Breaking Point (16 page)

“And Sean?”

“He’s … he was right behind me!”

I froze.

For one instant I saw Sean as he had been, in those woods behind the reformatory, hiding my intent to escape from the guards who had caught me, who meant to kill me. I felt the shudder tear through my body when he’d shielded me from the blows that had hit him instead.

No
. Sean could not be left in this building to burn.

There were no more thoughts. I pushed past Billy and ran down the narrow alley. Someone grasped my shirt, but I slipped away.

“Stop!” shouted Chase.

But I didn’t stop. I ran until I passed the broken water heaters and the metallic switchboards, until the alley opened to reveal a cement patio and a side door below an emergency exit sign.

No soldiers. Not yet anyway.

I placed my hand on the handle. Immediately it singed my palm. A putrid smell filled my nostrils—my own charred flesh.

I swore, gripping the hot doorknob with my shirt and turning it. It pulled out, revealing a great tidal wave of smoke that nearly bowled me over.

I sputtered. The poison siphoned down my throat and grasped my lungs. I covered my mouth with my hand and ducked, trying to remember what I’d learned in elementary school about stop, drop, and roll. I had to stay low.

Sure enough, the first onslaught of smoke left a thick cloud grazing over the ceiling. It was a petrifying sight—swirling like the vortex of a building tornado. I kicked a rock into the jamb, kept my body hunched down, and pushed inside.

“Sean!” I shouted. Then coughed. I breathed in through my teeth, as though they might serve as a filter. “SEAN!”

I’d entered into the stairway. Where we’d first been searched by CJ, the guard posing as a homeless man in the lobby just outside the door. I glanced up the metal steps, but the white plumes wound up in a spiral, disappearing into the next floor. It was so hot; sweat immediately began to drip from every pore in my body.

Something broke upstairs. A wooden crack, a faint explosion, and then the building groaned so loudly I was sure it was going to topple down over me.

A hand smothered my face. Through the haze I saw Chase, squinting, eyes red. He was wearing just his T-shirt, his sweater overtop now ripped in two and held against both our faces. Billy was right behind him, the sleeve of his shirt tied around his nose and mouth.

“Get out of here!” Chase shouted above the crackling. “There’s no time!”

I didn’t know if he meant until the MM took the building, or until the building took us all, but I wasn’t about to wait around and find out. I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, feeling his grip slide off my sweat-slicked arm.

No sign of Sean.

“Sean!” I tried again, but my shouts were getting progressively weaker. The urgency made me tremble. Sean had risked his life to help me at the reformatory. I owed it to him to return the favor.

The smoke took on an orange hue. It became so thick I could barely see right in front of me. My boots began to stick, like I was walking on gum. In horror, I realized that they were beginning to melt on the stairs. We were running out of time.

“Over there!” Chase shouted, sprinting past me to the top of the third floor. Sean was lying on his back on the landing; someone was desperately trying to hoist him up. The smoke made him weak, and he fumbled around like a drunk.

As I got closer, I saw that the person trying to help was Tucker.

My temples throbbed from the smoke and surprise. He had started the fire, I was sure of it, so what was he still doing here?

“Help me get him up!” shouted Tucker, struggling to grab Sean with the cast on his arm. His words spurred us back into motion. Chase pulled Sean’s arm over his shoulders and began lugging him down the stairs. Sean’s head hung limply; his feet dragged behind. The fear began to take over. Sean couldn’t be dead. Not here. Not like this.

On the second floor, Tucker lost his footing and dove into the wall. Without thinking, I grabbed his arm to steady him. We locked eyes for one short moment.

Don’t help him!

But the larger voice inside yelled
we have to get out
! And somehow right then “we” included Tucker Morris, too.

“Chase! Soldiers!” cried Billy, coughing with his mask lowered. He was standing in the stairwell, pointing out the blackened window. Soot couldn’t hide the fear blanketing his features.

Chase was beside him, scraping a clear spot in the glass to check.

“Exit’s blocked!” I could barely hear him. He turned fast, sweat streaming off his face. “Up to the roof! Go!
Go!
”

Billy went up first. Then Chase heaving Sean. I tried to help, but he wouldn’t let me. “
Go!
” he kept yelling. Tucker was right on my heels.

