She huffed in exasperation and smiled at his teasing, at least she thought it was teasing. With Jared, one never knew. She shook her head and he stuck out his lip in a pout. She smiled and blew him a kiss.
His face was oddly serious as he snatched the invisible kiss from the air and held his fist to his heart. She melted.
God, she loved him more every day.
He turned and started his patrol, and she cracked the door to the room so the residents’ sleep wasn’t disturbed by their lights and movements. They had obviously developed their own routine after the weeks of being here and sleeping together in this room at night was one of them.
She wondered if they had been doing it since the beginning, or only since the mutie herds congregated outside their doors at night.
She settled in with a borrowed book, some bodice-ripper that she was assured to enjoy immensely. She smiled as she thought back to Jared’s teasing about her choice of reading material back at the office. She hadn’t thought about those days in a while.
Darla and her damned popcorn…
She felt strangely as if that had been the beginning of the end. That day that she and Jared had sabotaged the microwave had been it, and they had lived on borrowed time ever since.
If only they had known.
If they had paid better attention to the signs instead of discounting them. They could have prepared so much more, saved so many lives. The guilt of it weighed heavily on her. Some part of her had known, and that made it worse. At the time, she hadn’t wanted to look like a crazy prepper. She was too comfortable with her life and to start stockpiling large amounts of supplies in those last days of relative ignorance…it would have made it too real. That was a huge, fatal mistake, she knew it now. It was too late, way too late, those days— those vitally important days— were lost to them forever.
It had been July, and she couldn’t even remember what day it had all started. All she knew was that it was still hot outside, still summer, but it wouldn’t be much longer. In this part of the country, fall didn’t really show up until October. Halloween was usually when the nights started to drop into the really cold territory.
It had been two and a half, or maybe three months since then…she wasn’t sure exactly. Violet would know. There were still things they could do to prepare for the future though, stockpiling and other preparations. They would, as soon as they got back.
If they got back.
She realized that she had read the same paragraph about ten times without ever comprehending just why the heroine was unlacing her bodice in an empty carriage. She tried to focus. She wouldn’t be able to sleep even though she’d been awake for over twenty-four hours at that point, and it wasn’t her turn for patrolling yet. This was her only option for entertainment, other than mulling over her regrets of the past…and that wasn’t very fun.
◆◆◆
Sometime later, a faint low humming noise made it to her ears, and she looked up.
There was nothing that accounted for it inside. Not in here anyway. It sounded something like heavy machinery, maybe on the road? Whatever it was, was large…very large.
It’s low rumbling growled under her feet, and she frowned as the vibrations intensified. She stood and began to make her way to the door. Perhaps the guys would know what it was.
The room began to sway much more forcefully and the building screeched overhead as the steel supports and wooden framing creaked ominously.
Oh God! An earthquake.
Her knees slammed into the tiled floor painfully and she felt a sharp pain in her wrist as her hands slapped down an instant later. She couldn’t look around. She could only hold on as she made her slow, painful way to the table nearby. She hoped it was as solid as it looked.
Yells all around her brought her out of her panic. Debris fell from the ceiling in a never-ending shower of tiles, wooden beams, and steel framework. The shaking seemed to go on forever, and the violent rumbling of the Earth combined with the screeching of bending metal, and the screams of the wounded, made her ill.
She opened her eyes at the sudden stillness and peered into the black room beyond the table. Specks of lantern light shone, as bright as beacons in a couple of points in the room, but her sense of space and direction was so messed up that she didn’t know if it was up or down or left or right. There was nothing familiar about the room now.
A flashlight rolled toward her. Its beam illuminated a crazy kaleidoscope of obstacles that hadn’t existed before. It came to rest against the table leg. In that beam, a hand lay stretched out toward her beseechingly. She edged forward and snatched the light and pointed it at the body that belonged to the hand.
No.
Oh God!
Her mind couldn’t process the image before her eyes. She blinked, her mouth opened in shock and horror and pity. Dust swirled in the beam and particles were still falling, but what she had seen was horrifyingly real. She felt herself want to shut down. She wanted to close her eyes and cover her head and pretend she hadn’t seen.
But she couldn’t, because the horror was crying out for help. It was still alive.
Grace. Grace was still alive, though she shouldn’t have been.
She shouldn’t have been.
As the rumbling under her body seemed to recede, she screamed for Jared, for Bradley, for Stewart, or Fletch. She screamed for an eternity, but perhaps only for a few seconds. Those moments were a blur.
Grace’s eyes were bloodshot.
Almost no white was visible in the sclera, but the fear and the pain were plain to see. She reached out to Anna with both hands, as if just by reaching her then she could be saved.
Anna swallowed back the vomit that the sight induced.
She couldn’t be saved. Not even in the world as it used to be, would she have been able to be saved.
The copiously bleeding lower half of her body was resting under rubble at a complete ninety-degree angle. The steel beam, and the weight above it, had sheared her in half. Somehow, she was still alive. Somehow, she was still pleading and reaching and grasping.
