Burning Skies_The Last Sanctuary Book Three

by Kyla Stone

  “I can’t let you do either of those things.” Micah’s finger twitched on the trigger. He was willing to fight. He had killed in the heat of battle. But this was different. He’d never killed someone face to face. He didn’t want to do this.

  He hesitated.

  “Micah,” Gabriel said from behind him.

  He nearly sagged in relief. Gabriel was alive. He was okay.

  He was only distracted for a moment, but a moment was all it took.

  Sykes plunged the scythe deep into Horne’s belly.

  Micah pressed the trigger. A crackling blast split the air. A hole the size of a softball opened up in the side of Sykes’s skull, the edges seared and smoking. His limp body tumbled sideways. He was dead before he hit the polished marble floor.

  Micah dropped the gun and raced to Horne. He knelt over him, heedless of the puddle of blood pooling beneath Horne’s crumpled body. Horne’s eyes were glassy. They stared up at the ceiling high above them, seeing nothing.

  Horne wasn’t a good person. Maybe he never would have changed, no matter how many chances he was given. Now, no one would ever know. Death was an ugly, terrible thing, no matter how much the victim deserved it. “He’s dead.”

  Gabriel came up behind him and gently wrestled the gun from his stiff fingers. “And we’re not.”

  He nodded dully. “I killed Sykes.”

  “He was a murderer. He would’ve hunted us down. And the others. Whoever got in his way. You did what you had to do, Micah.”

  Micah stared at the bodies. Bile roiled in his stomach, acid stinging the back of his throat. “If I hadn’t hesitated, Horne would be alive.”

  “They both made their choices.”

  “I know.” He did know. He would never condone violence, never choose it if there were any other way, but men who lived by the sword died by it, too. That was Jack London’s law of club and fang, wasn’t it? It came true for Sykes. For Horne.

  Would it be true for Gabriel? For Micah? That remained to be seen. All they could do was their best. That’s what Jericho used to say. The rest was out of their hands.

  “There will be other Pyros,” Gabriel said. “The hunting parties are headed back. The drones sent out alerts. Moruga is still out there. If he finds us, he’ll kill us. We have to go now.”

  Micah rose to his feet numbly. It felt like hours had passed since the first bullet had struck the elevator doors. In reality, it had been mere minutes. So much destruction and death in so little time.

  Gabriel placed a heavy hand on Micah’s shoulder. “Let’s find our people.”

  31

  Willow

  Willow tucked the gun inside her waistband and grabbed the flamethrower from its strap around her shoulder. She opened the ignition valve with trembling fingers, struggling to remember the hurried instructions Li Jun had given earlier.

  Yuan reached over and pressed the button that activated the spark plugs. “Point and shoot. It has wicked fire-power. Streams of napalm that shoot fifty—”

  He cried out as a rat leapt onto his shin. He dislodged it by slamming his leg against the wall.

  Another rat climbed up her shin. She seized it with her free hand and flung it to the ground. She pulled gently, half-depressing the trigger. A searing, twenty-foot flame whooshed out, blasting the rat. “Take that, you bastard!”

  The rodent squealed and skittered back, but it was too late. A sizzle of fire engulfed its fat, bristling body. She spun in a circle, obliterating anything that moved. Fifty rats burned to a crisp in an instant.

  Hundreds of rats squeaked and chittered, scrabbling away from her in a widening arc. Their shiny black eyes reflected the orange, flickering light. “They saw their comrades die. They know what it means.”

  “Of course they do,” Li Jun said like he was personally affronted. “I told you they were intelligent.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  Together, they drove the horde back. The rats squeaked and squealed in fury but scurried back from the flames. Gradually, the river of hunched creatures ebbed away like a fading tide. They slipped into cracks and crevices and pipes and grates.

  “It’s working. They’re leaving.”

  Yuan scratched his head, frowning.

  “What?”

  “That was too easy.”

  She switched off the flame and huffed her bangs out of her eyes. “Maybe you need to check your thesaurus app. That did not at all fit into my definition of ‘easy’.”

