Last Chance--A Novel Read online

  We made for the aerial tram.

  Fighting our way along the cliff, our backs to thin air. The sprayer started to sputter, running out of juice.

  At last we banged into the tram. It floated a few feet off the ground, ready to descend.

  I wafted the last of the mist through the cabin. Two Hatchlings pawed at their melting faces and pitched through the doors on the far side.

  As Patrick, Alex, Rocky, and JoJo piled in, I turned to face the driving throng and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  I ripped the weed sprayer off my back and threw it at them. It bonked off a Hatchling’s head. He was undeterred.

  From behind, Patrick and Alex each grabbed one of my shoulders and meat-hooked me into the cabin. Rocky slammed the door shut after me.

  I pounced up onto the operator’s seat. The bubble front window showed nothing but open skies and Stark Peak way down below.

  Home-free sailing.

  I yanked the lever to release the brake.

  Nothing happened.

  ENTRY 59

  In disbelief, I pulled the lever again. And then again.

  Hatchlings piled onto the cabin from all sides, a roundabout view of waiting death. The floating tram swayed from side to side. Gentle at first. And then not.

  I started punching other buttons at random, but nothing happened. “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “It might have been wise to ascertain that the lift was working before we blaze-of-gloried ourselves out here,” Alex said.

  Patrick rested the shotgun barrel across my shoulder. I looked over at it. He covered my ear with one hand and pulled the trigger with the other.

  At close range? The whole ear-covering thing? Not that helpful.

  The front bubble window shattered out, a confetti throw of shards into the abyss. Patrick stepped past me and up onto the control panel so his torso and head were sticking out into the open air. He faced back over the top of the tram.

  “I see the brake,” he said.

  He aimed above the cabin with his shotgun. “It’ll either knock off the brake or hit the cable and send us plummeting to our deaths.”

  “Patrick,” I said.

  The shotgun wobbled. He could only hold it with one hand; he needed the other to grip the frame of the blown-out window. He looked down at me. I could barely see his eyes beneath the cowboy hat, and they looked amused.

  “What the hell,” he said.

  And then he fired.

  We torpedoed off the edge of the cliff, and for a moment I thought we were gonna just keep falling.

  But no, the tram was still clinging to the steel cables overhead. A slew of Hatchlings tumbled over the cliff in our wake, several more sliding off the roof.

  Patrick fell back inside, falling across the open cabin and hammering against the rear window.

  Rocking violently from side to side, the cabin whipped down toward the first supporting tower. As we reached it, the tram pitched to the side. JoJo and Rocky screamed. We were gonna smash right into the tower.

  We clipped the edge of the massive metal post. One wall of the cabin was sheared off, door and all. Rocky and JoJo got knocked over the back bench, plastered to the rear window with Patrick. As we seesawed to the other side, Alex slid out backward on her belly toward the opening. Her fingernails dug for purchase on the cabin floor, but there was none to be found.

  I fell out of the operator’s chair, tangling in a seat belt. As I slipped through, it lassoed my head and one arm, holding me in place.

  I reached out and grabbed for Alex’s hand. It slipped from my grasp. My fingers caught hers, hooking them with my knuckles, but the centrifugal force was too great, pulling her away.

  Alex slid back, her legs falling through the opening. Her hand shot out and grabbed my leg. Her arm flexed, her hand gathering a fistful of fabric above my knee. For an instant we held that awkward equilibrium. Movement flickered above. A Hatchling stuck his head over the edge of the roof, leaning down past the sheared-off opening to swipe at Alex. All the while we hurtled toward the next tower.

  Behind Alex the mountainside flew by in a blur. My stomach muscles strained as I reached for her. The Hatchling lowered himself, clinging to the roof, the tips of his nails scraping Alex’s back. She hung on to my leg, her teeth gritted. I could hear my cargo scrubs tearing. I prayed they’d hold.

  They tore.

  More precisely, the cargo pocket ripped open.

