Did it even matter? It wasn’t like I was ever going to see him again. Hell, for all I knew, I’d never see anyone again. For all I knew, they were all dead. Or I would be, as soon as Sally and her crew decided that they’d had enough of me.
And just like that, escaping from this joint suddenly started to seem like a whole lot more than I was going to be able to handle. I’d escaped from the bunker, yeah, but I’d had a gun to get that done, and another woman who had been helping me, and an uncle who, though he might have been insane, still aimed for the other girl rather than me. He certainly hadn’t wanted me dead.
Sally might. Which meant that any escape attempt here had to be rock solid—or I’d end up shot.
And I didn’t have rock solid. Not even close. I’d seen my one friend in the bunker killed, had possibly killed my own uncle, and then walked through the entire night and come into the town where I’d lived in the Before, only to be taken prisoner again. And this time, I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get out.
Tears started spilling down my cheeks, and I didn’t bother to try to stop them. I’d had the worst week of my fucking life. I figured I was allowed to cry a little bit about it, now that I was finally alone for a second.
Chapter 7
After a couple of minutes, though, I forced myself to stop crying and get it the fuck together.
For all I knew, I was the only good guy left in the entire freaking world. I couldn’t afford to sit around on the floor crying about how many things had gone wrong. No hero would do that. It was the opposite of heroic.
And though I damn sure hadn’t set out to be a hero—had never wanted the role in my entire life—it turned out you didn’t always get to choose. The world needed a hero, and if I was the only one available…
Well, I guess I’d have to step up.
I needed to figure out how to make something go right. I didn’t have the choice of just laying around here, crying, and waiting for death to come to me.
Fuck that. Not happening.
Because there was also the other thing. The fact that I might be the only person left with any knowledge of the nerve agent and what it had done to people. Simone had been an expert, and though I couldn’t remember everything she’d said—and she definitely hadn’t given me all of the nitty gritty, but more like a seventh-grade science version of it—the information I had stored away in my brain might be useful. Hell, if I could get to the right people, maybe I’d be able to help them figure out a cure or some way to fight back or something.
No, it wouldn’t help the people who were already dead. But it might help if there was another attack. It might help those of us who were left to protect ourselves.
And another point, my brain told me, was that I might be one of the only people left who understood tech. Maybe all the other techies had died in that attack, and they would need someone who could help them get the internet back online.
No, I didn’t know who ‘they’ were. But I was banking on the hope that there was still some sort of government out there. Didn’t they have a special vault for the president to go into when there was an attack? Didn’t they have some sort of designated survivor sort of thing? If they did, that meant that someone had survived, surely. And that someone would know how to run the government. That someone would know how to get civilization back.
That was the person I needed to find. They were the ones who would be saving the world, and I wanted to be part of that group. I needed to be part of that group.
No matter what happened, I needed to get the hell out of here, find whoever was now running the country, and tell them everything I knew. I hadn’t always walked the straight and narrow, but it was screaming to me, now. Screaming that it was the only path for me.
So, that settled that. Now the problem was… how the hell was I going to do it?
I started running through possible scenarios in my head, playing the same old game I’d played time and again when I was a hacker. Here’s the objective. Here are the possible routes. Here are the possible conflicts. Here are the possible repercussions. I even got up and rifled through the little girl’s desk, just to see if I could find a pen and paper, to write down the possibilities.
Yes, some part of me knew that writing things down was a quick way to get caught. Never, ever leave a trail behind—particularly a paper trail. Way too hard to cover up. Way too hard to deny if someone finds it. Plus, it gives away your plans.
But another part of me told me quite frankly that I was going to die in this house anyhow, if I didn’t get out. And if I died in an escape attempt…
Well, there were less heroic ways to go.
I jerked awake, confused as hell, and glanced down at my hand, which still held a sparkly purple pencil. My gaze flew to the ground in front of me and I saw a piece of paper with my handwriting all over it, and then it all came rushing back.
I’d been coming up with plans. Writing them down to help me get the ideas clear—and so I would remember them if I came up with any good ones.
I’d somehow fallen asleep in the middle of doing so.
And I’d dreamt of Simone. Dreamt that we were running through a field full of yellow flowers, our hearts pounding, our eyes desperate—because we’d known someone was after us. Something was after us. I didn’t think either of us had known what it was, but we’d definitely known that it was going to kill us if it caught us.
We’d been running for our lives. And we’d been screaming.
I closed my eyes again and felt the echo of her there, that sense you get when you’ve dreamt about someone and it still feels like they’re either sitting right beside you or actually hovering in your head. It had been so real. Her voice. The feel of her skin against my fingers when I’d taken her hand. Her large, expressive eyes.
She’d been right there.
Waking up and remembering that she was gone…
“Get it together, woman,” I snapped at myself.
