by Kyla Stone
“You don’t get to decide who lives or dies!”
“Yes, I do! There were twelve men with twelve fully automated assault rifles to our three. How good a shot are you at fifty yards under stress? Huh? We would’ve been lucky to take two or three down before the rest of them stormed us and killed every single person you care about.” He released Micah’s neck and shoved him. “Think, Micah!”
Micah stumbled back, rubbing his throat. Jericho was right, and Micah hated that he was right. But he would not give up. They were better than this. They had to be better than this. “If we can help people, we need to help them.”
“We will.” Jericho spat on the ground. He glanced at the girl, his face darkening. “Do you think I wanted this? I did not. But I will not put our own people at risk. Are we clear?”
Micah nodded, though he still disagreed. Life was all about risk. You just made sure you risked for the right things, the things that mattered.
“All acts of bravery and sacrifice come at a cost. You better be damn sure you weigh that cost before you act. Sometimes the price is simply too high.” Jericho gripped his shoulder, his face softening almost imperceptibly. “This world isn’t the world you knew, son. Not anymore.”
Micah stared at the dead girl. The world he’d known wasn’t so great, either. Life had been harsh and terrible for a long time. For too long. “Maybe we’re the ones who need to make it better.”
16
Amelia
Amelia counted the hours since her exposure to the Hydra Virus in her head. Seventy-eight hours. Over three days. And five days since the attackers ambushed their transport.
Since the highway attack on the little girl and her family the afternoon before, the group was quiet, focusing on traveling as far as they could, as quickly as they could. Even Celeste managed not to complain.
After another long, exhausting day of walking, they found shelter in a small-town dentist’s office. Amelia and Benjie were quarantined in an exam room.
Shadows filled the room as the sun began to set outside. Amelia leaned against the cushioned dental chair, the silent machines arrayed around it eerie in their stillness. A service-bot slumped in the far corner next to its charging station, its power long since run out.
“Wanna see a magic trick?” Benjie sat cross-legged beneath a desk about ten feet from her, playing cards spread in a circle around him. The colored pieces of the board game Finn found for him were lined up on an office chair like little soldiers. They played Sorry together four times, Benjie taking Amelia’s turns for her.
“Sure.” She forced a grin.
Benjie sneezed and wiped his nose on his shirt-sleeve. She couldn’t tell if his symptoms were worsening or if his asthma and allergies were acting up.
He shuffled the deck, told her to pick a card—“Tell me when, okay? Make sure you tell me. I’m not looking, see?”—then reshuffled and managed to pick her exact card five times in a row.
“How did you do that?” she asked, genuinely impressed.
He grinned. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
“I guess that’s true.” Amelia leaned back against the chair. She ignored the grumbling in her belly, focusing on the permanent indents on the pads of her fingers instead. She missed playing. She missed the focus and discipline. She missed the soaring joy of the music, how it thrummed inside her like a living thing.
The violin was so much of her life back home—four hours every day practicing Bach and Dvorak and Tchaikovsky again and again, until she was good enough, until she was perfect; the concerts and competitions; her dream of attending Julliard and becoming a violin virtuoso. It was her way to chart her own path, to escape from her father’s control.
Now it was all ashes and dust.
“Knock, knock.” Nadira stood in the doorway. She wore gloves and a mask pulled over her face and nose. She took turns with Willow and Micah, bringing them their meals every day. Today, Nadira brought them a can of cold beans and a foil pack of some horrible-tasting prefab protein smoothie. It went down like pink slime.
Nadira put the food down and took several steps back.
“Thank you.” Amelia retrieved her can, spoon, and foil pack and sat back down so Benjie could get up and take his share.
When they were both seated, Nadira returned to the doorway. She wore a baseball cap with her hair bound in a braid and tucked into the back of her shirt. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay, so far.” Other than a few coughs, Amelia felt fine. But she knew better. In between seizures and migraines, she always felt fine. But her body still betrayed her. She knew better than to trust it.
