Read Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Aria Michaels
As grateful as I was for her company, I wished Falisha had stayed behind. After all she had lost in the last twenty-four hours, I did not want to expose her to the likes of what I had seen on that rooftop yesterday. I braced myself against the concrete wall, my mind flooding with images of burning bodies and festering wounds. I may not have been friends with Sara and Blake, but I still felt a hollow place in the pit of my stomach for their suffering and I knew that image would haunt me for the rest of my life. An experience like that was not something most people came back from.
“Stay,” I said, bracing my arm across her chest as we stood against the wall. “I’ll just run over, take a quick look, and be right back.”
“Uh-uh,” Falisha spat, shoving my hand away from her. “I promised Riley I would have your back, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
“
Falisha
,” I hissed at her.
“Sorry, no way in hell, girl.” She stepped away from the wall, spun out of my grasp, and took off. As soon as she cleared the corner, she yelled back over her shoulder. “Try to keep up!”
“Damn it,” I spat, diving after her retreating form.
My eyes tightened against onslaught of the bright sun so I kept them focused on the floor, trying to relieve the sting as I raced after her. Unfortunately, that meant I didn’t notice when Falisha stopped dead in her tracks. My face collided painfully with the back of her head.
“Jesus Christ, Falisha,” I said, my hand pressing the towel into my fattening bottom lip. I blinked away the moisture flooding my eyes and looked past her toward the row of glass doors. “Whoa.”
“What the hell?” Falisha said, rubbing the back of her head as she stared through the doors. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like a—” I said, no longer concerned by my shiny new fat lip. “But what the hell would that be doing here? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Really?” Falisha crossed her arms over her chest. “I am pretty sure we are a bucket load of shit past anything making sense at this point, don’t you think?”
We stood there, stunned to silence, staring at what appeared to be bright orange parachute plastered across the glass doors of the foyer. The cords had tangled themselves into the hinges and handles on the outside, and the vinyl material seemed to have welded itself to the doors, all but sealing us in. One of the four glass doors remained partially unobstructed, so we made our way to it and peered out into the parking lot.
“Seriously?” Falisha backed away, shaking her head. “I mean, come
on
.”
Floating a few feet above Zander’s toppled bike was a giant balloon. It had to be at least ten feet tall and nearly as wide at its fattest point. At first I thought maybe it was a rogue hot air balloon, but the whole parachute thing didn’t fit. There was no basket that I could see and the shape was all wrong— it looked more like a jellyfish with its tentacles tied together.
The balloon was anchored to the ground by wire-thin cords that attached it to something that looked like an old window air conditioner. The box was covered in gauges and dials, and framed in metal bars like a roll cage. One corner of the apparatus was completely submerged in the softened blacktop. Despite the steam rising from the pavement, the dials appeared to still be moving. Whatever this thing was, it was still functioning. The bubble surged up and down lazily like a half-deflated birthday balloon desperate to drift away.
“This is so messed up,” Falisha as she slowly walked the length of the doors.
“Yeah, pretty much,” I said, shaking my head. Between the parachute and the giant balloon obstructing our view, our hopes of seeing much else from this vantage point were growing thin. I threw my hands up in frustration and kicked a folding chair that leaned against a nearby table. It slid across the slick floor and slam into the wall, with a satisfying bang. “I can’t see shit from here.”
“Hey, Sarge, take a look at this.” Falisha was down on her knees pointing to some lettering stenciled onto the orange parachute. I could just make it out through the black dust on the glass as she read it aloud. “NWS-GB? What the H is that?”
“No clue,” I said, cocking my head to the side. “That’s not my department.”
I grabbed the phone out of my pocket and snapped a picture of the chute, the giant metal box, and weird balloon jellyfish. Jake’s massive brain could work out the details of this puzzle later. For now, we needed to get a better look outside. I had a specific target in mind and we could not see it from here.
“Come on,
soldier
,” I said, hoping to annoy her with an equally lame nick-name, but she saluted and waved me on with a smirk.
We headed back toward the decimated vending machines, past the locker room door, and down to the skywalk entrance. I had no idea what we would find on the other side of that corridor, but I did not want to take any chances. Anyone or
anything
, could have gotten into the building since we sheltered ourselves downstairs.
None of us had even heard the strange balloon and its mechanical cargo crash to the ground and it had landed just a few yards beyond the walls of our hidey-hole. My mind wandered to episodes of The Walking Dead, as images of the gray hands clawing at bloody flesh danced in my head. Falisha flanked me by the door. I held my finger to my lips and gestured for her to stay low as we waited for the blaze of hot air to pass before stepping out into the “Steamer Skywalk.”
This part of the building had been little more than an afterthought. The school had spent an entire summer clearing the land to build a fancy indoor courtyard that would connect building one to building two. Unfortunately, the money ran out, and a long hallway was erected in its stead. The pass-through served its purpose, but it was in no way an actual
skywalk
, seeing as there were no windows and it was at ground level.
