His hand struggled to grasp the cylindrical tube and he found it too exhausting. He lay back, blood pounding in his ears. Muffled roaring rushed over him and underneath that…screaming.
Anna!
◆◆◆
“Anna!” he screamed as the hands jolted him awake. “Anna! Where’s Anna!”
He didn’t know who was touching him. There was a glow from a light, and he didn’t like what it showed. Destruction. The nursing home lobby, he remembered.
It wasn’t a lobby anymore. It was nothing but a jumble of ragged concrete and metal.
“Be still, man. You’ve got a concussion.”
A light shone in his eyes, and he squinted and turned his head, almost puking as he did. He didn’t think he’d ever felt so bad.
“Where’s Anna?” he asked, feeling a frantic need to get up and move, to get to her.
“Jared, look at me. We’ll get to her, but I need you to rest. Don’t move,” Fletch ordered.
“Fuck that! Get the fuck out of my way!” he pushed Fletch away and realized they didn’t have much room. A particularly sharp piece of steel protruded a few inches away and Jared realized that he had almost impaled Fletch on it in his panic.
He needed to calm down.
“Help me shift this. Carefully,” Bradley said from nearby.
Jared looked over and saw Bradley’s leg trapped under a wood beam.
“Is it broken?” Jared asked, holding his head.
“I don’t think so, but the blood supply to my foot is compromised. We need to move it now. I don’t particularly desire to be hopping around on a peg leg during the apocalypse.” He grunted and started to push against it.
“Alright, let’s get over there. Jared, if you feel sick or woozy at all, you need to stop immediately. I mean it,” Fletch ordered.
“Sure man. Let’s get this done. We need to get to Anna.”
The tang of fear flooded his mouth, and his heart missed a beat when he realized that Anna could already be…that it could be too late already.
“Ready?” he asked as he grasped the wooden beam as best he could.
“Three, two, one, lift!” Fletch counted down.
They lifted and Jared felt a wave of dizziness with the exertion, but he powered through, closing his eyes. He struggled with the beam, feeling as if he was trying to lift the entire building. He probably was.
“Stop. It won’t work,” Fletch said.
Jared let go.
They hadn’t even shifted it.
He closed his eyes again, careful not to tilt his head on way or the other. Bradley lay back down, sweating and pale.
“We need something to move this,” Fletch said.
“We can’t use a pulley system,” Jared said, looking up at the ruined mass of what used to be the ceiling. “We don’t have ropes, and I don’t trust any of that to hold weight. It might bring the whole damned thing down on our heads.”
“What about a lever?” Bradley asked.
He reached out his hand and grasped something that Jared couldn’t see. He moved closer. A dull metallic finish glinted in the dim light. Fletch grasped it and pulled it over the concrete obstruction.
“We can use the concrete as a fulcrum point,” Jared said, placing his hands on the end of the steel bar. He hoped it was strong enough. The wedged the end under the beam that trapped Bradley’s leg.
“Ready?” he asked.
Bradley gave a nod and Fletch counted down again.
This time, Jared put his whole body weight behind it. He strained and grunted as he attempted to force the bar to the ground.
Suddenly, he felt it move.
“More! More!” Fletch called out.
Jared fought the roiling in his gut and the sharp stabbing pain in his head. He could throw up and die after they got Bradley out. He winced and gritted his teeth, increasing his force to the maximum.
“I’m out!” Bradley cried out.
They release their hold immediately, not able to ease the obstruction back down. Jared held his breath and hoped the building didn’t collapse at the sudden shift. Dust trickled down into his face and an eerie groan came from overhead, but they didn’t get crushed. Yet.
“One more aftershock and we may not make it out of here. We need to hurry,” Jared said.
“Yeah well, I’m going to need a shoulder to lean on until I get the feeling back in my leg,” Bradley said, hobbling forward, using the rubble to steady himself.
“Not me,” Jared said. “Or we’ll both end up on our asses. I feel like my head is about to fall off my shoulders.”
“Sit down and let us find a way out,” Fletch said, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“I’m good,” Jared said, shaking his head.
“I. Said. Sit!” Fletch said, clasping him a bit more forcefully.
“Okay Ma, don’t get your panties in a wad.” The joke came out ragged and forced, ringing false.
His hands trembled and he felt a burning in his eyes. Anna.
Bradley gave a thin smile at that and Fletch muttered something under his breath.
“How long until daylight?” Fletch asked. “My watch is broken.”
“Uh. It’s after dawn,” Bradley said, checking the time. “You were out for a while, Jared.”
“Damn it!” Jared said, jumping up. “You hear anything? Any noises? Anyone calling out?” he asked, clasping his head so it didn’t burst like a rotting watermelon. It felt like a rotting watermelon.
Shit.
“We heard a bit right after it happened,” Bradley said carefully, giving Fletch a warning look.
“What?” Jared asked, catching it. “What?!”
“We heard Anna,” Fletch said.
Jared felt his heartbeat rushing in his ears, the whooshing drowning out whatever Fletch said next. His vision doubled…. tripled…then everything shrank into a black pinpoint.
◆◆◆
“Jared! Wake up!”
