Last Chance--A Novel Read online

  I opened my arms, and JoJo crawled into my lap.

  I did my best to explain to her what was going to happen tomorrow. My best wasn’t very good. She beat at my chest with her little fists and then collapsed into me and cried so long I thought she’d never stop. The sun went down, and I rocked her in the darkness until at last she quieted. Her breaths were still jerky.

  “Will you come down from here with me?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “To finish our story.”

  “No,” she said. “No, I won’t.”

  She got up and ran from the belfry.

  I sat for a while, tasting the night air.

  Tomorrow at this time, I’d be dead.

  I gave myself a couple extra minutes to study the moon. How beautiful it was, blood-orange and ripe.

  A harvest moon.

  * * *

  I found Patrick and Alex down in the vast chamber of the church, talking quietly. As I approached, Alex held out her hand.

  I took it. Then Patrick took her hand and mine, the three of us standing in a circle, dwarfed by the huge golden altarpiece. Before us was a simple wooden table covered with a white linen cloth. It was so peaceful here.

  I glanced over to where Rocky and JoJo were conked out in the pews. Sleeping peacefully.

  I said, “You guys have to take care of them.”

  Alex nodded. “We can’t as well as you. But we’ll do our best.” She wiped her cheeks, not letting go of my hand. I felt wetness on my knuckles.

  “When we go tomorrow, we’ll set them up here in the bell tower,” I said. “They’ll have a good view of the city, so they’ll know when it’s safe to come down.”

  “Chance,” Patrick said. “We got it.”

  We stood at the altar, the three of us. No one knew what to say.

  Alex finally broke the silence. “Since my mom left, it’s just been us. You guys got me through. You’re the best family I ever could have asked for. All that matters…” She swallowed, hard. “All that matters is us.” She looked up. “Big Rain? Little Rain? I love you guys. I know you know it. But I wanted to say it.” She stared over at the massive altarpiece. “I wanted to say it here.”

  I was too choked up to reply. I couldn’t see Patrick clearly beneath his hat, but—as crazy as this sounds—I think he might’ve been choked up, too.

  Alex let go of our hands. Then she hugged me. I figured that was my cue to leave them there alone. I wandered off to one of the pews in the back and fell asleep beneath the celestial vaulted ceiling.

  * * *

  I woke up with her body pressed against mine. Before I could say anything, she kissed me.

  Kissed me deep.

  She pulled back, and my spinning mind took a moment to fasten onto reality.

  Stark Peak.

  End of days.

  In a church.

  My last night.

  Alex.

  I sat up. We faced each other on the pew there in the rear of the church. I looked around for my brother, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Alex took my chin. Turned my face back to hers.

  And then I kissed her. I couldn’t help it. Her mouth, her lips, her eyes—I wanted to lose myself in her. For a time I did.

  We pulled apart, breathing hard, our foreheads touching. Her eyes glinted in the darkness.

  “You’re both in my heart,” she said. “But you…”

  “What?” I said.

  “You are my heart, Chance. I can’t imagine living without you.”

  My own heart was doing things inside my chest it had never done before.

  I said, “I’m glad I won’t have to live without you.”

  We kissed again, hard, her arms wrapped around my neck, mine around her waist.

  And then we parted.

  I felt like I was being ripped in half. From her eyes I could tell she felt the same.

  She walked off quietly toward the nave, her footsteps pattering softly on the old stone tiles.

  I took a deep breath and turned back toward the altar.

  Patrick was standing there in the aisle, no more than ten feet away. Staring right at me.

  Before I could say anything, he walked away.

  * * *

  I lay there staring at the ceiling, guilt and fear crushing in on me. I had the sensation of being trapped in a rowboat in the immense, roiling ocean. So tiny. Everything else so huge. Doom tapping its foot, biding its time.

  A hand shook my boot. I sat up.

  JoJo stood at the end of the pew.

  “You okay, Junebug?”

