“We all are,” Cassie said. “Well, almost.” Her eyes flicked to the slick patch of human tissue on the floor.
“You saved us,” her mom said.
And even as Cassie contemplated whether she was right, another voice came in cold and hard and gruff from the side, like a sucker punch. “You’ve saved no one,” the man said. “And once you’re dead, Cassie, we can simply use the device again to restore the world to darkness.”
Cassie whirled around to meet the new threat, gasping at the familiar face. A man she knew all too well from weekends at her dad’s camp and routine appointments at her mom’s work.
“Uncle Rourke?” she said, her voice rising to form a question mark.
“Hello, sweetie,” Rourke Mullen said. And then he squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Sixteen
Written by Shelbi Wescott
The blast of the gun echoed in the small room. Eve could smell the gunpowder and the faint traces of singed fabric. Her own voice echoed in the room — a scream so loud and incomprehensible that it tore at her vocal chords as it propelled its way to the surface. Cassie fell. Her small, weak, body, laboring under the fever and the torment, tumbled downward, caught off guard by the presence of a man she had trusted.
In that moment before the gun went off, Eve recognized Cassie’s innocence in that flicker of recognition. And he had shamefully betrayed her. Eve scrambled toward Rourke, her hands outstretched.
“How could you?” she managed before Rourke turned the gun on her and sent her weeping to the floor.
“Easy, Eve,” Rourke sighed, as if he found her annoying, tiresome. He holstered his gun and walked over to his prey, stalked above her; blood pooled against her shirt and under her small body. Eve tried to crawl closer, but she was kept at bay by Rourke’s domineering presence. Cassie lifted a weak hand to her wound: a quarter-sized hole under her collarbone. She pushed against the entrance wound, her eyes narrowing.
“You trained me,” Cassie said. Eve recognized the strength in her daughter’s voice and she put a hand over her mouth to stifle the sobs.
“And I trained you well,” Rourke replied. He crouched down. “To stay alive when I needed you to stay alive. To be the kind of kid to come save your mom. Yes, Cassie. I trained you well.”
“You betrayed me, betrayed Jared.”
“To lead the world through crisis requires tough calls, Cassie.”
“Cowardice is easy.”
He smirked. “It’s much harder than you think.”
But as he said this, Eve noticed the faint glimmer surging up from Cassie’s gunshot wound. Like a dim bulb the energy pulsated, sputtered, and hummed. It was no longer bright and white, but yellow and hazy. Still, Cassie hadn’t used up all her power on Emerson and the phones and the lights. She’d quit before exerting everything; she must have kept a little for herself. And now the wound sealed like before, but slower.
Cassie closed her eyes and her breath became heavy; she scrunched up her nose and whispered, “No. No.”
Eve saw Rourke’s glower and used it as an opportunity to advance. She found herself by Cassie’s side and she slipped her hand into her daughter’s and stroked her head. It was clammy, not burning up like before. She let out a small sob: a mixture of anguish and confusion. She and Jared had been so worried about the fever, but they had been worried about all the wrong things.
In an instant, she felt a rough hand push her away from Cassie.
Rourke drew his gun again and looked at it and Cassie with measured intensity.
“Maybe we need to do this another way,” he mused. “Eventually you won’t be able to heal…Eventually your powers won’t save you.”
“Then why does it matter?” Eve yelled. “If she’s got nothing left, then she’s useless to you…”
“Useless?” Rourke said with a sneer. He leaned down and yanked on Cassie’s shirt to expose the bullet hole. Where he had shot her was now a tangled mass of scar tissue, the glowing light subsiding with each pulse. “We don’t know what she is capable of…and I’d be an idiot to risk —”
The door to their room swung open. Jared, flanked on either side by two armed guards, flailed and spun. Eve jumped up and took a step toward him, before she realized that Rourke had pulled his gun and trained it on her.
“Jared!” she called, but he’d already noticed Cassie on the ground, her breathing labored. And when his eyes lifted, they went straight to Rourke. Eve recognized that look: it was a look that made her stomach turn hard and cold. It was pure anger, unadulterated focus. It was the look Jared had when he was trapped and cornered and ready for a fight; she’d seen it a few times in their marriage — and it had always ended badly for someone.