Anna was scared to touch her but couldn’t ignore the appeal in her eyes. She reached forward and grabbed the woman’s hands. They were cold, as cold as death already, and they clutched at her with more strength than she thought possible.
She needed to say something, anything.
“It’s going to be okay, Grace! They’re going to get us out of here in a minute and Bradley and Fletch will get you all fixed up.” Anna struggled to control the panic in her voice and on her face.
“It hurts! My chest hurts!” Grace cried out.
Anna could see why. There had to have been some broken ribs, possibly completely shattered ribs. Things…organs…would have shifted in unnatural ways. Blood oozed from Grace’s nose and dripped in a grotesque red rivulet to the floor. She winced and squeezed Anna’s hands harder.
Her breaths wavered in her own chest uneasily. Her heart stuttered in an odd, foreign manner and she wondered if she wasn’t having a heart attack. She had the dreadful feeling that there was more than one heart attack taking place in this room right now, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Groans filled the congested space. New barriers had formed where only moments ago there had been none. Still clutching Grace’s hands, she looked around as much as she was able. The flashlight seemed to be weakening and she knew she should conserve it, but she couldn’t bring herself to push the button.
A primal fear of the dark filtered through her conscious mind, and she knew that if the light went out, things would get her.
A hand grasped her ankle and tugged, and she shrieked at the unexpected contact. The cold digits squeezed, and she felt breath on her ankle.
“Hush missy. It’s just me. Old Albert.”
She took several deep breaths and fought to remain calm and still when all she wanted to do was shake him off and scream.
justAlbertjustAlbertjustAlbertjustAlb…she ran the words through her mi
nd until they meant nothing, until Albert had crawled his way under the table with her.
She heard him wheezing and hoped he wasn’t about to die next to her. She didn’t know if she was mentally capable enough to lie next to a corpse, two corpses, in the dark.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking back to Grace. She found herself unable to tear herself away from Grace’s fearful panting.
“I’m okay, just a little beat up. Reminds me of the trenches back in the war. Course, I was a young man back then. This isn’t much different though. Be glad we ain’t getting shot at,” he gasped.
“Ms. Grace. Those young men out there will be digging us out here PDQ. That one is a medic and he’ll have you fixed up in no time, don’t you worry. Course, we might have to think about finding another place to live. What do ya say?” he said.
Anna was grateful. He had obviously had experience to trauma, maybe even worse than this. She swallowed and had a horrible thought.
What if the men were buried under all this and couldn’t get free? What if they were dead? What if she, and Albert, and poor Grace were the only ones left. She felt herself hyperventilating and closed her eyes against the welling of tears.
She hadn’t broken down this whole time. Not when the disease first started to spread. Not when they were stuck in the stadium. Not when the nukes went off. Not when they were trapped in the basement. Not when the muties attacked the kitchen.
She breathed in for five and out for five, over and over again. She closed her eyes and took inventory of her body while Albert droned on to Grace about something.
Her knees and wrists were sore, but that was all. She wasn’t really hurt, not like the others. It was almost a miracle really. She lay her head down on her outstretched arm, still holding Grace. She felt herself start to shake and her eyes closing. She could sleep. She could sleep, no problem.
Albert’s voice drifted away, and she sank down into the cool, claustrophobic darkness.
◆◆◆
“Missy? Missy, you best wake up now. You hear?” she heard rasped in her direction.
She opened her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything but a faint glow from somewhere to her left. There were groans of despair and pain scattered around the room. The flashlight was off.
Cold hands still lightly rested on hers. She feared those hands belonged to a dead woman.
“Albert? What happened to the light?” she asked. Her voice wavered and was too high pitched. It wasn’t familiar to her.
“Conserving the batteries,” he said, and pushed a button.
Dimness flooded the space, and she wished he hadn’t done that.
“Grace? How are you feeling?” she asked dumbly. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The woman was staring at her blankly. Her eyes now dripped blood, along with her nose. Red streamed from her mouth as well. It was one of the most disturbing things she’d seen, which said a lot.
She thought the woman was dead until she blinked.
“M’okay. Pain is mostly gone. I…can’t feel my feet anymore though,” she said, and a short, stunted sob escaped from her.
“That’s okay, Grace. Listen, there is a little pressure on your back from a board, that’s all. You know how your legs falls asleep when you cross them too long? Well, that’s all it is. Once Bradley gets you up and moving, you’ll be fine.”
Anna used every ounce of will she had to present what she said as the truth. She conveyed it with her eyes, her voice, her touch. It was all she could do for the woman.
She would never, ever forget the look on Grace’s face, or the way her lower body was severed almost completely. It would haunt her for years to come, if she lived through this.
What if she didn’t?
A new fear roiled through her. What if they couldn’t get her out? What if she and Albert just laid here in the dark?
Eventually Grace would die. The flashlight would go out permanently. Albert would probably die of thirst first, considering he was old and probably dehydrated already.
But her?
She would last a while. She would last days maybe, trapped in the dark alone, with rotting corpses for company. Death by dehydration was a bad way to go. Painful. She wouldn’t go that way. She wouldn’t allow it.
