As the sedan’s spin and forward momentum pulled it through the intersection, a loud metallic crunch filled the air as the pursuing Roadster T-boned the second. Miller saw both cars flipping through the street. A moment later, a body flew past, legs and arms sprawling out like a rag doll. He crashed to the street with a puff of pink dust. Miller twisted the wheel, straightening out the car, and zipped around the flung man’s motionless body.
The encounter, while brief, had taxed Miller’s body. He hadn’t seen action like that since the SEALs. Adrenaline pounded his heart and made his hands shake. He gripped the steering wheel tight and slowed the car, catching his breath. Once he felt a measure of calm return, he looked to Arwen. She stared back at him with wide eyes. Her lips showed a slight grin. If not for the dry cracking on her lower lip it would have been a full-fledged smile.
“That was awesome,” she whispered.
He smiled for her. “It was, wasn’t it.”
“Where’d you learn to drive like that?”
“Defensive driving course. Part of my job.”
“That was defensive? What are you, in the army or something?”
“Or something— Whoa!” Miller hit the brakes.
Arwen became quickly frightful. “What is it?”
“Look,” he said, pointing.
Arwen relaxed when she saw the Interstate 95 sign. “The highway!”
Miller checked the car’s charge. It indicated they could travel an estimated two hundred miles before the car needed a recharge. He figured they had about five hours of oxygen left, too. And the rebreather tank if it came to that. He considered trying to find the scuba shop and all of his supplies, but a flash of blue passing through a faraway intersection in the rearview sent him toward the highway. Predators were still hunting in Miami.
They drove in silence until they reached the on-ramp for the highway. “We made it,” Arwen said as they rode up the long, curving ramp.
When Miller saw that the double-yellow-lined road was almost completely free of cars and bodies, he powered up to eighty miles per hour and relaxed. The city of Miami, once full of life and never-ending parties, had been reduced to a red-hued ghost town hosting a gang of neo-Nazis somehow capable of reigning in their own SecondWorld. Leaving the city behind lifted a sinister weight from his shoulders.
As the buildings shrunk down to apartment buildings and then homes, Miller turned on the radio. He was greeted by static. He hit the Scan button and the numbers scrolled past until the cycle had completed and started over. Nothing but static. There were either no stations in range transmitting or something was blocking the signal.
Arwen leaned forward with a grunt and opened the glove box. It was empty except for one CD. “Score.”
“I wasn’t looking for music,” he said. “I—” He saw the CD’s label. U2—War. Score indeed. He took it from her and slid it into the CD player. Once “Sunday Bloody Sunday” started playing he knew the disc was kept in the car to show off its amazing eight-speaker sound system.
Miller and Arwen sat in silence as they cruised down the highway listening to an early Bono and The Edge pour their hearts into the music that made them famous. Red flakes danced on the breeze around them, flowing up and over the car.
Ten minutes into the CD, they passed an airplane that had crashed into the opposite side of the highway. It was big—a 747—and probably carried hundreds of people. Fire had consumed the middle of it, and Miller had to pull into the breakdown lane to skirt one of the destroyed wings.
“What happened?” Arwen asked.
“Engines can’t run without oxygen,” he said in a hushed voice. “They must have tried to land on the highway.”
“Maybe the red stuff clogged it up?”
He nodded. “That, too.”
Once past the plane, they fell silent again, neither wanting to talk about what they’d seen. After roughly twenty-seven minutes, nearly a minute into “Two Hearts Beat as One,” Arwen turned down the music. “Enough old-people music.”
“Old-people music? U2 is…” Miller paused. He was talking to a twelve-year-old. U2 was old-people music. “I thought you liked it.”
“You thought wro— Ahh!”
A split second of confusion struck Miller as his ear picked up on Arwen’s scream a fraction of a second before his mind registered what he’d seen—a bullet hole in the windshield. He yanked the wheel from side to side, hoping to throw off the sniper’s aim. A second round tore through the windshield and blasted a hole out the back.
