Burning Skies

by Kyla Stone

  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.

  Jericho pointed to an enclosed glass office. They crept toward it. Bland white floors and walls. A holoscreen, integrated computer desk, and blank wallscreens where the family vids would play on a loop. Against the floor-to-ceiling window was a rumpled sleeping bag, crumpled balls of trash and empty food tins, and a solar lantern.

  Rust-colored spatters stained the floor next to the sleeping bag. Dried blood. Jericho picked up a spent shell casing, studied it, and tossed it back on the floor.

  Micah switched off the lantern. From this vantage point, they could see everything below them more clearly. The building they’d holed up in was squat and gray and several decades past its prime, its paint peeling, the roof sagging slightly. But there were no dead bodies to draw the rats or spread infection.

  Amelia was down there. She was on her feet now, though still weak. He’d sat beside her for hours while she lay unconscious, listening to the ragged rise and fall of her breathing, begging God to let her be okay. The seizure had terrified him. He’d thought she was going to die. The next one might kill her, or the one after that.

  She’d had a nightmare last night, thrashing and moaning in restless sleep. He’d half-reached for her, wanting to take her hand, to touch her, to offer reassurance, comfort, anything. He’d thought better of it, his hand dropping helplessly to his side. He couldn’t risk their friendship. She meant too much to him.

  Jericho nudged his arm and pointed, drawing him back to the present. He had a job to do. He peered through the zoom on his scope and checked out the surrounding buildings. Many of them had red graffiti scrawled on the exterior walls, the circle with the X inside it that Amelia and Willow had warned him about.

  “Over there, north and west.” Barely visible through the buildings, he could make out side streets where it appeared a bulldozer had forced its way through, vehicles crumpled and smashed on either side of a narrow pathway in the center of the road, wide enough for a single vehicle to pass through.

  He froze. His gaze had snagged on something. There were piles of burnt corpses. At least a half-dozen of them, scattered over the surrounding blocks. If he didn’t already know what they were, his mind would have refused to identify them. He recognized charred bones and scraps of blackened clothing. The piles of bones and ash were mounded high, at least the height of a man.

  He gagged, fighting down the acid burning his throat.

  “I see it,” Jericho said softly. “We’re inside Pyro territory now.”

  Micah’s heart constricted. “Gabriel.”

  He’d try to play off his concern with Amelia, but the truth was, every hour that passed tightened the band around his chest. It had been forty-two hours since Gabriel left. What if he didn’t come back?

  He could barely speak to his brother. Yet the thought of something happening to him made him feel like he was teetering on the lip of a black hole, about to fall. Like the ground was opening up beneath him and he was falling with nothing solid to grab onto.

  He bit the inside of his cheek. Could he ever forgive Gabriel? Could they ever go back to what they’d had before? He didn’t know the answers. He only knew that he’d prayed for his brother’s safe return every single hour since he’d left.

  If Gabriel died, his own heart would split into pieces.

  “Gabriel is tough,” Jericho said. “You both are.”

  Micah glanced at him in surprise. That was the last thing he expected to hear from Jericho. “What?”

  “When I first saw you, huddled behind that slot machine about to piss your pants on the Grand Voyager, I thought you were a sniveling coward. Then I thought you were one of those book-smart, feel-everything morons who thought they knew better than everybody else but never lived a day in the real world.”

  Micah wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond. “Thank you, I guess?”

  Jericho smiled wryly. “Like I said, I was wrong. You’ve got a moral compass, kid, and you stick to it. That takes guts. A world like this, it takes good people, churns them up and spits them out, turns them into monsters.”

  Micah thought of Harmony, a normal person desperate enough to do something despicable to save someone she loved. Gabriel had been willing to kill for a cause, even if it meant taking innocent lives. People killed for much less all the time. They killed for food, for safety, for self-preservation, for power, for revenge.

  “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he becomes a monster,” Micah said, quoting a line by Friedrich Nietzsche he recalled from history class. He’d memorized it because it sounded so poetic, so essential, so true.

  “It’s what we’ll become,” Jericho said. “Monsters. Every single one of us.”

  “No,” Micah said. He didn’t believe that. He couldn’t. “Not if we’re careful. Not if we continually fight to choose the good. There’s always a choice.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “We all have choices. We all get chances. It’s what we do with them that matters.”

  Jericho turned to face him. A shadow passed across his tense features. “And the choice Silas made?”

  “Harsh times call for harsh choices, sometimes. I get that. But we still have a choice. We may have to kill to protect ourselves, but we shouldn’t do it until we have to, until we’ve tried everything else.”

  “I taught Silas how to kill,” Jericho said in a strained voice. His jaw worked, the muscle in his cheek twitching. “I never regretted it…until he killed that kid.”

  Micah looked down at the city. In the distance, fires illuminated gleaming steal and diamond-glass towers. Twisting elegantly among the monoliths, the AirRail glittered like a diamond snake.

  From up here, there was a dangerous beauty to it all. A design, a purpose. Down on the street, it all looked like chaos. Everything felt like chaos now. Was there a reason for all of this? A purpose? Something beautiful that might rise from the ashes? Micah hoped so. He believed so. He closed his eyes for a moment and said another prayer for his brother’s safety.

  “There are consequences either way,” he said slowly. “You act, and someone innocent dies. You don’t act, and you endanger someone you love. For me, I’ve got to live
inside my own soul. There is a cost for everything. Some things cost too much.”

  Jericho stared out the window, his jaw working. “What does that mean?”

  “If I had to kill an innocent person or steal the last bit of food someone else needed to survive in order for me to live, I wouldn’t do it.”

  “You would rather die?”

  “I would rather die with honor than live as a coward. If the cost is my soul, my humanity, then it’s too high. I refuse to pay it.” The words felt right as he said them. He believed it down to the marrow of his bones. Death wasn’t the worst thing. He refused to let anyone take his soul from him. If he died, he would die by his own terms.

  Jericho raised his eyebrows.

  Micah thought of his mother on her deathbed, squeezing his hand in her frail, trembling one. Be good. Be brave. “Survival isn’t the most important thing. It can’t be. Otherwise, this world could be run by cut-throat savages and murderers, and that would be a win for humanity. Why? Because humans are still alive.

  “But it’s not a win. It’s a tragedy. Because those humans are no better than animals. They’re worse. For humanity to truly survive, we have to preserve what keeps us human.”

  “And what is that?”

  Micah leaned against the glass. “Whatever sets us above even the most intelligent animals. Our ability to love, to be just, to be merciful, to forgive, to dream. To believe in something greater and better than ourselves. To hope.”

  Jericho flashed him a wry smile. “Maybe you missed your calling as a preacher.”

  Micah blushed and adjusted his glasses. “I’m just trying to be the best person I can, in spite of the circumstances. If everybody did the same thing, we would turn out okay.”

  Outside, dusk descended over everything. Treacherous shadows lurked in the alleys. The stars were invisible, the moon barely a murky glow.

  “Growing up in Nigeria during the revolution, you were hard or you died, simple as that,” Jericho said quietly. “I served as private security in the Chicago and Tampa riots. I saw what people did to each other during the water crisis uprising in Arizona. You learn to live your life one way. It’s difficult to see there are different paths, let alone better ones.”