Yes, come on, Orlando. Come on.
I dove into my backpack again and withdrew a bottle of water. I cracked it open and held it to his lips, coaxing him to drink. His dry lips parted, and he allowed the bottle between his teeth. He drank slowly, apparently in pain each time he swallowed, but he managed to down half of it.
“It’s okay,” I croaked, trying to comfort myself as much as him. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”
As his vision focused, he cursed. “Dammit, Grace,” he wheezed. “What happened to you? I tried to come after you—”
My breath hitched. “You shouldn’t have tried,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t have.” But I understood why he had. He was just as alone now as I was. He needed me as much as I needed him.
I glanced up and down the alley nervously, expecting to see a surge of Bloodless come streaming down toward us at any moment. I wound one arm around his waist and tugged him upward. “Come on,” I said, trying to be gentle but needing to be urgent at the same time. “We can’t sit around here.”
“You’re right,” he managed. “We have to keep moving. I’m sure that monster was carrying her toward the crematorium. We need to head there.”
I clenched my fists nervously. That was not what I was going to suggest. I didn’t know what to do now in our situation other than to find yet another shelter, somewhere we could go to take a short breather and recover our thoughts. But I couldn’t expect Orlando to be able to sit still when his sister had been carried off. If I’d had a sister, I would be the same way.
“Okay,” I whispered. “So we have to head to the crematorium. There are tall buildings near there, right?” I asked, straining to remember the sight I had glimpsed from the bathroom we had been holed up in in our previous shelter.
“Yeah,” he said.
Then at least we could get a peek inside the compound. There didn’t seem to be any windows in the actual building, but there had been grounds around it. Though I found it hard to believe the mutant would just be hanging around outside with Maura.
But there was nowhere else Orlando would head right now.
“So it’s nearby,” I said.
“Only a few blocks away from here, I think,” he replied.
And we had to hope like hell that the criminals who had spied my identity before being chased off by the Bloodless had not yet had a chance to reach their nearest IBSI scout.
I collected Orlando’s blade wheel along with his remote before helping him to his feet. He was awfully weak. I fed him some more water. At least he was coping better than a regular human would. Maybe whatever illness the IBSI had given him had affected his system somehow, made him tougher in some ways, even though he looked like a sickly thing.
I pulled Orlando as fast as he could move through the streets, stopping every time we reached a doorway to back up against it and look left and right, to check that nobody was following us.
I was relieved when Orlando informed me that we were close enough to the crematorium to enter one of the buildings. We entered a three-story restaurant. As we moved through it, the place was hardly recognizable as such, with all its tables and chairs splintered and strewn about the floor—its once beautiful decor slashed and faded.
We moved to the third floor and crossed to the other side of the building where, I realized, we had an extremely good view of the crematorium. We were shockingly close. Just a street’s width away.
“These buildings directly around the crematorium,” Orlando said, gesturing to the room around us, “are forbidden, apparently. If we got caught in here by the IBSI, we’d be put to death.”
I stared at him, though not disbelievingly. Thanks for telling me that before we climbed up here.
Though I was as good as dead anyway, wherever the IBSI found me.
We gazed over the wall enclosing the crematorium to see a small outside area, which consisted primarily of a parking lot. It was home to several large black tanks—signature IBSI style.
There was no soul in sight though. No sign of the mutant. No sign of Maura. No sign of anything but the monstrous vehicles.
My eyes roamed the vast, grim structure. So they sweep the fallen bodies from the roads in those tanks every so often and bring them to the crematorium. I took in the high, wide chimneys spiking up from the roof of the main building. They were still smoking, even now.
Even though I was sure that it was the last thing on Orlando’s mind, I couldn’t help but ask, “Did they, like, do a sweep recently? The IBSI? Those chimneys have been smoking ever since we arrived in this area.”
Orlando shrugged, his eyes wide and filled with angst as he scanned the parking lot.
“Maybe I was mistaken,” he rasped. “Maybe the mutant took Maura somewhere else.” He glanced beyond the crematorium, further to our right up the road. “Maybe there’s an IBSI post up there, where she was taken.”
Or she could already be inside the crematorium… That was a suggestion I figured I ought to keep to myself.
Silence fell between us. And I was certain that the same question was running through both of our minds. What now?
We had lost Maura’s trail. Would Orlando want to risk venturing inside the crematorium to look for her when she could’ve gone somewhere else entirely? Where would we even start looking for her now?
And what of our escape? How will we…
I stalled my frenzied questioning and reminded myself to live in the moment. It was doing my sanity no good.
“I don’t know what to do,” Orlando said faintly. “I don’t know how I will ever find my sister.”
