Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1)

by Aria Michaels

  For the first time in hours, the ache in my chest had become background music to the pain for the rest of my body. Despite the rawness in my arm and leg, I was grateful for the reprieve from the damn pull. I turned the truck’s engine off and sat back into the seat, finally relaxing the tension in my shoulders and taking a deep breath. My hands ached from gripping the wheel so tightly, so I shook them out to get the blood flowing again. I jarred my arm on the seat, and bit back a string of swears as pain shot down the side of my body.

  “Everybody out,” I barked, gritting my teeth against the pain.

  “Jesus, Liv,” Riley said, as she pried her door open. “My ears are already bleeding, do you have to yell?”

  “Sorry,” I said, taken aback. “I thought—”

  “It’s a little muffled,” Zander chimed in as he leaned forward from the back, “but I can hear, too. Eli?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted, still clutching his bleeding arm. “But it sounds like I am under water.”

  I opened my door and swung my aching legs out, dropping like a brick to the ground. Riley followed suit, slowly lowering herself out of the truck. Bella hopped out after her, immediately trotting off to do her thing, whatever that might be. Zander and Eli wrestled their way from the back seat, groaning around their various maladies.

  “Well, that sucked,” I groaned, finally looking down at my minced calf— needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.

  “Uh, yeah,” Riley agreed, absently dropping her chin to her shoulder to wipe away the blood dripping from it. “What the hell was that, anyway? We were at least a mile away from the hospital. There is no way that should have knocked us on our asses like that.”

  “Had to have been at least one nuclear charge,” Eli said, peeking at his shoulder beneath the collar of his tattered T-shirt. “No way C4 would have expelled that much force. We were well beyond the blast radius.”

  “They weren’t taking any chances, I guess,” Zander muttered, his brows furrowed. “No survivors means no loose ends.”

  “Let me look at that shoulder, Zander,” I said, making my way over to him. His arm hung at an odd angle at his side, his shoulder blade jutting from his back. His fingertips were starting to turn blue. “We need to realign that ASAP, or you will risk permanent damage.”

  “It can wait,” Zander said, clutching his shoulder tight in his blackened fist.

  “No, it can’t,” I said, pressing my thumbnail into the pad of his limp thumb. The skin did not spring back, nor did the color return. “Zander, you are already losing circulation.”

  “She’s right, kid,” Eli chimed in. “A few more minutes and you risk losing viability.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the second opinion, Doc.” Zander bit his lip against the pain.

  “Let’s get you inside,” I said, pulling him toward the front door. As expected, the doorknob did not turn.

  “I got it,” Zander said, smiling through the pain as he used his hammer hand to send the brass doorknob and its adjacent plating scattering across the concrete walk.

  “Thanks, Zan,” I said, running my hand across his chest as I stepped through the front entrance.

  Just inside the door, was a large waiting room. Much like the one at the hospital, the walls were lined with uncomfortable looking chairs and benches. Between them, were small kennels, leash posts, and tables lined with magazines catering to everything from your casual animal-lover to avid farmers. The building, so far, appeared undamaged and abandoned, so we quickly shuffled inside.

  “Stay here, okay?” I said, helping Zander into one of the stiff vinyl chairs near the front desk. “Guys, I am going to take a look around quick. I’ll be right back.”

  “Take this.” Zander pulled the small pistol from his waist and dropped it in my hand.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, accepting its weight in my palm. After everything we had just been through, my fear of guns was hardly in my top ten anymore.

  “Hey, kid, look for an O.R or a clean exam room. We need a sterile place to triage,” Eli said. “We survived the damn apocalypse, military imprisonment, and a massive explosion. It’d be a damn shame to die of a simple infection.”

  “Got it. Oh, and Elias,” I jabbed the end of the gun into the center of Eli’s chest. “When I get back, you have some serious fucking explaining to do. Got me?”

  “I assumed as much,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “Though, as you might expect, I have a few questions for you as well.”

