously at the back of his neck.

  “How can you say that?” I stormed toward him. “My brother is—”

  “Not relevant at the moment, Liv,” Jake cut me off his eyes wide as he waved me toward the door. “We have a much bigger problem right now.”

  The rest of the group had congregated by the door and were gaping out at the sky in awe. The wall of clouds that had been growing above us had closed off the rest of the sky, turning the entire thing an eerie shade of dark green. Lightning flashed from its depths, and the entire mass was moving in a rapid spiral directly overhead.

  The sky was all that moved now; there was no wind, no bursts of white-hot electricity raining down around us. The rest of the world on the ground had gone completely still.

  “Basement?” Jake’s voice shook.

  “Crap,” I said, my stomach sinking to my feet.

  “That’s insane,” Falisha said as she stared up at the spiral of flashing chaos above us.

  “Where’s the basement,” Jake growled.

  “Jesus,” Eli hissed. “We are in the eye!”

  “Basement, now!” Jake tugged on Zander’s arm and started ushering the group away from the door.

  “Right, right. This way, guys,” Zander said scooping up his bag as he grabbed my hand. Falisha shouldered her pack and grabbed Bella’s collar, and she and the others followed behind Zander. When we reached the heavy metal door that led below ground, he shouldered it open. “Everybody in.”

  “Go,” I said pushing Falish
a and Bella ahead of me, then Riley, Ty and Christa, Eli, and finally Jake. Zander shoved me in after them and closed the massive door behind us.

  He pulled a coil of wire from his pack and started wrapping it around the door handle and each of the locking mechanisms. Once he had them wrapped, we wound the wire around a nearby joist and an exposed pipe, then tied it back off around the handle.

  “I have never seen a door like that in a residential home,” Eli said looking back over his shoulder as he descended into the dark basement. “Usually you only see that in hospitals or government buildings.”

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness immediately. Jake, Eli, and the others were huddled in the middle of what had probably once been a very cozy family room before the raiders had gotten to it. Now it looked like a war zone. No care had been taken in whatever search took place here. I couldn’t imagine what they had been searching for that could be so important as to destroy everything in their efforts. Pictures lay in pieces around the room. Cushions, movies, and broken electronics littered the floor at their feet. Everyone looked lost and scared.

  “Which of these rooms is closest to the center?” Jake swung his light around him in a shaky circle. “We need…we have to get as close to the center of…which is it for Christ’s sake?”

  “Easy, Jake. Come on, it’s down here,” Zander gestured toward the hallway off what appeared to be a media room.

  There were four doors in the corridor. The first was plastered with Star Wars posters and a large pink flower with Jazz written on it in purple glitter. Across the hallway was a plain wooden door with a small white board attached to it with a message scrawled in red; No jerks allowed. A few paces down the carpeted hall was another door that appeared to lead to a furnace room and storage area.

  The last door was painted navy blue and had glow in the dark stars and planets stuck to the front of it. The stars formed the letters L, U, C, A, and S.

  This is where he’d been since the day they took him from Brigham House and out of my life. This was his home. He had a safe place. I reached toward the knob with a shaky hand but pulled away at the last second. “I…I can’t.”