The guards holding on to Jared’s biceps took note of the charred, rubbery remains of their former commander on the floor, and gawked, then their eyes slipped to the child on the floor, and those distractions were all Jared needed to tear free. He wasted no time and launched himself at Rourke. His feet carried him to his old friend faster than the man could pull the trigger, and they tumbled downward. Eve heard the crack of their bodies against the floor.
“You killed them!” Jared seethed and he got a punch in against Rourke’s jaw. It was heavy enough to send Rourke’s head into the floor, but not hard enough to end the fight. Rourke let a stream of saliva and blood drip down his chin. “You were my friend,” Jared accused.
Eve took a step forward.
“Stop!” she tried to yell, but she knew it was no good and the message came out strangled. She turned her attention back to her daughter. Cassie was looking right at her. Her hand raised in the air, her glare piercing.
The guards in the doorway were moving around Cassie, their hands on their weapons.
From the ground, Rourke thrashed against Jared and both men fought for possession of the gun. He lifted his eyes to the men.
“Go,” he managed to say. “Go…Ali…the Friar’s Lantern. Launch it. Do it now.” The Dark Worshippers didn’t hesitate and then spun and rushed out of the room as quickly as they had barged in.
Eve spun to Jared wrestling with Rourke, and Cassie, who attempted to sit up, her arms outstretched to her mom. But Eve knew she couldn’t let Emerson’s forces succeed. If Cassie had used up all of her energy to turn the lights back on, another round of Eve’s technology could wipe out the lights forever. No turning back, no rescue.
Rourke had a grip on the gun and Jared clawed at his hand. He turned for just a second and caught his wife’s eye. It was frantic and quick, but Eve didn’t need a translation.
“Go! Now!” Jared yelled. Rourke took a shot at him with his free hand and Jared was rocked off-center. He recovered and kept the gun at bay. It was a strange dance: quick, quick, slow.
“Now!” he said to her again.
With her heart in her throat, Eve rushed to Cassie.
“Can you walk?”
Cassie gulped. Then nodded.
“Can you run?”
Cassie nodded again.
“We have to stop them, Mommy.”
Eve tried not to look at the hole in her daughter’s shirt and the way she smelled like hot metal. This was still her girl; still her baby — she’d held her the moment she was born, rocked her to sleep at night, and fed, and bathed, and cradled her. She’d live with the guilt of her naivety for the rest of her life. The rest of their long, lighted, lives.
With a quick shudder and a glance at her dear husband, Eve grabbed Cassie and rushed after the Dark Worshippers, into the unknown, leaving Jared to finish Rourke. Leaving herself and Cassie to stop the Friar’s Lantern from striking again.
As they rounded a corner, the gunshot echo followed them.
Eve froze.
“Daddy!” Cassie yelled and she spun back toward the room.
Eve shuddered. Hot tears stung her eyes and she scrunched her eyelids tightly. He wasn’t dead. She pictured Rourke lying in blood. It had to be. It wouldn’t be Jared. It couldn’t be. He’d find her using
her GPS. He was smart. He was resourceful.
“Daddy’s fine,” Eve said, but her voice betrayed her own lack of conviction. “Okay?”
Cassie stared straight ahead. “Okay,” her brave daughter answered, and they pounded forward, ignoring the worry searing through them both. Eve pushed aside a worse thought: If Jared was gone — God, he couldn’t be gone — then Rourke would find them. And he would kill them, too.
Chapter Seventeen
Written by Tony Bertauski
A drip of sweat fell from Jared’s nose. It grazed the gun’s barrel that was pressed against Rourke’s forehead, splashed into the man’s swollen eye.
Jared leaned into the gun, both hands squeezing the grip, pushing Rourke’s head against the floor. His left arm burned where a bullet had ripped through the triceps. Blood trickled down his arm, pooling at the base of his thumb before finding its way to his friend’s cheek, smudging his whiskers crimson red.
Former friend.
The door slammed open behind them. Jared pressed the barrel deeper into the folds of Rourke’s forehead. Boots came to a stop. Weapons snapped.
