Annihilation (Shadowmark Book 2) Page 2

  She didn’t feel detached from the fire, though. It was creeping toward her, and more trees had caught fire. Smoke caused her already taxed lungs to wheeze.

  Gathering what was left of her wits, Mina sprinted into the trees, running as quickly as the tangled undergrowth would allow. A side road ran perpendicular to the highway, and Mina followed it. Her lungs burned for oxygen, begging her to slow down, but she pushed on. Finally, a spasm shot through her hamstring, and she tumbled into the ditch alongside the road.

  The wind blew foul-smelling smoke toward her. Mina sat up, gasping for breath, and massaged the back of her thigh until the pain subsided enough for her to stand. Then, she hobbled through the trees, away from the turmoil.

  As she crested a low hill, something down the road reflected the rays of the sun. Mina squinted. Two enormous creatures towered over the center of the road, standing upright on legs larger than pillars.

  Aliens.

  Mina ducked behind a tree, praying they hadn’t seen her. Terrified, she peeked out from her hiding place to see what the creatures were doing. They stood still as stone, their naked bodies glistening golden in the weak sunshine. They had long arms that ended in claws, and high knees and ankles that suggested they could walk on all fours as well as two. Their skin looked like gray stone, like a sculptor had roughed out their forms from a hunk of rock but had quit before fine-chiseling and polishing the completed statues. Strange markings covered their entire bodies, but at this distance, Mina could not see them clearly.

  One of the monsters shifted, its hue changing from gray to golden, and Mina caught a glimpse of its face. It had two eyes in a pointed head. It was almost human in form and yet not.

  Another blast thundered from behind, and Mina’s ears rang again as the deafening roar replaced the muffled silence. She turned. A ball of fire engulfed the stations, creating smoke so thick that the ship above disappeared entirely.

  Two soldiers emerged from the haze, running from the smoke. One jogged ahead, away from the fire while the other lagged behind, injured and coughing. He stopped and called out for his buddy to wait, but his companion continued to run straight for the invaders. Mina wanted to shout above the roar of the fire, to warn him of the danger ahead, but the words stuck in her throat.

  As he came over the rise, he must have seen the creatures, but he continued without slowing, running directly between them and along the road. The invaders did not even look at him. Why had they let him pass? Were the aliens blind?

  The second man walked to catch up, still coughing, holding his side. As he crested the hill, he stopped, eyes on the creatures. Half a second later, he broke for the trees. In a bound so quick it looked like a blur, one of the aliens pounced. The man took three steps before he collapsed beneath those terrible claws. The alien grabbed the man by the head, lifting him as he struggled to free himself. His attempts were futile, and with a crunching sound, the invader tore the head from the body and threw the parts across the pavement.

  Without pausing to consider what had happened, Mina turned into the trees and fled.

  Chapter Two

  Whispered voices drifted through the fog in Lincoln’s brain.

  “I’ve stitched him up the best I can, but he’s not recovering as fast as I would like,” someone was saying. “We need to find another donor.”

  “None of us match his blood type. What about the guy who already donated?”

  “He can’t give any more for a while yet, and I don’t think we can wait.”

  The voices were fading. Lincoln needed the people around him to know she was in Atlanta.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said Atlanta.”

  “His sister’s there. Or was. We have no way of checking.”

  Lincoln faded in and out of consciousness for several hours. He was dimly aware that they’d found another donor—Colonel Nash.

  “How long before we know if this works?”

  “Not long, sir.”

  Mina cowered all night in the dark, shaking with cold and jerking awake whenever she dozed off. As soon as the sun began to rise, she stretched her aching body and walked until she found another side road, looking carefully up and down before deciding to follow it. She trudged along slowly beneath the protection of the trees. More clouds moved in, bringing with them a damp cold. She shivered and pulled her jacket closer around her, wishing for warmer clothing and especially better shoes. Her toes ached from the cold.