  Sending both viral-vector syringes rattling across the floor of the cabin.

  Helpless, I watched them go. One glided straight off the sill, sailing into the void.

  The other banged against the side of a bench, spun lazily for a moment on the floor, and then flew out after it. I watched our last hope zip across the threshold, free in the air.

  Alex shot her other hand out behind her and grabbed it. Her body stretched as far as humanly possible, her legs dangling in space, one hand gripping the syringe, the other holding on to the torn flap of my cargo pocket.

  The Hatchling finally reached her. With a lunge, he closed his claws around her forearm just above her fist clenching the syringe.

  Alex screamed.

  But she didn’t let go.

  The Hatchling shook her arm, the acid sending up curls of smoke. I smelled burning flesh.

  Still Alex held on to the syringe.

  And to my leg.

  My fingers were inches away from her hand as it gripped my torn cargo pocket.

  The fabric gave way.

  Alex went weightless. Her hand flailed up.

  With a final effort, I surged forward and grabbed for her wrist.

  Caught it.

  As I raked her back inside the cabin, she twisted around and kicked the Hatchling in the side of the head so hard that his skull caved in at the temple. He released her forearm, plummeting off the roof.

  As he fell, the other tram zipped past, being hauled upslope as a counterweight. It plowed into the Hatchling, sending him flying, a jumble of broken limbs.

  The cabin was still swinging like mad. I ripped Alex in to me and gripped her as tight as I could. She hugged me back. That felt so good I didn’t even notice that my shoulder had been dislocated. When I shifted, it popped into place again with an audible click.

  Alex fumbled the syringe at me, and I shoved it into the cargo pocket on my other thigh. Her skin bore the acid mark of the Hatchling’s three-fingered grip, puffy and swollen.

  In the rear, Patrick held on to JoJo and Rocky, bracing against the benches with his legs. The cabin hammered through the next supporting tower, the steel rise sailing past, missing us by inches.

  We were really flying now.

  Two-thirds down the hill and picking up steam. The city loomed larger and larger. We were bouncing violently, the whole view gone jerky. If we didn’t slow the tram, we were going to fly right off the steel cables.

  Alex and I managed to claw our way to the operator seat.

  The ground whipped by below. Pitted rocks thrust up from the brush like molars.

  We scoured the controls for anything resembling a backup brake. No luck.

  I climbed up onto the control panel and pulled myself through the shattered front window, driving the baling hooks into the roof so I could hold on.

  Alex grabbed my leg. “What are you doing?”

  I screamed back into the wind, “Maybe I can activate a brake up there by hand!”

  She just pointed ahead.

  The bottom terminal was coming up fast.

  I kicked myself up onto the roof, using the baling hooks like ice picks, my body swinging around crazily. I dragged myself toward the mount where the wheel set rolled along the steel tracks. I spotted a red emergency-brake lever to one side, intact but pitted with pellets from Patrick’s shotgun.

  The cabin blasted through another supporting tower, bucking high and then dipping so low that treetops whacked the bottom of the cabin.

  It bounced me right off the roof of the tram
.

  I floated peacefully, the world rotating around me. The cabin sailed by beneath me, out of reach.

  I was going to fall hundreds of feet and break apart on the rocks below, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  As I spun upside down, one of the steel cables flashed by in my peripheral vision. I twisted and flung out a baling hook.

  And snared the cable.

  My falling weight ripped the handle from my fist.

  But the nylon loop held, biting into the flesh of my wrist. I kicked and writhed, sliding down the steel cable as if it were a zip line.

  I risked a look ahead of me.

  Four faces filled the cabin’s back window, staring at me helplessly. Beyond them the bottom terminal. If they hit it at this speed, there’d be nothing left but blood splotches.

  I yanked myself up, swinging my other baling hook onto the cable.

  I was picking up steam now, zip-lining along, closing the gap between me and the tram. When I tucked my legs up into my stomach, balling up my body, I went even faster.