“You’re not getting out of here.” Rourke grimaced. His forearm was pinned beneath Jared’s knee and bent at a funny angle.
“Tell them to stop,” Jared said.
Rourke drew a ragged breath. Jared, straddled over his chest, refused to lift his weight to give him more air. “When he shoots me —” Rourke grabbed another breath, “— kill him.”
For the greater good. That was the camp’s axiom. An individual didn’t matter as much as the whole, and the whole didn’t matter as much as the greater good. Rourke had always been dedicated to the camp, to having men and women ready for survival when catastrophe arrived. He believed in the camp’s greater good as much as Jared. But his beliefs had changed.
Or maybe they were never what I thought.
“Why?” Jared said.
“You know why.”
“But this…chaos and suffering, all this death, how is this for the greater good?”
Rourke swallowed hard, twice. Sweat beaded on his pasty complexion.
Jared leaned into the gun, again, felt the muzzle press into the man’s pale flesh. It began to slip on the perspiration. Rourke could’ve used that moment to knock the pistol away. Jared’s weight was forward, the pistol pinning his head to the floor. With all the guns aimed at the back of Jared’s head, all Rourke would’ve needed was a shift of his hips and half a second to end this. But he was limp beneath Jared, not because he’d been beaten, not because his forearm had been shattered against the edge of a desk. He was spent, finished.
His mission, complete.
“How?” Jared seethed. “How is this for the greater good?”
“It was inevitable, Jared.”
“Not this! We were preparing for it, not causing it. We were preparing to defend against men like Emerson. Like you.”
“There will always be men like me.”
“Damn you! I trusted you…the camp trusted you!”
A joyless smile flared. “The camp was all wrong. You know it.”
Boots shuffled closer. Rourke’s eyes flickered over Jared’s shoulder. He lifted the fingers on his good arm and movement stopped. With the pressure Jared had on the trigger, even a rifle butt to the back of his head would end Rourke. But that’s not why he stopped his men from charging. Something compelled him to wait.
“We’re slaves.” He spoke in fragments to catch his breath. “The human race…we’re slaves to technology…Even the camp. And men like me, like Emerson…had weapons pointed at each other…the camp wasn’t preparing us, Jared.” He forced another breath deep into his chest. “But this will.”
“This wasn’t necessary! You killed men and women…children! That’s not what we were prepping to do!”
“You know what the models…predicted.”
Rourke insisted a major catastrophe wasn’t just imminent, it was near. The predictive models showed humankind’s demise at their own hands. If we didn’t destroy ourselves, then a natural disaster would. A solar flare was due to hit any day, he’d said. It would knock out technology and chaos would ensue. Each week he would bring a new prediction based on population dynamics, politics, economy…each one more dire than the last. We must be prepared, he would say. For the greater good.
But none of those preparations included a preemptive strike.
“You’re saving the human race,” Jared said, “by destroying it?”
“Only those…worth saving.”
“Worth saving?” Jared’s hands quivered, the barrel denting Rourke’s forehead. Nervous footsteps edged closer. “Cassie and Eve…the men at the camp, they weren’t worth saving? Not worth…you murdered them, you bastard!”
Rourke closed his eyes. “These are dark times…they have been…for quite some time.”
Jared felt the room tilt. A dark tunnel was closing around his periphery. His breath was short and choppy. He ground his teeth. An animal groan started in his throat and morphed into a whine. Fresh boots charged into the room and stopped short. Rourke lifted the fingers on his good hand. He kept them raised.
“They’re gone, Rourke,” someone announced. “Eve and Cassie got out. They were intercepted heading for the signal light, but they escaped. We can’t find them.”
“Stop them,” he answered. “You must.”
Boots left the room, but Jared could feel the remaining men and women close in around him. The weight of their weapons shifted in their hands. Their steps were careful. Rourke, though, never took his eyes from Jared. He blinked like a man exhausted from a lifetime of heavy decisions.
Of betrayal.
“Not Cassie,” Jared said through a watery veil. “Don’t hurt my daughter.”
“She belongs…to all of us.”
