The Last Sanctuary Omnibus

by Kyla Stone

  She glanced at Micah, about to say something else, but she caught a fleeting shadow flickering across his face. His expression was tense. She could tell he was chewing on the inside of his cheeks, his brow furrowed. He looked like he was taking the weight of the world on his own shoulders.

  She resisted the urge to grab his hand. “You’re worried about Gabriel.”

  “I shouldn’t be, but I can’t help it.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  He stared down at the book in his hands, frowning. “He’s doing a good thing, I think.”

  “He’s been doing a lot of good things lately,” Amelia said softly. She didn’t know how to reconcile the Gabriel who’d betrayed her, who’d given her up to the likes of Kane, who’d stood by and allowed it to happen, who’d bristled with unrestrained rage—with this new remorseful, penitent Gabriel, who’d nearly killed himself to rescue her from Cerberus, who’d thrown himself in front of the rats, who’d valiantly taken on the Pyros so they could escape.

  And now he’d put himself at risk to find Celeste’s body, one of the elites he’d so despised. It didn’t make sense. And yet. “Does that make up for…”

  “Everything?” Micah smiled grimly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Benjie dashed up to them, his wild hair sticking up all over his head. “Lo Lo says it’s bedtime, but she won’t sing to me because she’s on guard duty. She says she’s a terrible singer anyway and to ask you.”

  He clasped his hands together, his big brown eyes pleading. His voice was still wheezy from the smoke inhalation, but he seemed to have his energy back. “Pretty please, Miss Amelia?”

  “I’m not much better,” Amelia said, though she remembered those nights with Benjie in abandoned offices and houses and hotels, quarantined from the rest of the group while they waited for the Hydra virus to show itself.

  Benjie quirked his eyebrows and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “You’re better than Lo Lo. Way better. But no telling her I said so.”

  Micah laughed. “I have to check in with Jericho on plans for tomorrow anyway. See you later.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Amelia called to Micah. “If anything, he’s a survivor.”

  Micah adjusted his glasses with his thumb. “Yeah, I suppose he is.”

  Amelia patted the sleeping bag beside her. Benjie dove in, nestling against her side. “Where’s everybody?”

  “Guarding stuff or exploring stuff. I already saw every single exhibit.” He wrinkled his nose. “There’s lots of naked statues and paintings and stuff.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “Totally gross.”

  Amelia smiled and tilted her head back against the wall. She hummed the classics, Peter and the Wolf and Brahms’ Lullaby, the familiar melodies more comforting than she could say.

  She hadn’t finished the third song when Benjie sniffled. Tears streaked his small face. “What’s wrong?”

  He sat up and wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t be crying, Miss Amelia.”

  “Who said you couldn’t cry?”

  He sniffed.

  Amelia touched his shoulder. “You can tell me.”

  “Lo Lo always tells me to be brave and strong. I try as good as I can, I swear.”

  “But?” she prodded gently.

  His face collapsed. “I miss Mommy.”

  Amelia’s stomach twisted in iron knots. The poor kid. This was hard for all of them. She couldn’t imagine how awful it was for an eight-year-old. “You know what? I miss my mother. And I know Willow misses your mom, too.”

  She gathered his small body into her arms. He nuzzled into her like a puppy and wrapped his thin arms around her neck. His heartbeat thudded against her chest. She still wasn’t entirely used to physical touch. Her family was reserved, to say the least. But Benjie made it easier with his exuberant hugs, his sweetness, his unconditional trust.

  She gently stroked his back. “Willow doesn’t need you to be strong for her, Benjie. She’s a big girl. She can be strong for herself. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. Crying doesn’t mean you aren’t strong. Tears aren’t weak. Emotions aren’t weak. They’re part of what makes us who we are. We can be happy and brave and strong, but we can also be sad and worried and scared. So don’t wipe your tears away, okay?”

  He nodded. “What about my snots?”

  “You can totally wipe your snot. Just not on your shirtsleeve.”

  “Aww, nuts.” But he was grinning.

