by Joe Hart
She looks at him, at his hand still holding Terra’s arm, at Vivian’s cold expression and Reaper’s ruined visage.
“No. You’re going to let us go,” she says.
The Director sighs. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
With a quick movement he raises the gun to Terra’s head and pulls the trigger.
Zoey’s scream is drowned out by the gunshot. Terra’s beautiful, blonde hair flies out from the side of her head and is suddenly streaked with crimson. Her legs fold beneath her, and she crumples to her back.
The room erupts in movement.
Lee leaps in front of her, as does Simon. Vivian steps toward the elevator, avoiding the spreading pool of blood coursing from Terra’s head. Reaper moves forward, hands out before him.
“Cleric, apprehend your charge and return her to her room!” the Director yells. He holds the pistol at his side, but it is pointed in Simon’s general direction.
Reaper is closer, and now there is something glittering in one hand. Something sharp and pointed.
“Cleric, this is your last warning. Disarm your charge. Now!”
Simon turns, brushing Lee out of the way, as Reaper moves in on her other side. Simon’s gaze is steely and dead as he takes a step forward.
“Simon, no,” Zoey says, bringing the handgun level with his chest. He stops a pace from her and freezes. His eyes thaw, and she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing.
“I hope you liked the books,” Simon says, and launches himself at Reaper.
He is a blur of motion, faster than she’s ever seen anyone move. He strikes Reaper in the side of the head, and then the two men are locked in a struggle for the knife.
Lee yells something she doesn’t understand.
The Director moves forward, first aiming his weapon at Simon and then at Lee, the whole while he grins, and there is something unearthly about the smile. It is like seeing past a tattered mask covering pure evil.
“Don’t shoot her!” Vivian yells. The Director’s attention falters, head twitching toward the doctor’s voice.
Zoey brings up the gun and fires.
The Director’s grin melts and he stumbles, dropping to his knees. A stain is spreading across the belly of his white dress shirt. He places a hand to the wound and brings it back before his eyes in disbelief. Slowly he tips forward, landing hard on his face, and lies still.
Lee grabs her by the arm and begins to pull her toward the infirmary exit, but even as he does so the door is yanked open and several guards spill inside, lights and weapons pointed at them as they advance.
Zoey turns back just as Reaper and Simon fall to the floor. Simon rolls on top of him, using his knees to pummel Reaper’s sides while holding the knife in the other man’s grip at bay.
They struggle, their arms interwoven, muscles bulging with effort. Reaper’s destroyed face grimaces and he releases a grunt. The tip of the knife slowly rotates between the two of them.
A drop of sweat drips from Simon’s forehead.
He shifts his eyes to where Zoey and Lee stand. “Run,” he says.
Simon’s hands slip as Reaper twists the knife and buries it to the hilt beneath Simon’s chin.
He twists and Simon’s body goes limp.
“Dad!” Lee screams and tries to run forward, but Zoey grasps his shirt, the material tearing as he drags her forward. Behind her comes the crackle of a prod, and she fires blindly over one shoulder.
“Don’t shoot her!” Vivian screams again from near the elevator. “Don’t shoot her!”
Reaper thrusts Simon’s body away and withdraws his knife, the blade an electrically red smile.
Lee lunges forward again, and Zoey pulls him back. An inhuman howl comes from him and he shudders. She guides him back from where Reaper gains his feet, the soldier moving forward lithely.
“Don’t do anything stupid, either of you,” Reaper says, flicking the knife back and forth. Droplets of blood fly from its end, their redness amplified by a flash of lightning.
The guards advance from the left, Reaper from the right. Vivian stands in the center.
“Don’t shoot her,” she repeats.
Zoey backs away, tugging Lee with her. Her hip nudges something and she reaches back, her fingers finding what they search for.
Zoey brings up the gun and fires at Reaper. He dodges, but not fast enough, and the bullet catches him in the side. The guards rush forward and Zoey turns.
She throws the lid on the laundry chute up and pushes Lee in.
He tips backward, eyes bulging, and falls, headfirst into the dark tunnel.
