Gone Series: Plague Part 15

Jamal punched her in the side of the head.

Brittney blinked and punched back. She kicked and flailed and punched as well as she could from her position half beneath a pew. And Jamal kicked her back viciously.

But Jamal could still feel pain. He backed away suddenly, eyes wild and dripping sweat. He leveled the rifle at her.

"I don't want to shoot you," Jamal pleaded.

"You can't kill me," Brittney said and got heavily to her feet.

"I know. Drake told me you'd say that. But I can blow up your face and then you won't be better right away. That's what he said. He told me to shoot you right in the face and tie you up."

"I wish you could kill me," Brittney said. And then, in a loud voice, trying to shout at heaven, she cried, "Jesus, I am in your house. I am in the house of the Lord begging you for death!"

"Just let me tie you up," Jamal pleaded. "He'll whip me if I don't." There were tears running down his face and Brittney felt sorry for him. They were both bound to Drake, unable to get away from him.

Jamal aimed the gun at her face.

"Don't," Brittney said. "We have to fight Drake, we have to get help. Sam. He has to burn Drake to ashes and scatter the ashes in the ocean."

"Please don't make me do this," Jamal pleaded.

Brittney yelled, "Help! Some-"

Orc had run until he was tired. That didn't take long. He was drunk and dehydrated. Weaker than he should have been. More easily tired.

But despair drove him on, staggering and weeping and bellowing in rage through the night.

"Never wanted to be no guard," he yelled at the closed and darkened houses. "Everybody hear that? I didn't ask to be no prison guard!"

He stood swaying back and forth, big stone-fingered fists clenched.

"No one wants to talk to me, huh?"

He smashed one arm down on the roof of a car. The driver's-side window had long since been beaten in so the door could be opened and the car could be searched. The trunk was open, too, and the recoil from Orc's blow made it bounce.

"Need another bottle," he muttered. Then louder, yelling at the darkened windows and locked doors, "I want a bottle. Someone give me a bottle so I won't hurt anyone."

No answer. The streets were silent.

He started crying again and brushed angrily at the tears. He started running once more, ran for a block and stopped, wheezing and threatening to topple over.

Then he spotted the boy. A kid. Maybe eight, maybe nine or ten, hard to say. The boy was walking bent over, holding his stomach. Every few feet he would stop and cough and then groan from the pain of coughing.

"Hey-ey!" Orc yelled. "You! Go get me a bottle." The word "bottle" came out "bah-hull."

The sick boy blinked and seemed only then to notice the monster in the street ahead of him. He clutched a stop sign to keep himself from collapsing.

"Hey. You, kid. I'm talking to you!"

The boy started to answer, then started coughing. He coughed and groaned and sat down.

Orc stomped over to him. "You ig, um, ig ... ignoring me?"

The boy shook his head weakly. He made a gesture toward his throat, tried to speak, couldn't.

"I don't want to ... ," Orc began, but lost the thread of his speech. "Just go get me a bah-hull."

The boy coughed in Orc's face.

Orc swatted him with the back of his hand.

The boy hit the signpost so hard it rang. Then fell onto his back on the sidewalk.

Orc stared stupidly, expecting the boy to start crying. But the kid wasn't moving. Wasn't coughing.

Orc felt ice water flood his veins.

"I didn't ... ," Orc started to say.

He looked around, feeling sudden, overwhelming shame. No one had seen him.

He tried to lean down and prod the boy with his finger, but the blood rushed to his head and he almost pa.s.sed out.

"Whatever," Orc said sullenly, and headed off again into the night.

But quieter now.

Chapter Thirteen.

48 HOURS, 29 MINUTES.

BRIANNA TOOK A deep breath of chilly night air. Was that a breeze? Excellent: a breeze for the Breeze.

"Here, Drake-y, Drake-y," she said.

She was in the middle of the street. As long as Drake hadn't found a gun, she would be safe. Drake was quick with that whip hand of his, but not Breeze quick. No one was Breeze quick.

"Oh, Dra-ake," she sang in a loud voice. "Oh, Dra-ake. Come out, come out wherever you are."

She ran down Pacific Boulevard, turned onto Brace, and shot back up Golding.

She heard Orc bellowing drunkenly in the distance. It would be easy to locate him. But Orc wasn't the problem.

No sign of Drake. She paused at the corner. Either she could just zoom randomly around or she could go methodically, street by street.

Methodical was not Brianna's thing.