  “There’s toilet paper in the bathroom. Remember, just a couple of squares. And then you come back and snuggle and cry with me as much as you want.”

  The shadows lengthened around them as Amelia hummed classical music long into the night. She practiced the movements on an imaginary violin in her hands, her fingers moving with a memory that lived deep in her bones.

  When the tears came, she didn’t stop them.

  18

  Willow

  There was something lurking in the shadows of the pharmacy. Willow could feel it. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She turned, gun clasped in both hands, and faced the shattered door. She made her way inside, careful not to make a sound.

  They’d spent the last two days on high alert, staying as hidden as possible, traveling through alleys and side streets. They’d trudged in single file through the crusty snow, doing their best to step in each other’s footprints so they appeared to be one or two people instead of the group the Pyros were hunting.

  Micah had carried Amelia, who was still incredibly weak, slowing them all down. Gabriel wasn’t back yet. Silas and Willow had acted as runners, branching off into false trails and doubling back on themselves. It wasn’t near enough, but it was all they could do.

  Snow drifted down in lazy spirals from the dreary gray sky, but they needed a few more hours of heavy snowfall to completely hide their tracks.

  They’d gone several blocks out of their way to avoid a half-dozen infected people wandering around in the cold, blood smeared around their eye sockets, mouths, and ears. One was a teenage girl with short dark hair that made Willow’s chest constrict. She’d looked so much like Zia.

  Only a few blocks later, they’d had to backtrack to avoid two dozen dead laid out side by side in front of a burning, ancient-looking stone church sandwiched between two diamond-glass skyscrapers. The bodies were covered with a writhing, wriggling carpet of black fur. She glimpsed pink-scaled tails and sharp yellow teeth as the rodents chewed on rotting flesh. She’d nearly vomited the meager contents of her stomach.

  “We’re going slower than a turtle stuck in molasses,” Finn had muttered, shivering as he untucked his hands from beneath his armpits to gnaw on a Twizzlers he’d scavenged.

  Willow was exhausted. All that work and effort, and they’d barely made it a few miles. Finally, around mid-afternoon, Jericho gave them the go-ahead. She and Silas scouted ahead to find a shelter for the night.

  Less than a half hour later, the first drone had appeared fifteen feet above the street, cruising silently between two buildings. She and Silas hid inside a liquor store, ducking behind the bar. The mirrored counters were smashed. Most of the bottles had been stolen, but a few were shattered across the floor. The scent of alcohol burned her nostrils. She crouched, heart beating in her throat, as several pairs of feet tramped past. The Pyros were still hunting them.

  They waited ten minutes before daring to move again. Before they’d left, Silas had grasped the neck of a bottle of bourbon that had rolled beneath the bar. He started to open it, already tilting the bottle toward his mouth. Willow seized his arm. “Oh, no, you don’t.” He’d hurled a few petulant insults at her, but they both knew it was half-assed.

  Now, she stared into the looted pharmacy, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She scanned the shadowy rows of mostly empty shelves, ripped prescription boxes and tipped bottles, pried open and long emptied.

  She gestured to Silas, a few yards behind her, and slipped inside,
gun level, careful not to step on the glass shards littered across the floor. She inched around a corner. Was she just being paranoid? Had she just imagined the sensation that she wasn’t alone—

  A woman with a tangle of matted dark curls was bent on her knees, reaching beneath a shelf for something, her backpack and rifle on the floor beside her.

  Willow’s blood quickened. She licked her dry, parched lips. “Don’t move.”

  The woman let out a hiss, but she obeyed, her body going rigid. “I’m no threat. You don’t have to hurt me.”

  “We’ll decide that,” Silas said, coming up behind her.

  Willow shot him a warning glance. Silas glared back at her, but he lowered his rifle slightly. They both took a step back, making sure they were outside of the ten-foot infection radius. The woman wasn’t coughing and didn’t appear feverish, but you could never be too careful. “Where’s the rest of your group?”

  “I’m alone.”

  “You expect us to believe that?” Silas asked.