  ***

  “Hello?” The only response I got was the hollow sound of my own voice echoing back at me from down the hall.

  I felt like an idiot, slinking against the wall with the gun raised awkwardly in front of me. I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of firing the weapon but having it definitely made me feel less afraid. I slid past a door labeled janitorial, leaped across the open doorway of the small room designated as a surgical waiting room, and came to a stop at a wide set of double doors. I pressed against the handles, but they wouldn’t budge.

  “Damn it,” I swore, kicking the door in frustration, before trying the handles once more.

  They hadn’t changed their mind about opening, so I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the diamond grid safety glass windows. The long hallway beyond was deserted but I could clearly see the vault-like doors beyond it and the corresponding O.R. numbers above each one. Of course, everything we needed— a sterile environment, proper equipment, maybe even meds, waited just beyond those immovable doors.

  “Open, damn it,” I said, gasping as I slammed my uninjured shoulder against the door. “Open, you piece of—Come on!”

  I bent at the knees, groaning against my teeth, and I gave it my all. I shoved and pushed as hard as I could against the solid wood, but it refused to move even an inch. The soles of my boots squeaked as they slid against the slick vinyl and I fell to the floor having made no progress. The side of my calf burned as it came in contact with the floor and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

  “Goddamn it,” I swore, ignoring the coppery taste in my mouth as I climbed back to my feet.

  My eyes raked desperately over the door. There had to be a way in. I could try to break the glass, but it was triple layered, wired, safety glass and that would take some doing. From what I could see, there was no external locking mechanism so I ran my fingers along the outer edge. The hinges were contained within the framework of the doors, so I would not be able to dislodge it that way.

  “Open…up…you…stupid—” I growled, slamming my shoulder into the door repeatedly.

  Eventually, I ran out of steam, slammed my back against the door and slid straight to the floor. My tailbone landed hard on the vinyl, my teeth clamping together. A sharp pain shot through my jaw, my tongue instinctively wandering to my broken tooth. The torn flesh on my arm was burning and my leg was dripping blood onto the floor at my side. I let my head fall to my chest, exhausted and utterly defeated. None of us had come out of this mess unscathed, and at that moment, it felt as though the weight of the world rested squarely on my battered and bloody shoulders.

  In short, I was a complete mess.

  Aside from the smattering of bloody wounds that decorated my aching body, my heart and mind were in complete overdrive as I ran down the list of items on my pity-party check list. A random space parasite was trying to take over my brain. I had played a key role in my best friend having her heart ripped out. Micah was probably dead. Jake and Falisha were currently MIA. The last place we had seen them alive was at the hospital, which was now a burning pile of rubble. And after days of clawing and scratching our way across the county, I was no closer to finding Beans than I had been before the world had come to a screeching halt.

  Oh, and then there was that guy I killed. Let’s not forget that.

  “This sucks!” I slammed my elbow against the unrelenting door and buried my face in my hands.

  “Hey genius, maybe you should try pulling,” came a familiar voice that sent my heart cat
apulting into my stomach.

  “J—Jake?” I said it quietly, firmly convinced that I was hallucinating. “Jake, is that you?”

  “In the flesh,” he said, bowing dramatically.

  “Oh my God, Jake!” I didn’t even realize I had gotten to my feet, but before I knew it my arms were wrapped around his slender shoulders.

  He was really here.

  He was safe.

  He was…alone.

  “Falisha?” I said, my voice choking up as I held him at arm’s length. “No...Jake, did she—is she?”

  “Please, you know that girl is too stubborn to die,” he said, laughing as he peeled my hands off his shoulders and walked over to the double doors. He grabbed one of the handles, pulled the door open and shook his head as he gestured for me to walk through it. “See? Sometimes pushing is not the answer, Liv.”

  “Where is she?” I asked, stumbling numbly through the doorway. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. I mean she still has bad hair and she’s still annoying, but otherwise, she’s good,” he said, shrugging. “She and Riley are helping Christa and the cowboy get settled in.”