  I approached the cabin as the cabin approached the bottom station.

  There’d be almost no time.

  My eyes were watering like crazy, but I blinked away the tears, squinting into the chill wind.

  I closed in on the tram.

  Hoisted my body up just before I hit the rear window.

  I slid across the top of the cabin.

  Knocked the brake as I glided past.

  The wheels screamed their complaint. The current tore away wisps of gray smoke.

  The tram slowed drastically, which only made me feel like I was speeding up. I zipped right across the roof.

  Just before I flew off the other side, Alex popped up from the broken front window. She was right in front of me, braced like a baseball catcher.

  I hammered into her.

  She made a sound: Oomph.

  She clutched me in a sweaty embrace. We fell onto the control panel and pinballed to the floor. I landed right on top of her. We were nose to nose.

  Above us the wheels squealed. In the back, Rocky and JoJo burrowed into Patrick.

  Through the shattered bubble window, we watched the bottom terminal loom. Larger.

  Larger yet.

  “Did you slow us enough?” Alex asked me.

  I stared down into her green, green eyes. “Let’s hope,” I said.

  We held each other, braced for impact.

  The impact didn’t disappoint.

  At first it was a catastrophic confusion. Rent metal. My teeth vibrating in my skull. A science-fiction warble of the steel cable snapping. The air filled with glass. We banged to earth so hard it felt like the floor swung up to hammer us.

  Freed from the cables, the cabin skated across the lobby of the terminal like a hockey puck. Fancy light fixtures whipped by overhead.

  A great shattering announced that we’d penetrated the row of lobby windows facing the street. Sparks showered up as we hit the asphalt. Rocketing toward the intersection, we ran over a female Hatchling. Then two males.

  We ping-ponged off a parked truck, careened through the intersection, passing a busload of Drones who stared out the windows at us as we flew past. Spinning slowly, we coasted up onto the sidewalk and came to rest, rocking gently on a bed of shrubs in front of the courthouse.

  We coughed and hacked and groaned. The air was filled with dust and smoke.

  “Is everyone alive?” Patrick shouted.

  “Mostly,” I said.

  We pulled ourselves from the wreckage. The city center still looked relatively empty, the search parties presumably still out at the periphery. But there were scattered Hatchlings and Drones. And they were already running for us.

  We bolted up the steps into the courthouse. Through the lobby, a courtroom, a judge’s chambers, and out a window into an alley.

  Footsteps behind us.

  Through another window into a department store, sprinting up the aisles, knocking over mannequins, getting tangled in clothes.

  The footsteps still coming. More of them now.

  Out a side door, across a street, up another alley, hiding behind a giant black Humvee.

  We panted and panted, peering beneath the high chassis at the department store across from us.

  “… can’t run … anymore…” Rocky said.

  After everything we’d gone through, I, too, felt at the end of my endurance. My legs throbbed. My lungs burned. My shoulder ached.

  Across the way our pursuers came into view in the windows of the department store, heading to the sliding front doors. Coming right in our direction.

  Rocky stifled a sob.

  A creaking sound came from behind us.

  We whirled around in terror.

  But it was just JoJo, holding open the giant wooden door of an old church right behind us. We’d been so focused on hiding that we hadn’t even noticed it.

  She smiled, keeping Bunny’s head tucked under her arm.

  Alex headed inside. “Sanctuary,” she said.

  ENTRY 60

  We huddled in the bell tower like low-rent Hunchbacks of Notre-Dame. We’d scampered up the creaky wooden ladders, losing ourselves in the network of walkways and scaffolding that threaded around the old apse. From here we could keep an eye on the city below.

  Patrols of Harvesters tore through the streets and alleys. We’d closed and barred the weighty oak doors of the church beneath us. The stone façade was impenetrable. More important, the Drones and Hatchlings centered their search a few blocks away from the department store, figuring we’d had time to get in a bit more distance from where they’d last seen us.