We were halfway up the seventh set of stairs when another eruption of gunfire came from just below. I braced reactively, and as I did, a piece of flaming drywall came crashing down from the ceiling and landed at my feet. My body twisted backward, slipping on my sticky soles. Tucker caught me beneath the arms; I could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt. In horror, I looked up, hypnotized by the fiery board on the steps that now separated us from the others. Sparks and burning ashes exploded from it, pinching my bare arms and neck in a dozen different places.

Tucker returned the cloth to my nose and mouth.

“We have to jump!” he yelled.

It was at least four steps up, and my muscles were burning. The fire was suffocating my strength from the inside out.

“Chase!”

He stopped at my voice and turned, terror lighting his face.

Balancing Sean on one shoulder he held his other arm out toward me, urging me to jump the four steps up to him. It wasn’t far, but it could have been miles. Sweat and smoke blocked my vision. The roar of the fire muted whatever words he shouted. I trembled, seized by fear.

“Jump!” Tucker ordered. I took a step back in order to shove off from a lower step. A sob raked my throat.

I hesitated.

Tucker rammed into me hard, sending me careening up the steps and into Chase’s chest. He grasped my shirt, pulling me the rest of the way. I screamed—for a moment I thought my pant legs were on fire, but they were only scorched at the bottom.

“Keep going!” Chase said. Billy ran ahead, disappearing into the mist.

A second later Tucker came colliding into the three of us. The door was three feet away. Tucker shoved past and kicked the door, once, twice. It burst open, and he disappeared outside.

Chase grabbed me around the waist and threw me after Tucker, into a day turned dark by black smoke. Sean’s limp form followed. Just outside the exit, Chase fell to his hands and knees. Billy was before me, shaking his head, as though waking from a dream.

The world spun. The clean air seemed just as poisonous as the smoke. I collapsed into the lip of the roof, hacking up black ooze, sliding down to where Chase had dumped Sean.

“Sean!” I croaked, eyes streaming. He was breathing, however shallowly, and in a burst of movement, he rolled on his side and vomited violently. I sobbed with relief.

And then Chase’s hands were on my face, my hair, my shoulders and legs.

He swore sharply, snatching away the hot St. Michael medallion from my skin. It stuck, but when I tried to cry out, I coughed again. Exhaustion made my vision waver. My eyes streamed with tears.

“What were you thinking?” he shouted furiously. The world behind him spun. I felt another urge to be sick. “You could have been killed! You
never
listen!”

“So what!” I was drained and scared and burning everywhere. I didn’t care what happened to me.

“So
what
?” he repeated, as if I’d struck him. He looked like he didn’t recognize me.

“Take it easy,” said someone behind me. Tucker.

Chase rounded on him fast, and instantly the teams shifted. Not the resistance against the MM. Not Chase against me. But us against my mother’s killer.

He hit Tucker square in the jaw before he ever saw it coming. Tucker flew back, spitting blood on the deck. The exertion toppled Chase, too, and he fell forward.

“You two are still trying to kill each other?”

I looked up. A lanky man with long, peppered hair was pulling Tucker off the ground.

“Wallace!” croaked Billy.

Wallace’s face was smudged with smoke and sweat. He crouched beside Billy, first slapping him on the back and then pulling him into a tight embrace. “You’re all right,” he said several times. “Just a little smoke is all.”

Chase swore, and I followed his eye line to a crowd of our people—Houston and the brothers and Riggins included—all gathered around the bench where I’d sat with Chase yesterday.

All gathered around a body, lying still upon it.

Lincoln.

“Gone,” I heard Wallace say grimly. “Gone when the boys found him.”

Choking. Coughing. My beaten heart twisting.
Think about it later.
We had to get out of here.

I knelt, glancing over the edge. The riot below had grown, and the soldiers were trying to contain it. The line closest to the building was waiting for us.

“We’re done,” said Riggins, hands on his glistening head. “We’re done.”

“You did this! They came here for you!” Houston approached behind him, eyes red, but not from the fire.

I couldn’t answer, lost to another coughing fit.
Me?
If Wallace had only listened! But then again, Tucker wouldn’t be beside us if he’d turned us in.

