Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two (32 page)

Eventually, the honor passed to my little brother. Even though the stuff came in a box, Mom always made a big production of mixing the ingredients together. Beans adored the time they spent cooking. Dad and I would watch intently, pretending to be impressed with my brother’s technique as he carefully dumped the packet of powdered cheese into the freshly strained noodles.

Then, with a furrowed brow and his bottom lip pressed between his teeth, his little arms would set to work mixing it all together. He and mom would dish out the gloopy orange noodles onto paper plates, and the four of us would gather around the small dinette table in the kitchen and dig in. I never actually liked macaroni and cheese, but the memories made over that cheap blue box were some of the best I had.

“Everything okay, kid?” Tessa whispered, tapping the toe of my boot with hers.

“Umm, yeah,” I said clearing my throat. I hadn’t realized I had been crying. Eager to divert the attention from me, I quickly added, “You had some questions for us?”

“I do,” Tessa set her empty cup on the floor, folded her legs beneath her, and settled in.

Most of Tessa’s people had been asleep when we arrived but had slowly begun to wander over to the kitchen area. Before long, a crowd had gathered round to hear our story.

We spoke of the hours spent locked in the school’s basement, the ones we lost along the way, and those we still searched for. Christa and Ty told them all about the horrors at the hospital in Morrison. We talked about how we’d all nearly died there. Zander spoke vaguely about the injury to his hand but admitted that he’d fallen ill shortly thereafter, I suspect in an effort to give Tessa hope that her granddaughter could recover. He left out the part about my suicide mission to Mrs. Proud’s garage and the medicine that had saved both of our lives. It sat hidden in the bottom of my pack, ticking like a telltale heart.

Bella wound her way through the crowd, garnering affections from the lost souls who had gathered to hear our story. The children giggled and smothered her with kisses, oblivious to the growing worry in their parents’ eyes. Heads shook in disbelief, unable to process our tales of green skies, murderous electrical storms, and the rapidly evaporating river. Ty dug through his pack and produced the hunk of obsidian he had pilfered from the Foster’s driveway. The black stone passed from person to person like a favorite toy on show-and-tell day.

Most of the people here had not been outside the carousel since the day Solar Storm Icarus hit. They may have heard the chaos beyond the thick concrete walls of their shelter, but had yet to witness the depravity for themselves. They had no idea what they were truly up against on the outside.

That’s not to say her people had not suffered losses. According to Tessa, they had already been forced to remove more than a dozen bodies. A few had died from injuries sustained in the chaos that followed Icarus, but the rest got sick. The lucky ones died right away. The rest suffered horribly, crying out in pain, and begging for death until their flesh was loose on their bones and their breathing came in short, rapid bursts.

“We didn’t know,” Collin said. He shook his head slowly. His pale eyes were shadowed with regret. “I just thought they were sick. I tried to help.”

“We didn’t know how dangerous they were until it was too late.” Tessa patted his shoulder.

The first among them to turn had been a young woman named Claire. Claire was a transplant from the United Kingdom. She worked at the airport coffee shop with Tamsen. The poor thing had been burned horribly in the storm. By the time Tessa and the others managed to get the girl to safety, her face was barely recognizable.

It hadn’t been safe to go outside yet, so resources were scarce. There was little Collin could do to soothe Claire’s pain. They could barely even treat her wounds. She thrashed and screamed for hours on end, begging someone, anyone, to help her. Claire was dying. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. According to Tamsen, Claire’s eyes turned an inky-black just before her body finally went still. They had all assumed the girl had succumbed to her injuries and the infection that had surely followed. They were wrong.

By the time Tessa finally managed to put the creature down, four more members of their group were dead. Claire, or what was left of her, had torn the poor people to shreds like a rabid wolf run amuck in a flock of sheep. It had taken four bullets and a blow to the head to end the massacre.

“Her eyes went dark, and it was like her soul left her body.” Tamsen stared at the floor, absently playing with the ends of her red hair. “I don’t know how to explain it. Claire wasn’t Claire anymore. She was just gone.”

“We all knew she was going to die,” Tessa said. “Seems we should have just helped her along.”