  Down the road, a small truck had pulled off onto the grassy shoulder. Its trailer doors hung wide open. It was a snack truck, the kind that stocked vending machines. Wary, she surveyed it from the nearby tree line before approaching.

  The trailer had been cleaned out except for a couple of half-opened boxes of smashed chocolate cakes. Tiny bugs crawled on them, but Mina was too famished to care. She scooped up the cakes, swatted away the bugs, and stuffed a sweet pastry into her mouth, fully opening the package to lick it clean. Mina had eaten her way through three before she remembered to save something for later. Carefully wrapping the remaining cakes, she placed them in an empty cardboard box along with the five unopened packages. The bottle of lighter fluid also fit in the box, but she kept the lighters in her pockets.

  Feeling slightly more hopeful, Mina jumped down off the truck. She walked around to the small cab, trying the door. Locked. If she broke a window, she could spend the night inside. Mina looked up and down the road again and then up into the overcast sky. No, too open. What if the invaders were searching the roads?

  Feeling defeated, she walked back into the trees. Darkness fell, accompanied by more cold and misting rain. Mina gathered wood for a fire. Wanting to build something that would last all night, she grabbed the largest branches she could find and piled them to her knees. After pouring lighter fluid over all of it, Mina held one of the lighters to a stick wrapped in leaves. As soon as the leaves caught, she threw it on the logs. The lighter fluid flared brightly for a minute, the flames licking the logs before suddenly petering out. She repeated the process, only to lose the flame again. Frustrated, Mina tried pouring the lighter fluid over the fire as it burned, hoping the wood would catch if it were hot enough, but nothing would burn for more than a couple of minutes. She knew it was foolish to try to light a fire in the rain, but her cold, fatigued body begged her to try. On her last attempt, more air came out of the bottle than fluid, splatting tiny bubbles on the wood.

  Cold rain poured down, quickly soaking Mina’s hair and everything below her coat. Angry, she threw the bottle into the dark woods and kicked at the logs. Then, she picked up a charred branch and hurled it at a tree with a yell. The branch bounced off, unharmed. Mina sank down to huddle under a tree and pulled up her thin hood.

  Dad and Lincoln had urged her to go hunting and camping with them many times when she was a child. She had always turned them down, claiming she didn’t want to know how her meat reached the freezer. Mina hadn’t been more than twelve the last time they asked.

  She should have at least let them teach her how to build a fire.

  Where was Lincoln now? Had Atlanta also been attacked?

  The note from Cummings hadn’t told her exactly why Lincoln was headed to Atlanta. Maybe he was going to pick up Mina and take her home, but then, that sort of gesture was out of character for Lincoln. Perhaps he had been more worried than he had seemed on the phone.

  Whatever his reasons, Mina had to get to Atlanta as soon as possible. She envisioned a map of the eastern US in her head. Charlotte was located near the North Carolina state line, she was pretty sure. Atlanta was definitely in northern Georgia. South Carolina lay in between. If she went southwest every day, using the sun to guide her, she would more or less be headed in the right direction. Of course, I could wildly offshoot and end up in Florida or Alabama.

  According to the mile markers, she had traveled twenty miles her first day. Not too bad considering her injuries. Today, after the attack at the station and more injuries, she’d made less progr
ess. She refused to think about the image of the invader walking through the fire, impervious to gunfire and flames. Refused to think about the soldier who had given his life for hers.

  A quiet sob escaped Mina’s lips. No, don’t think about it now. Focus.

  Mina took a deep, shuddering breath and tucked her icy hands into her armpits. There would be time for grieving and shock later when she was safe. Right now, she needed food and shelter. If she didn’t find sustenance, her ability to travel would be severely limited. But what else was she going to do? If she didn’t have a destination in mind, she would wander aimlessly. That she couldn’t deal with.

  Following the highway signage would be the easiest. After the attack at the truck stop, the main roads made her nervous, though. Too many people were using them, making them easy targets for the invaders, and she would have more competition for food.