  “We only killed a handful of them. The rest fled.”

  She remembered what he’d said about rats communicating with each other and suppressed a shudder. “You said they’re smart, didn’t you? I’d run from fire, too.”

  The remaining rats kept rising on their haunches to glare at them, if rats could glare. Li Jun let off a short blast. A dozen rats met their fiery demise. The rest of them scuttled into the darkness.

  More sounds echoed further down the tunnel. Willow dropped the flamethrower and drew her gun. Li Jun did the same. Was it Micah and Gabriel and Horne? Or were the Pyros coming for them?

  She gritted her teeth. “Come on, come on.”

  Li Juan peered down the tunnel with his night vision goggles. “They’re human, at least. Two of them.”

  Micah appeared out of the darkness. He sprinted toward her, his dark hair a mess, his glasses skewed. Gabriel followed close behind, several fresh bruises and cuts marring his jaw and forehead.

  She could have kissed Micah. She was so relieved. She pulled him into a quick hug. “Have I told you recently how beautiful you are?”

  Micah gave her a shaky grin. “Not recently, no. But there’s no time like the present.”

  “Save your flirting for later,” Li Jun said. “Where’s the traitor?”

  Micah shook his head, his face pale. “He didn’t make it.”

  “Horne is dead. So is Sykes,” Gabriel said. “Moruga will be coming for us.”

  Willow pointed ahead. “They went that way. We’re holding off the rats for a few more minutes, just to make sure it’s safe.”

  Micah hesitated. “I’ll stay—”

  She waved him off. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  Micah nodded. He trusted her to handle this. He and Gabriel sprinted down the tunnel. Willow watched them go.

  “I used to work at Rodell Industries, you know,” Li Jun said quietly.

  She turned to him. He was definitely the brainy type, though he clearly knew his way around a gun, too. The digital snake tattoo winding up his neck shimmered in the dim light. His angular face was sharp and hungry-looking, but his eyes weren’t cruel. She should hate him, but she didn’t. “Yeah?”

  “I was studying bioengineering at Georgia Tech. I interned at Rodell between classes. I wanted to be a scientist, one of the few jobs not taken over by metalheads. My family was barely hanging on, you know? My folks worked three jobs each and stayed in the slums of Doraville so they could send me to school.” His features hardened, his face grave. “Two years ago, the rotting tenement building we lived in collapsed. My parents were inside. The governor sent some drones and cop-bots to sift through the rubble, but only a handful of human rescue workers. They said they couldn’t waste valuable resources, claiming the drone scanners had determined everyone inside was already dead. But they didn’t know. How could they know? What they meant was, the slums could burn for all they cared.

  “When they finally uncovered my father’s body five days later, they found notes he’d written to us on the slab of concrete crushing his legs. He’d still be alive if…” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I dropped out of Georgia Tech and joined the New Patriots a week later.”

  Willow’s throat thickened. She swallowed. So much grief and sorrow everywhere. Too much. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I saw the way you looked at us. But the New Patriots aren’t terrorists. We’re freedom fighters.”

  “Whatever you say.” She felt a prick of guilt at the
words. She understood Li Jun’s suffering better than most. And his anger. She didn’t dislike him, though he was both a Pyro and a New Patriot. She glanced down the dark tunnel, straining for sounds. “Why are you risking all of this for us?”

  “Because of the girl who survived the Hydra virus. If it’s true, if she’s really got the vaccine or the cure or whatever inside her, that changes everything. We can stop brutalizing each other, fighting for the scraps of a dying civilization. We can build something new.”

  He sounded just like Micah. “I hope you’re right.”

  Li Jun pulled something out of his pocket. She eyed it warily. “What the hell is that?”

  Shadows flickered over Li Jun’s features. His mouth tightened, his expression scared but determined. He hefted a dark, egg-shaped object in his hand. “Plan D.”

  Willow’s eyes widened. A pulse grenade.

  “You should go now,” Li Jun said firmly. “The rats will come back. I’ll do this alone.”