The Hydra Virus lived inside her. It warred against her body’s defenses. First would come the coughing and sneezing. Then the boiling fever. Then the bleeding, and whatever horrors came next, whatever it was that made the corpses twist and writhe in agony.
She would fight it as best she could, but the war was coming. And judging by the wasteland around them, most people had lost.
“I’m fine, too,” Benjie chimed in.
Nadira nodded, the skin around her eyes crinkling. “That’s so good. I’ve been praying three times a day for you.”
Amelia wasn’t too keen on prayers. They didn’t do anything for her mother. Prayers hadn’t saved her from the horrors of the Grand Voyager. But it couldn’t hurt. And Nadira was always kind. “Thanks.” She took a bite of the cold beans and swallowed the tasteless lumps without chewing. “How much is left?”
Nadira hesitated. Her cargo pants hung around her hips. She was too thin.
“How much?”
“A day’s worth. No more.”
“Do you want my beans?” Benjie asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Your body needs energy to fight the infection.” Nadira’s voice filled with compassion. She winked at him. “And to grow big and strong.”
Amelia sighed. It felt like they’d been traveling for weeks. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, exhaustion burned her eyes, and her feet ached. But she wouldn’t complain. It wasn’t like they had any other options. “How far away are we?”
“Still three or four more days by foot.”
“I wish we could just drive there.” Benjie sighed. “Or fly on a hover craft.”
Nadira shrugged. “Horne found an old manual drive sedan with some gas in it, but Jericho says the noise will attract hostiles. We wouldn’t all fit, anyway.”
“I guess.”
“It’s almost dark. We’ll bunk here for the night. Silas and Micah are setting up a perimeter. I’ll bring you some blankets.”
Less than fifteen minutes later, Amelia wrapped herself in a fleece auto-warming blanket Nadira scrounged up from somewhere. Sleep was the last thing on her mind. The beginnings of a headache pulsed behind her eyes. She hoped it wasn’t a migraine.
Benjie made a nest of his blanket and curled up like a puppy. He clasped his backpack to his chest as if it were a favorite stuffed animal. “Are we still going to get sick?”
Most people would probably make something up to help him feel better. But for some reason, she couldn’t lie to him. She held no hope that the FEMA center would help them. The CDC couldn’t have developed a vaccine so quickly. Their only chance was if they weren’t infected at all. “I don’t know.”
“I miss Lo Lo,” he said pensively, staring up at the darkening ceiling.
“I know.” She wasn’t good with kids. She didn’t know how to be or what to say. She felt awkward and uncomfortable, like anything she tried would be the wrong thing.
Benjie sniffled. “I miss Zia—” His voice cracked as he started to cry. “And my mom.”
She felt a hollowness in her chest. In an instant, she was back in the bridge, re-experiencing the terror, the gut-wrenching fear for her mother’s life, for Silas, even for her father. How much worse must it have been for a kid? “I’m sorry.”
Benjie cried softly. She could do nothing to comfort him. She couldn’t even hug him or hold his hand. She lay ther
e for several minutes, listening helplessly to Benjie’s grief.
She had to do something. She pressed her thumb into the indentations on the pads of her fingers, permanent reminders of the hours, days, weeks, and years she spent practicing. All she knew was music, and she didn’t have a violin.
“I can’t sing worth a damn,” she said haltingly, “but I could try to hum something, if you want.”
“Yes please, Miss Amelia,” Benjie choked out.
She didn’t know any kids’ songs or even the popular stuff everybody streamed on their SmartFlexes. She pretty much only knew classical songs. She hummed the first song that came into her head: Brahm’s Lullaby.
As she hummed, she stared up at the pocked ceiling, her eyes gritty and burning. Gradually his sobs lessened to sniffles and the occasional hitching breathes. Finally, after she’d hummed most of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Benjie drifted into a restless, fitful sleep.
Amelia both longed for sleep and dreaded it. Kane came for her in her dreams, when terror lunged out of the dark, clawed and fanged. When sleep finally descended, the nightmare came, like it always did.
