Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1) (12 page)

              I shook my head, remembering how often I had complained about those trips. At the time, I didn’t really appreciate how involved my parents had always been. I often felt smothered by their attention and felt I lacked the same freedoms that most of my friends had.

              Despite my resistance, my mom and dad were always there for me. No matter what they had going on, they made sure at least one of them was present at every track meet, school play, or PTO fund raiser. They always made sure I knew I was loved, even if I was not very deserving of it at times. I suppose, like most kids, I took for granted that there would always be a next time—that they would always be around.

              “Sounds like fun,” Zander smiled, his shoulder brushing against mine as he turned to face me.

              “It was,” I said, smiling past the lump in my throat. “You know, I used to think my dad was crazy with all that survivalist stuff. I mean, he worked in a cubicle for Christ’s sake, the whole button down shirt and khakis nine-to-five thing. Not exactly Special Forces, you know? On the weekends, though, my dad went from Ken doll to
G.I Joe
.”

              “Nice,” Zander said. “So, the whole family would just disappear for a weekend and go off the grid?”

              “Oh yeah.
No GPS, no cell phones, no cheating,
he would say. He wanted us to be able to fend for ourselves,” I said. “Guess both our dads knew something we didn’t.”

              “Guess so,” Zander said, laughing half-heartedly.

              “He was a good teacher,” I said, thinking out loud.

              “Was?” Zander’s tone was curious not probing.

              “Yeah,” I said, my voice sounding hollow. “I—I lost him a few months ago. Both of my parents, actually.”

              “Jesus, Liv, I’m sorry—” Zander’s face twisted. He reached for my hand and, to my own surprise, I didn’t pull away. The look in his eyes was more understanding than it was pity and it spurred me on.

              “It’s okay,” I shrugged again, taking a moment to gather myself. “I mean, it’s not really
okay
. It’s just…it’s not like I can do anything about it, is all. For a while, I expected to wake up one day, and it would all be some horrible dream, but—”

              “Yeah, I get that,” he said.

              “The worst part is I keep reliving the whole thing, over and over in my head. I had a fight with my parents the night they died. It was so stupid, some pointless argument about a boy. My dad was harping on me about keeping promises and being responsible.” I threw the tube down on the mat and raked my sweaty hair away from my face. “They tried to talk to me, to make me understand, but I ignored them, Zander. I was so pissed off at my dad. And my mom, too, for always taking his side. I was just being stubborn.”

              Zander didn’t say a word, but his eyes were focused intently as I spoke of my demons. I rested my head in the crook of my elbow, not able to look him in the eye as I spoke.

              “I wish I could erase the last words I said to them,” I said as I buried my face. “I could have I love you, see you later, or even goodnight…but, no. The last thing I ever said to my parents before they died was
this is bullshit
. That was my goodbye.”

              That secret had been eating away at me for months. I had never said those words out loud before, not even to myself, but it was like my body could not hold onto it anymore. I sagged into the mats, suddenly very tired, and slid across until my bare back met the wall.

              We sat there for what seemed like hours, saying nothing. Zander slowly stroked the pad of his thumb back and forth across my knuckles. I stared at our joined hands, hypnotized by his rhythmic caress. My stomach was doing flips again and I was not sure if it was the temperature or our proximity that had me sweating.

              “We need to get some rest, Zan,” I said, struggling to my feet. When he didn’t release my hand, I turned back with a questioning glance.

              “I like that.” He looked up at me with the smirk that made my stomach do funny things.

              “Huh?” I was completely lost, now, and was he
blushing
?

              “You called me Zan,” he said, sliding his hair behind his ear.

              “I—” I froze, feeling my face heat.

              “Nobody has ever called me that before. My dad always called me Alexander. My mom, mostly out of spite I imagine, called me Alex. Pretty much everyone else calls me Zander or Z, even, but never
Zan
.” He took a step closer to, released my hand, and slid his to my waist. “I really like it.”

              Now
I
was blushing.

Chapter 13

Battle Lines

               I awoke a few hours later, curled up on the floor, with my dad’s old hoodie wadded beneath my neck. My bones ached and my muscles were angry, but nothing compared to the pounding in my head. Riley and Micah were sound asleep a few feet away. I bit my lip, stifling a groan so I wouldn’t wake them. I slowly wrestled myself into a seated position and fought the dizziness that threatened to overtake me. After a few moments when the room finally stopped spinning backward, I slowly rose to my feet.

              Zander had fallen asleep within arm’s reach and was snoring softly. His back was against the wall. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, his feet crossed at the ankles. His head hung at an odd angle against his chest. I was tempted to wake him, but decided against it. If he was going to heal, he would need to rest and in his condition, it was far better to be sore than sleep deprived. I smiled down at him and resisted the urge to brush his hair away from his face as I stuffed my hoodie into my bag.

              I stepped over Zander’s legs and tiptoed past the sleeping bodies of my friends. I grabbed a couple of the last few bottles of water and headed toward the dim glow of the laptop in the corner of the weight room. As expected, Jake was there, hunched over the keyboard, hacking away at the keys. I sat down on the floor next to him, handed him a bottle, and leaned in to see what he was doing.

              “Hey, you,” I croaked, my voice hoarse from dehydration and exhaustion.

              “Morning, sunshine,” he said, snickering quietly. As usual, he didn’t look away from the computer as he spoke. “How’d you sleep?”

              “Like a sack of bricks,” I snorted, focusing on the weird image on the screen. “What the hell is that?”

