Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two (23 page)

Layla stood there frozen, her eyes glued to the stain on the other side of the window. Her grip was so tight it was starting to hurt. Lucas peeled her fingers away from his shoulder and took a step forward, his eyes trained on the door to the clinic.

“Like I said,” the first guard, a large man with red hair, cleared his throat and lowered his weapon from his shoulder. “Clinic is closed.”

Lucas took another step forward, inching toward the door. The tall guard tilted his head and narrowed his eyes in challenge. There was a moment, a solitary chance to back down, to walk away, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The pull was far too strong. Whoever was behind that door needed him.

And just like that, it was decided.

Lucas gasped and clutched at his throat, stumbling to the side. Layla rushed toward him, but he subtly dodged her grasp and fell forward toward the guards. The first twisted to the side as if Lucas were on fire. The second grabbed him by the arm, the warm latex squeaking against Lucas’ sweaty skin.

“I can’t let you in there,” the man said, looking over his shoulder at the streaks on the glass.

“Ehhhhh,” Lucas wheezed his eyes wide with forced terror as he raked frantically at the man’s sleeve.

“Goddamn it,” the guard muttered, and he knew he had him.

Lucas rolled his eyes back in his head, let his legs go limp, and dropped to the ground. As he’d hoped, the guard caught Lucas just before his head made impact with the hard vinyl floor. A door slammed down the hallway, Layla shrieked, and chaos exploded all around him.

Chapter 19

Fight or Flight

“How much farther?” Ty grunted. A large vein at his temple pulsed with each turn of the pedals. Eli had finally started getting the hang of pedaling a few miles back, but by then Ty was already on the verge of falling over.

“Truck Stop,” Zander said between breaths.

The gas station’s tall, red pavilion was less than a quarter mile ahead. It was the closest thing to shade we had seen in hours. The promise of relief was enough to give me a second wind. I leaned into the handlebars, desperate to shrink the distance.

“Slow…down,” Riley heaved, narrowly missing a twisted fender lying in the middle of the road.

“Almost there,” I said, standing against the pedals. “Come on, Ry.”

What I didn’t say was that I felt like I was dying. The pressure at the base of my skull was nearly unbearable and that my eyes were burning. I didn’t tell her that my skin felt as though it had been dried and stretched tight over my bone or that my canteen had run dry about ten miles back.

Stopping would have been pointless, anyway. The vultures had left nothing behind. The vehicles on either side of the highway were already picked clean. Their doors and trunks were left open like the eyes of the dead. At first, my gaze shifted between the road ahead and the faded out interiors of the hulking metal shells we passed along the way. It didn’t take long to realize that the vehicles had nothing to offer but the stench of decay.

Nearly every home, barn, and business in a twenty-mile radius lay burned beyond recognition. The charred, skeletal remains of what had once been a massive wood, cowered against the churning sky. Without a breeze to feed them, the flames surrendered their hold on the landscape leaving behind a heavy curtain of black soot. It clung to your skin and made everything feel heavy and dry.

We had spent the last few hours traveling alongside the Rock River, only to watch it waste away like the rest of the landscape. The once muddy banks were now broader than the river itself. The current had all but dissipated. The stagnant pool sat idle within its shrinking boundaries. The once mucky shores were slowly peeling away, succumbing to the pressure of the unforgiving sun.

A large plume of smoke lingered in the distance. The closer we got to Rockford, the larger the smoldering beast got. Anything that may have survived the fires that raged after Icarus had been finished off by the crazy storms that soon followed. There were no signs of life here. Worse than that, there were no signs of a struggle. It was as if this little corner of the world had simply given in.

Riley finally caught up with me as we rolled past the toppled shards of what appeared to be a small factory. The building had collapsed into a heap of faded white siding and crumbling brick. A massive yellow bulldozer lay on its side amidst the rubble. The boom arm of a crane leaned precariously across the mountain of rubble, but the machine it had once been attached to was nowhere in sight.

I turned my back on the destruction just in time to swerve around a collapsed stoplight in the middle of the abandoned intersection. Zander whistled from a few yards ahead, and the rest of us followed him. He turned through a four-way stop toward the large brick building across the way.

