by Kyla Stone
She faltered, stumbled again. Micah dragged her to her feet.
Silas, Willow, and Finn sprinted beside her, Benjie still in Finn’s arms, Finn holding his shirt over Benjie’s nose. They wove between armchairs and coffee tables. The fire blazed on their left, blasting heat solid as a wall, threatening to cut off their path to the mall entrance.
The boiling cloud of smoke descended over their heads. Amelia struggled to breathe, her throat seared. Stars exploded across her vision.
They should be crawling on their hands and knees, dropping low to escape the smoke, but they couldn’t. If they slowed down even a fraction, death would get them anyway.
Behind them, the rats squealed as the heat blasted their tiny bodies. They shifted like a wave, fleeing the fire and instinctively heading in the same direction as the escaping humans. The rats spread like an oil slick, a writhing mound of bristling fur and lashing claws, gouging jaws and snapping, razor teeth.
Beside her, Silas skidded to a halt. He bent to pick up his discarded rifle. He spun and took aim at the rabid vermin.
“Silas!” Amelia cried. “Come on!”
“Just go!” Silas shouted.
Micah jerked her arm. She had no choice. They raced through the mall entrance into an enormous three-story atrium. She doubled over, coughing and choking, desperate to inhale mouthfuls of precious oxygen.
Her skull felt like it was fracturing, tectonic plates crashing into each other. The pain almost knocked her off her feet. Not now, please not now.
She struggled to stand, wiping her eyes, searching frantically for an escape. The escalators leading to the second and third floors were directly ahead of them. To the right, a bath store and a gift shop. To the left, a corridor lined with designer boutiques.
“Come on!” Micah rasped, pulling her again.
Amelia risked a glance behind them. Her heart seized in her chest.
Silas sprinted toward her, gesturing furiously as hundreds of rats flooded out of Fieldwell’s. The rodents squealed in terror, scrabbling to escape the roaring fire licking at their tails.
“The escalators!” Finn shouted. “Go up!”
Silas sprinted by her. He and Finn raced up the escalator three steps at a time, Benjie still clutched in Finn’s arms. “Come on! Hurry!”
Light blinded her, an aura shimmering before her eyes. A tingling sensation spread from her belly and flooded her body with weakness. Her muscles trembling, turning to water. She slumped to her hands and knees.
Not a migraine. Worse.
No! Not now! But she couldn’t stop what was coming. She was utterly helpless. She didn’t have her auto-injector. She didn’t have her meds. She couldn’t stop this defective, monstrous thing inside her from destroying her body from the inside out.
“Amelia!” Micah paused at her side. He tried to lift her, but she was dead weight. Her limbs wouldn’t move, wouldn’t obey her commands.
It was too late. The river of rats reached them. Amelia cringed, bracing herself for the pain and horror.
But the rats ignored her. They flowed around Amelia and Micah like a current and swept up the escalator stairs. They dodged Willow, who stiffened a few steps from the bottom, her face a rictus of terror.
The rats feared the fire. Their survival instincts were still stronger than the virus’s compelling urge to spread itself. But it wouldn’t last long. They might only have seconds before the rodents remembered their ravenous, unnatural hunger.
She vomited once, then again. The pain flared, peaking in a shattering explosion of pain. She collapsed. Her brain was melting, her bones breaking, her skin shattering.
Finn and Silas stared down from the second-floor landing. “Help Amelia!” Finn shouted at Willow. “I’ve got Benjie. We’ll find you!”
Willow waved them on, her body racked in a coughing fit. They ran.
“Wait!” Willow cried suddenly. She thrust her hand into her pocket, her expression stricken. “I have Benjie’s inhaler! He needs it. The smoke will—”
“He’ll be fine,” Micah croaked. “We need your help.”
Willow hesitated, torn.
She wouldn’t blame her for leaving, Amelia thought distantly. Willow owed her nothing. She should save herself and her brother. Micah should save himself. She would only slow them down. She forced the words out. “Leave…me…”
“Willow!” Micah cried desperately.