The third round found his left arm. Miller shouted in pain, twisting from the impact. He hammered the brakes as the car veered off the road toward a copse bordering an off-ramp.
16
A wave of leafy bush branches covered the car as it sliced into the brush like a dull knife. Each shattered branch sent a jolt through the car, but ultimately helped avoid a bone-crushing stop against the guardrail, which was just a few feet beyond where the car came to rest. Once stopped, Miller took stock of the situation.
Arwen was still conscious, though dazed, and most likely in intense pain. He glanced at his shoulder, now covered in a maroon stain. A gash stretched across the side of his shoulder where the bullet had skimmed past. A little to the right and his arm would have been all but useless. He’d survived worse—much worse—and didn’t give it a second thought. He couldn’t see past the brush covering the car, but suspected the sniper had been on the overpass to which the off-ramp led. And since he couldn’t see the overpass, the sniper couldn’t see them, which meant he had a minute, maybe less, to figure out some kind of plan.
He ejected the clip from his handgun and checked the rounds. One in the clip. One in the chamber. Two shots. Against what? A lone gunman with a sniper rifle? Ten gunmen with automatic weapons? There was no way to be sure.
Arwen groaned. “What happened?”
Miller slid into the backseat and started putting on his rebreather. There wasn’t time to explain. “Stay in the car. No matter what you hear or see.”
With the rebreather secured to his back, he slid the mask up over his head and secured it over his face. He adjusted the valves and took a breath. “Keep your head down. I’ll be back soon.”
“But—” Before Arwen could speak, Miller had slipped out the back door and closed it behind him.
Miller followed the rise of the off-ramp toward the overpass, staying well within the concealment of the tall bushes. The brush thinned out as several taller trees blocked out the sun. He paused at the edge of the brush, lowering himself down behind a leafy branch, and listened. His patience and instincts were rewarded thirty seconds later.
Fallen leaves and dry branches cracked beneath the careful approach of a lone figure. Miller watched him through the brush. He had the same look as the Miami gang—shaved head, blond hair, blue eyes, the military-grade rebreather—but a few details set him apart. He held the confident posture of a hunter. His black fatigues were similar to those worn by U.S. Special Ops on night missions. But his weapon stood out the most and made no sense. The Karabiner 98k was a five-shot bolt-action rifle sometimes fitted with an optical scope for sharpshooting. It was the standard infantry weapon of the Germans in World War II. But here it was, in the year 2012, held by the man who had just tried to kill him. In the open, with some space between them, the sniper had the advantage. Here in the brush, with twisting branches all around, the long rifle would be unwieldy. But if he reached the clearing …
Miller rose from his hiding spot and raised his weapon. The wound on his left shoulder pounded through him as he fired the first shot. The pain threw off his aim, and the bullet zinged past the sniper’s head.
The man ducked and raised his rifle, but it snagged on a branch and his shot dug into the dirt at Miller’s feet. As the man chambered a second round, Miller took careful aim. Before he could pull the trigger, he noticed the sniper was about to fire from the hip and ducked instinctively. Both shots went wild.
He had no idea how many shots
the sniper had left in his five-shot magazine, but he knew how many he had left—none. He left the brush behind and charged through the sloped clearing. When the man charged as well, Miller knew they were both out of ammo. But the stranger still had the advantage. Not only was he not wounded, but the rifle had been fitted with a very sharp bayonet, which essentially turned it into a short spear.
The two met in the center of the clearing, both moving fast. The sniper thrust the bayonet toward Miller’s chest. He spun like a football player, dodging the blade with his body, but felt a tug on something as he passed. He gave it no thought as he continued his spin and pistol-whipped the man in the back of the head.
The two men separated. As Miller watched the man stagger for a moment, he thought he’d gained the upper hand. But the man’s smile, twisted by the thick plastic of his rebreather mask, revealed otherwise. Miller found out why a moment later.
He couldn’t breathe.
The hose that supplied air from Miller’s rebreather to his mask had been severed by the knife.