“How can you say that?” A blonde woman scowled at Tessa. Her hair was pulled back into a severe knot at the nape of her neck. Everything about her screamed self-appointed judge and jury. “What if we had killed that poor girl and found out later there was a cure, a treatment. What if—?”

“Tessa’s right,” I said meeting the woman’s stare. “There’s no coming back from that.”

“And you’re, what, sixteen years old?” The woman scoffed at me. “Unless I missed the part of your little fairy tale where you went to medical school, I’d say you are hardly qualified to make that call.”

“I’m qualified because I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” I glared at her. “I’m qualified because I’ve survived it.”

It was hard, but I told them the story of Gunther and his research. I may have left out the tiny detail about
how
I had managed to find him in the first place. I glazed over the part where I buried my blade in the base of his skull. I skipped ahead to the part of the story where we first saw Eli held at gunpoint amid the convoy of military vehicles with the black stars painted on them.

Tessa grew restless and rose to her feet. She paced back and forth along the luggage belt where the food was stored. Doyle had wandered over at some point but stayed on the outskirts of the group. He looked frazzled and twitchy and his eyes following Tessa back and forth like a pendulum. Squints hovered nearby, watching us as a child would a busy anthill; his head cocked to the side with curious fascination.

Worried murmurs echoed about the carousel as my friends and I recounted the atrocities we had seen in Byron. Mason covered Caleb’s ears, and Riley lowered her head in prayer when I told them of the bodies piled in the middle of Main Street. Those poor people had been slaughtered in the middle of town and discarded with as much respect and dignity as the empty luggage they had left behind.

“They enacted the Darwin Protocol,” Tessa muttered fisting her hands behind her head. “Son of a bitch. This is bad.”

“Darwin Protocol?” Zander’s eyes narrowed.

“Whoever these guys are, they are playing God.” Tessa’s hands fell and balled tightly at her sides. “They are hoarding resources for the strong and eliminating those they deem weak or expendable.”

“Yeah, or anyone they see as a threat,” Zander growled, staring down at the petrified flesh on his arm.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how survival of the fittest is supposed to work,” Jake shook his head.

“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with evolution,” Ty said, scrubbing his hand down his face. “Them bastards are just thinning the herd so they can keep more for themselves.”

“Liv, if these are the same people who have your little brother you need to get him out of there, now.” Tessa’s brow furrowed. “As soon as they figure out he’s not healthy—.”

“Oh, come on, Tessa. Why would they do that? He’s just a child,” the judgey blonde crossed her arms. “Look, I know you said the soldiers at the refugee camp were dangerous, but how do you know? Have you ever considered that maybe they aren’t the bad guys? Maybe you are just being paranoid.”

“I don’t do paranoid, Vivienne,” Tessa glared at her. “I’ve seen what these men are capable of.”

“What if you are wrong?” Vivienne asked her hands on her hips.

“I’m not,” Tessa said.

“But what if you
are
?” she shrieked. “We trusted you. We hid in that damn luggage chamber for hours while they searched the airport for survivors.”

“They weren’t looking for survivors,” Tessa said. “They were raiding for supplies.”

“You can’t know that,” Vivienne said. “You never even gave them a chance. What if they really were here to help us, Tessa?”

“She has a point.” A man in a green football jersey stepped to Vivienne’s side. “This is the military we are talking about. They are supposed to be the good guys, right? What if you screwed us out of—?”

“Are you people kidding me?” I rose to my feet, cradling my ribs. “Were any of you even listening?”

“You said it yourself, kid,” Jersey guy glares at me. “The refugee camp has food, water, and medicine. It’s a pretty safe bet they have real doctors, too.”

“We have all of those things here, Ethan,” Tessa said.

“Hardly.” Ethan laughed bitterly. “What we have is a knocked-up hairdresser cooking soup-kitchen garbage, an eye doctor that can’t stand the sight of blood, and a couple of mall cops who couldn’t piss on the broad side of a barn from six inches away.”

“Excuse me?” Tessa cocked her head to the side and stepped toward him. “Did you just call me a mall cop?”