Albert’s voice brought her out of her morbid thoughts.
“Miss Anna is right. It’ll let up once you get walking around a bit. Come daylight, we’ll have to get these folks out of here and go find a house to stay in for a while. Those boys out there are probably just about here now. They have to move carefully, you know,” he said.
As soon as he completed that thought another low rumble worked its way toward them. More groaning and screaming came from the crumbling structure overhead than from the residents in the room, and she closed her eyes and covered her head.
She was afraid they were all dead.
Something large hit the back of her thigh and she screamed. The pain was instantly fierce and throbbing, and she released Grace’s hands and curled up.
She felt Albert at her back, but she couldn’t hear anything over the loud reverberations of the Earth and its collapsing surface infrastructure. She couldn’t see anything in the devastating blackness. She couldn’t feel anything except the pulsating in her leg. Maybe this was it. Maybe it was better this way, than lying here dying slowly.
At least it would be a little quicker.
◆◆◆
She opened her eyes sometime later.
“What time is it? Do you know?” she whispered to Albert. She prayed he would answer.
“I don’t know. I don’t have my watch,” he said regretfully. “There was a clock on the wall, but I doubt it’s still there now.”
They lay in the silence for a few moments, and she concentrated on listening. She heard no more rumbles from the depths. She heard Albert’s raspy breaths beside her. She heard her own, deeper breaths. She heard a rapid, shallow panting from the darkness in front of her.
Grace.
She fumbled around for the flashlight and finally found it cradled under Albert’s arm. He had managed not to lose it in the aftershocks.
Thank God.
She pushed the button and recoiled. Grace’s head was lying in a puddle of viscous blood. Red bubbles protruded from her lips before bursting and running down the side of her face. She was panting rapidly. The red pool was oozing toward them sluggishly, making clotted trails in the dust.
“Hang on, Grace. It’s not too bad. You’ve just got some scrapes on your face. You know head wounds bleed a lot,” Anna said. “Bradley is on his way to us right now, and he’s got some butterfly bandages that should do the trick.”
She didn’t respond, but her gaze focused on Anna, or rather the light that Anna was holding. Anna realized that Grace wouldn’t be able to see her, so she laid the light down to the side, careful not to illuminate Grace’s legs lying to her right.
“See, we’re all okay here. We just have to rest and be patient, okay?” Anna said.
Albert edged forward and took one of Grace’s hands. She had a watch on her wrist, and he took a peek at the time and frowned. It was only a flash of an expression, but it told her enough. Her heart sank.
He rubbed Grace’s hand while he told them stories about his time in the war and afterward. Anna realized, somewhat stupidly, that he was older than he looked. She should have figured it out sooner when he mentioned the war.
World War Two.
Most of his contemporaries were dead. He had to be well into his nineties. He told Grace about the old farmhouse where he had lived with his wife and children, and suggested they move everyone there when they all got dug out.
Anna looked around as much as she could. Her thigh ached fiercely, and felt about three times too big, but she didn’t think the bone was broken. She scooted around awkwardly, trying to determine just where they were in the room.
What she saw caused panic to rear its ugly damned head again.They were surrounded by rubb
le.
Trapped.
Concrete and rebar and steel and wood stuck out at odd, lethal angles. A large chunk seemed to be resting on the table they were taking shelter under. She realized that if she hadn’t made it to the table, she would be dead now. Albert as well. Could still be dead if the table failed to hold the weight.
Sword of Damocles…more like two-ton concrete chunk of Damocles. The errant thought brought her old boss’s face to mind, and she shoved that away.
There was no light anywhere else, and no noise came from any other part of the room. It was as silent as a tomb.
“It’s two-thirty,” Albert whispered, almost too low for her to hear.
Four hours until the first light of day.
Fucking damn it all to hell and back.
Time kept pace with Grace’s rattling breaths.
Death rattles.
The flashlight dimmed, brightened, dimmed…went out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tomb
Jared
Jared groaned. His head felt fuzzy, and nausea roiled in his stomach. How much did he drink last night?
He rolled over and felt Anna’s side of the bed. Only he didn’t feel a bed, and the hard, cold surface under his hand certainly wasn’t Anna.
What the hell was going on?
“Fletch? Jar…Jared?” someone groaned from nearby.
“Bradley? What the fuck happened?” Jared asked and tried to sit up.
He realized it was pitch black and a large, heavy object had barricaded him close to the floor. Were they in the basement? He reached down and patted his cargo pocket, feeling for the light he kept there. Depending on what the hell happened, it could have been broken.
He found it, fighting back against the edges of a deeper darkness that threatened to pull him under any moment. His head throbbed and he felt wetness coating the side of his face.
“Building collapsed. Earthquake I think,” Bradley murmured from somewhere nearby.
Earthquake?
His thoughts were hard to hold on to and he felt himself drifting mentally, wanting to lay back down and sleep more. Something niggled at him though, something…
The Salvation Plague | Book 2 | The Mutation Page 21
