by Kyla Stone
“You’re stronger than I was,” he said softly, “than I am.”
She rubbed her charm bracelet beneath her sweater. Pain pulsed behind her eyes, but she ignored it. “You could have told everyone what my father did, that he was the one who engineered the Hydra virus. You could have claimed your innocence. But you didn’t. Why?”
Gabriel shifted, leaned against the wall. The outline of his profile was sharp in the dim shadows. He was still as handsome as ever, strong and fierce as a hawk. “They would have suspected you and your family by association. They would’ve interrogated you, imprisoned you, or worse.”
“You let your brother believe you were a monster rather than rat me out.”
“I was already a monster,” he said heavily.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. She didn’t know what she was supposed to think or how she was supposed to feel. He had committed truly awful acts. He’d acted monstrously. Did that still make him a monster? “Micah says there’s hope for everyone.”
He shifted in the dark. “So did Nadira.”
Her heart twinged at the thought of Nadira. She had been genuinely kind and tenderhearted. The world was a bleaker place without her. Nadira had believed there was still good in Gabriel, that even a terrorist could be redeemed. Was it possible? Did she want it to be true?
He peered at her intently. “You told Micah the truth yourself.”
She didn’t tell him how trust was a brittle but precious thing. When it shattered, it shattered her heart, too.
But she couldn’t stay broken. She refused to stay broken. She wouldn’t let Kane or Simeon or her father win. She needed to trust someone. It was part of rebuilding herself, one shard at a time.
But he didn’t need to know that. “It was the right thing to do.” They stared at each other for a long moment.
She held his gaze a beat too long before dropping her eyes. “Well, I’m thankful.”
His lip curled, revealing a flash of white teeth. “See, we can be civilized.”
She couldn’t see the dimple in his left cheek, but she knew it was there. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She needed to get out of there.
A wave of dizziness rushed through her, not just from Gabriel’s presence. Her headache still throbbed against her skull. She needed to lie down, and soon. She moved toward the bathroom. “I need to go.”
He moved out of her way. “Of course.”
She opened the door into complete blackness. She held out her SmartFlex, the blue glow illuminating a circle of the cement floor. Before her mind could register that cement was an odd choice for an upscale department store bathroom, something erupted out of the darkness.
She glimpsed a snout and teeth and tiny black eyes. A small, furred creature lunged at her. She gasped and stepped back, leaving the door wide open.
A brown rat skittered out of the doorway. It rose on its haunches less than a yard from her feet, squeaking angrily.
Amelia kicked at it. It turned and fled back into the darkness.
“What the hell was that?” Gabriel asked.
“A rat. It came from in there.” She pointed at the door to the storage warehouse. Warily, Gabriel stepped into the doorway and flicked his flashlight inside, illuminating the shadows.
Amelia froze. Dread coiled in her stomach as the shadows separated into distinct shapes. Wriggling bodies. Shiny black eyes. Flat, wide teeth. Sharp little claws.
A dozen. Then several dozens. A hundred. More than she could count.
They gathered along the armrests of plastic-wrapped lounge chairs, perched on table tops, skittered from sofa cushion to sofa cushion. They amassed atop coffee tables and end tables. They crouched a hundred deep within every corner like thick, bristling shadows.
These were not the cute pets used to sawdust and cages. Their eyes glittered with malice. Their tiny, bone-sharp teeth gnashed, the fur around their jaws damp with a yellowish, foaming saliva tinged red.
They were infected. The virus raged through them, twisting their brains with blood-lust until they were savage little monsters, only longing to spread the virus through bites to as many victims as possible.
A huge black rat emerged from the shadows a dozen feet from the door. It crept stealthily toward her. Gabriel swung the beam of the flashlight, the light reflecting in its tiny eyes. It sat back on its fat haunches and chittered angrily, whiskers twitching.
One by one, and then in clumps, the rats behind it slipped from chairs and sofas and tables and dropped to the cement floor.