I was spared racking my brain for how to reply to him when the crunching of gravel sounded up the road. We ducked down, keeping only our eyes above the window sill so that we could watch. A tank was trundling down the road from our left. It moved quickly, passing directly beneath us. It continued on its course until it reached the crematorium’s gates, where it ground to a halt. The barbed gate swung open automatically, and I expected the vehicle to trundle inside to park up along with the others in the parking lot. But it didn’t. It moved forward only slightly, until it was half inside the gates, half out of them. And then, with the shuddering of metal, the entrance to the crematorium swung open. Out stepped ten armored IBSI members. They hurried toward the tank. Two hatches opened up on either side of it. The men surrounded the vehicle, reaching in through the openings and pulling out bodies. Dressed in the same patchwork clothing that many of the inmates of Bloodless Chicago wore, they had sacks strapped over their heads, and their wrists and ankles were bound together. Corpses, my brain immediately assumed, based on everything Orlando had told me of the tanks’ purpose.
But my eyes told me something different.
The corpses were moving. Their limbs were struggling.
They were alive.
And yet the hunters began half-carrying, half-dragging them, one by one, from the tank, across the parking lot, and through the crematorium’s steely entrance doors.
Orlando and I gaped, dumbstruck.
“Maura could be one of them!” he hissed. “She could have been one of them!”
The latter suggestion didn’t sit right with me at all. I had seen each of the bodies they had pulled out, and none of them had been short enough to be Maura. Though I supposed that they could still have her in the tank. But again, that didn’t make sense. The tank had come from the opposite direction from where Maura had been carried by the mutant.
But, apparently by desperation alone, Orlando was convinced.
“I need to go down and speak to them! Beg them, offer them anything!” His voice trailed off as he scurried to snatch up his wheel and remote, before dashing to the staircase of the building.
No, no, no.
I had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling. Not just for myself, but for Orlando, too.
Even if they were open to a barter, you didn’t just bargain with the IBSI.
They bargained with you.
Grace
>
I could only assume that Orlando had leapt down the flights of stairs in his manic hurry, for by the time I raced after him, he had already dashed out of the restaurant and emerged out in the street.
Crap.
I stalled, my heart hammering against my chest. I dared not call out to him as he ran. We were far too close to the hunters now. They were just on the other side of the building. Just a few dozen feet separated me from them.
Do I follow him? That would lead me, literally, into the IBSI’s clutches.
I wasn’t sure what exactly Orlando had meant by “offering them anything”. One way or another, he had avoided handing me over to the IBSI until now, even though he could have easily done so. But now that he had lost his sister, I found it hard to believe that he wouldn’t finally give in to the temptation.
As much as we had survived together in the past—how many hours or days had it been? I had totally lost track—blood ran thicker than water.
I decided to take a left turn and head in the opposite direction. I wanted to see if I could creep around the edge of the building and peer out on the other side while nobody was looking my way. At least then I could observe what was happening, what the heck Orlando’s game plan was—not that I thought he had any semblance of a game plan. If I heard him begin to inform them about me, I would have to dash away like a madwoman… somewhere, anywhere.
I crept around the edge of the block, slowly and cautiously, trying not to cause the slightest crunch beneath my feet. All the while I held a lighter at the ready. I arrived at the end of the building and peered around to see that Orlando had already arrived in front of the tank—which the hunters were still unloading.
“Hey,” he called. He looked so breathless and hurt as he staggered toward them, it was painful to watch. Even though he could be seconds away from ratting me out, my heart could not help but break for the sorry state of him.
“I think you have my sister,” he gasped. “She’s short, and looks very similar to me. She was abducted by one of your beasts. Please. I need her. If you could—”
Orlando’s pleas were cut short as one of the hunters sprang out of the tank. He moved up to Orlando with supernatural speed and, without warning, withdrew a needle from his pocket and stabbed it into Orlando’s neck. Orlando’s eyes bulged. The blade-wheel and remote slipped from his grasp. He dropped to the ground like a fly.
It all happened so abruptly, I let out an involuntary gasp. A gasp that immediately became my downfall. I had lost my helmet during my escape from the gang of criminals, and now I had nothing to hide behind. Their attention shot in my direction before I could back away behind the building. Recognition flashed in their eyes instantly.
Before any of the hunters could lurch for me, I blazed up a shield of fire. Every instinct screamed at me to dart in the opposite direction—run for my life while I still could. But… Orlando. I could still just about make him out through my fire, lying there on the ground. What were they going to do to him? Carry him into the crematorium along with those other hapless souls and burn him alive?
What the hell were these people thinking?
My hesitation soon left me out of options. My shield of fire was so thick in parts that I could hardly see through it. I hadn’t noticed three hunters circle and creep up behind me.
I heard what could have only been the clicking of guns. “Relinquish the flames! You have ten seconds.”
My breathing ragged, I reminded myself that they would not kill me. Not yet… or would they?
One of them fired a bullet in the air, painfully close. My eardrums reverberated from the sound.
More hunters hurried to make a wide circle and joined those who’d gathered behind me.
Two hunters picked up Orlando from the ground, placed a sack over his head, and then began to carry him through the gate, along with several other hunters carrying what appeared to be the last of the bodies from the tank.
I surged forward into the road that bordered one side of the crematorium compound, adjacent from the one I’d been standing on, in an attempt to distance myself from the men behind me. But here more hunters closed in on me from my right and my left, blocking both sides of the road.