We sprinted across and reached the door at the other end in mere seconds. It was already open, so I stepped through it cautiously, palming the knife in my pocket. I jerked my head in the direction of senior hall and Falisha followed. The towel around my head and mouth was beginning to dry out, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. I tapped my wrist and held up two fingers. A couple minutes was probably more time than we could spare, but I refused to go back without answers.
The once bustling hallways felt hollow and displaced, like the dirt around a fresh grave. When we reached the end of senior hall, we tore the spring formal posters and school spirit signs from the glass doors and let them fall to the floor. What we saw beyond the glass looked like a foreign planet ravaged by war and I wanted nothing more than to hang those cheesy posters back up and hide the reality behind their cheerful colors.
The ground outside was little more than a labyrinth of cracks and crevices slicing through the gray dirt. The once lush lawn was stripped of its greenery, save for a few stray blades of dry brown grass drifting across its surface. The crisp new leaves that had shaded us mere hours ago were gone. All that remained were bare branches and snapping twigs. Small flames licked at the crumbling remains of the wooden picnic table and the bushes that had surrounded the brick marquis were nothing more than smoldering, black skeletons. The loose dust from the parched earth blew around in swirling clouds.
“Damn,” Falisha said, barely above a whisper.
Across the street, a small blue house smoldered. Half of the structure had already caved in on itself and the rest was not far behind. A second later, a chunk of burning wood tumbled away from it, and landed in the husked-out bushes next to the neighboring house. The dried twigs immediately burst into flames and I knew the adjoining house would be next. I hoped like hell there was no one in that house, but it hardly mattered. There was nothing we could do from here. I scanned the street, my eyes roaming from house to house.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be—
“Hell yeah!” I shouted, relief pouring over me.
Mrs. Proud’s house and, more importantly, her garage were still intact. Hopefully, that meant she was okay, too. The fire at the blue house was spreading fast, but it had not reached her house yet and I needed to get there before it did.
“Time’s up, Sarge,” shouted Falisha, wheezing around her towel. “We have to go!”
The journey back down to the weight room went much faster than our trip up had. We gasped and choked our way back down senior hall and sprinted through the skywalk. Then we rushed through the boys’ locker room and took the stairs down into the weight room, two at a time. We made it back into the basement in less than a minute and burst through the door as if we were being chased.
“They’re back,” Jake said, meeting us there with water bottles in hand.
“Oh my god, are you guys okay?” Riley squealed, grabbing at me. “What the hell happened? Why do you have a fat lip? Was there anyone out there? What took you so long? Talk to me!”
She was everywhere I turned, smacking me in the face with questions without giving me any time to answer them. I hunched over, putting my hands on my knees and I sucked down huge gulps of air. Falisha threw her back against the wall, then slid down to the floor and draped her head across her arms. When Riley’s questions showed no sign of relenting, Falisha looked over at her and raised a brow.
“Hey, Tinkerbelle,” she huffed. “You happen…to find any Ritalin…in that box of pills?”
Between the adrenaline rush and oxygen deprivation, I completely lost it. My legs gave out on me and I collapsed to the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter. I laughed so hard, my stomach ached and my cheeks began to cramp. I rolled onto my back and threw my arm over my face. A snort of laughter to my side confirmed that Falisha had apparently lost her mind along with me.
“Seriously?” Riley shouted, yanking my arm away from my face and glaring down at me. “What the hell is going on out there, Liv? What is wrong with you?”
I wanted to explain myself, truly I did, but I could not stop the laughter that was exploding from deep in my chest. The ridiculousness of the entire situation hit me, all at once, and something inside me just snapped.
What we had just done had not only been really dangerous, but it was also incredibly stupid. In that moment, I knew there was no logical reason for my insane giggling. Things were bad; like
really
bad. After what I had seen, I knew they would be even worse when we actually went outside.
Still, I couldn’t seem to help my hysterics. After all, our mission
had
technically been a success; we had gotten the information we needed and I now had something vaguely resembling a plan. There was a very good chance it might get me killed, but I was relieved to feel slightly in control of
something
.
“I’ll have some of whatever
she’s
smoking,” Jake giggled as he helped Falisha back to her feet.
Eventually, my inappropriate laughter subsided, and I was able to bottle up the crazy for another day; I had things to do. I was tinkering with the tiny flashlight Micah had found while we were gone, and piecing my half-assed plan together in my head, when Jake approached from the shadows.
“Falisha told me what you saw up there,” he said, squatting down in front of me. “Mind if I take a look at the pics you took?”
“Take it,” I shrugged, dropping the phone into his hand. “It’s not like I need it. I have this awesome flashlight, now.”
“Sweet,” he said, rising back to his feet.
