Fear My Mortality (16 page)

“Yeah. Okay.”

“And Hannah, can you do me a big favor? Can I borrow some money?”

There was a pause.

“I promise I’ll pay it back. It’s just … everything’s kind of … I just really need your help.”

Her voice softened. “You can count on me, Ava. Tomorrow morning? Ten o’clock?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Great.”

“Take care, Ava.”

I clicked off the phone and sagged onto the bed, ready to sleep and forget.

The darkness lifted beyond my eyelids and a sudden rush of awareness took over. Blood on the carpet. Glass in my back. My eyes shot open, but with the quilt over the window, I couldn’t tell what time it was. I slipped out of bed and padded across the floor, tripping over an arm flung around the end of my blanket.

Michael was asleep on the floor, his head resting on the rolled up butterfly quilt. He must have dragged it off the bed and over himself. No wonder I’d been cold in the night.

I watched his face, how calm he looked while everything churned inside me. Maybe if he stayed there, asleep, there would be one part of my life that was under control, one part that was peaceful. I glanced at the door where he’d wedged a chair under the handle and I could pretend—just for a moment—that my room was safe.

Then I came upon the kit and the bottle of methylated spirits resting on my dressing table, a nasty reminder. I backed away from it, running my hand over my eyes as I crept over to the window. I pulled aside the quilt and cracked open the blinds, peering down at Mrs. Hubert’s low-set, brick home. Dark gray settled over her roof, a first brief glint off the solar panels she’d had installed two weeks before. I guessed she didn’t have any idea then that final death was only a couple of weeks away.

A shadow passed behind her window. I frowned down at her living room, thinking that something moved there. That wasn’t possible. She was gone. Everybody was.

Unless …

I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the sudden tension in them. I was about to turn away from the window when there was a
crack
. The sound crashed through the air moments before glass and wood shattered over me.

I jerked, hunching my body, curling downward and away from the falling debris. The quilt came with me, sliding to the floor, and something bit my ear.

I followed the object as it flew through the air and lodged in the wall. Then I jumped to my feet and leaped over where Michael was still asleep.

He lurched up, groggy, driven awake by the crash. “Ava!”

We collided and one of his arms came up around me, his eyes meeting mine as he pulled me against his bare chest. In one swift movement, he twisted us around, his back to the window, blocking me. My eyes widened. A shout surfaced in the back of my throat as the next bullet hit him.

Michael braced. There was another bullet—and another. With each, he pushed me away with rigid arms, spitting blood, still holding me so his body protected mine, but not so close that the bullets might speed through him to me.

“Get down.” His voice was a rasp, a bare whisper.

With a shock, I realized that he was going to take as many bullets as he had to until I was out of range. His words from the night before rang in my ears.
Make amends.
I knew it from the look on his face and the way he held me so tightly, right where I wouldn’t get hurt.

I dropped to the floor and squashed myself against the carpet and he followed me down. At the last minute, he punched off the floor as if he was about to bash out a round of push-ups. Something bronze slipped out of his mouth.

“No.” I put my hand over my mouth as I realized that the first bullet had lodged in the back of his head. “No, no, no. Are you okay?”

His face contorted in concentration.

“There are two more,” I said, wanting to help, but not knowing how. He shoved my hand away, balancing on one arm as if it was the easiest thing in the world. I guessed, compared to spitting out a bullet, it was.

“I … can count.” He ground out the words as his whole body shuddered, his eyes squeezed shut. Something dropped from his shoulder. Another bullet. He flopped over and reached into the wound in his stomach, snatching out the final bullet before his skin closed. Dropping it onto the carpet, he ran his hand over his face. “I almost healed over it.”

My stomach turned. I tried to get closer to him, but he shook his head at me. “Just give me a moment. I’ll be okay, and then we have to get out of here.”

The blind hung in tatters at the window. There was no cover now, nothing to conceal us other than the bed. I couldn’t believe a drone hadn’t soared inside the room already. I looked from the exposed opening to Michael. He was only wearing blue boxer shorts and my face went red. I glanced away, but he raised his eyebrows.

I rushed to speak before he could say anything. “They’re using bullets. Not tranquilizers. And where are the drones?”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He grimaced. “It’s not Hazards.”

My heart pounded. “It’s Bashers, isn’t it?” They were out there.

As I spoke, another bullet bashed out the remaining glass from the window and knocked off part of the wooden surround. He grabbed my hand, urging me forward, and the shock from his touch stung all the way up my arm, so sharp my eyes watered. I crawled as fast as I could toward the door with Michael close behind me.

“I’ll get the door,” he said. “Stay down and cover your head.”

I wasn’t sure how he was going to get the chair out from under the door handle without eating more bullets. When he reached it, he crouched, poised against the wall. His hand shot out. He snatched the chair, angling it out from under the handle and flung it—one-handed—up into the air. The chair fragmented as a round of bullets cut through it. I face-planted on the carpet, throwing my arms over my head as Michael shot up into the path of gunfire, curled his hand around the doorknob and threw it open. He ducked, just as another bullet tasted the bedroom wall.