It seemed that I would have no option but to just rush toward one of the encroaching groups. It would mean risking them shooting at me, and banking on them leaping aside at the last moment to avoid being burned.
But then a horde of mutants descended.
Their arrival was announced by bloodcurdling screeches overhead. Their beady eyes were set on me as their heavy wings beat, their beaks and talons clacking while they touched down with heavy thumps on the wet road.
I knew from experience that these beasts were far less afraid of fire. They weren’t immune to it, but they were much more daring in the face of it. They gained even more confidence when in a group.
Looking frantically toward the two men carrying Orlando across the parking lot and toward the entrance of the crematorium, I realized that now, ironically, inside the compound was the only direction that was not cornered off by mutants and hunters. Into the crematorium.
It felt like my brain had shut down as I darted forward, all the while maintaining my blaze. But as I reached the tank parked half inside, half outside the gate, an idea flashed through my brain. I verified in the space of a second that its open interior was emptied of victims before exuding into it the most intense billows of fire that I could manage. Then I stooped, shooting flames toward the tank’s underbelly, near where I hoped the fuel tank was. It caught fire shockingly fast. I backed away into the compound, bracing myself for the explosion.
I had no choice now but to move into the jaws of death—the crematorium’s compound. But I hoped that the tank would explode, forcing the hunters and mutants to scramble, and provide me with the option to back out again and…
And then it happened. The explosion came sooner than I had dared hope for. Almost too soon; I had barely gotten myself out of the way. I had doused the tank with my fire so fiercely that barely a few seconds later it went off like a bomb. The force of the blast shot outward, causing me to stumble and fall to the ground.
I heard the shouts of men and squealing of mutants, even as I fought to stand up again.
I gazed toward the metal entrance of the crematorium just in time to witness the doors slam shut. No! Dammit!
More screeching sounded, much closer this time, and less desperate than a few seconds ago. The mutants had recovered more quickly from the shock of the blast than the hunters. I glimpsed them flying over the wall toward me and my blazing aura.
My eyes traveled wildly around the parking lot until my focus fixed on the large number of tanks stored in here. I raced up to the nearest one and doused it with fire, just as I had done the first, and then raced onward until I set up a chain of explosions, one tank after the other.
As they went off in a symphony, I hurled myself toward a narrow passageway that wound round the back of the building, in between the fence and the crematorium’s back wall, in order to avoid the brunt of the explosions.
I raced down the narrow path while gazing up hopelessly at the crematorium’s towering brick wall on my right. Even though I had spotted no windows when inspecting it from a distance, I was half hoping that I would see one now—lower down in the building—that I could break into, just to get away from the mutants whom I knew would be following me anytime now. The explosions that I’d set off were nothing but distractions to delay their chase.
But there were no windows. And as I reached the end of passageway, I realized I’d hit a dead end. I’d assumed that it would extend all the way around the building. Dammit, wasn’t that a logical assumption? It didn’t matter whether it was logical or not. As I whirled around to face the direction I’d just run from, behind me and on either side of me was impenetrable brick wall. And now, in front of me, was the harrowing sight of the first of the mutants galloping toward me, their wingspan being too broad for the narrow passage.
/> Somehow, watching them lope was far more terrifying than watching them fly. Gone was any grace they might have had in flight. They looked ten times more menacing, less birdlike and more beastlike.
“No!” I roared. “No!”
I’m not going to be brought back into the IBSI’s clutches.
I’m not.
I manipulated my fire to spread as far in front of me as I possibly could, and managed to stall them in their gallop about ten feet away from me. But how long would they stay at this distance? How long would it be before the first of them braved the flames, plunged into the heat and grabbed me? Or maybe they would do no such thing. Maybe they would just stand there, ensuring that I was trapped with nowhere to run, and wait for their masters to arrive with sedative arrows. Arrows that would penetrate the flames and shoot right into my…
“Grace!” a voice boomed down from above me. A voice that was so familiar, I would have recognized it underwater.
Relief rolled through every fiber of my being, hot tears brimming in my eyes.
“Dad!” I cried.
Through my flames, I made out three figures flying over the crowd of mutants and descending on me. My dad was at the lead, followed closely by my great-uncle Lucas, and Kailyn. All three were in their solid state. My father’s face shone with sweat, his green eyes wide and alert and gleaming in the firelight.
“Dad!” I gasped again. The word felt like honey on my tongue.
He swooped down toward me, and the next thing I knew, his strong arms had wrapped around me and I was being lifted upward.
My trembling form blanketed around him. I buried my head against his chest and locked my arms around his neck so tightly I was probably strangling him.
Oh, my God, Dad!
“You found me,” I panted. “You found me!”
It felt like every single emotion I’d experienced in the past few days bubbled to the surface at once. All the stress, the fear, the uncertainty. I could no longer hold back my tears.
“It’s okay, baby,” he breathed, even as he heaved a deep sigh of relief. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”