The pumps at the front side of the station had already been drained. The metal caps to the underground tanks had been tossed aside. The fuel drains left open. That would have been a risky move given the lightning storms had they not been dry as a bone.

The fumes were much stronger than anticipated, and I wrinkled my nose as we rolled past. We gave the pumps a wide berth and made our way around the perimeter of the Road Ranger filling station. We rolled toward the shade provided by the truck stop’s weigh station. The second my front tire rolled into the wedge of shadow beneath the large awning, I slid off the seat and let the manky old bike fall to the ground.

“Oh, my God.” My mouth hung open in shock.

The copse of trees that grew behind the truck stop was completely mowed down, leaving a trench of charred kindling. The ground ahead of us was a disarray of twisted scraps of metal, most of which were warped beyond recognition. Suitcases and bags littered the pavement, spewing their singed contents out onto the cracked concrete.

The mangled wreckage of a massive passenger plane lay smoldering in the field ahead, spewing thick black smoke up into the sky. The dark puffs of soot fed into the odd-shaped smattering of clouds that lingered there. The craft’s landing gear was a pile of rubber and metal just a few short yards from where we stood. The nose end was buried in the ground up to the blackened windows. One of the wings was severed from the body of the aircraft. It was wedged against the shell of the cabin, holding it up like a kickstand.

Wires and cables dangled like severed tendons and sinew from the dregs of the craft’s twisted body. A row of seats jutted out from the gaping hole at the rear end of the gutted craft. The seat belts and bright orange oxygen masks had melted in the blaze, fusing with the scorched remains of the former passengers.

“D, E, L,” I said my stomach churning as I read the letters on the side of the plane.

“T-A.” Riley nudged me and pointed toward the east side of the grounds where the tail of the plane had found its new home.

A charter plane the color of 1975 had sacrificed itself beneath the tumultuous weight of the Boeing’s forsaken rudder. The last few rows of upholstered seats littered the ground near the gaping hole in the tail.

The toffee-colored jet never stood a chance against its louder counterpart. The front end was crushed flat like a discarded soda can, leaving the rear end of the craft jutting from the ground like a lawn dart. A pile of windshield glass lay gathered in the dust beneath the twisting sea of metal carnage.

At least three other planes had been plucked violently from the heavens and laid to rest here. Their ashen corpses smoldered in the space between the fueling station and the airport, spewing a thick vapor up into the sky. The massive, black beacon we had been following for the last twenty miles had led us here to bear witness to the destruction. Smoke rose high into the air, wrapping itself protectively around the crash site like a dark veil hiding a widow’s tears.

Jake dropped his pack to the ground and stepped forward as if to make his way into the field. I grabbed his arm and shook my head. My heart was jumping in my chest, the faint thrum slowly blossoming into an uncomfortable presence behind my ribs. I didn’t need to get any closer to know there were no survivors. No human survivors.

“Holy crap, you guys,” Christa said.

She and Bella were wrestling each other to be the first to climb from the buggy. Bella managed to clear the rig first, and both of them came rushing over to get a closer look.

“Stay back, Christa,” Jake barked. He jumped in front of his sister and glared at Ty. “Get her out of here, now. She’s just a little girl. She doesn’t need to see this.”

“I’m not a little—” Christa protested, but Ty cut her short.

“Come on, Sugar. You ain’t gonna win this one.” He grabbed her hand as she tried to scoot past him and led her away. “Let’s go and see if we can’t find any leftovers in this, here, fillin’ station.”

“Right behind you, cowboy,” Falisha said, her voice catching as she turned away from the crash site.

“How could this happen?” Eli clasped his hands behind his head. “The whole world knew about the flare. There were protocols in place.”

“They couldn’t have known Icarus would turn into a full-blown solar storm,” Zander said. “Nobody knew.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Eli said his nostrils flaring. “The FAA had already grounded all flights during the primary window. It’s standard procedure with an event that size. These birds should never have left the ground.”