Someone was shaking his shoulder and they wouldn’t let up. A bright light in his face made him wince and his head pounded sickly. It felt three times the size it should have been.
“Anna?” he muttered.
“We’re getting out of here. We’ve got to go dig them out. We have to hurry!”
It was Bradley. He was the one talking.
Jared opened one eye gingerly, hoping it was all some horrible nightmare. The sun beamed down on him, hot and unforgiving. The floor where he lay was too warm and hard on the back of his head. He groaned as Fletch helped him sit up.
“Where are we?” he asked, not recognizing the surroundings.
Muties lay dead around the former building. Their bodies uncamouflaged and still. They had not yet blackened.
“Uh…the parking lot. What’s left of it,” Bradley said.
He looked around in shock. Yesterday the parking lot had been a shabby clearing with cracked pavement and a sense of hopeless despair. Today, it looked like ground zero. Shit, it was ground zero…
He saw the SUV sitting canted on a chunk of pavement that had risen straight out of the ground. It was probably still drivable, if there was a road left to drive it on.
He stood and hobbled out of the wreckage. The floor where he had been lying used to be the entrance to a side door. He had no idea how they had gotten him out.
“Stewart’s looking for a way in,” Bradley said, gesturing to the heap of the building.
Jared backed up carefully, watching the new trenches that had formed in the ripped apart parking lot. One misstep and he would have worse injuries than a concussion. Some of the fissures were so deep that he couldn’t see the bottom, and he didn’t want to find out firsthand how deep they went.
He was still in shock, his brain foggy and slow. He felt sluggish and unlike himself. He remembered Anna again.
“Shit, Anna. Where is she?!” He grabbed Bradley by the collar of his shirt. “Where the hell is Anna?!”
“She’s in there! We’re trying, man!” Bradle
y said, throwing an arm out toward the demolished building.
“God,” Jared said, brokenly staring at the wreck. “How long?” he whispered on a ragged breath.
“It’s been about ten hours since the first one,” Bradley said mutedly. “Give or take a couple.”
Jared jogged toward the wreckage, ignoring everything wrong with his body, and remembered the layout of the nursing home.
She had been in the east wing, or what he thought was the east wing. That room had been an interior room. No access to the outside. The only windows and doors here led to the residents’ rooms. There was no way in those. They had all collapsed.
He saw a blur of motion directly on top of the rubble, and recognized Stewart. His skin was camouflaged, and Jared knew he was conserving his energy. He came sprinting, in his unnatural way, down the ragged structure, not even noticing the sharp and distorted terrain under his feet. He was surefooted and swift.
“There are three left,” Stewart said in that semi-demonic, double-toned voice.
It made his statement sound even more dire than it already was.
“Anna?” he asked.
“That I do not know. I sensed life. One was fading. I smelled blood. Rivers of blood,” Stew said.
“Fucking hell, Stewart! Do you have to be so damned dramatic?” Fletch complained.
Jared gritted his teeth. “Show me where.”
Bradley looked at him skeptically, but he wisely didn’t try to stop him. Nobody was going to stop him from finding her. He would kill them if they tried…or at least lay them out on the pavement.
Stewart took off and Jared followed, carefully climbing over the ruins. His balance wasn’t what it used to be, but he made it work. He could hear Bradley and Fletch behind him. Some of the concrete shifted under his feet and he winced, hoping nobody was under it. He refused to let his mind go there.
Anna was fine. She had to be.
“Here,” Stewart said and crouched near a gap in the collapsed roof.
The building had cracked in two halves, and one shift had inexplicably shifted forward a couple of feet. The right half had collapsed completely. He, Bradley, and Fletch had been trapped on the very edge of the structure.
They had been lucky.
This half fared a little better. The second story had collapsed, but the supports for the first floor had mostly held, miraculously, under the weight. One wrong move and it could come down. They couldn’t forget that.
“They live still,” Stewart supplied. “Two here, and one there.” He gestured to the rear of the wreckage. They would go there next.
“I’m going in. Someone give me a light,” Jared said.
“Jared—” Fletch interrupted.
“No! I said I’m going in, now give me the fucking light!” The harsh snarl shocked them all and Bradley handed over a light.
He knelt and carefully put his leg into the hole, testing the strength of the material. It held. He crouched in and flicked on the light.
The hole opened up underneath. He’d still have to crawl and squirm his way through. He squeezed into the darkness, the slim flashlight clutched in his teeth. He heard Stewart crawling behind him.
“Anna!” he called out. He waited. Nothing. “Anna!”
His breathing was harsh and rapid and down here out of the direct sunlight it was like a different world. He heard nothing. Nobody answered his calls. He moved forward.
“Careful,” Stewart said.
The wood beam he was currently crawling down creaked and shifted slightly and he held his breath. It held.
He kept moving, down into the blackness with only the thin, bright beam of light to show him possible paths.
◆◆◆
It seemed as if an eternity had passed as they scrabbled down into the bowels of the ruined structure. He looked back from where they came and only the barest hint of sunlight filtered through.
“Anna!” he called out again, expecting nothing.
The sweetest sound he had ever heard came then. He would never forget it…never forget the feeling of hearing her voice.