She was back in the captain’s suite on the ship, fighting for her life. Kane’s meaty hands closed around her neck, cutting off her breath. Terror pulsed through every cell of her body, as darkness blurred her vision.
His beady eyes and that wide, gleaming crocodile smile leering at her, his hands ripping at her clothes. Fear pounded inside her head, the migraine splitting her skull open. She was dying, and she was helpless to do anything to stop it.
She awoke gasping, trembling, drenched in sweat. A headache pulsed against her skull. The terror didn’t fade. She searched the room frantically, half-expecting the shadows to lunge at her with dripping fangs and Kane’s crazed, violent eyes.
She shuddered, her fingers grasping for the comfort of her charm bracelet beneath her shirt. She’d never escape him. She’d never escape that soul-swallowing terror and despair. He was dead—she’d killed him—but his ghost still haunted her.
Gabriel’s face flashed through her mind. She pushed it out. Surrounded by the chaos of the terrorist attack, she’d felt safe with him. He promised to protect her. She’d been dumb and naïve enough to believe him. Every time she looked at Gabriel, she saw the look in his eyes when he betrayed her.
She lay back on the sweat-drenched carpet. Sleep wouldn’t return, not tonight. That’s when she felt it. The first wave of heat flushing through her, from her toes to the top of her head.
It was too early. But it was here.
The fever.
17
Willow
For the first time in a week, Willow wasn’t hungry. A few hours after leaving the dentist’s office that morning, they found a gas station with several bags of expired chips stored behind a box of bleach in a janitor’s closet. They ate chemical-infused junk food until they were stuffed.
“Each of you should be armed,” Jericho said. “I will train a core group with the basics of fighting and shooting a gun. We must protect ourselves.”
Willow and the rest of their group stood in a loose circle in the overgrown yard in front of a small, dilapidated house they’d commandeered for the night. Jericho decided to stop early so they could rest and, apparently, learn to fight.
He stood in front of the small pile of rifles, handguns, knives, and boxes of ammo they’d scavenged over the last few days.
“There’s no law anymore, no justice except what we make ourselves,” Jericho continued.
Horne frowned at the weapons. “This is a bit . . . extreme, don’t you think? Most people are still civilized. I don’t see why we need to traipse around armed to the teeth like some sort of deranged gang.”
Jericho picked up a few of the knives. “I served as private security after the Springfield bombing and in Arizona during the drought riots. I was fourteen when the government fell in Nigeria. I lived through—” His mouth hardened. He gave a quick jerk of his head, as if reliving some terrible memory. “It’s not a lack of structure that turns people dangerous. It’s a lack of food, of resources, combined with an ability to act with impunity, in any manner one sees fit. Some will revert to their bestial natures; others will do anything to protect their own. Bottom line, if you’re not willing to do the same, you won’t survive. In this world, the only rule in any fight is to win.”
He handed Willow, Elise, and Celeste a knife and sheath to strap to their belts. He gave another knife and a small switchblade to Nadira. “Give these to Amelia and Benjie. Benjie can have the switchblade. Even a kid can learn how to use it.”
Celeste held hers with the tips of her fingers, frowning in distaste. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“It’s not gonna bite you, that’s for sure,” Willow said.
Celeste smiled sweetly, but her eyes were spitting venom. “Cut the sarcasm, would you?”
Willow smiled just as sweetly. “If you don’t want a sarcastic answer, don’t ask a stupid question.”
“Guys, we’re on the same side here,” Micah said.
“Tell her that.” Celeste pouted. “She’s the mean one.”
Willow had no response that didn’t involve a black eye on Celeste’s part, so she turned away with gritted teeth and focused on the weapons at their feet. “How about that one?” She pointed at a slim knife with a leg strap. “That goes in your boot, right?”
Jericho handed it to her. “Be careful.”
She grinned. Micah’s hope had rubbed off on her. Benjie wasn’t coughing yet, and she’d started to believe he might be okay. She felt better than she had in days. “Let’s get this party started.”
