Dying Light (35 page)

Nikki arches her eyebrows. “Yes.
Definitely, the bodies—”

“
No details, please,” Ally
begs.

“
Georgia killed Cindy.” My
heart aches.

Nikki sees my face. “I’m sorry for
your loss. I know she worked with you.”

I see Cindy in my mind the day she
came to tell me she’d started seeing her angel, Raphael. I can see
her huge wet eyes and the way she held herself protectively,
looking for answers I didn’t have. I told her we were going to be
okay.

And now she’s dead.

Ally squeezes my arm, and I see Nikki
stiffen. Normally, I’d enjoy it. I’d lean into Ally, let her hold
me, really play it up. But right now I feel numb. The only feeling
I can manage is relief that Winston dodged a bullet. My mind
doubles back and I turn to Maisie holding Winston. “Your power
doesn’t have a time limit or anything does it? I mean, he’s not
going to be alive for a day or something?”

“
Not that I know of,”
Maisie says. “But this is only the third time I’ve used it. And the
first time I used it twice in one day.”

“
You brought your mom
back,” I say, realizing just how smart it was for Caldwell to bring
the kid here and keep her close, but out of the way. They probably
intended to split the powers between them, using Maisie to make
them revive faster than ever before.

“
You have to come with
us,” Ally says to her. “We can’t leave you here.”

Maisie looks like she might object,
but after her eyes circle the destroyed room once, she agrees. “But
he’s going to come and get me again.”

“
We’ll see about that,” I
say. “I’ll carry Winston.” She obediently hands the dog over. “Go
get your backpack.”

Nikki looks to Jeremiah to give the
order.

Jeremiah nods, looking half-dazed
himself. “We’re done here.”

Ally

W
e find a second armored truck waiting on the
curb
behind the
first
.
They begin with the
business of loading up the bodies—Cindy, Minli, and
Rachel.

Our attempt to load up is
interrupted by a siren and the shadow of a massive
truck
blocking the
road.

“
I’ll talk to them,”
Jeremiah says, stepping off the
sidewalk,
heading
toward the vehicle. Before he
reaches it, two familiar faces emerge from the smoke.

“
Gloria,” I call out,
relieved to see her alive.

“
It took us a minute to
find another ride,” Gideon says, companionably. “But we found this
beauty, unattended and waiting for us.” He pats the driver side
door of the fire truck.

“
How’s Jesse?” Gloria
asks.

“
Alive,” Jesse says,
stepping out from behind me.

Gloria grabs each of Jesse’s shoulders
and inspects her. Then she nods as if reaching a
conclusion.

“
Where’s Rachel?” Gideon
asks.

“
Dead,” I say.

The smile falls off his
face.

“
They think she’ll wake
up,” Jesse says. “Her body was sort of crushed against the column,
but her head is okay. No reason to think she won’t wake
up.”

Gideon doesn’t look any happier
despite this news. “Put her in the truck.”

“
We’re
happy to transport her to our facility,” Jeremiah begins,
pushing the glasses up on his nose and moving toward us.

“
No, thank you. Please put
her in
my
truck,”
Gideon says again, his gaze heavy on Jeremiah.

Nikki makes some motion beside me, and
the two men holding Rachel’s stretcher behind the armored truck,
carry Rachel toward the fire truck.

“
We need to get out of the
city,” Gloria says.

“
You’re leaving?” Nikki
asks, her hand soft on my arm.

“
There’s no need,”
Jeremiah says. “We have a medical facility, state of the art, in
the south of the city for this exact situation. The danger has
passed.”

“
The danger has not
passed,” Gloria tells them, heading to the truck
herself.

“
Fighting is inevitable,”
Jeremiah says. “You cannot simply decide you won’t.”

Gideon laughs. “Oh sir, that is
exactly what we can do.”

With Rachel in the truck, Maisie and
Jesse hoist themselves up into the main cabin, pug in tow. Gideon
and Gloria climb in after, leaving me alone on the sidewalk with
Nikki and Jeremiah. Their own men wait in the armored trucks for
their next orders.

Jeremiah stops in front of me, his
hands on his hips. “You can’t go off alone, not with so few of
you.”

“
You say it like I make
the decisions,” I say, with a short laugh.

“
You influence
Jesse.”

I laugh harder. “Do I?”

It’s not true. I can no more to
control Jesse than I can control the sun in the sky.

“
You don’t understand,”
Jeremiah says, nostrils flaring as he shoves his glasses up on his
nose with a finger.

“
Explain it to me,” I say.
“Please explain why you feel like you should manage Jesse. Have you
seen something horrible in these visions of yours?”

Jeremiah shoves his glasses up on his
nose. “The very first vision I had was of Caldwell, eleven years
ago.”

This certainly gains my
attention.

“
I saw him take Henry
Chaplain’s gift. I’ve seen him take every gift he has, and I saw
Jesse take Jason’s gift too.”

“
How is that possible?” I
ask. He’s not talking about remote viewing.

“
Caldwell called me the
observer. The prophet. It is a good enough name for my role in
this. I am meant to
see
.”

“
So what did you see that
makes Jesse seem like such a liability?”

“
She kills us
all.”

My breath catches in my throat.
“Excuse me?”

“
She becomes the apex and
instead of saving the world and recasting a new shield, she
destroys it. She can choose anything, but she chooses to destroy
us.”

“
I don’t understand. How
can Jesse decide the fate of the whole world? She’s one
girl.”

“
I thought if she worked
with us, understood that there were good people here, people worth
saving, I could change that.”

