Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two (20 page)

“Jesus, Ty,” I yelled up at him. “Would you—ugh. Be careful!”

“It’s all good, Liv,” he grinned down at me as he pulled himself up using nothing but his upper body strength. “I grew up on a farm, remember?”

“Are you crazy?” Jake shrieked waving his hands in the air. “Get down before you kill yourself!”

“Please,” Ty snorted reaching his arm through the window. “Been climbing rigs, rocks, and rooftops since I was knee-high to a cricket. This here redneck roadblock ain’t nothin’. I’ll be up and over— Whoa!”

The driver-side door swung open with Ty still perched on the lip of its window. He clung tightly to the car’s side mirror as the massive mound of metal shifted and groaned beneath his weight. The cars on top of the Hummer slid a few inches sending the entire top half of the stack he was climbing on tilting in our direction. Christa screamed and lunged forward as if to catch him, but Jake caught her around her middle and held her back.

“Whew,” Ty shouted. “That was a close one!”

Unlike those of us still on the ground, Ty didn’t look the least bit worried. In fact, he was actually laughing as he climbed across the top of the opened doorframe and onto the roof of the Hummer. He spanned the distance between the hood of a small four-door sedan and a rusty old station wagon in one stride without the slightest catch in his step and started climbing up.

The grocery-getter was leaning at a steep angle with its front end wedged in the open top of what had once been a very expensive red convertible. Ty scaled it easily as though his boots defied gravity. Within minutes, he stood victorious on the rear bumper, peering over at the other side in complete silence. Bella scampered back and forth along the base of the wall barking up at Ty as he teetered precariously on the leaning tower of twisted metal.

“Well?” I said staring daggers into the back of his head. When he finally met my gaze, his eyes were wide, and the color had completely drained from his face.

Chapter 16

Off to Slaughter

“It’s bad,” Ty said hopping down from the tailgate. “Like, real bad. They’re gone. All of them.”

His trek down the wall had been much less terrifying than the climb to the top had been, mostly because I refused to watch him do it. Seeing my friends in any kind of danger had become physically painful for me, as of late. Between that and the ache in my chest, it was a wonder I even noticed the unbearable heat.

“Care to elaborate on that?” Eli asked pushing his glasses back up his nose.

“Not really.” Ty said hunching at the waist. He put his hands on his knees.

“That’s very helpful, Tex,” Eli threw his hands up. “We need to know what we—”

“Don’t,” Riley said sharply. She cut Eli off as she made her way over to Ty’s side.

“Are you okay, Ty?” Christa leered at Eli then started rubbing Ty’s back. “Do you need a drink, or a hug or something?”

“Nah. I’m alright, Sweets,” Ty said in a shaky voice. His wide eyes never left the ground. “I just need a minute, is all. Gotta catch my breath.”

“Over here,” Zander shouted waving at us from a few yards away. “I think I found a way through.”

He cranked his arm back and slammed his blackened fist through the rear window of an old Cadillac at the far end of the wall. By the time the rest of us made it over there, Zander had already wriggled his way through the opening and broken another window. A second later, I heard a muffled grunt and all the air rushed from my chest.

“Zander,” I shouted, charging at the Caddy.

The only answer I got was the cringe-inducing sound of grinding metal and the tinkle of glass as it scattered across the pavement. I lunged forward and braced my hands on either side of the car’s shattered window prepared to dive in after him if necessary.

“I’m good,” Zander grunted from the other side of the wall. “Go ahead and climb through. Just be careful of the broken glass. I will help you out on this side.”

“Got it,” I said nodding to the others as I swallowed my heart back down into my chest where it belonged. “Okay, come on guys.”

Despite the haunted look in his eyes, Ty was the first to climb through. He insisted that he clear the broken glass for the rest of us. Once Ty shouted the all clear, Jake helped his sister through then followed immediately behind her. Unlike Eli, who grunted and grumbled the entire time, Riley had little trouble fitting through the narrow opening. She was in one side and out the other in a matter of seconds.

“After you, Sarge,” Falisha said as she ushered me toward the car. “I got your back.”