  The setting sun sent an orange glow across the tower, reflecting off the giant bronze bell overhead and casting us in a twilight hue. We leaned against the brick walls. It had been hours since our escape and it still felt like we were catching our breath.

  I rubbed the aching tendons around my shoulder. It didn’t help. My cheek stung from where the Hatchling had sliced it with his nail. Alex tended to the cracked swelling on her forearm. Rocky and JoJo were off to the side, tucked into the corner of the belfry. Rocky had curled up like a puppy and fallen asleep. JoJo was sitting cross-legged, hopping Bunny up and down in her lap. The Head of Bunny had never looked worse. Tattered, dotted with acid burns from Hatchling spatter, a missing half-marble eye. But JoJo loved her just the same.

  Patrick sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his black Stetson slanted. He looked well rested and calm. I had no idea how that was possible, but that was Patrick for you.

  On the stone floor between me, Patrick, and Alex sat the single syringe. Miraculously, it had remained unbroken in my cargo pocket.

  One viral vector.

  And—in me and my brother—two dispersal bombs.

  The math sucked.

  The three of us did our best not to look at the syringe, but it was screaming for our attention there between us. It felt like some macabre game of spin the bottle. Which—if you really thought about it—was kinda appropriate.

  Alex looked away, and I followed her gaze. To the west across Stark Peak, the City Hall spire rose, the highest point in the skyline. It used to represent such hope for me. I remember marveling at it on our third-grade field trip. They’d even let us onto the roof for an up-close look. We’d stood at the base, leaned back on our heels, and stared at it thrusting into the sky. It was the first time I’d ever encountered vertigo from looking up. But especially for us kids from a farm-and-ranch town, it seemed to hold all the promise of what mankind had to offer.

  And now, there on that spire, we would make our last stand for mankind.

  How had Zach put it? A high altitude in the middle of a dense population.

  Yup, City Hall spire seemed just about right.

  If we could get there.

  If the scientists’ viral vector worked with whatever dispersal mechanism had been implanted in my and Patrick’s DNA.

  If the engineered, weaponize
d pathogen worked against the Harvesters.

  I pushed my doubts away. We had one play to make, and we would have to make it. There’s no point second-guessing your final option.

  “We’re down to our last day,” I said.

  Alex stayed still, but her eyes shifted over to me. “Before I die. Or before one of you does.”

  “What does that mean?” JoJo asked.

  “New Year’s baby,” Alex said. “I was born just after dawn. Tomorrow’s December thirty-first. The last day where I still get to be me.”

  “I know that,” JoJo said. “But Patrick and Chance are gonna save you, right?”

  I said, “That’s right, Junebug.”

  “So what does she mean that one of you might die?”

  No one answered.

  “The streets are too busy to make a move,” Patrick said to me. “We gotta wait for it to die down a little.”

  JoJo said, “Why can’t you just do whatever you’re doing here?”

  “We need to get as high up as possible,” Patrick said. “For wind currents and all that.”

  “What are you gonna do?” JoJo asked, fear taking over her voice.

  Patrick met my eyes. “We’re not sure yet.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We are.” I leaned forward, took the syringe, and put it back in my pocket.

  “No,” Patrick said. “No way.”

  “You guys can be together,” I said. “It’s always been you two.”

  A tear rolled down Alex’s cheek. “No,” she said. “It’s always been us three.”

  “We don’t have that choice,” I said. “Not anymore. One of us has to, or everything’s over.”

  JoJo was crying now. “I’m scared,” she said. “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

  Patrick’s gaze didn’t waver from me. “I won’t let you,” he said.

  I looked at him. “Big brother, you don’t have a choice.”

  Patrick got up and walked out of the belfry.

  JoJo started to sob.

  I looked at Alex and nodded for her to leave me and JoJo alone.

  Alex got up, picked up Rocky, and carried him out.