Willow swore. She leapt the last several steps, kicking two rats out of the way as the rodents slithered up the escalator, their tiny claws clicking.
She bent over Amelia. Her shadow sparkled with brilliant colors. “Get up!”
Amelia heard them speaking, but they were very far away. She was underwater, and they were calling to her from a great distance. She worked her mouth, but no sound came out. She couldn’t speak.
Her vision swam with light and dark spots. Her muscles were stiffening, seizing, her jaw rigid, her tongue thick and useless.
Her body was no longer hers. Her mind was no longer hers. It belonged to something else now.
“Seizure,” Micah said from the other side of the world, the other side of the universe.
“Oh, hell,” Willow said.
And then it came: the shaking, trembling, roaring darkness.
12
Gabriel
Gabriel coughed violently, his lungs burning in the smoke-clotted air. He struggled to breathe through his mask. Heat shimmered all around him, oppressive as an oven.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Amelia and Micah fleeing through the store, heading for the mall entrance. On his right, Celeste and Horne raced past him toward the parking lot exit.
He had to give them time to escape.
Nicolas, the young tattooed Pyro, was a statue, staring in horror at the writhing horde of rats pouring from the warehouse doorway. Past the rats, the main section of the furniture store erupted into flames. The fire was a crackling, popping cacophony, a pulsing roar in his ears. There was only one way out now.
He took a ragged breath and lunged at Nicolas.
He seized the gleaming pulse gun in the boy’s hands with his right hand. With his left, he ripped off the boy’s respiratory mask. If Gabriel was choking to death on smoke, this kid could experience the same pleasure.
Nicolas blinked to life with a growl and jerked back. He coughed, sputtering and hacking, but refused to release his grip. They wrestled for the gun.
“Give it up and I’ll let you go,” Gabriel grunted. The Pyro was just a boy, too young for this. He didn’t want to kill him. “I won’t hurt you.”
Nicolas spat in his face.
Up close, the boy’s skin was mottled with acne, his upper lip filmed with fine blonde hairs. But he had the cold, blank eyes of a killer. There would be no appealing to his better nature.
“Have it your way.” Gabriel headbutted him.
Nicolas stumbled, mouth agape, but he didn’t let go. He managed to regain his feet and tried to force the barrel of the pulse gun into Gabriel’s chest. A single electrified blast from the weapon would melt his heart inside his body.
A squealing rat scurried onto his foot. Another leapt onto his calf, its claws digging into his boot. He kicked them off, almost losing his grip on the gun.
The fire raged behind him, roaring ever closer. He heaved, coughing violently, eyes bleeding tears. He was running out of time.
But he needed the gun. Jericho had gone after Mohawk with nothing but his pulse rod. Celeste and Horne were unarmed. If Gabriel didn’t get this weapon and fast, they were all dead.
He changed tactics. Instead of yanking back as the Pyro expected, Gabriel shoved, hurling his weight into the boy’s chest. Already pulling back and taken by surprise, Nicolas lost his balance and staggered.
The boy released the weapon. His arms windmilled wildly as he fell, toppling backward onto the wriggling carpet of rats.
The rats swarmed the boy. They scuttled along his arms and legs. Teeth jagged as shards of bone san
k into his hands and the exposed skin of his face and neck. He flailed at them, rolling and kicking, knocking a handful off him but two dozen more instantly took their place.
He shrieked in agony.
Horror clawed Gabriel’s throat. But he couldn’t help him even if he wanted to. To wade into that writhing mass of infected teeth and claws was a death wish.
Four fat black rats raised themselves on their haunches, snouts twitching. As one, their heads swiveled toward him.
Gabriel fled for the exit, the boy’s anguished wails echoing in his ears.
He took cover behind the wall to the right of the glass doors, the pulse gun clutched close to his chest. On the other side of the doors, Celeste and Horne cowered behind a potted plant.
“Why are you still here?” Gabriel hissed. The air was blurry, his eyes stinging so badly he could hardly see. He rubbed his face with the back of his arm. “Get the hell out of here!”