“Fine,” I shook my head, tossed my pack through the gaping window onto the back seat, and slid through the opening on my stomach.

“Whatever you do, don’t look in the front seat, okay?” Zander whispered as he leaned in the opposite window and grabbed my pack.

The time it took for him to hand it to Riley and turn back to help me climb out was more than enough for my curiosity to get the better of me. I peeked between the gap in the seats and immediately cursed my ability to see clearly in the dark.

“Oh, crap,” I gasped swallowing back the acid rising in my throat as I scrambled free of the car.

“I told you not to look, Liv,” Zander shook his head and smoothed a hair out of my face.

“I probably should have listened,” I said as he turned to help Falisha from the car.

Nausea threatened to overtake me, but I refused to lose control. I took slow, deep breaths and tried to think about anything that might erase what I had just seen. Riley gave me a knowing look as she handed me my pack but said nothing. We walked together in silence and stood with the others next to the city bus that had been overturned in the middle of the street.

“Listen, Liv,” Ty said reaching anxiously to adjust a hat that no longer existed. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“We don’t have a choice, Ty,” I said. “We need to get to Rockford, and this is the only way.”

“It’s just,” Ty inched closer and whispered. “Maybe we should go back. I don’t think…I mean, what you are about to see is—.”

“Unavoidable,” I said finishing his sentence and placing my hand gently on his arm. “This is our reality now, Ty, and hiding from it is not going to change that. We can’t go back and even if we could, there’s nothing to go back
to
.”

“It sucks, dude, but she’s right,” Jake said handing Ty his pack. “Forward is really our only option now.”

“We have to keep moving,” I said.

“Alright, then,” Ty said sighing heavily. He slid his duffle over his shoulders, tightened the straps against his chest, and nodded in my direction. “Right behind you, chief.”

Flashlight beams sliced through the shadows as we made our way past the front end of the abandoned city bus. We turned, heading right into a massive pile of discarded luggage. Backpacks and suitcases of all shapes and sizes had been hastily tossed into a heap in the middle of the street. Most of them had been torn apart, the contents spilling carelessly from their gaping mouths.

I shuffled through the scattered personal belongings that littered the pavement until my foot collided with a half-deflated football. It skidded across the pavement and bounced off the curb, coming to a stop next to a collapsed stroller. I bit my tongue and focused on the ground ahead of me, determined to ignore the blood I was sure I had seen on the buggy’s pink awning.

Military barricades, like the ones we had seen by Zander’s house, spanned the width of the street, sectioning it off into four different squares. Each row was spray-painted a different color. We’d just left the yellow section. Just past that was a row of orange, then red, and finally black. In each of the sections, the ground was littered with clothes, purses, and other items left behind.

“What the hell happened here?” Jake asked scanning the area with his flashlight.

“Nothing good,” Zander laced our fingers together as we rounded the final set of barricades.

“Oh my God,” Riley’s eyes filled with tears and her hand shot to the cross around her neck.

“I tried to warn you.” Ty pushed Christa behind him.

It was a massacre.

The bodies were piled in the black section in the same way the luggage had been in the yellow. The pavement was stained with their blood. Every single one of them had been shot—assassinated— and left in the middle of the street to rot. Arms and legs tangled together in such a way that it was hard to tell where one person ended and another began.

An older couple in matching windbreakers was slumped together against the near side of the mass grave. Their hands, which had been marked with a black X, held one another even in death. Their sad gray eyes stared ahead into emptiness.

“Hmm.” Eli cocked his head to the side, clicked on his penlight, and slowly approached the indiscernible mass of corpses.

Christa finally wriggled free of Ty’s hold and got around him determined to see what he was shielding her from. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth clamped shut. Jake rushed over and tried to pull her back. She pushed him away and stepped closer to the bloodied mass of limbs and hair.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Eli shook his head and walked back over.

“No kidding,” Falisha said. “What part about mass-murder could possibly make sense to you?”

“Sorry, but whoever did this—their intent was not murder,” Eli said staring at the gaping bullet wound in the back of a bald skull. “These people were euthanized.”