“Hope you can make sense of it,” I said, taking a swig from my water, “because I honestly have no idea.”
“If this is what I think it is—” he muttered, then turned on his heel and walked away.
“Okay,” I said, smiling to myself as he disappeared. “Good talk, Jake.”
“How you feeling?” Falisha’s voice preceded her as she slid from the shadows and sat down next to me.
“Like I lost a fight,” I said, rubbing at the ache that had seated in the center of my chest.
“Sounds about right,” she chuckled.
“So, hey, I wanted to say thanks,” I said awkwardly.
“For what?” Her clipped tone suggested she was just as uncomfortable accepting my gratitude, as I was offering it.
“You know, for having my back up there,” I said.
“Whatever. No need to get all chick-flick about it,” she said, nudging my shoulder. She shrugged and climbed back to her feet. “A promise is a promise, right?”
If you had told me twenty-four hours ago, that one of my greatest allies would be a cheerleader and that I’d fall for a biker-boy with daddy issues, I would have laughed in your face and recommended professional help. Then again, I had no idea I’d be locked in the smelly basement of my high school waiting out the end of the world, either.
Turns out, life sort of did its own thing.
Tiny flashlight in hand, I made my way over to Zander, hoping to find him awake and alert. When the twelve-inch circle of white light landed on his face, the droplets of sweat that were gathering in a thin sheen over his skin glistened like tiny diamonds.
“Damn,” I said, feeling a lump form in my throat.
I let my legs give out and dropped ungracefully, to the floor beside him. His skin had taken on a gray pallor since I had last checked on him. Even in the dim glow of the flashlight, I could make out almost every vein in his face. His eyes, which had sunken farther into their sockets, darted back and forth behind their lids and the ache in my chest became a stabbing pain. I put the end of my flashlight in my mouth and began to unwrap the gauze from Zander’s hand.
I had no idea what had made him sick, but it was no ordinary infection. It had moved too fast and hit him too hard. I knew in my gut he was running out of time. My fingers refused to cooperate, shaking uncontrollably as I slowly unwound the bandages from his injured limb. When the last of it fell into a pile on the mat, my stomach lurched up into my throat.
His hand was almost completely black.
The original injury across the surface of his palm was no longer visible beneath the mass of marbled flesh. His entire palm had swollen to the point that his skin had cracked. Puss and gangrenous fluid seeped freely without the bandages to staunch it. His fingers were stiff and engorged. Every inch of his skin that was not already black was modeled with splotches of red and gray that suggested it soon would be. Beneath the thinly stretched tissue, ran a twisting labyrinth of curling black tendrils. The vine-like structures ebbed and flowed organically beneath his skin, pulsing in time with each labored beat of his heart. The oily black threats were advancing like a parasite, each seeming slowly inch its way towards Zander’s heart.
“I don’t know how,” I whispered, “but I’m going to fix this. Please, just hang on.”
I was so lost in thought I hadn’t noticed when my best friend slipped onto the mat next to me. I tossed a nearby towel over Zander’s hand so she would not see and turned to see the scowl that I knew would be plastered on her face.
“Glad to see you finally got a grip on yourself,” Riley said, tossing me a bag of corn chips and crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me what all that was about?”
“I don’t know, Ry,” I said, setting the chips aside. I suddenly felt exhausted. “Look, I’m sorry I laughed at you, okay? It’s just…it’s bad, Ry, really bad, and it kinda all hit me at once. I guess I did lose it for a minute there, huh?”
“Gee, you think?” Riley rolled her eyes.
From the second Falisha and I had returned from our little recon mission, Riley had seemed to be annoyed with me. I was not sure why, but she did not seem in a hurry to share, so I decided not to press. For a moment, she said nothing, but her face softened when she saw me smooth Zander’s hair away from his furrowed brow.
“Liv, are you okay?” Riley finally relented her grumpiness in favor of worry. “You seem…off.”
“Not really,” I said, sighing at Zander. Even in his sleep, he looked pained.
“How’s he doing?” Riley asked, biting her lip.
“About the same, I guess,” I shrugged.
I flipped off my flashlight to conserve the battery and found I could see just fine in the faint glow of the cell phone lying next to me. I traced the tense outline of Zander’s jaw and gently placed the palm of my hand against his face. His skin was so warm and the fine dusting of facial hair tickled at my palm. I moved to pull away, but Zander turned his face against my hand. The corners of his lips turned up for a fraction of a second and I froze. I kept my hand there, cradling his face as if my touch alone could pull him out of this.
“Please,” I begged him. “Just…hang on.”
“Liv.” Zander’s voice rasped past his lips, barely more than a faint whisper. His lids began to flutter, his head lolling weakly from side to side. Heat rolled off of him in waves and his skin was unbearably warm against mine as his body began to succumb to the fever. I felt like I was watching him drown and no matter how hard I swam toward him, he was always just out of my reach.