“Well,
obviously
they did!” Jake flung his arm out gesturing toward the smoke and debris. Bella barked in agreement, trotting to his side and licking at his hand. He brushed her away. “Protocol, my ass.”

He kicked a rock and sent it sailing toward the metal awning. It bounced off the vertical support. The ping echoed through the stark silence. Thunder rolled overhead as if in response. Jake looked up into the churning mass of clouds, sighed deeply, and bent to scoop his pack up off the ground. His shoulders slumped in defeat as he sauntered back toward the Road Ranger. He rubbed at the back of his neck, his hands shaking. Riley and Eli shuffled after him. Zander slid his hand into mine, and Bella hobbled awkwardly at my side, her head hung low.

The gas station had quite obviously been raided, and those responsible had taken little care in this process. The massive storefront windows were long gone, and most of the shelves lay toppled and empty. Crushed boxes and shredded paper littered the slick tile floors. A small metal bell above the door tinkled a welcome. Glass crunched under our boots as Zander and I stepped through the door.

“This place was completely gutted,” Falisha said shaking her head as she hopped up onto the register counter. “They took everything but the lotto tickets and the condom machine in the bathroom.”

“We did find this,” Ty said holding out a half-flattened plastic bottle of water. “Here you go, boss-lady. Looks like you need this.”

“That’s okay. You hang on to it,” I said eying the water a second longer than I meant to. My limbs felt heavy, and my bones ached. I pressed my hand against my ribs and leaned my back against a counter top next to Falisha. “I’m good.”

“Take the water, Liv.” Zander nudged my arm, his lips set in a grim line. “Now.”

Of course,
he knew, and he clearly wasn’t happy with me.

“What do we do now?” Riley asked rubbing her temples.

“I don’t know,” I said dodging his stare as I swiped the bottle from Ty’s hand. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to drain the entire bottle of its contents. I cut myself off after a few lukewarm ounces and slid the bottle deep into my pack. “One thing is for sure. We can’t stay here.”

“Obviously,” Christa said toeing an empty box of fruit snacks on the floor. “The last sign we passed on the highway said that camp place was still ten miles away.”

“We can handle that,” I said closing my eyes against the dizziness that was threatening to overtake me.

“No way, freak-show,” Christa said crossing her arms. “Some of us don’t have super powers, remember? I refuse to do another ten miles in that stupid cart. I’m tired, my butt is sore, and your weird dog has the worst breath ever.”

“We need to get somewhere safe and out of the sun,” Eli said, staring out at the wreckage in the field behind the gas station.

“What we
need
,” I said, “is to get my brother out of that place. We can rest when we know he’s safe.”

“You’re insane,” Eli said stepping toward me. Bella sat between us, her big brown eyes darting back and forth. “I get that you want your kid-brother back, okay, but we can’t just go storming into that refugee camp like a bunch of Vikings. We’d get slaughtered.”

“Speaking of storming,” Jake said cringing as a burst of white lightning crackled behind the wall of clouds above us. “Guys, we need to move.”

“You can barely stand right now, let alone fight,” Eli said crossing his arms over his chest. “You are the strongest one here. What good do you think the rest of us will be against a group of highly trained soldiers?”

“He’s right, Liv,” Zander said. “It’s too dangerous. We need to get out of the sun, rest, and regroup. And we definitely need to do some recon before we even think about making a move on that camp.”

“I second that,” Ty said leaning heavily against a vertical beam in the middle of the aisle. “I would give my left bootstrap to just put my feet up a spell and catch my breath, maybe grab a bite?”

“Oh, sure,” Christa stepped closer to Eli’s side and rolled her eyes dramatically in Ty’s direction “Let’s just call a taxi, catch a ride to the nearest five-star hotel, and order room-service. Look around you, genius, everything is gone.”

Ty’s brows knitted and he took a step back, visibly wounded. Jake scowled at her and shook his head. “Christa, you are not helping.”

“We could try one of the sub-divisions closer to town,” Falisha shrugged. “There’s bound to be at least one house still standing, right?”

“Something with a basement, preferably,” Jake said staring out through the busted storefront.