Shane crawled across the dark room and collapsed, huffing for air. He felt different—the pain from his injuries more pronounced, but his mind clearer. An instant ago, he hated Steve so much that he wanted to kill him and was certain killing Tracy was in her best interest as well. Now, he couldn’t figure out why they were fighting.
“Shane?” Steve’s concerned voice came out of the darkness. “Holy crap, man. Are you alright?”
“I’m a little busted up,” Shane admitted, grimacing from the pain in his left arm and shoulder. “But I think I’ll live.”
The battery room and the tunnel outside were silent. The mini-guns’ motors had stopped spinning.
“What the heck happened?” Steve asked, sounding like he’d just woken up.
“I think we just tried to kill each other,” Shane replied, leaning against the cold, cinderblock wall and waiting for the world to stop spinning.
A flashlight at the far end of the passageway leading down the side of the massive block of batteries flickered as it approached. Shane realized it was Tracy, moving slow because of her injuries.
“Tracy?” he called.
“I think I shut it down,” she replied, her voice weak.
“Thank God—I almost killed you both,” Steve said, his voice heavy with remorse and guilt.
“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” Tracy replied. “I was on my way back to kick your butt if the weapon didn’t shut off.”
“Tracy,” Shane said, a relieved smile rising on his face in spite of his pain, “did you just make a joke?”
“Don’t worry,” she replied, stopping at the corner of the batteries and shining her light on her grinning face. “I won’t let it happen again.”
Tracy turned her light at Shane, and he squinted and looked down at his bloody chest. He had a nasty gash, and his arm didn’t look any better. But at least the bleeding was slow, and nothing vital seemed to have been hit. When Tracy turned the beam on Steve, Shane saw his face had swollen and turned purple. Blood trickled out of his crooked nose and from the gash under his right eye.
“You guys look like crap,” Tracy observed. “I hope you can walk, because I sure as heck ain’t carrying you.”
After Tracy used the remaining antiseptic and gauze from her backpack to dress Shane’s wounds, he pushed up to his feet. He was dizzy from the pain and from losing so much blood, but he was able to stay upright. They worked their way into the tunnel, wrapping their arms around each other for support.
“Let’s get out of here,” Shane said, anxious to see Kelly and to breathe fresh air.
They made their way up the tunnel and toward the alcove where Kelly waited in her barrel. Too shocked and exhausted by the ordeal they’d just endured, Shane didn’t say a word the entire way, and neither did his two friends. Was it even over? He couldn’t believe the nightmare ended so abruptly. Maybe Steve whacked him on the head, sending him to this fantasyland of sudden peace.
“Kelly?” Shane called as soon as the barrel was in sight.
He slipped from Steve and Tracy’s arms, fighting off a surge of pain. The fear that she may have died while they were away spurred him to a trot, making him ignore his discomfort. If the barrel had become her coffin, then all his efforts were in vain and he’d want nothing more than to join her in the grave.
Kelly’s muffled response washed away his nauseating fear. Hope ignited in him with such intensity that it made the dark tunnel seem brighter. Shane rushed to the barrel and pried the lid off. The spiders and rats that attacked her before were gone.
Shane tossed the metal lid to the side, and it made a loud, clanking sound that echoed in the darkness.
“Did you do it?” Kelly gasped. Tracy’s flashlight revealed a sweaty face covered in dirt, and eyes bloodshot from crying.
“Yeah—we shut it down,” Shane replied, tears flowing. He reached in with his good arm and helped her stand. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Kelly hugged Shane, weeping joyously.
“Ouch,” Shane groaned.
She leaned back and looked at him with concern. “Oh my gosh, what happened to you?”
Shane glanced at Steve, who smiled, his bloody mouth missing teeth. He shrugged his big shoulders in an innocent way.
Chuckling, Shane turned to Kelly. “I’ll tell you later.”
She looked at him with wide and worried eyes, then leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. In that moment, Shane forgot about all his pain and forgot Steve and Tracy probably stood there watching him with disgusted looks on their faces, letting the intoxicating bliss that came with kissing the hottest girl in school overtake him.
When Kelly pulled away, Shane and Steve helped her climb out of the barrel. They hurried as fast as their injuries would allow up the tunnel and through the capitol building. Walking out the front doors, Shane worried Shamus’ gang might be waiting on them. Instead, Maurice slumped on the bottom of the capitol building’s steps, his shotgun lying next to him. Morning had come, and the sky was miraculously clear, turning an inviting, soft blue color Shane had feared he’d never see again.
