AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then shoot me!” I shout to Ashley June. “Shoot me with the Origin dart. ”
“No—”
“Do it!” I shout. “Do it or I shoot myself. ”
“You don’t understand. She has to die!”
“No! It’s you who don’t understand. Both Sissy and I have to live. We’re the Origin. We’re the cure!”
Ashley June lowers the dart gun. “You and this heper girl—you’re not the cure. You’re the contagion. What your father discovered wasn’t ‘the cure. ’ It was a virus. ”
“What are you talking about?”
Everything starts to shake around us. The masses have arrived, and they haven’t slowed down, not even as they reach the outer fortress walls. They buffet against the walls, over and over, until the walls, unable to withstand their collective might, collapse. Pale bodies race across the grounds, blanketing the Palace in a sheet of membranous white.
Sissy. Her heper flesh shuddering, ripples of fat and muscles moving irresistibly up and down her body. Only a few more seconds before I will have lost complete control.
“Shoot me!” I yell. “Shoot me with the dart!”
“No!”
Muzzle still pressed into my chin, I start pulling the trigger.
“Gene!”
I don’t know what causes me to look up. The urgency in Ashley June’s voice or the oddity of hearing her speak my designation. But when our eyes meet, a strange resignation settles upon her. As if she’s just realized something. Slowly, and very deliberately, she places the dart gun on the floor.
Then her legs crouch, and her back arches as she prepares to launch herself at Sissy. Everything about Ashley June’s body is tense, like a drawn bow. Her eyes, though, as she gazes at me. Softer than I’ve ever seen them, with a strange quality, almost a sadness, blazing in them.
“Look to the moon,” she says. “The truth is in the moon. ”
And then she springs toward Sissy, a blur of action, her eyes rolling back, her clawed paws slashing forward.
I see them both as in a photograph, this moment frozen. Ashley June silhouetted against the window, her hair flaming behind her, descending on Sissy; and Sissy trying to rise, pushing off the floor with her sweaty arms.
I pull the trigger and the shotgun explodes.
Fifty-six
THE BLAST CATCHES Ashley June with enough force to send her flying into the window. The glass craters under the impact of her body, bulges out like a cracked eyeball, but does not break.
“Don’t,” I say.
But she does. Ashley June picks herself up, her legs buckling. Her body riddled with holes, her eyes clenched in excruciating pain, she’s blinded by the flash. She had not known to shut her eyes against the blast as I had. She sniffs the air, her nostrils flaring. Trying to locate Sissy.
“Don’t. ”
Ashley June keeps moving. Right toward Sissy.
I fire another round. A warning shot, into the window. It blasts a huge hole, one body length in diameter, right next to Ashley June. Wind gusts through. Whistling, it blows through Ashley June’s hair, and the strands seem to reach out to me like bloodstained, pleading arms.
“Don’t. ”
She crouches down to leap at Sissy.
I shoot again.
The blast pummels Ashley June almost right out of the hole in the window. She is only able to stop from falling outside by spreading her arms and catching herself on the ragged rim. Her eyeballs have disintegrated; viscous white liquid leaks out from the corners of her shut eyelids. Like tears.
“Please,” I say.
She leaps, once more, and I pull the trigger for the last time.
The blast swallows up my hellish scream.
She’s flung outside into the open sky. For a long moment, she hangs suspended in the great wide emptiness of the night. She looks so alone. And then she falls. Shards of glass sparkle around her, twinkling, blinking, then are no more.
Fifty-seven
I PUT MY mind on lockdown. Refuse to think, to acknowledge the horror of what I have done. There is only what must be done next, and quickly, before the heper odors, still thickening, overcome me. The dart gun.
I scuttle across the floor to where Ashley June laid it down. My neck is cracking, head flickering from side to side, drool seemingly pouring out from my pores now. Desire revolting against my will, beginning to get the upper hand. With trembling hands, I turn the dart gun around until the muzzle is pressed against my leg. I pull the trigger. A sharp sting on my thigh.
Ice flames sweep over me.
I don’t even remember collapsing to the ground. When I come to, Sissy is leaning over me, cradling my head in her lap. Five seconds might have passed, or five hours—it feels like both, it feels like neither.