  “Can I sit up?” The woman asked. “I’ll answer your questions, but I’m very uncomfortable.”

  The woman spoke with a faint Middle Eastern accent. Willow thought of Nadira with a savage pang in her chest. She gestured with her gun, even though the woman couldn’t see from her position. “Sit up, face me, your hands in the air.”

  The woman obeyed. She looked about mid-forties, but the strain of the last few months could have aged her a decade. Beneath the smudged dirt and grime, her skin was honey-brown. Her mask was tight against her mouth and nose. She clutched a bottle of pills in her right hand. Antibiotics.

  They’d lost most of their meds in the fire, though Micah had a few supplies in his pack. But not enough. “We’ll take those,” Silas said.

  The woman’s face blanched. “Please. My daughter’s sick. She needs these. I never would have ventured into the city unless I was desperate.”

  “If she’s sick, she’s already as good as dead.” Willow kept her voice hard, made her face impassive. The woman looked scared, but it was fear that made a person the most dangerous. If the woman sensed weakness, she might attempt an attack.

  “It’s not the Hydra virus. She has sepsis. She fell and cut her leg. A visit to a clinic would have taken care of it in the old world. But now? It’s infected badly. Look—you can take anything else. Take my pack. My gun. I’ve got three days’ worth of food. Two water filters. Vitamins. A fire starter.”

  “How old is your daughter?” Willow asked.

  Silas gave her a withering stare. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Seven,” the woman stammered. “Her name is Lily. She loves unicorns.”

  “Give us the meds,” Silas said.

  “Her little girl loves unicorns,” Willow said. She imagined Benjie. She couldn’t help it.

  “She’s playing you.” Silas’s mouth puckered in a sullen scowl. He knew he’d already lost the battle. “She can see you’re a gullible sucker from a mile away.”

  Willow kept her gun up, but she eased her finger off the trigger. Maybe she was gullible, but she didn’t think so. The woman didn’t seem like a hardened criminal. She looked like a mother, with the same strained worry around her eyes as Willow’s mom used to have. “We’ll trade you. You give us info, we let you keep the antibiotics.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said, relieved.

  “Willow—” Silas growled.

  She ignored him. She was the one who found the woman. She got to decide how this went down, not him. “We’re headed north. Any advice?”

  The woman stuffed the antibiotics inside her pack and pulled herself to her feet. She glanced at Silas warily. “One survivor to another, you’re going the wrong way.”

  Willow licked her lips. “We just have to get through the city and—”

  “I wouldn’t be here myself if there were any better options. This is Pyro territory.”

  “We’ve had the pleasure of their acquaintance,” Silas said stiffly.

  “What happened here?” Willow asked. “How did the Pyro gang gain control of the whole city?”

  The woman’s gaze flitted to the sliver of sky between two soaring buildings and back to Willow. “Atlanta’s been a dangerous place for a long time. That was no secret. Poverty and zero jobs mixed with anger and helplessness make for a toxic mess. I lived outside midtown with my daughters. There was nowhere else for us to go. But then that Hydra bioweapon wreaked havoc on the world. The infection spread like wildfire. My oldest daughter, she—she didn’t make it. By the time the vlogs and newsfeeds were reporting death tolls, half the city was already gone. The cops, the soldiers, the government officials—they all died or bailed within a couple of weeks.

  “Then all hell broke loose. The survivors joined up with other survivors, some of them already members of established militias and gangs. You joined up or you were a target. Three major factions warred for control of Atlanta—The Right Hand of God, the Cobras, and the Pyros.

  “There were sporadic battles in those first weeks, but most people were still shell-shocked. The smart ones were scavenging food, water, and weapons. Then all of a sudden, the Pyros were on the warpath. They were burning bodies, burning apartments and condos. They tramped down streets armed with pulse guns and grenades and RPGs. Atlanta was a war zone for a week. We hid in our apartment building, too terrified to move. Then it was over. The Pyros won. They killed off their competition. But they’re crazy. And they’re brutal. Their leader—Tobias Moruga—he’s bad people.”