  Mina considered her other options. The Appalachian Mountains bordered the western part of the state. She could find them easily if she headed west and then follow them south to Atlanta. Using the mountains as her guide, she might have a better chance of finding the city and a smaller chance of error. The mountains would provide better hiding places, too, and fewer population centers might mean fewer invaders.

  She hunkered down, pulling her hood further down over her face as the wind blew rain in her eyes. In the morning, she would keep the sun at her back and walk west. With her mind made up, Mina tucked as much of her body into her raincoat as possible.

  Calla halted along the road, listening to the patter of rain on the pavement. She hadn’t met her first contact yet, but her journey had required a detour to a state highway winding toward the mountains. A small band of US Army had escaped an attack on a gas station a few hours ago, and Calla had turned aside to hunt them.

  With their injuries, the band wasn’t difficult to track, even in the dark. Calla followed the blood trail and the scent of their sweat as they used the road to make a hasty escape. She wondered why they were running in the open before she realized they had caught up to a band of civilian survivors.

  Stupid move as they had just killed everyone. Close to one hundred people trudged through the rain on the shoulder of the road, forming a long column of bedraggled humans. The soldiers thought they were protecting the people, perhaps had promised them safety. Even convinced them to move at night for better cover. Calla smirked at the irony. The Condarri and the hybrids hunting the humans saw just as well in nighttime as day.

  She reached the rear guard in minutes, creeping up on them from behind. Using her long knife, she stabbed the first soldier at the base of the skull, angling her blade upward into his brain. He went limp, and she lowered him to the ground as the next soldier turned. With an upward slash, she drove the knife beneath his chin and up through his mouth. The last of the rearguard went down when she shot him, her suppressed handgun creating a mechanical clink as the bullet left the barrel and hit him in the forehead. All had died within seconds, an advantage of Calla’s superhuman speed. She left them to die and focused on the crowd ahead.

  A civilian woman looked back and spotted Calla lunging for the nearest human. Lightning streaked across the sky, and her eyes swept over the dead bodies on the ground.

  The woman screamed, and others turned. Panicked. Unmoved, Calla continued her slaughter.

  Like a wild animal in human form, she cut through the first ranks as the people scrambled to get away from her. They scattered, but Calla moved with precision, bringing one down and launching herself at another in the next move.

  The Army unit positioned throughout the column rushed to help, and Calla met them with her knife. When the first fired his automatic weapon in a three-round burst, she pulled a civilian in front of her as a shield. He screamed as bullets tore through his body. Calla felt the heat from one glance off her side, but the human shield had served its purpose, and her injury was minor. She would heal overnight.

  Seeing they had killed a civilian, the soldiers hesitated. Calla raised her sidearm. Even in the darkness, her aim was perfect. One shot dispatched each soldier. More arrived, and they fired and tried to surround her, but she cut through them like grass under a mower.

  The last one evaded her, throwing himself behind an abandoned car to pop up and shoot from behind.

  Since the civilians had scattered, Calla grabbed a dead soldier’s automatic rifle and found her own cover, trading shots with the stubborn man until he was out of ammunition. With her superhuman hearing, she heard the click when he loaded a new magazine.

  Calla seized her opportunity to run out from behind her car and hop on top of his cover. Surprised at her speed, he raised his gun to shoot, but Calla had the advantage. He went down under her knife, and she relished the kill, the victory.

  The errand wasn’t complete, though.

  Stealing his remaining ammunition, Calla turned toward the trees and fields beyond where the mass of people had fled.

  Chapter Three

  The rain was unrelenting, and Mina slept very little, dozing fitfully as morning approached. When she rose, her numb toes and fingers refused to work independently, and she could barely place the remaining cakes in her pockets.

  In the feeble light of morning, her plan to find Lincoln seemed pale and impossible. She had no idea how many miles lay between her and Atlanta. How many invaders. How many obstacles.