Zoey throws a final look at Terra, at Simon, never forget, and dives after Lee.
Vivian screams something and hands grasp her ankles as she slides down. They slip off.
Then she’s falling.
Pure darkness surrounds her. She accelerates, the smooth steel polished by thousands of laundry bags hums past. The chute skims her shoulders and she prays that Lee doesn’t get stuck. The flesh on her arms heats up, then burns, then blisters. She tries to scream but the velocity sucks her voice away.
A sickly light fills her vision and she flies out into the huge laundry bin. There is a glimpse of Lee within hundreds of uniforms, then she lands on him and he cries out with pain.
The top of her head is on fire and she rolls to the side, struggling in the giving folds of laundry. Lee wheezes and his hand grasps her arm.
“What the fuck,” a deep voice says and she blinks away the cobwebs of unconsciousness to gaze up into Eli’s face that is hovering over the side of the bin. “I mean, really, what the fuck.”
“Help us out,” Zoey manages, and Eli grasps her outstretched hand, dragging her up and over the bin’s side. Lee sits up, his face a mask of pain, one hand over his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she says as they haul Lee out onto his feet. He doesn’t respond, only limps away from her. She’s about to ask if he’s okay when a humming grows from the mouth of the chute and a guard erupts from it into the bin.
Eli fires a burst from his rifle, and blood sprays across the uniforms. “Let’s go,” he says, shoving her and Lee toward the hole in the floor. Zoey kneels and drops her legs through the dark circle, only then realizing she lost her pistol in the ride down the chute. Hands find her feet and she lets herself be lowered outside into the cool, damp air.
The storm still rages around the ARC. She finds herself being held steady by Chelsea and Tia, who usher her away from the hole as Lee drops down next. Zoey passes Penny and Rita sitting side by side, and Sherell gives her a quick nod as she takes a seat beside Lily, who is shaking, huddled beneath a dark blanket. Zoey places an arm around the girl, holding her close.
“Shhh, it’s okay now. We’re going to be okay.”
There is a loud crack to the west, and for a second she thinks it is the beginning of another bout of thunder, but then it is answered tenfold by more gunfire and streaks of light that zip across the water’s surface.
The boat rocks hard, and with a solid thud, Eli drops into the bow. “Let’s go!” he yells as Tia scrambles past. There is a cry from where the other boats are docked, and Chelsea releases a curse before the barrel of her rifle spits fire. She empties her magazine and drops down behind the upraised sides of the boat as several bullets sing through the aluminum.
Then they are moving, the ARC’s bottom sliding away as they cruise around two sets of concrete supports. A shot whines off the gunwale to Zoey’s right and she hugs Lily harder, pulling her down. Thunder detonates above them, and wetness patters against her back.
They are out from beneath the ARC.
The shoreline is only thirty yards away now and coming up fast. The river water leaps up in a million splashes with each raindrop. Eli fires several rounds past Tia’s hunched form as lightning splits the sky into two halves.
“When we hit the shore, everyone get out and follow Chelsea up the hill!” Tia yells. “If any of them come after us we can lose them up there.” Zoey ca
tches a glimpse of Penny as another branch of lightning splinters in the clouds. The woman’s face is flat and empty, eyes like two holes.
“Brace yourselves!” Tia says.
There is a grating screech of metal and the front of the boat thrusts upward, nearly flinging Chelsea out into open air. Everyone slides forward and gathers themselves as Eli hops the side and starts waving them forward. They climb out one by one, Eli hoisting them over the side and onto the rough ground. Zoey jumps out after Lily and grabs her hand tightly. She turns, squinting through the dark and rain back at the looming shadow of the ARC.
“They’re not shooting anymore,” she says as Tia hits the dirt beside her. “They don’t want to hit us.”
“That’s good for all of us then,” Tia says, snagging her by the shoulder. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
They run as a clustered group, a wounded animal, loping awkwardly up a small hill and over a rusted string of fencing that fell decades ago. They climb another rise onto what was once a roadway and find a cut in the next hillside that brings them up through the rising bluffs. As they reach the top of the grade, a sound begins to grow from behind them that makes the hair on the back of Zoey’s neck stand on end.