Celeste silently pointed outside, her pallor ashen.
He peered around the corner, sweeping the parking lot. It was difficult to make out anything through the sheets of freezing rain. The sky was black, the moon and stars hidden behind thick clouds. There were no other ambient lights, the city dark but for a few sputtering fires in the distance.
He took in the scene in an instant: a black van in the parking lot a few dozen yards away, three hostiles, their respiratory masks removed. Two stood apart; the third was engaged in combat with Jericho.
Alvarado, the Latino with the cowboy hat and the gold rings, was closest to Gabriel’s position. His back turned to the mall, his pulse gun aimed at the grappling bodies, but he wasn’t shooting. He was watching the fight. The female Pyro with the red mohawk stood ten feet past Alvarado on his right. She simply watched, her semi-automatic aimed at the pavement.
Jericho tangled with Sykes in close, hand-to-hand combat. Jericho had managed to saw the Pyro’s automatic rifle in two pieces with his pulse rod—which now lay a dozen feet from him, the length of it crackling and spitting with bluish lightning.
Gabriel could shoot through the glass and take out Alvarado, but that would release the rats. He and Jericho wouldn’t survive another battle fighting two enemies at once. And Celeste and Horne needed a clear path of escape. The rats had to stay inside.
He’d have to gamble that he could slip through the door and disarm the first Pyro undetected, that the hard rain pounding the pavement and the howling wind would hide his movements. Then Celeste and Horne could make a run for it.
He smashed one last scrambling, squealing rat with the butt of his rifle. He risked a glance back at the boy. He was no longer moving.
Micah and Amelia should have already made it out. He would hunt down every damned Pyro in this entire ruined city if something happened to them. But he couldn’t think about that yet. These two were his responsibility now. “I’ll take care of them out there. But you can’t lose it. You’ve got to be ready to run.”
Horne was a trembling, sniveling mess. Celeste stared at him, her cheeks streaked with soot and tears, but her eyes were clear. “I’m ready.”
The furniture store was engulfed in flames, everything blazing, burning, sparks flying, the smoke a dark, writhing cloud. A terrible roar filled his ears, the sounds of wood popping, things splintering, the building heaving, caving in on itself.
His lungs burned. He coughed, choking, his lungs seeking oxygen that suddenly wouldn’t come. But the fire wasn’t the greatest threat.
Dread filling him, Gabriel lowered his gaze to the sea of bristling fur, tails, and teeth flowing down the hall toward him.
Time was up.
13
Willow
“Pick her up!” Willow cried. “Hurry!”
“We can’t!” Micah knelt over Amelia in the center of the mall’s atrium. “We have to wait for the seizure to pass.”
“Oh, hell!” She whirled and took in the blazing inferno that was now Fieldwell’s furniture store. Sparks flew from the flames licking the wide archway. Thick coils of smoke billowed into the atrium.
The atrium boasted dozens of potted plants, tufted benches, and lush carpet. The fire was big enough, hot enough, that practically anything would burn. The fire would chew its way toward them in only a matter of minutes.
If the fire didn’t get them, the smoke would. Willow’s lungs burned. Her breath rasped in her aching throat. Her head hurt and her limbs felt sluggish and slow.
And then there were the rats. A few dozen of them scurried in crazed, haphazard circles, squealing in terror.
Willow paced, as panicked as the rats. At least Finn had Benjie. He would keep her brother safe. But what if he had an asthma attack? She fingered the inhaler in her pocket, cursing herself. She should have thrown it to Finn, should have done something else, something better.
But there was nothing to do about it now. She had to worry about her own survival. It wasn’t looking good. She didn’t even have a gun, only her hunting knife. She pulled it out of its sheath at her side. “How long?”
“I don’t know!” Micah gently turned Amelia on her side. Her whole body had gone taut. She shook uncontrollably, her eyes rolling in their sockets.
Willow rubbed her stinging, leaking eyes. She crouched low to the ground, forcing herself to breathe the hot air. She’d never seen a seizure before. “Is she—is she okay?”