“Gabriel…”
“I see them. Don’t move. Don’t startle them.” Gabriel edged closer, moving in front of her protectively as he stretched for the door handle.
The fat rat charged. Instantly, the rest followed. A living tide of brown, writhing bodies rushed toward them.
“Shut the door!” Amelia screamed.
“What’s going on?” a groggy voice blurted from the darkness. But there was no time to answer or call for help.
The rats scurried across the floor, hundreds of bristling, hunched backs and slithering pink tails, a thousand claws scrabbling against cement.
Gabriel dove for the handle and slammed the door shut. Two rats squeezed through. They lunged at Amelia’s feet, both of them clawing up her leg. One bit down hard over her shin, its teeth catching in the thick leather of the boots she still wore. Thank goodness for small mercies.
“Don’t move!” Gabriel swung his rifle like a bat, connecting with the biting rat and sending it flying. It landed a few feet away, deep in shadow, but Gabriel pummeled it with the barrel of the gun.
The second rat scampered up her thigh, its scrabbling claws finding purchase on her pants. She shrieked, frantically batting at it.
She was immune from the virus passed by human transmission, but she didn’t know about animals. The virus could be a mutation. She had to assume this rat was as deadly a threat to her as it was to everyone else.
She wasn’t wearing gloves. If she tried to grab it and it bit her hand…but she had no choice. The thing would gnaw through her pant leg and bite her thigh in half a second if she didn’t do something.
She could barely see. Gabriel’s flashlight swung wildly, the beam of light skittering in all directions. The shadows shifted like liquid oil, tricking her eyes.
She could feel the thing like a weight hanging from her leg. If she missed, if her aim was off by even a fraction…
She caught a flash of tiny shining eyes and a black bulge on her thigh.
Amelia seized the rat around its middle. It felt like a thick, terrycloth towel. A towel that was dense and coarse and bulged grotesquely beneath her fingers.
She screamed and flung the creature as hard as she could against the wall. It struck with a wet thump and slid to the floor. It writhed, twitched, and fell still.
Gabriel leaned against the door, his chest heaving. She sagged next to him, her shoulder only inches from his. They stared at each other in shocked horror.
“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked. “Were you bitten anywhere?”
“No,” she gasped. “You?”
He shook his head.
Micah and Finn stumbled toward them, wiping sleep from their eyes. “What just happened?”
There was a scratching sound against the door. Like an old-fashioned key scraping against metal. Like tiny scrabbling nails.
The rats were trying to get out.
The blood drained from Amelia’s face. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t open that door.”
10
Micah
Micah awoke to the sound of shattering glass. The stench of smoke filled his nostrils. Not the distant smoke that swirled constantly in the air, but the intense, fetid smoke from a nearby fire.
A fire so close, he could feel the heat of it on his skin.
He opened his eyes, expecting complete darkness. Instead, everything was orange, flickering shadows.
“Fire!” someone cried.
Micah stag
gered to his feet, blinking sleep from his eyes. He shoved his glasses on, jerked on his pack, and grabbed the rifle resting on the cushion beside him. He seized the flashlight from his pocket and flicked it on.
The glass doors of the west entrance were shattered. Little fires surged from a half-dozen places. A brocaded sofa whooshed into flames. A coffee table blazed.
Another line of fire trailed from a broken bottle. Several bottles were scattered near the west entrance, flaming rags stuffed inside. Molotov cocktails.
They were under attack.
“Everyone out!” Micah shouted.
“Get up!” Silas cried, charging between the sofas. He gripped Willow by the shoulders, yanking her from her cushions and blankets and weary dreams. “Wake up!”
Celeste and Horne rose, coughing and pulling on their masks. Jericho stumbled toward them from the west entrance, smacking at his sparking, smoking pants with a sofa pillow.
Finn grabbed Benjie with one arm and hauled the boy over his shoulder. Willow grabbed Finn’s hand and dragged them toward the double doors of the south exit, the closest escape.
Ribbons of smoke writhed through the thickening air high over his head. Thank goodness the ceiling was three stories high. It would give them the few precious moments they needed to breathe—though he could already feel a tightness in the back of his throat.
