Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3) (17 page)

Pierce always scurried away at night like the rodent he was. I waited until he left, until he went to sleep and then I went for supplies. He kept those locked away in the basements of buildings all over town, in rooms that no one wanted. He had fuel. He had matches. I took both. And I had to work fast. Pierce would suspect I was up to something if I waited too long, so I handled everything that night.

The accelerants made the fire travel fast through the building. Fire was hungry, too. It consumed without discriminating. It fed without ceasing. It ended what Pierce began. His pets…some of them didn’t even scream when the flames came for them. They sat in the smoke, unaware that they were going to be burned. I limped away, avoiding the liquid trails of fire starter fluid. I found the cans stored in a room in the main apartment building the night Pierce snipped two fingers off one of the older Infected shells, ground them up into dust and gristle, mixed them with Roman’s blood and then fed them to another Infected. He planned to try an eyeball next. I couldn’t take it anymore.

And I couldn’t listen to Miranda Grant anymore. She ranted night and day about Porschia, Roman, and Pierce. The woman was a loose cannon. She would make Porschia’s life a living hell if she ever found her frequency. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect Porschia from her mother, from the toxins she spewed.

The flames lapped at her room, warping the door, bowing it. The paint on the metal door bubbled and boiled. She laughed and cackled at the fire right up until it reached the corner she was huddled in.

You’re burning, Roman!
she called out to him.
I told you! I told you that you would burn for what you’ve done. Now you will. Now you’ll burn with me. You’ll burn with us all! I bet fire can kill a night-walker. Burn. Burn. Burn...

I limped out of the door and into the night air, gasping for freshness, and found Pierce waiting. He grabbed my shoulders and squeezed, his spittle flying into my face.
What have you done?
he asked angrily.

I smiled.
I saved them from you.

You killed them all!

Still smiling, I spat in his face.
You killed them long before I came around
, I answered smugly.
You know what?
I pulled back from him.
You picked the wrong human to turn into a monster
. I slammed my fist into his jaw, the crack reverberating up my arm. When he grabbed his face, I reared back and hit him again. His cheek shattered and he fell to the ground, his skull striking the concrete with a dull thud. Wren appeared silently from the shadows.

Don’t kill him. You’ll be no better than him if you do.

I’m already worse, Wren.

You aren’t. Leave him. You need to get away from the smoke.

I leaned over with my hands on my knees, completely spent.
I could walk a thousand miles and never be rid of it.

Why’d you do it?

I couldn’t watch it another second.

You’ve only been here a short time. It couldn’t have been that bad.

I looked at Wren, really looked at him. His wrinkled skin. His tired eyes. His dull, torn clothing. And he looked at me. The soot, the sweat, the sin. I killed them all. He never expected that. None of them did. But I did them a favor! I saved them from him. From Pierce. From more tests and experiments, from mutilations and manipulations. I. Saved. Them.

Wren waved his hand for me to follow him. I stepped away from Pierce, his scratchy moans filling the cool night air. And I followed him; away from the fire, from the screaming, from the smoke and the flame. Away from the insanity.

We found Pierce lying on the sidewalk outside of the burning building. Actually, the building was worse than burning, which I didn’t even know was possible. The structure was completely engulfed; every orifice being lapped at by the flames that ate away at it. The glass windows that were still intact overhead finally exploded, littering our heads and backs with tiny shards as we covered our faces and ducked. The shrill shrieking from within was more than I could stand. I didn’t know if they were in my mind, if I was hearing them with my ears, or both. But it was too much.

The flames.

The smoke.

The smell of burning flesh and hair.

The crumbling building.

The glass.

The screams.

The cries for help.

Pierce’s moaning.

The yelling.

One voice was familiar: Mother’s.

She was being burned alive.

I ran toward the door. The flames wouldn’t hurt me, right? Tage’s arm on my bicep stopped me. “Don’t. She’s already gone.”

I shook my head. “I hear her. She’s in there!” Gesturing toward the building, I cried, chest heaving.

“It’s too late!”

“It might not be!”

Tage ground his teeth together. “Let me go instead. You stay here.”

“NO! She’s my mother!”

“I’m stronger than you are right now. If anyone can save her, it’s me!”

I swallowed the harsh truth, angrily swiping the tears from my cheeks. “Hurry, Tage. Please come back to me.”

“Always,” he said, kissing my lips lightly before running into the burning building to save my mother. Some would argue that she didn’t deserve saving, but I would argue that none of us deserved mercy. This entire mess began with a curse; one that would have ended as quickly as it began if humans had the ability to see past differences and work together. But humans were evil. Night-walkers and Infected were once normal people. It wasn’t the virus that addled their minds, it was the nature of humanity. It was the inherent evil, selfishness, and shortsightedness that lived within us all. And I just sent Tage into danger because of it.

My stomach turned. Pierce rolled over to his side, pushing up onto his elbow. I watched him flail and flop like a fish out of water. Did I offer him a hand? No. Because I, too, was evil. I didn’t know if I wanted him to live, let alone stand up again.

My eyes watered from the heat radiating off the flaming mess around me, waves distorting my vision. Door after door was easy to kick in. The metal had already begun to melt from the heat, but Miranda was hard to find in the smoky mess. And when I did find her, my heart broke. It didn’t break for her; it broke for Porschia. I was too late. Huddled in a ball in the corner of an empty shell of a room was her charred body, still smoldering and being licked by flames. Above her room, a familiar voice raged above the din of the inferno.

“Get. Me. OUT of here!”

“Roman?”

“Tage? Tage! Get me out of this room!”

“What the hell?” I yelled, fighting my way past the support beams that were crashing down one by one. “I can’t get to you. Kick the door down!”

“You think I haven’t tried? I haven’t fed in too long.”

I should just let the asshole burn.
I jumped over one metal beam, so hot that all but the center of it glowed orange. The stairwell door was missing. I found it across the lobby. My boots melted on each concrete step, despite the fact that they were probably the coolest thing in this place. I could smell gasoline or kerosene. Some kind of accelerant… I couldn’t place it and didn’t know where they’d even gotten it from. It wasn’t like the gas station pumps worked anymore.

The door that led to the second floor was also off the hinges, but it was lying in a molten puddle at the entrance to the second floor. “Where are you?” I called out. The flames roared in my ears. The walls were on fire. The drop ceiling was falling, also consumed by flame.

“Here!” came Roman’s voice from all the way down the hall. Of course. He would naturally be in the most difficult place to reach. I pulled my jacket over my head and ran through the gauntlet of falling and already fallen debris and holes in the floor, past the people who had been shrieking and were now silenced forever.

I kicked his door in and Roman stepped into the hallway, a glowing metal collar falling from his neck. The building groaned and the walls began to bow inward. “Shit. Let’s go!” he screamed, the skin on his hands and face bubbling angrily.

Roman was going to tear whomever did this apart.