  Mina took a deep, steadying breath and took a cake out of her pocket. The sugared cake tasted good, and her spirits lifted as she licked chocolate off the wrapper. If she had survived, Lincoln could have, too.

  She wasn’t even certain that Atlanta had been attacked, either. With a rueful smile, Mina shook her head. That idea was blind optimism.

  With the overcast sky, finding east proved impossible. She would have to implement her plan when it cleared. Mina stood and viciously beat mud off her jeans. Her stomach growled, but she refused to eat another cake now, not before she found more food to replace it. Unable to bring herself to return to the roads, Mina abandoned her feeble campsite and slipped farther away from the city.

  “LINCOLN? LINCOLN?” Alvarez asked. “Can you hear me? They’re looking in the tunnel. We haven’t found Halston, but they’re looking.”

  “It’s going to take days, maybe weeks,” Nelson said. “I don’t care about finding that psycho. Let him rot down there.”

  Lincoln lay on a cot in a large tent. Carter, Nelson, and Alvarez stood near him. Faded light diffused through the tent’s fabric. Everything smelled like sweat and dirt. Oh, that was him.

  “He’s awake,” Alvarez said.

  Carter leaned around Nelson to look at Lincoln. “How do you feel?”

  “Been better. What happened?” His mouth was dry, his voice hoarse.

  “Halston stabbed you. Don’t you remember?” Alvarez asked. The Army jacket was gone, and she shivered in her light beige coat.

  “I remember. What happened after that?”

  “By the time we figured out what was going on, Halston had already grabbed your gun. Carter swung a torch at him, but Halston dodged him and bolted down Corridor B.”

  “Would’ve been better if I’d hit him with it,” Carter said.

  “He might have shot you, though,” Alvarez said, frowning.

  “Don’t know why he didn’t. Still, he was fast, very fast.” Carter looked troubled for a moment and then smiled at Lincoln.

  Alvarez moved to the foot of Lincoln’s cot. “We don’t know where he went after that. You were losing a lot of blood.”

  Carter pulled something from his pocket and held it up for Lincoln to see. Lincoln squinted, his eyes focusing slowly. It was the sketchbook sliced almost in two and covered in dark blood.

  “They found this in your pocket,” Carter said. “Looks like it stopped the knife from doing any serious organ damage.”

  Lincoln reached out and felt the gash in the middle. “Sorry about your book.”

  Carter scoffed and laid it on the bed beside Lincoln. “For luck,” h
e said.

  Lincoln looked around at his friends. They were all a little worse for wear, sporting bruises and scratches on their faces and hands. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

  The team stood there awkwardly, like they wanted to say more or thought he was going to say something embarrassing.

  Lincoln spared them by asking, “What happened to the map?”

  Nelson shifted from one foot to the other. “We think Halston grabbed it. Sorry, man.”

  “That’s great.” Lincoln’s head hurt, and he laid it back down on his pillow. “How’d you get out?”

  “We followed the trail of boot prints and guessed. Schmidt was waiting for us outside. When we didn’t come back to our tents, he figured we had gone to the mine and followed us. He helped get you back to camp.”

  For once, Lincoln was glad Schmidt was so nosy. He’d have to tell the kid as much.

  He shivered in the cold. Why hadn’t anyone thought to light a fire or bring more blankets?

  “Any news from outside?” he asked.

  Carter and Nelson exchanged grim glances.

  Alvarez glanced nervously at them, too. “Actually, we just got word on the radio,” she said. “We’ve heard about Atlanta and some other places.”

  “And?” Lincoln did not like the look on her face. Dread began creeping into his bones, which were already aching from his ordeal.

  “And I’m sorry, Lincoln, but they’re completely destroyed. All of them. New York, DC… Atlanta.”

  Nelson jumped in. “Power’s out everywhere. Widespread blackouts across the nation. From what the colonel pieced together, the attacks happened immediately after the blackouts.”

  “How do you know?” Lincoln asked.