Better to taunt him, tease him into showing himself. "Here, Drake-y, Drake-y."

She zoomed to Astrid's house. No sign of him there.

She zoomed to the firehouse. To the school. To Clifftop and down the beach, kicking a tail of sand behind her as she ran.

Where would he go? What would he do?

It dawned on her then: Brittney. What was Drake going to do about Brittney?

As far as Brianna knew, Drake had no power to stop Brittney from emerging.

Where would Brittney go if she were free?

Brianna turned her gaze to the ruined church. And just then, she heard the sound of voices from within.

She zoomed up the stairs and into the church as ...

BLAM!.

The explosion, a stab of yellow, blinded her. She stopped as fast as she could, but not fast enough. She slammed into a pew and flew headfirst through the air, unable to see.

Anyone else would have smashed face-first into the marble altar, but Brianna was not anyone else. As she was flying she tucked, spun, and landed on her feet on the altar. Like a cat.

The wave of pain from the impact with the pew made her gasp. But she fought down the urge to scream.

Then she saw.

And then she did scream.

The rifle blast had hit Brittney in the face and neck. The entire left side of her face was gone. Her neck was torn open. She should be spouting blood. But although the shattered flesh was red and raw as uncooked hamburger, no arteries sprayed.

And Brittney was still standing.

Jamal made a sound like a tortured animal, a howl of fear. He leveled the gun at Brittney's chest but in the half second it took him to find the trigger with his finger Brianna was on him.

She hit the barrel and knocked it away just as BLAM!

She grabbed Jamal by the neck, yanked him forward so fast his head snapped back. She punched him six times in less than a second and Jamal crumpled, blood gus.h.i.+ng from his nose and lips.

"Don't hurt me, it's not my fault!" Jamal wailed as he dropped and curled into a ball protecting both the gun and his face.

Brianna did not want to look at Brittney, really really didn't.

"Are you okay?" she asked over her shoulder. No answer from Brittney. Not surprising since her mouth was smeared all around the back of her head.

Brianna steeled herself and shot a glance at Brittney, but the whip hand was already reaching, yanking Jamal's rifle away.

Brianna pulled her knife free and leaped at Drake.

She buried the knife in Drake's chest. It was a huge blade, a bowie knife, as big as a chef's knife and a lot thicker. The blade was in all the way, up to the hilt.

Drake grinned. "This should be fun."

Brianna expected him to try to turn the gun toward her but instead he tossed it aside. Then, with his real hand, he drew the knife out of his chest, slowly, as if relis.h.i.+ng every inch of steel.

Brianna stared, mesmerized. And almost missed the sudden flick of Drake's tentacle arm as it swept behind her.

Almost missed.

Not quite.

Brianna dropped and the whip went over her head. Drake threw Brianna's own knife at her, but it wasn't even close. The knife stuck into the back of a pew.

Brianna pulled her sawed-off shotgun from her runner's pack, leveled, aimed, and fired.

The blast caught Drake in the mouth. It turned his thin-lipped smirk into a gaping hole, like a sinkhole.

Drake reached with his tentacle to feel the hole. He stuck the end of his whip hand into his own destroyed mouth. The pink-red tip came out through the back of his head and waved at Brianna.

Drake made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh if he'd had tongue and teeth and lips.

Brianna dropped back a few feet.

Drake's face seemed to melt and re-form. She could see individual teeth, white pearls in the starlight, moving like insects, crawling out of the shredded flesh to find places in newly reshaped gums.

Brianna felt for the wire she hung from her belt. It was an E string from a cello she'd found. She'd wrapped the ends around short pieces of wood to form a four-foot-long garrote.

"This is what you were going to do to me at the power plant, remember, Drake?" Brianna winced as Drake's tongue grew inside the still-gaping hole of his mouth.

"Oh, sorry, you can't really chitchat, can you?" Brianna taunted. "Well, the thing is, whether it's me running into a wire at two hundred miles an hour, or the wire running into you at two hundred miles an hour, it works just the same."

She grabbed the garrote and was behind Drake before he could blink. The wire went around Drake's neck as she was still running. The wire bit and sliced, and she felt a powerful jerk in her hands that tore one handle from her grip as the wire sliced through neck bone.

Drake's head fell. It hit the stone floor hard, and rolled onto its side, rocked a few times, and lay still.

Not enough, Brianna thought, turned, raced back, threw the loose end of the wire around Drake's waist, caught the handle, and gripped with all her strength as she backpedaled at super speed.