“No, of course not.” The man took a step back, his hands raised. “I’m just saying. You can’t do it all, Tessa. Ballard is barely out of diapers and Doyle…I mean, where the hell is he right now? Do you even know?”

“Exactly,” Vivienne said, crossing her arms victoriously. “If it really is as bad as these kids say it is, maybe we’d be better off with someone that can protect us from what’s out there.”

“Are you serious?” Jake asked, throwing his hands up in frustration. “What was it about our story that made you think these guys would be on your side?”

“Was it the part where they harvested survivors from the streets, promised them help, and then locked them in a building rigged with explosives?” I asked. “Maybe it was the when they fired into a crowd of innocent people. Oh, I know. It must have been the massive pile of bodies they left rotting in the middle of the Main Street, right?”

“How do we know you aren’t just making that all up?” Ethan shook his head.

“We don’t,” Vivienne narrowed her eyes at me then glared at Tessa. “What we do know is that those soldiers have been responsible for exactly zero of
us
dying, which is far more than I can say for
some
people.”

She spun on her heel and stormed off, the guy in the jersey trailing after her. No wonder I wanted to claw her eyes out the second she opened her mouth. She reminded me of Tara. Her arrogance was an irritant festering beneath my skin. The woman wasn’t just defiant for the sake of opposition. Her mutiny was grounded in fear and an over-inflated sense of importance. In my experience, that kind of hubris got people killed. She was a threat.

“
Stop
.” Zander hissed, stepping in front of me.

The tip of my blade rested less than an inch from his hand. I hadn’t even realized I had grabbed my knife, let alone made attempted to use it. Thankfully, neither had anyone else. They were far too distracted by the gauntlet Vivienne had just thrown down. Noisy chattered that filled the room as the meeting adjourned and people slowly disbanded.

“What the hell was that, Liv?” Zander narrowed his eyes at me. “You went after that woman.”

“We need to go,” I said through gritted teeth, pocketing my knife as I spun toward the exit. “These people are useless.”

“Whoa, hey,” Zander grabbed my hand and pulled me gently towards him. “Slow down, Liv. Just take a moment.”

“No, Zan,” I said. “We’ve already wasted too much time here. These people can’t help us. Most of them are in denial. The rest of them are afraid of their own shadows.”

“You want to take on a small army with nothing but a handful of crappy steak knives? Fine, great. I’ve got your back,” Zander said. “But, Liv, if we are really going to do this we need to know what we are up against.”

“He’s right, kid,” Tessa said, walking over. “This isn’t a pack of Cub Scouts you are going up against. These people are a highly trained military unit. If you want to get in and out of there in one piece, you need a plan.”

“And preferably more firepower,” Jake added.

“I c-c-can m-maybe h-help you w-w-with that,” Devon stuttered, tapping his chest as he slunk out of the shadows. His eyes stayed fixed at my feet when he spoke. He pulled a folded Polaroid out of his pocket and held it out to me. “M-might be m-m-messy, th-though.”

Chapter 28

Mulligan

“And you’re
sure
there are weapons on that plane?” Zander asked Devon.

“Like, one hundred percent sure?” I stared down at the toffee-colored personal jet in the picture he had handed me.

“D-deh…mmm…d-deh-defin-neh-neh,” he sighed and nodded once. “Y-yes.”

“You wanna help me out here, Devon?” Tessa swiped the picture from my hand and tapped it violently with her index finger as she spoke. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it scraped through the silence like a howl. “The plane in this photograph isn’t even on airport grounds. You haven’t been out of the carousel since this whole thing started. How did you know about this? Where did you get this picture?”

Riley tugged on my arm and the three of us slowly backed away to give them some distance. Whatever these two were to each other, there had been a certain level of trust there. The wounded look in Tessa’s eyes said that bond was delicate.

“I…I—.” Devon shuffled his feet and looked around at us, tugging anxiously on the neck of his tee. “It, umm.”

“Enough, Devon.” Tessa shoved the picture in his face. “No more lies.”

“Take it easy, Tess,” Collin crooned softly, reaching for her empty hand. “Give the kid a chance to—.”