              “Shhh,” he said, anxiously looking over his shoulder. “Keep it down, okay?”

              “Okay, sorry,” I whispered, leaning in. “What’s going on, Jake?”

              “A couple hours ago, the loop cut out— it just, like, stopped. I tinkered around with it for a while, but I couldn’t seem to get the signal back,” he shrugged. “Anyway, you guys were all out cold and I was way too wired to sleep, so I hooked up my camera to check out the footage from last night.”

              “Okay,” I gestured for him to continue. “
And
?”

              “And,” he said, turning the laptop at an angle towards me, “see for yourself.”

              He clicked on the film cue marker and slowed the playback to frame-by-frame. The sky was an ominous shade of orange. At the very center of the screen, there was a huge orb of bright light. At first, the white ball of light simply hovered in the sky. Snake-like tendrils of light curled and twisted from its surface. I recognized it immediately as the moments leading up to the flash. Last night, we had all shielded our eyes from the harshness of it, but Jake’s camera had filtered it enough that, this time, we did not need to.

              “Wait for it,” Jake whispered, pointing to the center of the screen.

              He sped up the film a bit and let it play. I stared at the screen like it was pulling me through, as the giant globe of light got bigger and bigger. The center of the sphere started expanding outward, pulling the top and bottom edges in toward the center. Suddenly, the orb burst like flattened balloon. A massive shock wave shot off from its widest point and quickly disappeared over the horizon.

              “Holy shit,” I whispered in shock, grabbing onto his arm. “That was— Oh my God, Jake!”

              “Right?” Jake ran his fingers through his short brown hair. “It’s like those old videos of nuclear test sites they used to make us watch in science.”

              “What the hell was that?” I asked, making sure no one could hear.

              “Best I can tell,
that
was the moment that Icarus reached critical mass,” he said, tapping his finger on the numbers at the bottom of the screen.

              “10:03 p.m.” I released my grip on his arm and sat back on my feet. “How are we— I mean, what the hell?”

              “Trust me, I know,” Jake said, looking at me over his shoulder. “I have watched it like twenty times, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.”

              “So that’s what Taylor was talking about,” I said, taking a deep breath. “He said eighteen hours, right?”

              “Yeah,” Jake said, clicking out of the video and bringing up a pale blue screen. “Taylor said it would be, approximately, eighteen hours from the moment of eruption until the coronal mass ejection hit our planet,”

              “So we have like nine hours until—” I said.

              “Until the electromagnetic
shit
hits the fan and wipes everything out,” Jake said, slamming the laptop shut.                

***                

              The rest of the group was awake now. They ambled about the weight room looking tussled and tired. The bathroom was little more than a three-by-five foot hole in the wall, but each of us waited anxiously to lock ourselves inside for our allotted five minutes.

              The ceilings in the bathroom were easily nine feet high and, like the rest of the basement, housed a slew of exposed rafters and pipes. On the back wall, sat an ancient bowl-style toilet with a pull chain flush. Across from that, was a rust-stained pedestal sink and a small cracked mirror plastered to the concrete wall. A single, bare bulb dangled on a chain from the ceiling; the only source of light. It highlighted the less than appropriate graffiti that spattered each of the walls, as it swung freely overhead.

              I was in line after Zack and when he finally emerged, I nearly knocked him off his feet as I brushed past him and dove inside. I closed the door behind me and threw my back against it as if I were running from a monster.

              I was just as grateful for the solitude as I was for the running water, which we may no longer have in a few hours. I needed a moment alone to gather my thoughts and for five glorious minutes, no one would be looking at me for answers. No one would ask me what we should do, or what was happening beyond the walls. No one judged me or depended on me, and there were no questions or doubts. Just me, silence, and running water.

              I stood there for a second, my hands bracketing either side of the dingy old sink, as I hung my head above the drain. I turned on the water, then jabbed a finger quickly into the stream to test the temperature. It had cooled enough that it would not burn me, so I cupped my hands under it and sloshed some onto my face.

              The tiny room was quite hot, and the water was even hotter, but the rush of it against my clammy skin felt amazing. I splashed my face a few more times, then took off my tank top and tucked it into the back of my jeans. I soaped up my hands, washed my face, neck, and arms, before shoving my entire head beneath the faucet to soak my hair. I was so exhausted that the warm water drizzling against my scalp was lulling me into a sort of trance. I was startled by a loud banging on the door and jerked my head up so fast, my hair flung water across the ceiling and back wall.

              “Jesus Liv, did you fall in?” Of course, it would be Riley. “Hurry the hell up, I have to pee!”

              “Give me a second, Riley, jeez,” I yelled through the door.

              My heart was beating rapidly in my chest, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the sense of normalcy that her morning harassment provided. Though I would kill for a shower and some clean clothes, the quick rinse had definitely lifted my spirits. I quickly wrung out my hair in the sink, then slid my tank back over my head and opened the door.

              “God, finally.” Riley nearly tackled me as she danced her way into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

              “Your girl’s got about as much patience as a two-year-old,” Falisha laughed, shaking her head.

              “You have no idea,” I said, smiling as I walked away.

              I lazily scraped my hair up into a messy bun and scanned the room for my friends. Zander and Micah were on the far side of the room talking to Jake, who was still perched in front of the old laptop. Micah nodded as Jake spoke, but shifted anxiously on the balls of his feet while he chewed at his thumbnail. Zander, ever his opposite, stood firm at his cousin’s side, arms crossed over his broad chest and unaware of my scrutiny.