I don’t know what to say. I open and
close my mouth more than once.

Jeremiah doesn’t wait for me to
process what he’s said. He climbs into the armored truck and turns
the key. He pulls away from the curb, driving off into the
half-destroyed city.

“
He’s just angry,” Nikki
says. “He doesn’t actually believe you’re responsible for Jesse’s
actions.”

“
But he does
believe
she’s
going to destroy the world?”

Nikki reaches out and takes my
hand.

“
And you knew?”

“
I didn’t want you to
worry. He thinks we can change it. He’s changed a vision
before.”

Jesse is already walking
toward the fire truck, Maisie in tow. Maisie likes her. Jesse will
never believe it
.
She believes everyone hates her as a rule. But Maisie has the
same look on her face that I often give my brother.

Nikki grabs on to me and pulls me into
a hug. Her lips are soft on my neck and for a moment, I think I
won’t be able to leave her.

“
Natalie?” I
ask.

Her hold falters. “She had NRD and was
killed. A bullet to the stomach and she bled out. Jeremiah
recruited me at the height of my depression. He gave me a purpose
again.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
You knew about Minli. If
you hadn’t warned us about the light, we would all be
blind.”

I nod, not sure what to say. “Jeremiah
has visions?”

She looks away, her eyes falling on
the fire truck. “It looks like we’ve both been keeping
secrets.”

I take her hands in mine. “We can’t do
this right now.”

She searches my face for
meaning.

“
We’re both trying to work
right now. I have Jesse. You have Jeremiah and Natalie’s memory. We
can’t build a loving commitment under conditions like
this.”

Jesse stands in front of the truck,
waiting.

Nikki gives my hands a squeeze. “I’m
still holding out for our happily ever after.”

“
We should focus on what
needs to be done and if someday things change—”

Nikki kisses me, cutting off my
words.

A little embarrassed that everyone in
the fire truck is surely watching, I break the kiss.

Nikki gives me a sad little smile.
“Don’t let Jesse talk you into anything reckless. Be the voice of
reason.”

“
I’ll try. And don’t let
Jeremiah take your loyalty for granted.”

Nikki pushes my hair back behind my
ears, her expression heartbroken. “If you need me, call. You know
I’ll come running.”

Jesse

“S
weet Gee-
zus
.” I’m going to throw up in my mouth if I have to watch
Sasquatch slobber on Ally for a second longer. “How long is this
going to take?”

“
Don’t enjoy a bit of
snogging?” Gideon says. “I do.”

“
I don’t know what
snogging is, but it sounds way dirtier than what they’re
doing.”

“
It’s British for
kissing,” Maisie says, feeding Winston bits of beef
jerky.

“
How the hell do you know
that?” I ask.

“
Harry Potter,
duh
,” she says. “Haven’t
you read them? I have. Twice.”

I snort. “Do I look like I have time
to read books?”

“
My boy Kevin loves ‘dem
books,” a man says.

I jump in my seat, whirling toward the
sound. “Holy shit, where did you come from?”

Monroe blinks wide eyes at me. “I
didn’t mean to scare you, miss.”

“
He’s coming with us.”
Gloria’s face and tone definitely have an
I
-dare-you-to-say-
otherwise
fierceness about them.

I shrug. “Whatever. If he stabs me in
the brain with an ice pick, it’s your ass I’ll be
haunting.”

“
Do you really think we
should swear so much in front of a child?” Gideon asks.

Maisie gives him a
drop-dead stare. “I’m not a child. I’m
sixteen
.”

Gideon gives her a devilish grin. “My
apologies, madam.”

I glare at him. He looks
away.

“
How old is your kid?”
Maisie asks, shoveling a piece of the jerky into her mouth, despite
Winston’s whining.

“
Thirteen,” Monroe says.
“He loves books and airplanes. They’s his two favorite
things.”

At long last, Ally climbs into the
truck, leaving Sasquatch on the sidewalk like a lost
puppy.

I snort.

“
What’s so funny?” Maisie
asks.

I consider making a Sasquatch joke,
but Ally doesn’t look too happy herself.

I frown at her. “Are you
okay?”

“
I’m fine,” Ally
says.

I don’t believe her, but with Monroe
breathing over my shoulder and Maisie staring at me with half a
piece of jerky hanging from her mouth, it’s hardly the time to
talk.

I turn to Gideon, waiting for him to
fire this truck up. “Do you think we can fit this thing through a
drive-thru?”

We do not find a drive-through. Most
of Chicago is either shut down or in complete chaos. Also, it turns
out that taking a fire truck through a drive-thru is a bad idea,
since this truck is stolen.

Instead, we drive the truck an hour
southeast to Gary, Indiana. I have to say, this place looks more
apocalyptic than Chicago did, and Chicago was in flames. We pull
off the interstate into a desolate town with run-down,
not-at-all-white houses and crappy roads.

Gideon stops the truck at a junkyard.
A high fence topped with barbed wire runs along the perimeter.
Behind the fence, cars in various conditions stretch as far as the
eye can see.

“
Wait here.” Gideon slides
off the driver’s seat, hopping down to the gravel road. A man a
little darker than Gideon comes out of a squat brick building and
meets him halfway. They are laughing and talking in a language I
don’t understand.

“
This is shady,” Ally says
from her seat behind me. Maisie and Winston are sleeping upright on
the end of Rachel’s cot. I have to give the kid props. I’m not sure
I could have taken a nap by a dead body when I was sixteen. I don’t
think I was that desensitized to crazy by then.