The ramifications of this struck both men at the same time. The sniper didn’t need to fight. All he had to do was wait. Without air, Miller would soon drop dead without another blow landed.
The man turned to run, but stumbled, weakened by the hard blow to his head. Miller charged, his subconscious counting down the minutes his body could keep going without another breath, and then cutting that time in half because of the oxygen being eaten up by physical exertion.
Miller caught the man’s shoulder and spun him around, but had to jump back as the bayonet swooshed past his stomach. The man’s quick strike overextended his arms and Miller filled the gap, planting a punch into the man’s stomach. The blow would have sent most men to the ground, gasping for air, but the sniper was a trained fighter. He flexed his stomach muscles and sucked in his gut, absorbing the blow’s energy, and keeping his air—of which he had plenty—in his lungs.
In close, the sniper twisted the butt of his rifle up and caught Miller in the side of the head, sending him to the ground. Miller reached out as he fell and managed to pull the face mask from his attacker.
The effects of asphyxiation assaulted Miller. Dizziness and blurred vision blinded him to the man’s approach. Then the man’s weight was on his chest, forcing out what little air remained in his lungs. The sniper tore Miller’s mask away.
The man grinned and spoke English with a heavy German accent. “It has been a long time since I took a life.”
The man pressed his rifle’s long barrel against Miller’s throat and pushed, though it was really just a symbolic gesture since Miller couldn’t breathe anyway.
Miller grasped the rifle and with the last of his strength, pushed back.
The German laughed. “Your struggle is admirable, but ultimately futi—”
Miller let go of the rifle and swung the bayonet, which he’d managed to unscrew with his fingers, into the German’s side. But it didn’t bite flesh. Instead, it stabbed through the man’s rebreather and punctured something inside. As a loud hiss filled the air, the man turned toward the sound. Miller withdrew the bayonet and struck again, this time slamming the blade into the side of the German’s head. The man slumped over without a sound.
Miller stood on shaky feet, his vision narrowing, his thoughts confused. He tried to reconnect his severed rebreather hose, but without tape to seal it back together, most of the air seeped away. All he could think about was the car and Arwen. He started back, stumbling through the brush, snapping branches and fighting to keep his eyes open. A glint of silver ahead shone like a beacon. He fell from the bushes, landing on the hood. Sliding along it, he found the door, opened it, and fell inside. With the door closed, he took several deep breaths.
Nothing. No improvement.
The car held no air, or at least not enough to help.
Arwen’s silence confirmed it.
That’s when he remembered the four golf ball–sized holes in the front and back windshields. He’d left Arwen behind, without air, to die on her own.
17
Miller reached back and cranked the oxygen tank’s valve all the way open. It hissed pure oxygen into the car. His head cleared and his vision returned. He checked Arwen and found a pulse. Unconscious, but alive. Next he removed his T-shirt and tore it into four pieces, balling them up and shoving them into the window’s holes. They wouldn’t stop all the air from escaping, but they were something.
Knowing the oxygen tank wouldn’t last long, he pushed the car’s starter button. When it clicked at him, he feared the car had been wrecked, but quickly realized the silent vehicle had never shut off. He threw the car into reverse and pulled back onto the highway.
Branches flew from the car and red dust billowed behind it as Miller hit the gas and pushed the vehicle to its top speed of 120 miles per hour. The highway passed in a blurry haze of red flakes.
Miller looked down at Arwen. She was tiny and frail and innocent. She didn’t deserve to die like this. The millions of people lying dead in the city shrinking behind them didn’t deserve to die like they did, either. He thought of the gang back in Miami. He saw the sick grin of the German sniper, leering down at him.
“Fuck you,” Miller said to the red sky.
“Who are you talking to?” Arwen asked, her voice weak.
Miller breathed a sigh of relief. “The sky.”
“What’d the sky do to make you so upset?”
Miller’s tension bled away. “Aside from raining down oxygen-stealing red crap?”
Arwen glanced up. “Right. That.” She wheezed. “Hard to breathe.”