Micah brought his shirt up and covered his mouth, though he already wore a mask. He swung his flashlight, searching frantically for Amelia and Gabriel.
She was slumped against a sofa armrest twenty feet from the bathrooms and office suite. Gabriel leaned over her, his hand on her shoulder. She bent her head, her hands pressed over her ears, her chest heaving.
Something was wrong with her. A migraine or …worse. He staggered toward them. His shin struck the corner of a coffee table, sending pain jolting up his leg. “Amelia! Go, go!”
Then he heard it. A melodious, sing-song voice cut through the coughing and shouting. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Micah stiffened. Dread solidified in his gut like a block of ice. He exchanged a horrified look with Gabriel.
The Pyros had found them.
“We know you’re in there!” the voice came again.
Micah whirled, raising the muzzle of his rifle. The bulky forms of sofas, chairs, tables, and buffets could hide anything. To his left, the flames danced higher, licking the walls, leaping from object to object, feeding on wood, carpet, stuffing, and fabric, bathing everything in a wicked orange light.
Four shapes materialized out of the smoky shadows, striding into Fieldwell’s from the main mall entrance. They wore fitted respirator masks over their mouths and noses, thin tubes trailing from their masks to cylindrical oxygen tanks hooked to their backs.
The first man stepped onto an ornately carved coffee table. A billowing black trench coat swept to his knees. He wore thigh and hip holsters and gripped a pulse gun in each hand. When he spoke, his voice was lilting and musical, only slightly distorted by the mask. “Little piggies, little piggies, let us in.”
Celeste screamed.
“How’d they get past our watch?” Micah gasped, stunned. It still felt like some horrible dream he could wake up from.
The air to his left shimmered with heat, everything distorted like a desert mirage. Only the leaping flames were no mirage. And this was no dream.
Silas came up beside him, swearing profusely. “I was guarding that entrance, but when I smelled smoke, I ran to warn the others. The bastards were waiting. They snuck in behind me.”
Micah coughed into his arm. “They’re trapping us.”
“What do you want?” Horne yelled. He cowered behind a purple loveseat. “I’m certain we can work something out to our mutual benefit.”
Horne believed he could smooth-talk their way out of everything. But this plan was too well orchestrated. These people wanted something, and they expected to get it. The sickening feeling in Micah’s gut told him he already knew what it was.
The trench-coated man’s face was leathery and well-lined, like the spidery cracks in a window. The part of his nose not hidden by the mask was misshapen from being broken too many times. His eyes were quick and pale, a deadly coldness to them. “You killed the wrong kid, my friends.”
Beside Micah, Silas stiffened.
Micah’s mouth went dry. “That was an accident.” He’d feared consequences for Silas’s rash actions. Violence never occurred in a vacuum. There were always repercussions, like waves rippling out from a rock hurled into a placid river. There was a cost for everything.
The man only laughed. As if he could read Micah’s thoughts, he said, “There’s a pretty price on your heads. And we’re here to collect.”
The second man, a short, heavy Latino wearing a cowboy hat, a gold chain around his neck and fat gold rings adorning his gloveless fingers, gestured at them with his semi-automatic. “Put your weapons down. Make your way in a line toward those doors behind you, nice and easy now.”
“I wouldn’t take too long,” the third one said. She was a muscular black woman with the sides of her head shaved, her mohawk dyed blood-red. “This whole damn place is going up in flames.”
“There’s no need to hurt anyone,” Finn said. “We can explain what happened—”
Mohawk aimed her rifle at his feet and let off a volley of bullets. A glass coffee table shattered. Benjie cried out. Finn leapt back, pressing Benjie to his chest.
Willow’s face contorted in fury. “You could’ve killed my brother! He’s just a kid!”
“A kid’s life for a kid’s life, eh, Sykes?” Cowboy said to the man with the black trench coat.
“Seems fair to me,” said the man called Sykes.