  “I’m bigger than I thought I was.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

  She gazed at me with her giant eyes. Bit her lip. Held it between her teeth until it stilled. “I’m ready to finish our story now,” she said.

  I got up and took her hand. As always, I was struck by how small it felt in mine.

  I grabbed my backpack, and together we climbed up into the scaffolding. I pulled out my notebook and my last two pens. We sat together, side by side, our legs dangling off the suspended planks.

  There couldn’t have been a prettier place. It was like we were floating in the dome with its beautiful murals. All the great stories laid out in paint and stained glass. Adam and Eve in the garden. Cain sneaking up on Abel. Christ’s eyes turned to heaven, the crown of thorns trickling blood down his temples.

  I wrote entry after entry, JoJo and I talking quietly, catching up on everything that had happened since we’d been apart.

  When we’d written our way through to our arrival at the church, JoJo leaned into my side. “Where should we end it?” she asked. “With us sitting here on the scaffolding?”

  “No.”

  I handed her the pen. She took it. Her eyes glittered with tears.

  “You’ll take over,” I said. “Write down everything that happens. You’re the keeper of the human record now.”

  She blinked and tears fell. “But I want you instead.”

  I rested a hand on her dirty hair. “You’ll keep me alive this way.”

  ENTRY 61

  This will be my last entry. I won’t have time to write, you know, before. JoJo’s got it from here. So this is our good-bye. I hope everything goes well. I hope you can live safe and free.

  Thanks for sticking with me.

  ENTRY 62

  Circumstances have conspired to allow me to pick up the pen and notebook again. Things didn’t go as planned.

  In fact, what happened was devastating.

  But since you’ve been here for most of the ride, I figure I should take you through the bloody end.

  ENTRY 63

  All the next day, we crouched in the bell tower waiting for the streets around us to clear. But—if anything—the Harvesters’ search in this area of the city had intensified. It seemed only a matter of time before they’d bring a battering ram and knock down the church doors.

  More essentially, our time was running out. We watched with mounting impatience as morning turned to day, day to evening.

  As the sun started to trace its descent, every minute grew more agonizing.

  Alex would die at first light of day.

  I chewed my thumbnail to the quick. Alex paced in tight circles. Patrick kept watch by the jagged parapet, silent and steady, barely moving.

  He hadn’t said anything about seeing me and Alex last night.

  I hadn’t either.

  And Alex and I didn’t mention it to each other either.

  The good thing about knowing you’re close to dying is you don’t have to waste your time poking at painful spots. You can just let everything be what it is.

  I knew Patrick would forgive me. I knew he still loved me. I knew he was way more upset about losing me than he was about me and Alex kissing.

  So it was behind us already. There was only one thing in front of us.

  That spire taunting us from the western horizon.

  The sun inched lower and lower
. Hatchlings and Drones crowded the blocks below.

  As the horizon extinguished the last rays of the last day, our frustration reached a near-panic pitch. The movement below showed no signs of diminishing.

  Midnight.

  Two A.M.

  Four.

  There was no more time to wait. Alex circled past us again, heading for the far side of the bell tower, giving me and Patrick a moment of privacy.

  He pulled away from the parapet. “We go now,” he said to me. “We’ve no longer got a choice.”

  I turned to get Alex, but Patrick grasped my forearm, gentle yet firm. I looked back at him.

  “The best part…” Patrick’s voice went hoarse. He steeled himself and started over. “The best part was having a brother like you.”

  I wanted to say something, but my words were blocked by the lump in my throat. He must’ve read the emotion in my eyes, because he gave my cheek a gentle tap with his palm.

  Then he turned away quickly and headed for the stairs.

  * * *

  The Humvee flew away from the curb, plastering a band of Hatchlings across the grille and windshield. The tires spun over their corpses, caught, and hurled us forward.

  By the time we reached the first intersection, it seemed the entire city knew about us. Every Hatchling and Drone in sight came at us.