“I don’t know.” Micah’s expression was tense, filled with barely repressed panic.
Amelia was unnaturally stiff, her face blue-tinged, rigid and mask-like. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth.
Willow’s heart constricted. The girl looked like she was dying.
Micah gripped Amelia’s hand and bent over her, his mouth moving in a silent prayer. He squeezed her fingers and spoke so softly it was hard to make out. “I’m right here,” he whispered over and over. “You’re not alone.”
Willow looked away. Even surrounded by fire and killer rats and chaos, it was an intimate moment, one she wasn’t a part of.
A rat scurried at her. She kicked it away. Another one crept stealthily from behind a potted plant, whiskers twitching, beady eyes gleaming. Three more scrabbled down the escalator.
She coughed loudly and cleared her throat. “Uh, Micah? It’s time to go.”
“I think it’s over,” he rasped. He gathered Amelia’s unconscious body in his arms and cradled her like a baby. “My gun is in my side holster, beneath my jacket.”
“Oh, hallelujah.” She grabbed it and unlatched the safety. “Let’s go!”
Two more rats slithered closer, sniffing only a few yards from her feet. There were several dozen on the escalator now. They were still skittish of the fire, but seemed to think they were safe for the moment. If she had more bullets in her gun, she would blast them into oblivion.
Instead she went left, crouching, her body bent almost double to escape the smoke, following the main corridor. They ran past a bath shop, a makeup counter, a personalized home robot store, a SmartFlex repair place. They needed a store large enough to have its own separate exit; otherwise, they risked hemming themselves in. The store entrances were all too wide, with only the metal grate doors as a barricade, which the rats would easily squeeze through.
The more distance they placed between themselves and the raging fire, the easier it was to breathe. Willow heaved great gasps of sweet, sweet oxygen.
Unfortunately, the stupid rats could breathe, too. One of them nipped at her heels. She kicked it, but there were a half-dozen more right behind it. For such small, ugly creatures, they were incredibly fast. “We need a freakin’ door!”
“There!” Micah pointed three shops ahead and to the left—a narrow hallway with an ‘emergency exit’ sign above it.
She ran for the exit, making sure to stay just behind Micah. He wasn’t as fast with Amelia in his arms. She had the weapons. It was her job to keep them all safe.
They careened into the hallway. Heavy with shadows, it was hard to see, but she could just make out a meta
l door with a narrow, rectangular window at the far end.
Micah stumbled but righted himself, his glasses half-sliding off his face.
“I’ll cover you!” She whirled and shot, taking out a massive rat about to leap at Amelia’s dangling feet. She took out two more skittering for Micah’s legs.
Another huge, hunched rodent climbed on a bench, ran along it, and sprang at Willow. She hissed as sharp claws dug into her right thigh. She slammed the butt of the gun against the creature’s bulging back.
The rat fell off. She sprinted the last dozen yards to the door, which Micah held open. “Go, go, go!”
She hurled herself through the door, spun, and slammed it shut—right on a squealing rat’s head. She shuddered at the sickening crunch of its tiny, splintering skull.
For a minute, the only sounds were her ragged panting and the roar of her heartbeat in her ears. Slowly, other sounds came to her. The wind, still shrieking around the corners of the buildings. The freezing rain, hard little pellets splatting her face and pounding the sidewalk. Micah, whispering a prayer of gratitude.
Her throat felt scorched. Her eyes and chest burned. Her legs were weak and trembling. Her stomach wrenched with anxiety for Benjie and Finn. But she stood there, her eyes closed, in the frigid cold, and simply took it all in.
They were beautifully, gloriously alive.
“You did good,” Micah croaked. His glasses were a fogged, dripping mess.
She grinned at him. “Can you even see me right now?”
He shrugged. “It would be worse if I took them off. I’d walk into closed doors.”
“I’d like to see that sometime. Not today, though. I guess I’ll lead then.”
“Great. It’ll be like the blind leading the blind.”
“Hardy har har. Keep working on your poetry skills, ‘cause your comedy isn’t exactly cutting it.”