“Moruga gets to decide that, Alvarado,” the fourth attacker said to Cowboy. He was shorter and slender, maybe nineteen, with blonde hair shorn close to his skull, an eyebrow ring, and tattooed stars below each eye. A second tattoo peeked over the collar of his jacket—a flaming skull.
“You’re Pyros,” Micah croaked. He blinked and coughed, the first tendrils of smoke worming into his throat.
Tattoo Boy sneered. “Excellent deduction. What was your first clue?”
Sykes gestured at the boy. “You can handle this, Nicolas.”
Nicolas aimed his gun at Micah’s face. “Now put the guns down or I shoot you first.”
Reluctantly, Micah lowered his rifle. His jacket covered his side holster. He risked keeping it. Slowly, the others did the same. Silas threw his weapon to the floor with a growl.
The fire hissed and sparked. The flames grew larger, more ferocious, smaller fires joining to form a blazing wall. It chewed through furniture like toothpicks. Smoke billowed over their heads, still near the top of the high ceiling, but slowly descending like a black shroud of death.
Heat singed Micah’s skin through his clothes, seared his throat. He prayed silently, his lips moving in a desperate plea.
They were trapped between ruthless killers and a wall of fire. There was no way out. No escape. Only a miracle could save them now.
11
Amelia
“Hands up!” shouted Nicolas, the boy with the tattoos.
Amelia raised her hands. She blinked stinging tears out of her eyes. Pain sank vicious claws into her brain. Her vision blurred, the flames sparking and shimmering like holos.
She took a step and faltered, dizziness spiking through her. Micah grabbed her arm and steadied her. “Cover your mouth with your shirt. Breathe through your nose!”
Amelia obeyed, lifting her thick knit sweater and pressing it to her mouth and nose. She inhaled several frantic, panic-stricken breaths. The smoke intensified her headache until it was a crescendo of agony pulsing against her skull.
She prayed it was only a migraine, that the smoke wouldn’t trigger something worse. A seizure now would be a death sentence.
“I said get in line!” Alvarado shouted as he adjusted his cowboy hat, the semi-automatic still aimed at Ame
lia. The Pyros jostled them toward the south exit and the parking lot. A black van waited for them in the rain, the rear doors open. Who knew what lay in store for them after that?
These people were going to kill them slowly. She could see it in the vicious set of their faces, the coldness in their eyes. They wanted revenge. Torture. Suffering. Death. And they were going to enjoy it.
Amelia had to find a way out. They had to escape.
She stumbled past the office doors, the bathrooms. The storage warehouse.
She had only seconds to decide. The fire raged to their left, popping and spitting and roaring like a ravenous dragon. The Pyros were well armed, but if they were distracted, Amelia’s group might have a chance. They could escape the fire and run out the exit, or back into the mall, where a thousand nooks and crannies offered hiding spots, shelter from bullets, and improvised weapons they could use to fight back.
Even if it was only a slim chance, it was better than none. Her vision blurred, shimmering with bright, scintillating colors, then darkened. Pain struck her skull, splitting it open like an axe. She had to act while she still could. She had to move now.
She lunged for the warehouse door and wrenched it open.
A black mass poured from the doorway, a swarming, seething carpet of bristling bodies and slithering pink tails. A thousand tiny nails scrabbled over concrete, the awful sound raising the hairs on her arms.
“Rats!” she shouted in warning.
Chaos erupted. Celeste screamed in horror. The Pyros yelled curses. A gun went off.
Gabriel sprang at the nearest attacker, Nicolas, who stood frozen in shock. Jericho sprinted past her, kicking at the small squirming bodies as he lunged for the armed woman with the mohawk.
A rat skittered up Micah’s ankle.
“Watch out!” Amelia cried.
He slammed his foot against the wall, knocking it off.
Amelia staggered, nearly falling. Micah grabbed her upper arm. “Run!”
The swarming rats blocked the exit. The only way was back through the furniture store, bypassing the fire to reach the mall. She turned and fled, pain exploding inside her skull, her lungs burning.