  We blasted up the dark streets, Patrick steering skillfully. And then there was a loud booming sound, and the city grid lit up.

  Every streetlight, every fluorescent in every building, even the glaring arena lights at Stark Peak Stadium. Up ahead the City Hall spire glowed yellow and orange, still decorated for last year’s fall feast.

  We let it guide us in.

  We whistled between vehicles, smashing into Hatchlings. We clipped Drones, sending them spinning off in mist-blasting trajectories. It was mayhem.

  As we breached the city center, cored-out buildings rose all around us, each illuminated with hundreds of virtual screens showing live feeds from everywhere on the globe. Our world in the clutches of Harvesters. On every high-rise floor, floating as far as the eye could see, Drones and Queens were hooked into the network they’d created.

  “How’s our rear flank look?” Patrick shouted.

  I twisted in the backseat to look behind me.

  The sight literally took my breath away.

  The streets, the city, the mountains beyond were alive with so much movement I couldn’t see the ground. Hatchlings swirled in at us from every direction, a flood pulled toward a drain.

  I tried to swallow. Couldn’t.

  “Um,” I said. “Not so great.”

  As I turned to face forward, I saw the same view to our left.

  And our right.

  And ahead.

  We were the eye of a living hurricane.

  It looked like a war zone, but not a modern one. More like one of those battlefields you see in period movies when Roman infantries blanket the earth and you can’t believe you’re seeing that many bodies bent to a single cause.

  The cause for every Harvester in Stark Peak was to kill us.

  This was it. Our last run.

  We skipped up the curb, the front tires popping, and skated down the wide steps into the giant courtyard before City Hall. All the while Hatchlings hammered off our hood. Our windshield cracked. The roof dented in so hard that the metal kissed the top of my head.

  We plowed through endless bodies. They racked up against our bumper. The stripped wheels gouged concrete.

  “We’re not gonna make it!” Alex shouted. “There’s no room for us to get out and run!”

  “Then we won’t,” Patrick said.

  He stomped the gas pedal, blasting through the Hatchlings, aiming straight for City Hall’s doors.

  “You might want to fasten your seat belts,” Patrick said.

  Alex and I clicked ourselves in.

  The Hummer hammered up the front steps of City Hall and barreled at the big double doors. The crash slammed us forward in our seats.

  The SUV stayed there, rammed into the mouth of the shattered doorway.

  Bruised and bleeding, we popped off our seat belts. Patrick kicked out the cracked windshield. We slid across the hood, slick with Hatchling guts, which burned where it touched our skin. Scraping it off, we fell into the empty lobby.

  The unvented air stank of dead fish. Massive aquarium tanks lined the walls all around us, mineral deposits whitening the glass like mold. Already Hatchlings were crawling through the Hummer after us. Others smashed through the floor-to-ceiling window panels flanking the front doors, streaming in two bodies wide.

  Patrick shuck-shucked the Winchester and blew out one of the tanks. Rank green water swept across the marble tile, eating into the Hatchlings’ feet.

  He shot the next tank. And the next.

  Salt water flooded the lobby, melting the Hatchlings. They screamed as if caught in lava.

  We waded through toward the fancy marble stairs. Bloated fish bobbed across the tide. Already the water was draining from the lobby, pouring out the front door and the shattered window panels. The Hatchlings didn’t slow. They hurled themselves onto the wet tiles, jellying against the marble. Others trampled over the disintegrating flesh only to bubble into the mass.

  They were willing to sacrifice themselves. And they had countless numbers.

  We’d bought some time. But not a lot.

  The horde was making progress as we scampered up the wide stairs. From that long-ago field trip, I remembered the route we needed to take. Alex and Patrick followed me to a rear stairwell, and we bolted up three more sets of stairs and spilled onto the roof.

  There the spire was, lit up like a mirage, convenient metal rungs running up one side as on a telephone pole.

  There was only one problem.

  The base was encased by a big protective metal cage.