Nadira and Elise went back inside the house to prepare what little they had for dinner. Celeste followed them since she had nothing else to do, flipping her curls and slanting her eyes at Willow as she went.
Willow didn’t care. She strapped the knives to her belt and lower calf. She wasn’t going to cook just because she was a girl. She knew how—her lola taught her—but to hell with that. She wanted one of those guns.
Gabriel leaned against a tree, his arms cuffed in front of him, watching with narrowed eyes. The right side of his face was still puffy, his lip purple and swollen. “Give me a weapon. I know how to shoot. I’m better than Silas.”
Silas shoved his hands into his pockets and glowered at him. “Not on my worst day.”
Gabriel ignored him and turned to Jericho. “Release me and let me have a gun. You need me.”
“We don’t,” Jericho said curtly. “End of discussion.”
Unease twisted Willow’s gut. She was glad Jericho wouldn’t release Gabriel Rivera. That was a good thing. He couldn’t be trusted. He was a terrorist, a traitor, and a killer. She hated the fact that he was allowed anywhere near them, near Benjie.
She glanced at Micah, whose mouth pressed into a thin line. Micah had it worse. And Amelia. She could bear it if they could.
Still, she’d be happier with a better weapon than a knife to defend herself. Just in case.
Jericho grabbed two assault rifles and handed them to Micah, Horne, and Finn.
Finn dropped his hands and shook his head. “No thanks.”
Jericho paused. “Come again?”
Finn shifted uncomfortably. “I’d prefer not to carry a gun.”
Willow stared at him, lifting her brows in surprise.
“You’ll have to elaborate,” Silas drawled, all smirking and superior. “I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”
Finn shrugged his massive shoulders and flashed an apologetic grin. “I . . . don’t want to kill.”
“You must be jesting.” Horne scratched the stubble on his chin. “You’re built like a tank.”
Finn looked from Horne to Jericho, the grin fading from his face. “It’s how I was raised. My dad—I mean, he’s dead now, but he was Buddhist, and I—it feels wrong, you know? I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Nobody wants to fig
ht, to kill,” Willow said. “Sometimes we have to.”
“I’m sorry. Even if you gave me a gun, I know myself. I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger.”
“We need you.” Jericho stared up at Finn, who towered a full half-foot above him. “You understand that?”
“Will you fight, at least?” If she were Finn’s size, she’d have found a way to save Zia and her mother. She’d have mowed down any terrorists stupid enough to get in her way. “You could slam two of those Headhunters’ heads together and crack their skulls open like eggs.”
Finn shook his head. “I guess I’m a delicate flower,” he joked, but it fell flat.
Horne and Jericho stared at him like he’d transformed into some bizarre creature they didn’t recognize. Silas sneered in contempt. “More like a pansy-ass coward.”
“Silas!” Micah said. “Stop it.”
Finn only looked down at the rifle in Jericho’s hand. “He’s right.”
Willow touched his arm. She didn’t agree with his resistance, but she understood it. Finn was gentle, a giant teddy bear. He didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He was simply goofy, soft-hearted Finn. Her Finn. Her friend. “You’re no coward.”
“He’s right,” Finn said sheepishly, his shoulders slumping. “I would freeze, failing when you needed me most.”
“We aren’t going to escape the next gunfight unscathed,” Jericho said. “Do you understand that? We need to win. And to win, we need manpower.”
Willow stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”
Silas made a contemptuous, disbelieving noise in the back of his throat.
She ignored him. “Teach me to fight.”
“Right,” Silas scoffed. “You’re just a pathetic little girl.”
She raised her chin. “Exactly. You not only underestimate me, you barely even see me.” She had no skills. She had no clue how to fight. But she was stronger than they expected from her years of hefting fifty-pound bags of fertilizer. And she was stubborn and determined as hell. She would do anything to protect Benjie. Anything. They’re your responsibility. Take care of them.