  “Unbelievable,” I groaned, rubbing my sore shoulder as I stepped into the dark operating ward. “Wait. Did you say cowboy?”

  “Yeah,” Jake said, rolling his eyes as his smile disappeared. He followed me through the door, sulking as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Don’t even get me started.”

  Chapter 42

  Ghosts

  “So, Christa has no idea where they took her?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, no.” Jake shook his head. “Gran died the first day when the flare blew out her bypass machine. Mom and a couple of the other grown-ups helped the doctors and nurses get everyone they could down into the basement and locked themselves in.”

  “Wow, your mom’s bad-ass, Jake,” I said, gently nudging him as we slowly walked down the hallway.

  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging sadly.

  We walked further down the hallway, inspecting each of the rooms as we made our way back to the waiting room. The surgical waiting room, though empty, had a vending machine in it that still had a few items buried among the spiral wracking inside. We would definitely have to make a stop there before we left.

  “I guess my mom and the others started getting sick within a few hours, though. The doctors, they tried to set up their own quarantine, but there was only so much they could do, you know? The only thing in the basement was the morgue, so it’s not like they keep any good meds there,” Jake said, his voice shaking. “People were dying in the halls, only some of them didn’t stay dead. Christa said they ended up losing a lot of the healthy people to the leeches they had inadvertently trapped in the building.”

  “Damn,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “Eventually, they were able to break down the doors and let the damn things out, but by then it was complete chaos. Everyone that wasn’t dead or dying was left fighting over food and medicine.”

  “Until help arrived,” I rolled my eyes and kicked a chair across the hallway. “Metz and his cronies are just as bad as the damn leeches, in my book. Worse maybe.”

  “As soon as the Army arrived, they divided everyone up into four different quarantine cells. That was the last time Christa saw our mom.” Jake said as he pushed the chair, neatly, back against the wall. “You should have seen them, Liv. There was like twenty of them in there. They had no food or water, they hadn’t showered in days, and there was no place to go to the bathroom. Liv, the smell…it was god-awful. I never saw my mom at all, but we found Christa and her precious Ty huddled together behind one of the lab tables, real cozy-like.”

  “And Ty would be the cowboy, I take it?” I asked, not missing his spiteful tone.

  “Uh-huh,” Jake said, staring down at his feet as he walked. He crossed his arms over his chest, and scowled straight ahead, but offered nothing in the way of an explanation.

  “O-kay,” I said, drawing the word out. “I take it you are not a fan.”

  “Not in the slightest,” Jake grunted.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because, I dunno, it’s just weird, Liv,” he said, his voice cracking. “The guy’s like seventeen or something and she is not even twelve yet. She has been glued to him since the get-go. The building was like, literally, falling apart around us and she still refused to leave unless the half-wit hick was allowed to come, too.”

  “It’s not like you could just leave the guy there, Jake.” I shrugged, not understanding what the problem was.

  “I wouldn’t have done that, but he didn’t have to come with us, either,” he pouted, pausing as I grabbed the handle to the door that led to the records room. “She acts like he’s fucking Superman or something.”

  “And?” I said, shining my flashlight in as I waved him through the door.

  “And, I’m her brother,” Jake threw his hands into the air, stepped into the small closet, ranting as he examined its contents. “I could have died trying to get her out of that that hell-hole and I didn’t get so much as a thank you. But, Ty? He calls her darlin’ and smiles at her with his stupid cowboy hat, and his stupid dimple, and he’s her freaking hero?”

  “Jake she’s eleven years old.” I said as he stepped back into the hallway with me. “I think maybe you are over-thinking this a bit. Ty was there with her during a traumatic time and she got attached, that’s all.”

  “Whatever,” he said, pulling the door open and ducking through it and into the waiting room. “Doesn’t matter, anyway.”

  “Sarge!” Falisha launched herself at me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders.

  “Hey,” I said, returning her embrace. “Glad to see you are in one piece.”

  “Wish I could say the same for you,” she said, wrinkling up her nose when her arm came away covered in my blood. “What the hell did you do to yourself now?”