“Shhhh…It’s okay, Zan,” I whispered, trying to quiet him, as I leaned in closer. “Don’t try to talk.”
“
Liv.
” It was but a breath this time.
A lone bead of sweat rolled down his cheek and disappeared into the corner of his mouth as the next wave threatened to pull him under. Tears clouded my vision. I blinked them away, unwilling to remove my touch from his skin. The pain behind my ribs became almost unbearable the tears rolled freely down my face. His chest rose and fell in short bursts, as he struggled for breath.
“Fight, Zander,” I whispered.
The moment I said his name, he turned his head and pressed his cracked lips to the palm of my hand. The contact was brief but it sent an undeniable shiver up my spine. The flutter of hope was short-lived. His mouth went slack and he sank back into a fitful sleep.
“Uhh, Liv?” Riley’s eyes were wide. “He totally just
kissed
you.”
“I know,” I said. I looked down at Zander’s strained expression, his face resting hot against my hand. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to face-palm myself. How had I let this happen? “Just shut up, okay?”
“What?” she said, feigning innocence. “I’m just saying, it’s obvious that—”
“No, Riley. Just…no.” I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “I’m such an idiot. I should never have let it go this far.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her face a mask of pure confusion.
“I’m talking about
this
,” I said, gesturing to his face resting against my palm. “This—
he,
was not part of the plan.”
“Are you kidding me right now? Jesus Christ, Liv. Take a look around you. ” Somehow, Riley managed to both yell and whisper, as she gestured wildly around the dark room. “Was
any of this
part of your precious plan?”
“But, my brother—” I said.
“Stop,” she shoved her finger in my face, glaring at me. “Don’t you dare, for one second, act like this is about your little brother because you and I both know that is complete and utter bullshit.”
“
Riley.
” My eyes widened, shocked by her anger.
“You listen to me,” she said. Her tone softened but hard lines of her face did not. “You can’t keep doing this, Liv.”
“Doing what,” I said, bitterly.
“
This
,” she said, pointing at me. “What you are doing, right now— going through the motions with your head up your ass, pretending you don’t give a shit about anything or anyone. I’ve watched you do it for months now, but I can’t do it anymore. I won’t let you do this to yourself.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” I said, carefully prying my hand away from Zander.
“I know
exactly
what I am talking about,” she growled. “And just so you know, pushing people away, refusing to let anyone get close enough to hurt you— that doesn’t make you strong or brave, Olivia Larson. It makes you a damn
coward
!”
In the months since she had wormed her way into my heart, Riley had never talked to me like this. And she had never once called me
Olivia
. No one had…not since Mom, and it nearly broke me to hear it again. Before I could completely fall apart, Riley reached over, put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed, leaning into my side.
“I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, Liv, but it needs to be said,” Riley said, laying her head on my arm. “Life is unpredictable and messy and sometimes it hurts like hell, but you don’t get to stop living it just because it’s hard.”
“I know, but—” I just couldn’t put it into words how helpless I felt. My parents were gone and for all I knew, Beans was too. There was nothing I could do to stop or change any of it.
“It’s okay to hurt, Liv.” She stopped me. “But you can’t let that pain and anger swallow you up. You have to keep fighting, every day, no matter what. I promise you that it will get better if you let it.”
“How?” I asked, staring down at Zander. “I don’t even know where to start, Ry.”
“Yes, you do,” she said, bumping my shoulder. “Just start from where you are, and try to remember that every person you cross paths with in this life is meant to be there. Some will make you weak and others will give you strength, but they are all a part of your story. When you lose someone, it doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve to have them in your life anymore, or that they didn’t belong there to begin with. It just means that their part in your story is over.”
“But, I can’t just move on and forget about them, Ry,” I said, a tear sliding down my cheek. “That feels wrong.”
“Oh, honey,” Riley said. “Moving forward is not about forgetting they were ever here. It’s about accepting that they are gone, and still having the courage to turn the page.”
“I knew it!” yelled Jake. “I freaking knew it!”
We had all been wandering around in the near pitch dark, for hours now (aside from my brief stint above ground), but my eyes seemed to have easily adjusted. I barely needed the glow of a phone, or my tiny flashlight to get around anymore. I followed the sound of his excited ramblings, easily navigating my way through the shadows with grace and efficiency I was not aware I possessed.
Funny, I had spent most of my life tripping over my own two feet, dropping things, and generally mastering the art of all things clumsy. Until recently, my center of gravity (much like my love life) had been virtually non-existent. Even as a young child, I had always been a bit on the klutzy side. My parents used to crack jokes about dropping me on my head as a baby and shaking a screw loose. In fact, the only time in my life I ever felt sure-footed and at ease was when I was running. While I may have been fast, I had never once been accused of being graceful.