I didn’t have time for this. I didn’t have the luxury of giving in to sorrow right now.
Hell, I didn’t even have the luxury of trying to find a therapist to talk to. If there were even any therapists left out there. If they hadn’t all died in that attack.
Besides, Simone would not have thanked me if I ended up giving up because of her memory—or getting caught because I was so busy mourning her that I didn’t remember to keep my eyes open. She and I had been escaping because we’d known what was going on up here, and we’d been intent on helping.
She’d been the original hero. And she’d died trying to follow through on that.
The least I could do was to finish the task for her.
I just needed to get an actual plan together to do so.
But what the hell was I supposed to do? No internet meant no plans for me.
What I really needed was an ally. Someone who could help me plan, and had things like guns and knowledge of what was going on in the world around us. Hell, some kung fu moves would have been great, as well. You never knew when you needed to employ hand-to-hand fighting skills.
I would have settled for someone who could just get me the hell out of this room, and then out of the house I was trapped in. Away from the people who were looking increasingly like they wanted to murder me—and who had already murdered at least one other person. More than that, if you counted the people they’d been shooting out in town, right after they kidnapped me.
Unfortunately, allies are thin on the ground when you’re imprisoned and some very large part of the population is dead. The only people around me were those that belonged to the gang whose clutches I was so desperate to escape. And though I’d thought that the green-eyed guy might turn into a friend, my last interaction with him had made me distinctly less confident in his ability to actually do anything.
He’d looked more scared than I felt. And though I was relatively young, he’d looked a whole lot younger—at least in terms of life experience.
He might want me to help him get o
ut of here. He might want to get out of here himself. But I didn’t think that meant he was going to be able to help me escape. He hadn’t even been able to get me a meal without getting us caught.
Suddenly, I heard a click behind and above me, and I froze.
I started frantically gathering up the papers I’d been writing on and the pencils themselves and shoving them into my shirt. God, I was a terrible prisoner. I was a horrible hero. Completely useless as a schemer when there were actually other people around, rather than just me, myself, and I in my little apartment.
The last thing I wanted was to be caught with an escape plan literally written down and ready for them to find.
I froze at that, realizing that it might be even worse if they found it on my person, and snagged it back out of my shirt. Where was I going to put it that it would be safe, though? And where did I have the time to get to before whoever was on the other side of that door managed to get the lock to disengage?
I went sprinting across the floor on my hands and knees and shoved the papers and pencils under the pillow, spinning around just as someone came barging in.
Chapter 8
The problem was, the light had grown dim enough by now that I couldn’t see who the hell it was. I’d still had enough light to write by when I first started making the plans, but by the time I woke up again, it had been pretty dark and I’d only been able to see the writing by holding it extremely close to my face.
The light had faded even more since then, and it was definitely dark enough that I couldn’t make out who was standing on the other side of my room. Though I could tell that they were breathing heavily—as if they’d either run all the way here, or were nervous as hell about what they were doing.
Considering the way they’d come barging into my room, it could have been either. They could have come running down the hall and right into my bedroom—though if they were doing that, I didn’t know why they’d bothered with the key at all—or they could be doing something completely against the rules of the gang, and be so nervous that they were out of breath about it.
I sank back against the bed, wondering if they could see me. Wondering whether I should try something like tackling them right now, when they (potentially) didn’t know where I was. Wondering whether I’d be tackling an enemy… or an ally.
Because I thought I knew Sally well enough by now to know that she would never have entered the room like that. She’d have come strutting in like she owned the place. Bruce would have barged right through the door, breaking the lock and half the frame. Jameson… well, I was guessing he didn’t have authority to be up here, since he’d already told green-eyed guy that he didn’t want anything to do with Watching Michelle Duty.
And that really only left green-eyed guy himself. But what the heck was he doing, barging into my room in the middle—
Well okay, not the middle of the night, by my count, but at least eight.
Then, he hit some sort of switch on whatever it was he was carrying, and the room flooded with light.
Battery-powered lamp, my mind told me quickly. Nifty. And convenient.
And God, was it nice to see light again. I’d never been a big fan of the dark. Not scared of it, precisely, but more like… nervous about what it might be hiding from me. I’d never appreciated light as much as I did at that very moment.
Also because it gave me a very clear, very sharp picture of what green-eyed guy was doing here. He looked… not panicked, exactly, but definitely concerned. A fine sheen of sweat covered his brow—leading me to assume that he hadn’t in fact been guarding my room, but had actually been downstairs, and had come running up here for some reason—and his eyes looked wild. Even wilder than they’d been downstairs, when Jameson had caught us in the kitchen.
“Why do you look like you’ve just figured out that there are zombies downstairs waiting to eat our brains?” I asked sharply.
He whirled in my direction, having up to that point not seen me, and heaved a sigh of what looked like relief at my existence.