  Willow swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you for the warning.”

  The woman bent and grabbed her rifle. She looked up at something beyond their heads and stiffened. “Drone.”

  All three of them ducked, crouching behind the shelves. Willow peered around the corner as the sleek black shape drifted by, snow swirling in eddies beneath its whirring rotors.

  After they were sure it was out of sight, the woman stood again. “I have to get back to my daughter. Thank you.”

  Willow nodded. The woman hurried toward the exit in the back of the pharmacy, seeming to dissolve into the shadows.

  They made their way back out to the sidewalk. The sky had darkened ominously. In the distance, several fires flared. The red X’s encased in circles were everywhere. She repressed a shudder. “We’re in incredible danger.”

  “Congratulations,” he quipped. “You have a remarkable grasp of the obvious.”

  “Oh, shut up already.” Suddenly all she wanted to do was get back to Finn and Benjie. She needed to wrap Benjie in her arms and never let go. “There’s an office building up there, to the right. No fire damage. No Pyros’ mark. Let’s clear it and we can get the rest of the group.”

  “We needed those antibiotics,” Silas said to her back. “We don’t have enough. Giving them to her was a mistake.”

  She saw her mom’s eyes again. Worried, exhausted, stressed, but always full of love. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t.”

  19

  Micah

  “There’s another fire.” Micah pointed above a squat ten-story parking complex several blocks to the east. Billowing smoke stained the darkening sky, rising from somewhere behind it. If that fire came from the Pyros, they needed to know.

  He and Jericho were securing the perimeter of the nondescript office building they’d sought shelter in for the night, the third night without Gabriel.

  Beside him, Jericho wheeled and stared up, shielding his eyes. Towering corporate buildings blocked their view. “We can’t see a damn thing from down here.”

  Dusk was falling quickly, the world fading into pale shadows. Micah adjusted his glasses and peered up at the skyscrapers surrounding them, turning in a slow circle. Something flickered at the edge of his vision. “There’s a light up there.”

  A single square window was lit in the black steel and glass corporate high rise across from the museum.

  “Damn it,” Jericho said. “We have to get rid of that light before it gets dark or
it will lead the Pyros to us like a beacon.”

  “Everyone’s exhausted. We’ve already walked all day. Amelia’s still recovering. We can’t just move—”

  “I know.” Jericho shouldered his rifle. “Come on. And look alive.”

  Micah gestured to Willow, who was standing guard inside the office entrance, Silas’s semi-automatic tucked into her shoulder. He signaled their intention to check out the building. She nodded and flashed him a thumbs-up.

  They wove silently between the snow-covered husks of cars, buses, and transports. Something skittered over the road, kicked loose by his boots. Several spent tear gas canisters lay half-hidden in a heap of snow drifted against the curb. More signs of a turf war. The Pyros had obviously won.

  Micah swallowed. The hairs of his neck prickled. Anyone could be watching them from any of the hundreds of thousands of darkened windows glinting above them.

  He moved as quickly as he could behind Jericho, stepping carefully inside his prints as they made their way to the corporate tower. The doors were already broken. They slipped inside, crouching, weapons up.

  They cleared the lobby—mirrored walls, huge chrome spheres hanging from the ceiling, strange statues made from wire and welded steel. A few bloated bodies slumped against the far corner. Two possums and a racoon skittered deeper into the shadows.

  Micah covered his nose against the stench as they hurried into the stairwell. The metal door clicked silently behind them. The beams from their scopes gave them just enough light.

  “What floor?” Jericho asked.

  “Twenty-fifth,” Micah huffed, already exhausted from the day’s long trek. “But you know that.”

  “Just checking to make sure you’re paying attention.”

  Micah’s legs trembled by the time they reached the twenty-fifth floor. He gritted his teeth and pushed away the pain. Jericho signaled and went in first, Micah right behind him.

  They moved slowly, but the vast, open space was relatively easy to clear. There were no cubicles, just self-contained banks of computer towers without desks or chairs. This business venture had been virtually managed by AIs. Very few humans had worked here.