Grip (The Slip Trilogy Book 2) (13 page)

T
he door is shuddering with each hammer blow, but Benson is numb to the sound. He sees people shouting, their mouths forming giant, black Os, but they might as well be yelling in a soundproof box.

Because he saw Check and Rod and Gonzo come through the door; saw his mom get pushed through by Luce,
saved
by Luce; saw Luce tumble after her; saw the bullets ripping through her body, red spots of paint against her white shirt, smudged with dirt and ash.

Jarrod tries to grab his arm but Harrison punches the Lifer leader in the face, rocking him back, and the twins charge toward the entrance, which is still shaking as someone tries to smash their way through the iron door.

Harrison dives to the floor to attend to their mother, checking her for injuries, speaking to her quickly in words Benson can’t hear.

Benson falls to his knees and cradles Luce’s head in his arms, trembling fingers feeling her carotid artery for a pulse.

There’s so much blood, a pool of it beneath her body.

And yet, there it is. A pulse, extremely faint and weakening by the second. “Luce,” Benson says, his voice a rough sandpaper whisper. His hearing is back, his own voice seeming to cut through the haze in his brain. Gently, he slaps her face. “Luce,” he says again, tears springing from his eyes.

Her dazzling blue eyes flutter open and seem to look past him; but then, as if focusing, slowly meet his. “Hi,” she says, her voice weakly sliding over her dry lips, red with blood.

“Oh, Luce,” Benson says, hot tears painting his cheeks.

“Your mom,” she says.

“You saved her,” Benson says.

“I think I got hit,” Luce says. “But it doesn’t hurt.”

That scares Benson more than anything. She should be in excruciating pain. Her numbness can’t be a good sign. Her body’s in shock.

“I’m going to find the wounds and put pressure on them,” Benson says.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Harrison says, helping their mother to her feet.

“Luce is coming, right?” Janice says. “She’s my guardian angel. She’s been watching over me.”

“Take Mom,” Benson says to Harrison. “I’ll follow after.”

Harrison glances at the door, which has just received another blow, this one stronger than the previous ones. A small portion of the metal bulges inward, in the shape of…a fist?

“Hurry,” Harrison says, swinging their mother into his arms and striding away.

“Go,” Luce says.

“No,” Benson says, moisture dripping from his chin and onto Luce’s face.

“Don’t cry,” she says. She lifts a hand to wipe away his tears. “Just hold me.”

“Luce, I—”

“Please,” she says.

God, no, Benson thinks. Please, God, please. Not
her
. Pick someone else.
Pick. Me.

Her arms reach for him and he leans closer, letting them wrap around his neck. She tries to pull him in, but she doesn’t have the strength. The strongest person he knows doesn’t have the strength.

Slowly, he presses himself against her. She doesn’t even flinch. It’s the most he’s ever been able to touch her without conjuring up nightmares from her past.

“Go,” she says again. “Live every day for the both of us. Find where you belong. Be happy.”

Benson chokes out a sob. “No, not now. You’re a survivor, Luce. You’ve been through so much and always made it. Don’t leave me. Please.”

Something powerful slams into the door from the other side, but Benson doesn’t even glance at it, his eyes locked on Luce’s startlingly beautiful face.

“Benson,” Luce says. “Find Geoffrey and take care of him. I love you.” She closes her eyes and her arms drop away to her sides and her body goes still.

And Benson clutches her to him and cries and cries and cries, saying “I love you,” over and over and over again, until Harrison and Check come to pull him away from her. He fights them, tooth and nail, but they manage to subdue his kicking legs and thrashing arms, dragging him away from the area near the door, which is empty save for Luce’s lone, unmoving body.