There was little strength in Jared’s left arm, but he no longer felt the throbbing pain of the bullet wound. There was no chance of lifting Rourke, of using him as a shield and backing out of the room. The heat was stifling, the air thick. His breath slowed and a sense of peace filled him. Finality had arrived. No more striving, no more struggling. Eve and Cassie still had a chance. Someone was flashing that signal light, calling people to it. Someone with power.
Someone that didn’t belong to the Institute.
Rourke’s heavy eyelids dropped for a long moment. The fingers on his good hand, still propped up, were quivering. All the air seemed to leave his chest at once. Jared’s weight sank into the man’s midsection.
Rourke drew one last breath. “For the greater good.”
His fingers dropped.
Before the world around him went black and empty, Jared felt the trigger beneath his finger release, felt the recoil of the weapon in his hand. He didn’t hear the gunshots behind. His life ended suddenly, painlessly. He fell forward into the eternal dark knowing that Rourke would be coming with him.
His former friend wouldn’t hurt his wife and daughter anymore.
Chapter Eighteen
Written by David Normoyle
Eve clutched Cassie’s hand tightly, running after Ali and the Dark Worshippers. But they were never going to catch them. And even if they did, what then? What could one woman and a child do against armed combatants? She staggered to a stop, watching the backs of the Dark Worshippers get further away. They were going toward a barn-like structure in the distance. And with no one to stop them, the Friar’s Lantern would be activated again, and this time Cassie wouldn’t be able to return power to the planet. Her creation would be responsible for sending the world back to the Dark Ages.
“Mommy, get up. We have to stop them.” Cassie pulled at Eve’s hand.
“It’s too late. We’ll never catch them.” A deep weariness made her feel like her bones were filled with lead.
“The machines are back working, right?”
Eve followed Cassie’s gaze to five parked SUVs. Instantly, the weariness was gone and Eve was on her feet and racing toward the vehicles. She open
ed the door of the nearest, and quickly scanned the front seat area, looking for a key. Nothing. She went to the next one, frantically fumbling with the door handle before she managed to get it open.
“Try the next one, honey, look for a key,” Eve told Cassie. This time Eve sat into the front seat and checked the glove box and back seat before giving up and climbing out.
“This one has a key,” Cassie shouted from the next SUV over. “It’s in the ignition.”
Eve ran over, picked Cassie up and swung her into the passenger seat, then sat into the driver seat. She applied gas and twisted the key. No sound, not even the groaning of an engine making an effort to start. She tried again, twisting the key violently. Nothing. Eve let her forehead fall against the top of the steering wheel.
“Mom,” Cassie said. “Try again.”
Eve looked up to see her daughter putting her two hands on the dashboard. Did she still have some of that power left inside her? Eve took a deep breath, shook the gearstick to make sure it was in neutral, touched her foot to the gas and turned the key.
The SUV roared into life. Eve threw it into reverse, backed out of the parking lot, and directed it toward the barn. The grassy field they traveled across was bumpy, jolting Eve back and forth, but she didn’t slow.
“Put on your seatbelt,” she shouted to Cassie over the scream of the engine. The sound of the engine also spurred her to change gear to second and then third. It’d been a while since she’d driven stick.
Up ahead, the Dark Worshippers were halfway to the barn. They had slowed to a walk, but turning to find a SUV on their tail, they broke into a run once more, dodging out of Eve’s path. The lead-most Dark Worshipper was the only one not to quickly clear the way. She turned and Eve saw that it was Ali. The girl stood directly in the path of the accelerating SUV, refusing to move.
She’s bluffing, Eve thought, driving straight for her. But Ali didn’t move, just stood there with a smile on her face as if daring Eve to run her down. Eve swore and jerked the steering wheel to the side at the last moment. The jeep lurched, throwing Eve against the door, but she managed to maintain control, swerving around the crazy-stupid girl. She glanced over at Cassie who was shaken but uninjured. Through the rearview mirror, Eve could see Ali direct several of the Dark Worshippers in pursuit, while she others began running back to the main camp. To get another vehicle, Eve guessed.
The Catastrophe Theory Page 7