  We pulled up short, our chests heaving.

  It must have been a safety precaution added in the years since I’d been up here, designed to prevent unauthorized access.

  Like, say, the unauthorized access needed to save the lives of everyone on the friggin’ planet.

  Patrick ran up to the big metal gate and tugged at it. Locked. I tried to wiggle between the bars. No luck. Alex started to scale the bars, but about ten feet up they ended in an encircling overhang, the bottom studded with razor wire.

  We regrouped outside the barred gate. Clipped to one of the rungs, out of reach just above the cage, a climbing safety belt swayed in the wind, mocking us.

  From our perch we could see much of the city. Every square inch, it seemed, was covered with Hatchlings. One rotund female for every twenty sinewy males. They bounded toward us, individual forms lost to the scope of movement.

  The city lights cast our shadows across the rooftop, distorted and severe.

  Patrick and I watched the incoming avalanche with stunned disbelief.

  Alex was cursing skillfully, a torrent of frustration. And then she stopped.

  Patrick looked over at her. “Run out of words?”

  “’Cuz I got a few more,” I said.

  “The janitor’s closet,” she said. “Second floor by the stairwell. Remember?”

  Patrick and I shook our heads.

  Already she was running back for the stairs, gripping her hockey stick tight. We followed her, leaping down four steps at a time.

  The clamor rose up from below. Fighting every instinct in our bodies, we ran toward it.

  We reached the second floor. Sprinted to the janitor’s closet.

  At the end of the hall, the vanguard of Hatchlings spilled into view off the top of the wide marble steps. Their feet and ankles were scalded with salt water and couldn’t hold their weight. They collapsed, and others clawed over them.

  Alex pawed at the door to the janitor’s closet. It was locked.

  Patrick shot the knob off with his Winchester.

  Alex sprang inside.

  A few of the Hatchlings broke free of the mo
rass and started for us. Patrick tore a hole through them with rock salt. I readied my baling hooks for the next charge, sweat tickling the sides of my neck.

  Alex stumbled out again, gripping a massive key ring. “Got it!”

  We jumped back into the stairwell. Ran up and up.

  Onto the roof, locking the door behind us.

  Over to the gate.

  As Patrick and I watched the roof-access hut behind us nervously, Alex tried key after key. At last there was a click.

  We turned. Alex stood triumphantly by the open gate, wearing her unimprovable smile. We all gulped in a breath. Around us we could hear the entire city crashing toward us, a galaxy folding in on itself. Light from the high-rises shimmered over us. Movement from around the world scrolled across the virtual monitors.

  For a single instant, we were the center of the universe.

  A body thudded against the door behind us, yanking us back to reality. And then another hammered the wood, breaking the spell entirely.

  Patrick breezed past me, brushing against my side.

  Lifted the keys from Alex’s hand.

  Stepped through the gate.

  And shut it with a clang.

  From inside the metal cage, he looked back at us. And then he threw the key ring through the bars and off the top of the roof.

  I stared after it, incredulous.

  I grabbed for my cargo pocket.

  Empty.

  I looked back up as Patrick tucked the syringe into his boot. He’d lifted it from me.

  My chest lurched with emotion. My throat clutched. We were only a few feet away.

  The brim of Patrick’s hat gave the faintest dip. “You got it from here, little brother.”

  Seven words, a continent of meaning.

  I grabbed his shirt through the bars. “No—goddamn it!” I was sobbing. “My most important job is to protect my brother.”

  He looked at Alex. “Not anymore,” he said.

  My fist was still twisted in his shirt. He held my hand until I relaxed it. The sound of Hatchlings banging on the door behind me faded away. Everything faded away but me and my brother.

  He gave my hand a squeeze and let go.

  He looked over at Alex. “I promised I’d keep you safe, Alexandra.”

  He pulled her to the bars and kissed her.

  When he let go of her, she literally reeled. I caught her, bracing her with an arm across her lower back. She was crying, too.