The helicopter is starting up.
“Run! We have to hide!” she yells, yanking Lily along as the girl protests weakly. “They’re coming in the helicopter,” she tells Eli as they draw even with him.
He wipes the rain from his face like tears and points to the south. “Run that way. Merrill should only be another few hundred yards.”
“You can’t stay, they’ll kill you,” Zoey says, trying to pull the big man with her. He pries her fingers from his shirt gently.
“Go,” he says. She sees the set of his eyes and turns, dragging Lily with her.
The ground heaves and drops before them. In the strobing light she spots Chelsea far ahead and Tia off to the right. The other women are strung out between them. Lily stumbles on a loose rock and falls hard to her knee. She cries out, face constricting in pain. Zoey slings an arm around her, pulls her back up, and moves them on, much slower than before.
On the rise to their left, a building grows out of the night, and Zoey begins to move toward it just as she registers the darkness a few feet ahead.
A chasm at least forty feet deep drops away in a narrow draft in the land. Tia missed its closest end by only a step or two, and several of the other women are coming toward her, trying to find a way to cross.
“Come on! This way!” Chelsea yells back to them, only a dark figure ahead in the night. Zoey starts moving slowly with Lily parallel to the drop, the other women coming up behind her. The sound of the copter is louder, the rotors beginning their deep thud.
There is a streak of lightning, and at the same moment bright pain rips across her back. I’ve been struck, she thinks absently as she releases Lily. After everything I’ve gone through only to be struck by lightning.
She falls forward, hitting the ground on her hands and knees. Lily shrieks, rolling away from her, and the darkness of the chasm tilts like an open mouth ready for a feast. Warmth rolls down her back, the cold rain a bright contrast. Feet come into view, and she looks up.
Penny stands above her, water dripping from her hair. She’s smiling the cold smile that’s always chilled Zoey. There’s something in her hand, and slowly she brings it closer to Zoey’s face, waggling it like a toy.
A knife.
She wasn’t struck by lightning. Penny cut her.
“What are you doing?” Zoey asks, trying to regain her feet.
“Something I’ve wanted to do for so long,” Penny says. “And now I’m going to.”
“I came back for you.”
“I don’t want to be out here,” Penny says. “I’m going back to the ARC as soon as I slit your pretty throat.”
The chopper howls in the darkness.
Chelsea yells something Zoey can’t make out.
Rita appears by Penny’s shoulder, gazing down at Zoey as she tries to stand.
“We’re going back,” Penny says, and Rita’s eyes flick from the knife in her friend’s hand to Zoey’s upturned face. Zoey tenses, the skin on her back screaming, ready to lunge forward as soon as Penny moves.
Penny raises the knife.
And flies sideways as Rita pushes her hard.
The chasm swallows Penny in a mouthful of darkness. A second later there is a short cry followed by a bone-snapping impact. Then nothing but the sound of the helicopter becoming airborne.
Rita grabs her by the arm and hoists her up. To her right she sees Sherell helping Lily back to her feet.
“I always knew she was crazy,” Rita says.
“Thank you,” Zoey says.
Rita nods and glances back the way they came. “Doesn’t really matter. Chopper will be here in a minute, and we’re all fucked.”
“Zoey!” Tia comes bursting through the darkness and grabs her shoulder. “What are you doing? Come on, Merrill’s waiting.”
They continue around the deep cut in the land and up to the building that she realizes must be the relay station. Automatic gunfire explodes from the top of a hill to the right as the helicopter’s lights cruise over the river and curve toward their position.
“Eli will distract them. Come on!” Tia yells in her ear. Ahead Zoey makes out the forms of Chelsea, Lee, Merrill, and Newton waiting a dozen yards from the building. When they reach them, Merrill points to a dip in the land illuminated for a brief span by a flash of lightning.
