Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (reading list txt) 📗

dirt. For a moment, nothing happened, and I breathed a sigh of relief. There was a crackle as the spark grew into a flame all its own. Like a kind of hellish snake, the burning grass wove back and forth across the field. It occurred to me that I should get my ass in gear and start running but I found that I couldn’t move my feet. The primal fear of death by burning paralyzed me. After what felt like an eternity I found my muscles again and ran.

The firestorm was spreading fast; soon I would be driven too far away from the door to be discovered. At least I was certainty that there were alarms going off in the shelter right now. There was little danger of the fire spreading even an inch past the door. That wasn’t the concern. It was the air quality that was. Even a small leak of carbon monoxide into the shelter’s air circulation system could turn deadly. Thusly the shelter was equipped with firefighting equipment. It was imperative that any fire, no matter how large or small, was extinguished as quickly as possible.

That’s exactly what I was counting on.

Chapter Twenty-One

The heat was suffocating. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead and my feet protested the further exposure to extreme heat. I hovered around the edges of the blaze the best I could but it was getting difficult. Where the hell where the firefighters…? The effects of dehydration and undernourishment had already been taking their toll and were intensified by the fire. Even in the bright light I was starting to have trouble distinguishing shapes and more than once I tripped over nothing, landing in the dirt hard each time. I was tired, so tired. The heat from the fire was seductive and cloying, a lethal lullaby that urged me to lay down and rest, everything would be all right as soon as I went to sleep.

If no one opened that door soon, it might not be such a bad way to go. The smoke would overwhelm my lungs long before the flames consumed my flesh. I imagined that it might be like going to sleep. A slow drift into unconsciousness. I shook my head and pain shot through my skull. Had I fallen on a rock back there somewhere? Dimly, I pressed my fingers to my head but found no blood. If there had been any, perhaps it was dried already. My vision had blurred, I was starting to see double. I decided that I would at least sit in the grass where I thought the fire was unlikely to spread towards me. As soon as my backside touched the ground, the ground came out from under me and I fell, head smacking into the hard dirt. Some dim voice in my mind screamed at me to get up, that if I didn’t move I was going to die, but I didn’t care. I was just so damned tired. Above me the smattering of stars I had admired so well my first night in camp had started to shine. I wondered if the old stories were true-maybe I’d be up there myself soon, joining my ancestors in watching what hell our progeny had brought to the planet.

My eyes slid shut even without my knowing. The voice that had begged me to stand up was quiet now. I felt the creeping fingers of death starting to touch the edges of my consciousness. Something within me knew that I should panic-I was going to die horribly, after all, but the weight of my body felt too heavy to even move. I let go and let myself drift away.

I awoke to the feel of something cool on my face and a sharp smell in my nose. I shook my head, trying to clear whatever it was away. Whatever the object was, it was bringing unwanted alertness. If I had to die, I sure as hell didn’t want to be awake for it. Something slapped me across the face and I pictured the cat-thing, returned to find itself an easy kill. Maybe it was just playing with me before tearing my throat out. Sadistic bastard.

“Grandpa?” The word was far away, like someone speaking from behind a barrier. Another slap and my eyes flew open. I was being carried through the shelter’s inner door, the metal frame above me familiar and confusing. Maybe this was one last glance at my family. I heard that happened sometimes. If there was a God, he was one real son of a bitch. Forcing me to see my family again before I died didn’t feel like a chance to say farewell. It felt like a taunt. A bright yellow helmet and a respirator appeared in front of my face. Wearing them was a tan-skinned man with familiar eyes.

“Marcus?” Each syllable was a fresh fire lit in my throat.

“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t try to talk, okay? You’re in rough shape. You’re on oxygen and we’re taking you to the infirmary.”

“No!” Were they crazy? That would definitely kill me! Marcus sighed underneath his firefighting gear.

“Calm down, old man. I know it’s hard but get over yourself and trust me for once, okay?”

I nodded and let my body relax. Everything hurt, the aches and pains of everything I had gone through over the past days amplified by the trauma from the fire. I couldn’t smell anything underneath the tang of the oxygen but it felt like I had some nasty burns. Char-broiled grandpa. I chuckled to myself. They must have given me some painkiller, too.

“For fuck’s sake, Grandpa—did you have to try to burn down the shelter?” It was a rhetorical question, of course. I cracked a crooked grin and nodded. He laughed. I must have slipped into unconsciousness again because the next thing I knew I was in a curtained-off cubicle in the infirmary. My oxygen mask had been replaced with a modified respirator. Twin filters hung off of it like grotesque