  “And leave you to be the hero and get all the credit? I don’t think so. I have a kick-ass reputation to uphold. We do this together.”

  “Halvsies on the credit?”

  “Done. Now tell me how to kill these flea-infested mutants.”

  “When the rats show up again, because they will, I’ll hurl it down the tunnel. I’ll activate it here,” he flicked his Smartflex, “and we’ll take out as many as we can. The explosion will kill most of the main colony, hopefully. At any rate, it will create a wall of fire that will stun and confuse them, for a few minutes at least. It should be enough time to get us all out of here.”

  She smiled grimly. “Then we run like hell?”

  He nodded. “Then we run like hell.”

  Something heavy plopped onto her shoulder.

  Something else landed on her head. A hairless, scaly tail brushed the side of her face. Faint and tickling, like a feather.

  Human speech failed her. Her scream died in her throat.

  She flailed at the creature clawing at her scalp. She jerked her head and flung the thing away.

  Dark, squirming shapes fell all around her. Rats dropped from a large grate in the ceiling, oozing out from the holes. More rats scurried along the pipes above their heads.

  Abruptly the entire tunnel was alive, writhing and squirming with thousands of bristling bodies.

  The rat clinging to her shoulder chittered angrily in her ear. She punched it off with the butt of her gun. But there were more. So many more.

  Li Jun was right. These vermin were smart. They’d pretended to flee, only to regroup and return through the ceiling, attacking from above. The cunning bastards.

  She cowered, attempting to cover her head and protect her face even as she thrashed wildly with the flamethrower, trying to knock the thing off. A wriggling rat tangled in her hair. She seized it and hurled it against the wall.

  She stepped on another rat, lost her balance, and fell to her hands and knees.

  A huge rat as large as a cat slammed onto Li Jun’s head. He stumbled, arms flailing. The grenade slipped from his fingers and rolled across the floor.

  Before he could regain his footing, rats swarmed him. A squirming knot tumbled from the ceiling and landed on his chest. They slithered over him in seconds, a mass of quivering bodies and gnashing yellow teeth. He beat at them, sending a pile skittering off his torso. But there were more, scrabbling at his feet, his ankles, digging their claws into his pant legs.

  Horrified panic coursed through her veins. Half of her screamed to run, get out, to survive, by any means necessary. The other half wouldn’t let her flee. She couldn’t just leave him behind. He wasn’t one of them. But he had still risked his life to save them all. Benjie would live because of him.

  Micah was right. There was more to surviving than staying alive. She decided who she was going to be. What she was going to stand for. Whether she was a hero or a coward. And she sure as hell wasn’t a coward.

  She hadn’t saved Zia. She hadn’t saved her mother. But she’d be damned if she left anyone else behind. She couldn’t abandon Li Jun to die.

  She forced herself to move. She scrambled to her feet and shot a blast of fire at the rats, aiming to either side of Li Jun. She couldn’t get too close or she’d burn him, too. She killed a hundred rats, two hundred, their death squeals echoing through the tunnel.

  A handful skittered away. They shied away from the blast, but they’d scented blood now. They were voracious, the virus boiling their tiny brains, forcing them to bite, bite, bite, even at their own peril.

  She backed away, searching desperately for any way that she could help Li Jun. A hot wave of fear and revulsion burned through her. There were too many of them. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t save him.

  Li Jun screamed. A rat clawed at his face and bit deep into his cheek. He shrieked in anguish as dozens of razor-sharp teeth sank into his hands, face, and neck.

  “Li Jun!” she cried. She stared, helpless, horrified, frozen in terror.

  Li Jun lifted his arm high into the air, his SmartFlex glinting. He intended to activate the grenade with his SmartFlex. But it had fallen on the ground nearby. There was no way to find it somewhere beneath the bristling sea of vermin. She only knew it was close. Much too close.

  Rats crawled over Li Jun, scratching, biting, gnawing. The entire squirming, writhing horde burst from the tunnel behind them. He moaned. “Run!”

  Heaven help her, but she ran. Ten steps, twenty, her heart in her throat.

  A flash of white-hot light blinded her.