“Like cattle sent to slaughter?” Ty raked his fingers through his hair. “That’s just…damn.”

“Exactly,” Eli said pointing toward the nearest barricade. “It looks like they were corralling them. I think these colors mean something.”

“Why?” Riley choked out. “Why would they do this?”

“At first, I thought maybe they were sick. But I see no tell-tale signs of infection in any of these people,” Eli scratched his head. “In fact, aside from the marks on their hands, and the way they died, they appear to have nothing in common.”

“Yeah they do,” Christa said as she knelt to pick something up off the ground.

“What?” Eli snapped turning to her.

“You said they don’t have anything in common, but they do,” Christa said strolling toward us.

“Such as?” Eli put his hands on his hips.

“Such as
this
, Einstein.” Christa rolled her eyes as she hooked the handle of a wooden cane over Eli’s shoulder. She shook her head at him and turned back toward the bodies. “I guarantee you the youngest person there is like, maybe, fifty.”

“Huh.” Eli pushed his glasses up his nose and stood with his hands on his hips staring toward the dead. “I think you’re right, kid.”

Christa stood at Eli’s side mimicking his position. “Those psychos totally offed all the old people.”

“We can’t leave them like this,” Riley sobbed, clutching me in a hug. “It isn’t right, Liv.”

“We won’t, Ry,” I said squeezing her tight while she leaned into my shoulder. “We’ll take care of them.”

Zander and Ty ran back to the yellow section, dug through the pile of discarded belongings and returned a few minutes later with a stack of blankets to cover the bodies. Riley said a prayer and sang softly while the rest of us shrouded the dead in a multi-colored mass of fabrics. It wasn’t nearly the ceremony they deserved but, under the circumstances, it was the best last rights we could offer them. Riley was still crying when Ty lit the match and tossed it.

“How much farther, Liv,” Jake asked softly as we ambled past the broken storefront window of the Byron Insurance Agency. He looked at Riley, then back at me, rubbing his neck anxiously. “I think everyone could use a moment.”

“Another block or so,” I said.

I was determined not to look back at the slow-burning pyre we had left behind. I focused instead on the shops and stores that lined either side of the street. The sign from the Granite Works across had fallen from its perch and lay up against the front of the building balanced on one of the corners. The slightest breeze would likely have sent it crashing to the ground. The neighboring workout studio had burned enough that it had collapsed in on itself and taken half of the adjacent barbershop along with it.

Aside from the sound of our footsteps and Riley’s soft cries, we walked the rest of the way to the shop in complete silence. The ache in my chest had gotten stronger, and my head was beginning to pound, but the pain did little to distract me from the complete absence of life that surrounded us. The town of Byron was a black hole.

Though the thick wall of clouds churned steadily overhead, the air remained unnaturally placid. For the first time in days, even the ash lay stagnant on the ground rather than swirling about in thick gusts. The fires that burned were weak and unimpressive. They, too, had become lethargic in the lull. Burning was simply too difficult.

“I think this is the place,” I said.

I cupped my hands around my face and peeked in through the cracked plate-glass window as I waited for the group to catch up. When I stepped back, I caught my reflection in the spidered remains of the glass that dangled from the storefront window frame. My eyes still had that strange luminescent quality they got in the dark, but they had dulled some from exhaustion and sadness.

“Stay here while we do a sweep,” Zander said his eyes drilling into mine. “Ty?”

“You got it, Z,” Ty slid the handgun from his waistband and clicked off the safety.

“Please stay here, Liv,” Zander said again then he and Ty disappeared inside the store.

“I hate this,” I groaned.

I leaned against the ashen shell of an old bus bench and stared into the darkness after them. My body began thrumming with anxious energy the second they disappeared from my sight.

“They will be fine, Sarge,” Falisha said propping herself on a nearby lamppost. “Your boy is strong, and Ty is a crazy-good shot. Besides, you guys have that handy monster radar. If there were any crispy-crawlies close by, you would be the first ones to know. Leeches can’t hide from you, Liv.”