“What now?” Steve asked, spitting blood out of his mouth.
Shane looked around at the bodies of kids littering the steps, lawn, and the gardens of the capitol building, many of them several years younger than he was. It was the most depressing scene imaginable, somehow far sadder than all the adult dead he’d seen. He noticed a few kids down on the street below looking up at him. Maurice stood as well and waved at Shane and his friends, a weak smile and an expression of relief on his chubby and now much-younger looking face.
“We have to get back to the base and make sure my sister and the other kids are okay,” Kelly replied, a desperate urgency in her tone.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “And then we should get as far away from this city as possible.”
He slipped his good arm around Kelly, and they climbed down the steps and across the wide, blood-covered concrete walkway to where Maurice stood. The sun peeked between the buildings and warmed Shane’s face. Squinting at the brilliant light, Shane tilted his head back and looked up at the American flag dancing in the gentle morning breeze.
“Thank goodness you guys are alive,” Maurice said, eyeing Shane’s wounds with concern.
“Barely,” Shane replied. “What happened to Shamus’ gang?”
“I was out of it there for a while, but I guess most of the younger ones must’ve run off when the older kids started turning on each other,” Maurice replied, looking at the street. He had a gash on his cheek, and his shoulders were slumped forward with fatigue. “I’m worried that they might come back at any moment.”
“Yeah,” Tracy said, staring down the street leading away from the capitol. “We should get out of here ASAP.”
Steve picked up a motorcycle. “Come on, we can get back to the base a lot quicker on these,” he said, pointing at several other abandoned bikes.
Maurice gathered the few of his people who survived and those who defected from Shamus’ gang, and they climbed onto the motorcycles. Those too injured to drive rode on the back behind those who could. Shane sat behind Steve, Kelly rode with Maurice, and Tracy rode with Jules.
They buzzed up the street, leading away from the gold-domed capitol building just in time, because Shane glanced over his shoulder and saw some of Shamus’ gang pull around the corner on motorcycles to give pursuit. After a couple of miles, the thugs seemed satisfied they had run the intruders out of their territory, and they stopped and turned back.
Every bump the motorcycle hit caused shockwaves of pain to flash from Shane’s injuries and radiate throughout his body, but he managed to hang on and stay alert. When he wasn’t distracted by the pain, the faces of all those he’d seen die and those he’d killed tormented his thoughts. He wondered if his mind would ever be at peace again, and expected to be plagued by nightmares whenever he finally had a chance to get some sleep.
By midmorning, they pulled into
the military base. Kelly leapt off the back of the bike she rode on before it came to a complete stop and ran to the crowd of kids gathered around the lean-to shelters. Nat rushed out of the group, passing through the teenage girls who held their guns ready to defend the children against the approaching motorcycles. Kelly scooped her little sister up and held her in her arms.
“Where’s Laura?” Shane asked, after he’d climbed off the bike and limped to the girls who stood guard.
“She’s over there,” Rebecca, the red-haired girl who’d been assaulted in the gym replied, pointing at the cot that was used for Matt two days before. “A bunch of birds attacked her. We did our best to keep them off, but they cut her up pretty bad. Luckily, they stopped as suddenly as they started. A minute more, and I think she would’ve been killed.”
Shane rushed to the cot as fast as his injuries would allow. Scratches covered Laura’s face, and chunks of her black hair was missing, her scalp bloody where it had been ripped away. She had a makeshift patch covering one of her eyes, which Shane feared had been plucked out.
“Laura?” Shane gently touched her shoulder.
She opened her good eye, blinked, and then gave him a little smile. “You guys made it back,” she whispered.
“Yeah, we did,” Shane replied, trying to smile.
Laura began to push up to sitting, and when Shane tried to stop her, she said, “Don’t worry, I’m not half as bad as I look. You guys must’ve shut that weapon down just in time.”
“I suppose so,” he said. Shane was relieved to see she wasn’t dead or dying, but he knew by looking at her that her face would bear the scars of the bird attack for as long as she lived.
“I think we should head north,” Tracy said. “It doesn’t feel safe here, so close to the city. As soon as the bodies start rotting, the gangsters may start venturing out into the suburbs.”
“You’re right,” Shane said, cringing at the pain that shot through his neck and shoulder when he glanced at her. He reckoned, like Laura, they’d all have scars from the last few days for the rest of their lives—both inside and out. “Let’s try to find some trucks to load these kids on and get the heck out of here.”