  The blast knocked her off her feet and slammed her body against the concrete. Her forehead and nose struck the ground. Pain erupted in her skull, splintering through her brain, screaming through every nerve and cell in her body.

  The explosion shook the tunnel, raining gravel and chunks of concrete down on her head. Heat seared her exposed skin. Her ears rang. Blood filled her mouth.

  The world throbbed red, like a wound.

  She shook all over, gasping, struggling to breathe, to suck oxygen into her starving lungs. She scrambled to her hands and knees, waves of dizziness pulsing through her, nearly bowling her over.

  She blinked away the stinging tears streaming from her eyes, rubbing her face furiously, desperate to clear the blackness wavering in the corners of her vision.

  Her hand came back streaked with red.

  Her thoughts were scattered and broken. What just happened? Why was she on the ground? Why couldn’t she get up?

  The rats. Li Jun, fighting them off. The explosion. The rats. Oh, hell. Li Jun.

  She vomited sour, burning stomach acid. Her trembling legs wouldn’t hold her weight. They were liquid, weak as water. She tried to stand and collapsed. Abrasions scraped her hands and elbows. The knees of her pant legs were ripped and bloody. More blood dripped into her eyes.

  Her head was on fire. No, that was the pain. She touched her forehead gingerly, felt split skin. Was that bone? White and scarlet and black swirled across her vision. Her mind went dark, came back again.

  Li Jun.

  She managed to turn, craning her neck. Her head splintered with the pain of moving. Everything was hazy and disconnected.

  Fire consumed the tunnel behind her, flames licking the walls and ceiling. Orange shadows writhed over stone and concrete. Hundreds—thousands—of small, bulging shapes littered the ground. Some of them burning. Most of them charred and blackened. None of them moving. A giant rodent lay a few feet behind her, its head missing.

  The rats were dead.

  She blinked through burning tears. She glimpsed an arm. A twisted leg.

  A devastated moan vibrated deep in her throat. Li Jun had died for all of them. For her, too.

  She didn’t know how long she huddled there in shock, curled on the ground, her mind sinking into blackness, into red fire, into pain like an axe shattering glass, shattering her body, her brain, her everything.

  Maybe it was two minutes. Maybe it was two hours.


  A large hand seized her arm. The voice sounded far away, so very far. “Willow…you’re safe now…I’ve got you.”

  Someone lifted her like a baby and pressed her against a broad, warm chest. She recognized the smell, dense and woodsy and sweet; recognized the heft of the person who carried her, both softness and strength somehow combined in one.

  Her vision dimmed, the darkness coming for her at last, but she knew the face looming over her, knew it like her own: mischievous eyes, rich brown skin, that goofy, lopsided grin.

  Finn had come back for her.

  32

  Gabriel

  Gabriel slogged through the snow. The bitter cold stung his face and throat. He checked his rifle with fingers he could barely feel. But he was alive. Everyone was alive. That was all that mattered.

  Cleo’s plan had been dangerous but brilliant. Two hundred Pyros hunting them, but in all the wrong places. No sane person would double back and infiltrate the very headquarters they were attempting to flee. No sane person would intentionally descend into the death trap of the sewer system.

  By the time the drones alerted the Pyros to their plan, it was too late. They were gone before the hunting parties returned. Even if the Pyros figured out the sewer ploy, there were so many tunnels and escape routes, they were impossible to track.

  The plan had cost Li Jun his life, and almost Willow’s. But it had worked.

  The snow fell thick and heavy. The tracks they’d left would be covered again soon. But even if their footprints were discovered hours or days from now, they would be long gone.

  They reached the AirRail station two hours before dawn. Elevator pods took riders from the ground to the slim, enclosed platform three stories above them, but without power, they wouldn’t budge.

  They climbed up the service ladder built into the steel support columns to get to the tracks. Up here, there were no rat hordes or dog packs, no aggressive infected whatever creatures to worry about. They could spot potential hostiles from this vantage point, but the height also exposed them. Luckily, the night would hide them through the most dangerous part of the journey.