“You’re all right,” he said on an exhalation.
I gave him a long, considering look, wondering if he was okay.
“Dude, in the last week I’ve found out in advance about terrorists who were going to attack the world, been kidnapped by my uncle and held hostage in a bunker, watched people literally dying on TV, seen my friend killed, bashed my uncle’s head in, and walked all the way back to town after escaping him. I’m now sitting in some enormous mansion that belonged to someone who I expect is dead, and I’m a prisoner again. The last thing I am is all right.”
He gave me a slight smile at that, but I wasn’t going to let my guard down that easy. This guy had just come barging into my room unannounced, and was running with a gang of thugs who had killed multiple people.
A gang of thugs who might be coming up the stairs right after him. If something had made him come up here, there was no telling whether it was going to draw the others as well. And I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said about them and keeping me around.
I hadn’t forgotten what I’d figured out in terms of them not wanting me around for much longer. I still didn’t know why they hadn’t killed me immediately. I wasn’t going to bet on my luck lasting even into tomorrow.
“What?” I asked sharply. “Speak. What the hell did you come up here for? And are your grimy little friends on their way up here, too? Are we expecting the whole party?”
No, it wasn’t friendly. But I didn’t trust the guy. I’d learned my lesson about that when I'd trusted my uncle—and he'd promptly kidnapped me, locked me in a bunker, and told me I was never allowed to leave. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. No matter how dreamy this guy’s eyes were.
No matter how innocent his face looked when he wasn’t paying attention.
I shifted my posture, wondering suddenly if I could run right by him and find a way out of the house, and he suddenly put his hands up, his eyes going wide with surprise.
“Easy, cowgirl,” he said quietly. “I’m not your enemy here. I didn’t come to hurt you, and the rest of the gang is still downstairs. They know I’m up here, but they’re not going to bother us.”
“Why the hell did you come up here, then?” I asked. “What do you want? To slap me around again? Shake me and shout at me, to impress your friends?”
He dropped his hands back to his sides and took three strides toward me—just enough so that I could see him better. Enough that he was closer, but not too close. I still could have gotten around him and run for the door if I wanted to.
Believe me, I was thinking about it.
“You were shouting,” he said quietly. “I started to worry about you and wanted to make sure you were okay.”
All the fight went out of me at that. Because I could tell by the way he was saying it that it was the truth. Either that, or he was an extremely good liar.
“You came up here to check on me?” I asked doubtfully. “Why? Aren’t you guys just going to kill me at the end of the day, anyhow? After all, I’ll be taking up valuable resources, and it doesn’t seem like you’re interested in my skills.”
“I’m interested in your skills,” he corrected me.
He stuck out a hand, and I took it after a moment's pause.
“My name is Will Cartwright,” he said, “and I think we need to team up if either of us is going to get out of this situation alive.”
I shook his hand silently, all of my thoughts having flown right out the window at his words.
Chapter 9
This was a trap. It had to be. It didn’t make any sense for a member of the gang to just show up and ask me to be his ally, with some story about needing to escape if we were going to survive. I mean, I wouldn’t even have believed that in a movie, where shit like that happened all the time.
My life might have gone completely off the rails. But that didn’t mean I’d suddenly turned into one of those airheads who runs up the stairs when the killer is clearly waiting up ther
e with an axe, just itching to cut her head off. I’d been the smartest person I knew in the Before, and that hadn’t changed.
I wasn’t going to fall for some stupid story about a guy wanting to rescue me. No way, no how.
My thoughts went briefly to our quick interlude over lunch, when this very guy had seemed like he might be a friend. Hell, I’d even been thinking then that I might be able to make him an ally, and it had seemed like the most brilliant idea in the history of ideas. But making someone into an ally because you needed one and having someone just throw themselves at you under very suspicious circumstances were two completely different things.
I liked having the choice. I didn’t like coincidences.
Of course, the more rational side of my brain was also screaming that I was overreacting and that it didn’t make any sense whatsoever for this to be a trap. If the gang had wanted to kill me, they could have done it without any trickery. They didn’t need to set me up. I was their prisoner. And exactly zero other people would know if they just did away with me.
The fact that I was still alive meant that they had a reason for keeping me that way. I didn’t know what it was, and I wasn’t sure whether I even wanted to find out.
And that reasoning was what made me grip his hand harder, lean in, and say, “What exactly do you have in mind? And tell me the truth. Convince me that I can trust you.”
He pressed his lips together and considered me for a moment, his eyes almost glowing in the dim lighting. Then, he gestured toward the floor.
“Take a seat. It’s not a short story.”
I sat down, but kept my distance from him and maintained my readiness. I wasn’t sure whether I could trust the guy, after all, and I wasn’t going to let my guard down quite yet.
Survival of The Fittest | Book 2 | Shallow Graves Page 4