“We’re not done,” said Wallace. There was a crazy light in his eyes when he stood from Billy’s side. He removed a gun from his waistband—the black pistol he carried—and chambered a round. It was then that I noticed the crate he’d left when he’d found Billy. It was filled with ammunition and firearms.

My burning eyes widened.

“Think!” said Chase. “Fire escapes are blocked. Boiler exit is blocked. Front and rear doors are out.”

“No!” Wallace shouted. The others had left Lincoln now, and were gathered in a tight half circle around those of us still on the ground. Eight from the resistance had made it to the roof before us, Wallace included.

“We’ve lost!” shouted Chase.

“We’ve lost when I say we’ve lost!” Knoxville’s leader roared back. “We have rules, Jennings! We don’t abandon our brothers! We don’t abandon our home! This is our chance to take a stand—”

“We can’t fight if we don’t live!” Chase yelled.

“This
is
the fight,” Wallace said with finality. “This is the only fight that matters. The one we fight today.”

Then he grabbed a pistol out of the crate and shoved it into Billy’s trembling hands. Still weak, the boy wavered when he stood. He stared at the gun in his hands and said, “Wallace?”

A
whir
and a
crack
as a bullet flew by. They’d seen us on the roof and were attacking.

No.
We couldn’t die here.

“Line up,” Wallace told us.

“Wallace, please,” I begged him. Chase was dragging me away from the ledge, teeth bared.

“Line up!” Wallace demanded. The other guys faltered, ducking low beneath the ledge for protection. Fearful glances were passed among them. A temporary break in the smoke brought a hailstone of more bullets. Riggins, swearing profusely, grabbed a gun and kneeled behind the barrier, aiming down toward the line of soldiers. Two others followed. Houston’s hands were cupped over his ears, but though his lips moved he made no sound.

“Crazy bastards,” muttered Tucker.

A jet of flames burst from the stairway and then was sucked back inside. The roof beneath our feet trembled with the strength of an earthquake. Had I a voice, I might have screamed.

A weak voice came from behind me. “Through the other building.” I turned, surprised to find Sean sitting upright.

Yes. The office building adjacent to the Wayland Inn was abandoned. The space between them was narrow, maybe three feet. We might be able to jump in through a parallel window.

An instant later Chase and Tucker were running toward the bench where poor Lincoln lay.

They lowered his limp body to the ground, and I had the sudden revolting memory of the base, transporting the dead prisoners in laundry carts to the crematorium. I hadn’t known those people, but Lincoln was not a stranger. I knew what his laugh sounded like. I knew how tall he was when I stood next to him. That was when I realized—
really
realized—he was dead.

Tucker and Chase each took an end of the wooden bench. They carried it around the stairway exit, toward the side of the roof that interfaced the office building. I helped Sean up, and we ran to follow. There was a shattered window down a few feet across the gap. I watched as they leveled the bench between the roof’s ledge and the windowsill, making a slide into the darkened room below. The curtain of jagged glass above made for an ominous entrance.

When I glanced back four more of the men were gone, maybe back through the smoke-filled stairway. Wallace was shouting, gesturing in wild motions with his arms, and forcing Billy to his knees before the ledge. When Billy tried to get up, Wallace pushed him down.

He’d lost his mind. Billy was like a son to him, and here he was, preparing to sacrifice them both for a fight we’d never win.

Billy was coming with us, and Wallace and the others too, if I could make them.

But as I approached, it hit him, an invisible bullet, slicing through the smoke. It ripped through Wallace’s shoulder and threw him to the ground, flat on his back.

I ducked low, hearing Chase bellow my name. I kept going.

“Wallace!” I pulled him up, and then Billy was there, and Wallace, groaning, was seated, blood flowing freely from the blackened shirt just below his collarbone. “We have to go,” I said desperately. “Come on! Now!”

“Wait, wait a second,” Billy was saying. “Wallace?”

Wallace was shaking his head, regripping the pistol that he’d dropped.

“Billy is going to die,” I said flatly. “You are going to kill him.”

He met my eyes, and I saw the infection, the fever of insanity circling the whites around his irises. I summoned all my strength to burn clarity through my gaze, and after a moment, he blinked.