The rest of the dead are on the other side of the door, along with whatever is pounding its fists against the metal barrier.

~~~

Harrison’s afraid for his twin. It’s like something has snapped in him, sucking the light out of his eyes and the energy out of his body. Luce’s death seemed to kill something inside him.

But he can’t think about that. Not now. Not when his family still needs him to be the strong one.

Jarrod, the area around his left eye blossoming with various shades of purple and blue (guilty as charged, Harrison thinks), is ushering the surviving Lifers and Slips toward a door in the back, which opens to reveal a rocky tunnel. Of course there would be a secondary escape route, Harrison thinks.

He’s about to shepherd Benson and his mother in that direction, when gunfire chirps from the tunnel. The first escapers are cut down by the bullets, likely dead before even hitting the floor.

“Shut the rear door!” Jarrod shouts, and a moment later the door slams closed with an echoing finality.

They’re trapped, Harrison realizes. Protected by the doors, for now anyway, but trapped.

Panic sets in quickly, as the masses shrink toward one of the walls, as far away from the two doors as possible, shouting and screaming and aiming their guns back and forth.

Harrison’s about to tell them to put their guns down before someone gets shot, but Jarrod is on top of it, a natural leader even in the direst of circumstances. “Silence!” he shouts, his voice reverberating around the cavernous space. The people listen, their voices fading away like moonlight under the rising sun. Without him commanding it, the tips of their guns drop to the floor. “If you want to survive, you must remain calm,” he says, lowering his voice.

“This is my fault,” a voice says from behind Harrison. He turns to find Destiny, her skates hovering just above the floor. Her dark face is as blank as an empty void. Her hands are clasped together, her fingers running over each other. Her bottom lip is quivering.

Harrison says, “No. It’s not. You didn’t do the killing.”

Jarrod’s voice cuts through the brief silence. “Those in the Lifer guard, split into two equal squads and protect the doors. Prop up anything you can get your hands on in front of them. Slips and Lifer families, to the center of the room.”

“But I brought the killers here,” Destiny says. Seeming to notice her fidgeting hands, she drops them to her sides, where they hang like lifeless vines, all strength sapped from them.

“You couldn’t know that,” Harrison says.

“I should have.”

“But you
couldn’t
.” He takes a step toward her as the first tear rolls down her cheek.

“Luce,” Destiny says.

“They killed her. Pop Con,” Harrison says. “Not. You.” Another step.

“I need to be on the front lines,” Destiny says. “I need to be the one to die first, to give everyone else a chance.” She starts to head toward where the guards are carrying beds and chairs to the doors, piling them up.

Harrison reaches out and grabs her arm. “I need you to help me with my mom,” he says truthfully. “I need to help my brother, and she can’t be alone during something like this.”

“I—okay,” she says. “But if the door is breached, I have to fight.”

“The door won’t be breached,” Harrison says, and this time it’s a lie. He searches the floor. Rod and Gonzo are helping push stuff against the doors. Check is sitting next to Benson, his arm around his shoulders. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, his mother has removed her shoes and is looking inside them. “Can you just sit with her, talk to her?” Harrison asks Destiny.

“Yes,” she says. She skates over and plops down beside Janice, offering her own skates for Janice to look inside.

Harrison starts toward his brother, but stops when he sees Benson respond to Check. They’re…talking. He’s an idiot. Why would his brother need him? They’ve only known each other for about two minutes, whereas Benson and Check go back many years. Benson needs a friend, not a stranger who happens to be his brother.

Instead, Harrison approaches Jarrod, who is shouting orders to his men and women. He can’t help but to be impressed. He’s taken a chaotic situation and organized it. The Lifer leader has given them a fighting chance. “Nice right hook,” Jarrod says without looking at him.

“Seems to have knocked some sense into you,” Harrison says, unwilling to apologize. He’d hit him again in the same situation. “So what’s the plan?”

“We wait until they break through and then we fight,” Jarrod says.

“
That’s
the plan?” Harrison says incredulously.

“You got a better one?”

“We don’t even know how many of them there are. They’ve got explosives and automatic weapons. All we’ve got is a huge cavern that’s about to become our collective coffin.”

Jarrod finally looks at him, glaring. “You think I don’t know all that? This is my life’s work. Everything that has ever mattered to me, about to go up in smoke, the ash sprinkled into a river of blood. So yes, Harrison Kelly, I will fight to the bitter end, until I’ve taken my very last breath. What about you? Will you stand and fight or cower in the corner?”

Harrison’s eyebrows are raised. He didn’t expect the sort of passionate response he got. “You obviously don’t know me very well. I don’t cower. But your plan still licks bots. How does the air get down here?”

Jarrod blinks. He looks up. “Through the vents.”

Harrison chews his lip, gazing at the metal vent halfway up the wall. Too small and too high. They’d be lucky if they could evacuate a handful of people that way. There’s got to be another way.

“There
is
another way out,” Jarrod says. “But it’s a last resort.”

“I think we’re at that point,” Harrison says. He can see the regret in Jarrod’s eyes. This man is loath to abandon everything he’s built up over the years. But he also sees the moment Jarrod realizes they have no other choice.

“The waste removal system is bigger and easier to get to,” Jarrod says. “That’s why we designated it as our secondary escape route.

Harrison nods. “Show me.”

Jarrod leads him to the back corner, where there’s a small hut constructed of plaster. It has a door, which Jarrod pulls open, revealing a toilet and wash basin. “One toilet for all these people?” Harrison says.

Jarrod motions to each corner of the space, and Harrison sees three more identical huts. Four toilets are better, but not by much.

Simon and Minda approach them. “Strange time to take a dump,” Simon says.

“Can you help us break through the floor?” Harrison asks. “We need to do it in all four bathrooms.”

“I’ll start rounding up some of the guards,” Minda says, seeming to immediately understand the situation. She races off.

Simon steps forward, one hand going to his belt. He draws some kind of metal instrument. “My laser cutter should do the trick,” he says. Harrison and Jarrod stand back as he goes to work, his instrument humming as he slowly moves it in a circle around the toilet. A deep red gash forms in the concrete floor, appearing as if by magic.

Harrison’s gaze flicks away, toward each door, now invisible behind jumbles of furniture. So far, there haven’t been any further attempts to break down the doors. That should be a good thing, but Harrison doesn’t think it is. Instead the silence seems to carry the heavy weight of foreboding, like the air itself is pushing in on them.

Destiny is still sitting with his mother, holding her hand and chatting. Distracting her.
Thank you
, he mouths when she looks his way.

She nods.

He sees Check pull Benson to his feet, and they join Rod and Gonzo, forming a circle around Luce, whose body has been moved away from the barricade. They hug each other and shed tears for their friend, a girl who was more than a friend to Benson. Harrison considers joining them, but knows he would feel out of place. An outsider.

A heavy slam draws Harrison’s attention back to the washroom, where the toilet has crashed through the floor and into a dark space beneath. A rancid odor wafts up through the hole, seeming to thicken the air. Using their shirts to cover their noses, they crowd together. Harrison, Simon and Jarrod peer into the void. With a start, Harrison realizes he’s given the two of them black eyes in the last two days. He’s almost surprised when they pull away without pushing him into the hole.

“We’ll have to crawl, but I think it’s doable,” Simon opines.

“When’s the last time the sewers were flushed?” Jarrod asks.

“Does it matter?” Harrison says. This is life or death and this guy’s worried about crawling through crap?

“It’s every other day,” Simon says. “So either yesterday or today. Luck of the draw.”

“I’ll flip one of those antique coins some people collect,” Harrison says drily. “Or we could just go anyway.”

Narrowing his eyes, Jarrod says, “Start the evacuation.”