“C’mon, Ava. We have to move.”

But I remembered the medical kit on the dressing table. I’d happily leave the methylated spirits behind—even the bottles of nectar—but I needed that kit, the bandages and needles and thread. It may as well have been on the other side of the world right then.

Michael followed my line of sight and shook his head. “No, Ava. Don’t.”

I shimmied across the floor as he scooted out and tried to grab me to stop me from committing suicide. I readied myself, took a deep breath, and then launched myself toward the blue kit, into the path of gunfire.

Michael shouted and I caught his swift movement. As my hand closed around the kit, he leaped up and out toward the bed with something in his arms. In the next instant, he propelled himself off the bed end, flinging out the butterfly quilt. The giant pink creature spread out like a flag of war, blocking out everything around me. Bullets whipped through it and cotton filling floated like snow. One bullet hit my shoulder, but I didn’t have time to think. I scooped up the kit and plummeted. The blanket engulfed me and Michael with it, the two of us crashing to the floor, wrapped and twisted.

I heard a voice at my ear. “You’d better not be dead.”

“I’m okay. My shoulder hurts, but I think it only grazed me.” I checked and confirmed. “It nicked me.”

His arms trapped me so I couldn’t move. “Are you going to do anything else insane? Tell me now, all right?”

I shook my head, not sure if he could see it. I guessed he did because, in the next moment, we rolled out onto the floor. Clutching the kit to my chest, I shuffled forward, but before I dumped it into my duffel bag, I snapped open the lid and removed the two little vials of black liquid nestled inside, shoving them across the floor. With all the side effects, they were no use to me. Then I dragged my bag around the corner where he propelled me.

“Listen, we have to head downstairs to my car. And then we’re getting out of here.”

I tried to focus on his eyes and not the shooting tingle where he gripped my arm. “They’re waiting for us out there. There’s no way we can get past them—”

“Getting in the car and getting out of here is the only plan we’ve got.”

I tried to rid my mind of the image of him spitting out a bullet. There was still blood on his chin. I wanted to wipe it away. I reached out—almost touched him—but he grabbed me and pulled me after him.

Turning right past Mom’s study, we headed through the hall to the internal garage door.

He said, “Your parents took the remote control, so I’m going to start the car, press the button and jump in. Okay.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll press the button. You start the engine.”

“No way, Ava. They’ll have guns trained on the door.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I raced to the passenger side and threw my bag behind the seat. Michael opened the driver side, turned the key in the ignition, and raced to the back of the garage.

His chest rose in a deep breath. Then he thumped the button with his fist and ran back to the car. I expected to hear the chatter of gunfire. The door was already a third of the way up when he hurtled in, slammed the door, and revved the engine.

I waited with my heart pounding in my throat as the metal door rose. I stared out the back of the window. Michael revved the engine, inching backward without getting too close, waiting and looking, arm tensing on the gear shift, ready to gun it out of there as soon as the gap widened.

The door rolled up high enough, and I gasped.

A single figure stood waiting, covered tightly from head to foot in motley brown and beige Basher cloth so I couldn’t see her face, but her figure marked her clearly a woman. She stood very still, all alone, but she held what looked like a bomb launcher.

Michael saw it too. “What the—” He froze for a split second.

I wondered how many pieces I’d explode into. I wondered how Michael’s body would heal itself. Whether he would fragment and then pull himself back together like the people who were hit by the nuclear bomb. I wondered how that would work. By his expression, he didn’t exactly know himself.

We both knew I’d be dust afterward.

His jaw clenched and the car roared backward, straight toward the figure.

“You’re going to hit her!” I shouldn’t have cared whether we ran her down or not. She was a Basher, which meant she was a fast healer. Being pummeled by a car wouldn’t keep her down for long.

“It’s too late.” Michael’s face turned white. He heard it too. The whoosh.

As the car escaped the garage, flying down the drive, the bomb zipped toward us. Michael’s foot came off the accelerator. He let go of the wheel. In the second before the bomb hit, he threw his body across the gap between us, shoving me hard up against the passenger door, and at the same time reaching for the handle.

I dropped as the door gave way.

“Michael!” I screamed for him as I crashed toward the concrete driveway. Trying to shield my head, I threw my arms up as I thwacked the ground.

Michael leaned halfway out of the car, trying to get out, tugging at something.

The missile hit.

Flames burgeoned. Windows cracked open. Metal tore apart. Somehow, I was clear of the explosion, but heat scorched my face, my arms, my legs, more heat than I could bear, and all my thoughts ripped apart. Michael was so close, yet so far. I’d made it out of the car, but I wasn’t far enough away to miss his expression.

A second explosion burst across us. Michael’s face floated in flames for a split second. He found me, saw that I was clear, that I was safe. Then, with a faint smile, he shattered.

Terminal