Miller motioned to the T-shirt-stuffed holes in the window. “We’ve got a leaky ship.”
“We going to make it?”
There was no way to answer that question. Too many variables were still unknown. How far did they have to go? Had the rest of the world been attacked? How long would the oxygen tank last before it ran dry? The only real information he had was the battery charge. They had fifteen minutes left. Driving at full speed drained the battery fast. He’d been looking for signs of a drugstore or hospital close to the highway, but saw none. He’d considered slowing the pace, but if the air ran out before the battery, what was the point? Time was the enemy and speed was his only weapon.
Arwen coughed. “I’m sleepy.”
“Try to stay awake.”
The girl propped her eyes wide open, but the effort was short-lived. Her eyelids slid down to a tired squint.
Miller moved to touch her arm, but the sight of a body in the road snapped his hand back to the wheel as he yanked it to the left. The car jolted as they swerved one way, and then the other, nearly careening into the center guardrail.
“Sorry,” Miller said, but was secretly glad to see the maneuver had woken the girl again.
“What’s wrong with the sky?” she asked.
He looked up and saw an endless sea of red flakes. “What do you mean?”
“It’s blue.”
Miller looked again. Was Arwen hallucinating?
“Not up there.” Arwen pointed straight out the windshield. “Out there.”
Miller looked straight ahead. The change had been so subtle that he hadn’t noticed the growing streak of blue at the horizon. A blue sky lay ahead. And with it, the promise of breathable air. If he could, Miller would have pushed the accelerator farther down, but it was already pinned to the floor.
“We’re going to make it,” he said, turning to Arwen, but the girl had slumped to the side, her eyes closed.
He stared at her neck, looking for a pulse, and saw a gentle twitch just beneath her skin. But it was faint.
With a suddenness that made his stomach churn, Miller felt as though he’d just spun in circles. The world shifted around him. He kept his arms rigid, maintaining a straight trajectory. He took several deep breaths. His vision cleared slightly, but he knew those three breaths had taken much of what little oxygen was left in the vehicle—oxygen that Arwen needed as muc
h as he did.
The blue sky grew larger before them, expanding fast as they approached the border of the red storm.
As each breath became a wheeze, Miller knew the oxygen tank was empty. His vision became a blur, but he could see the blue sky was nearly above them now. Another minute, maybe, and they’d be clear.
That’s when the car’s battery died. As the car slowed from 120 miles per hour to zero, it carried them closer to the blue sky, but stopped just short. While fighting the now-familiar sensations of the onset of asphyxiation, Miller stumbled out of the car and ran to the other side. He fumbled with Arwen’s seat belt, but got it free and scooped the still form up.
He ran toward the blurry blue sky ahead of them. His legs shook from the effort. Sweat poured down his shirtless torso and red flakes clung to his skin. Through his waning vision, Miller saw two things ahead of him.
The blue, blue sky.
And a wall, atop of which stood a line of armed men wearing identical rebreathers.
“No,” he whispered.
The men were moving now. Rushing toward him. Weapons raised.
“No,” he whispered, and then fell to his knees. He placed Arwen down on the pavement and placed his body over hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said with the last of his breath before falling to his side. Miller blinked at the red sky above and rolled his head northward. The blue sky was so close. Black military boots charged toward him. Loud voices shouted. His vision faded. The last thing he saw was the side of Arwen’s neck. He fought against unconsciousness as he waited for the twitch of her pulse.
When none came, Miller closed his eyes and gave in to death.
18
“Is he awake?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep an eye on him.”
Miller listened to the conversation with his eyes closed. He’d woken thirty seconds previous and attempted to determine his situation without opening his eyes. The sounds around him—feet walking in a hallway, the beep of a heart monitor, and a distant television—combined with the smell of antiseptic, told him he was in a hospital. Normally, this would be a good thing considering he was certain he’d died. But the line of men he saw before losing consciousness wore gear similar to that of the Miami gang and the highway sniper. He was alive, but was he also a captive?
SecondWorld Page 8