“Down there! Get down below that rock shelf!” He drops to a knee and unzips a bag, pulling out two long sections of steel that he twists together to form a T. The rest of the group begins to run toward the small drop but Zoey hesitates, glancing toward the approaching helicopter.
“What are you doing? We have to go!” she yells over the storm.
Merrill draws a pointed steel tube out of the bag and affixes it into a groove in the T. There are three fins attached to the cylinder and she spots the gleam of a cable strung behind it.
Merrill stands, pulling the T to his shoulder and aiming at the black form of the chopper that is coming steadily toward them. “You asked what I stole from town,” he says. “This is it.”
A blade of light lances from the helicopter’s bottom and stabs the ground as it turns sideways to them.
Merrill triggers something on the apparatus and there is a sharp twang as the tube zips up and lodges in the side of the chopper.
A pulse of white light emanates from where the projectile hit the aircraft. Zoey blinks at the brightness that is there and gone in an instant. The helicopter’s steady beat changes, and the engine suddenly goes silent. The body begins to spin in the opposite direction of the rotors, and the entire craft cruises past them overhead, eerily quiet.
It rotates two more times, a high whistling coming from the slowing blades, before it crashes to the ground a short distance past the rock shelf where the rest of the group took shelter.
The rending of steel makes Zoey wince, and she waits for an explosion, but there is only the hiss of steam and the rain beating on the crumpled body of the chopper.
“What was that?” she asks, trying to shake the disbelief at what just occurred.
“EMP grenade that I attached to a crossbow bolt,” Merrill says, dropping the empty weapon to the ground. A small flame pops to life in the nose of the chopper, illuminating part of the wreckage through the storm. “Come on,” Merrill says, guiding her down the slope to where the others wait.
When they are within several paces of the group, Chelsea breaks away and sprints to Merrill, nearly bowling him over. He starts to laugh but is cut off as she kisses him. He holds her, and Zoey looks away to take in the others.
They stand in a semicircle, hollow-eyed and ghostlike in the flickering light of the storm. She moves forward to where Lee stands looking at the helicopter’s burning carcass. She touches his arm gently but he doesn’t respond.
“Lee
, are you okay?” The firelight is reflected in his eyes, the flames dancing across his face. She starts to ask again when a tall figure looms out of the darkness. She nearly draws the pistol she took from the guard, but then notices sopping gray hair in full disarray around a lined face.
“You made it out, my girl. Bravo,” Ian says. Zoey grins and takes two steps into his arms. He hugs her and strokes her hair before holding her at arm’s length. “Are you injured?”
“Just a cut on my back. It’s nothing.” She looks over his shoulder into the dark. “Did you see any more guards coming?”
“I managed to deter their progress across the river. Eli was covering your trail, and he should be along soon.”
“He’s okay?”
“Right as rain.” This strikes him as funny and he chuckles, holding his palm out to the storm.
“We should get to the Suburban and put some distance between us and the ARC, just in case they send out a larger party on foot.”
“I agree.”
They walk together back to the group, the rain tapering off slightly as more thunder booms to the east. Merrill is looking from Rita to Sherell to Lee and back again, and Zoey’s stomach shrivels. It’s time. She begins to walk toward him, to finally face the lies she’s told, when movement catches her eye near the downed chopper.
Lily is rocking from foot to foot in the light of the flames. She turns slowly, her head thrown back into the rain, and Zoey realizes she’s dancing.
“Lily, come on. Let’s go and get somewhere dry.”
“Zee! Burr! Burr!” Lily begins to move her arms up and down. Like wings, she thinks.
“You’re a bird, Lily, you’re free,” she says, stopping a few steps away from the dancing girl.
“Burr!”
“That’s right. Okay, come on, Lily, we’ve—”
Zoey’s words die in her throat.
A form is crawling out of the burning helicopter, the red shine of its eyes reflected demonically as it pushes itself to its knees. And there is something in its hand, something dark that is aimed directly toward Lily.
“Lily! No!” Zoey screams, running forward as she yanks the handgun free at her side. Lily stops dancing and time takes on a distended shape, each second bloated, lasting for eternity.