“Jared hurry!” she yelled back.
She sounded impossibly far down.
He crept faster through the deadly maze. She kept calling out and he kept moving forward. He came to a hole in the concrete and looked down with the light, trying to make sense of what he saw there.
He gaped in shock. Shit.
Directly under him was a very large chunk of concrete resting on a table. He didn’t know how it was possible that the table hadn’t collapsed. What pulled more of his attention were the boots he saw lying under it.
They were Anna’s boots.
“Anna, I’m here. Are you okay?” he called down.
“Fine. I’m okay. I think…I think the table is about to break. There’s too much weight on it. There’s a crack forming!” her voice held the edge of panic. “Albert is here with me!”
Albert? He couldn’t be bothered to place the name with a face right now.
He was going to have to drop down without landing on top of the concrete. There was only the slimmest space to put his in the back. He directed his flashlight to the other end of the table and gasped.
Someone’s legs lay there in a pool of blood. Just their legs. The scene was graphic and terrible, even after seeing all he had seen since this shit had all started, it was shockingly brutal. He pointed the light further over to the left and saw the other half of the body.
Grace. Poor Grace.
Her face was frozen in a rictus. Her eyes wide and red, her face bloody, her teeth in a permanent grimace. Her arms were outstretched in a puddle of congealing blood, and he suspected by the claw shaped fingers that rigor mortis was in full swing.
He caught a little motion only inches from Grace’s dead hands and squinted. Oh God, those were Anna’s hands and arms, and they were covered in blood. He rapidly assessed his options.
“Anna! I can’t get down without putting weight on top of the table. I’m sending Stewart down to get you. He’ll hand you up to me!” he called.
“O-okay,” she called back uncertainly. “Albert first!”
He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Of course, she would send the other one first. He pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded for Stewart to go down. He shifted to the right an let Stewart’s alien body slither past. His skin and muscles felt solid and strange, not as human as he looked…which wasn’t much.
Stewart easily avoided the table and crouched out of sight. He heard a sharp gasp and wheeze, then Anna’s murmurs. Albert must have met Stewart face to face. He didn’t blame him for being startled.
Stewart dragged an old man into the light, and he saw it was the one with the M1 Garand, the sniper. He had been in a wheelchair, and it was obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to climb out of here. He sighed and shook his head. The longer they stayed down here, the more Anna’s life was at risk. He wouldn’t trade her for the old man. As bad as that sounded, he just wouldn’t do it. And he didn’t give a fuck if that was a sick thing or not.
Stewart lifted the old man until Jared could take hold of his arms. He wrapped his feet and legs around a solid piece of rebar and braced himself. He pulled with all his strength, thankful that the old guy was skin and bones. He wouldn’t have been able to do it if he’d been any heavier.
“Jared!” Anna screamed as the table leg snapped and crashed to the floor.
Stewart yanked her out, dragging her through the puddle of blood. Her leg cleared the edge of the table just as the rest went plunging to the floor. Dust flew up and she finally looked up at him. Her light brown hair was sweaty and dirty. Her face was bloody, and her eyes were wide with terror. She looked as pale as death under the blood and dirt.
He heard creaking above them and told Stewart to hurry. He helped Anna to stand, but her leg collapsed, and she almost fell back down.
“Hurry!” he shouted.
She yelped as Stewart picked her up. She reached her hands up an
d Stewart pushed from below. When she cleared the edge of the floor above, he yanked her into his arms, and she buried her face in his neck. He felt the coolness of her blood-soaked shirt and the stickiness of her blood-splattered arms.
Stewart came up then and Albert gasped in horror at his sudden appearance.
“Get on my back,” Stewart ordered the old man.
The old man trembled and shook but scooted his way toward the crouching mutie. They took off back up through the labyrinth of steel and wood and concrete and Jared followed, grateful for Stew’s sense of direction.
He clutched Anna tightly, half-dragging, half-carrying her up the perilous path. She could barely put weight on her leg. He hoped it wasn’t broken. His head pounded fiercely, and his mouth was as dry as a desert. He needed rest, badly. It would have to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Six
What Now?
Anna
She let Jared pull her through the demolished building. She could barely see. She was achingly tired. Her leg throbbed and burned, and she thought maybe she was wrong about it being fine. There was a sharpness to the pain that hadn’t been there before, and that worried her.
Stewart led them up, up, up.
She squinted when they made it to the light, and she felt the strangest sense of unreality as she saw the sky. Her time in the depths of the wrecked nursing home had seemed like an eternity.
Grace had finally died three minutes after six that morning. She knew because she looked at her watch when she let out her final breath. She cried for the woman that she barely knew. When she was done, she took the watch off her wrist as a remembrance.
She heard shouting as Stewart leapt out of the hole with Albert on his back. She hoped the old man didn’t have a heart attack from this all.
Bradley and Fletch were okay.
She closed her eyes.
Jared was okay. She was okay. They were all okay.
She felt tears burn behind her closed lids as hands grasped her and pulled her up. Someone was carrying her, and she opened her eyes. It was Bradley.
The Salvation Plague | Book 2 | The Mutation Page 22