  “Long story,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I hear that,” she said, smiling broadly. “Looks like y’all picked up a stray, too.”

  “You could say that,” I said, glaring at Eli from across the room. He was hiding something and I was determined to find out what. “Jury’s still out on whether or not we are keeping him, though.”

  “Liv,” Jake said, waving me over to the receptionist’s desk.

  A young blond girl sat on top of it, dangling her feet carelessly over the side. She was so busy tossing her curls about and staring at the very tall, very good-looking guy by her side, that she didn’t acknowledge my presence. Based on the guy’s get-up, it was safe to assume this was Jake’s cowboy.

  He was about the same height as Zander, but where Zander was long and lean, Ty was more thick and stacked. His shirt was torn, revealing a very well-defined set of abs that disappeared into the waistband of his very tight Wranglers. Ty leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his broad chest, feet crossed at the ankles. The wide brim of his dusty black Stetson was tipped downward— the cherry on the sexy cowboy sundae.

  “Liv, this is my sister, Christa,” Jake said, gesturing pointlessly. The poor thing was oblivious to anything outside of Ty’s orbit.

  “Hello,” I chuckled, fully aware I was essentially talking to myself.

  “Christa,” Jake shouted, snapping his fingers in front of her face. “Christa!”

  “What,” Christa bit back, finally tearing her eyes away from Ty. “Why are you screaming in my face? Jeez!”

  “Christa, this is Liv,” Jake said, waving toward me. “She’s the one I was telling you about.”

  “Oh, right. She’s the one with, like, alien brain damage or whatever,” Christa said, grabbing onto Ty’s bicep as she shot me an appraising look. “You are like, crazy tall, for a girl.”

  “Ignore her,” Jake said, rolling his eyes.

  “Whatever, a-hole,” Christa said, sticking her tongue out.

  “Nice, Christa. Very lady-like,” Jake said, shaking his head. He pointed vagu
ely over his shoulder as he walked away. “Oh, and that’s Ty.”

  Ty stood immediately and removed his hat, smiling wide as he reached out to shake my hand.

  “Ma’am,” he said, in what had to be the most adorable southern accent I had ever heard.

  “Liv,” I stammered, momentarily in awe of his gorgeousness. “Call me Liv. Well, you’ve already met Jake and Falisha. Let me introduce the rest of the crew.”

  “Much obliged,” he said.

  I felt my face heat for a moment and eyes burning into the back of my head. I snapped out of it, motioned for him to follow and hastily started introducing my friends.

  “That’s Riley, my sister, slash BFF, slash pain in my ass,” I smirked, as we approached. “Riley, this is Ty.”

  “Hi there,” Ty drawled, smiling genuinely.

  “Hi there, yourself, cowboy,” Riley said, sitting up straighter, her eyes trailing after Ty as we passed.

  “That’s Bella, the three-legged wonder dog,” I said, pointing to where she sat, curled up at Eli’s feet. I waved at him dismissively. “That’s Eli. He’s new and kind of annoying.”

  “Sir,” Ty said, nodding in his direction when Eli didn’t rise to shake his hand.

  “And this is Zander. He’s my…he’s, umm—” He’s my what, exactly? My friend? My almost-boyfriend? My post-apocalyptic, alien virus soul mate?

  “Zander James,” he said, cutting me off as he reached out to shake Ty’s hand.

  “Ty Bailey. Nice to meet ya,” he said, shaking Zander’s hand firmly.

  “Love that accent,” Riley said, sidling up with Falisha on her arm. “Where you from, anyway?”

  “He’s from Tennessee, right Ty?” Falisha was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Memphis, to be exact,” Ty nodded, sliding his hat back on. “My family owns a ranch down there.”

  “How on Earth did you end up at a hospital in Morrison, Illinois, of all places?” I asked.

  “I came up here to— I was visiting a friend,” he said. “I was at that little grocery store, you know the one with the funeral home right next door?”