Endless Storm by Riley Miller & Grace Hamilton

Author:Riley Miller & Grace Hamilton [Miller, Riley & Hamilton, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

57

Kelly stood waiting, heart in her throat. Her palms were all sweaty. She was going to drop Ray.

“State your business,” said someone, a young voice. A kid?

“I’m Kelly,” she said.

“You’ll have to speak up.”

“Kelly. We’re here for, uh…we heard there’s a clinic?”

Kelly heard mumbling, then the speaker cut out. She hitched up Ray’s litter and balanced it on her hip. In the glare of the floodlights, she could see he’d passed out. His mouth gaped open. Flies buzzed in and out. The sight made her gag, and she looked away.

“The clinic’s in Scarsdale,” came an older, cracked voice—or maybe the same one undistorted by static. Kelly hung her head.

“Okay, we’ll go. How do we—”

“Where’d you come from? Someone point you this way?”

“The radio,” said Stanley. “We spoke to a…Joe? He told us the clinic was still taking patients.”

“Just wait,” said the young voice, and then came more mumbling, a low, heated conference just past the gate.

“I don’t like this,” said Eddie. “These guys are weird.”

Kelly took a step back, and Jeb backed up with her. “We’re going,” she called. “Just point us to Scarsdale, and we’ll be on our way.”

The big gate slid open, but only a crack. A figure slipped through, goggled and masked. A man, Kelly thought, a rifle strapped to his back. He held one hand up and pressed the other to his ear.

“Don’t go,” he said. “We just need a second.”

Kelly thought about running, but she had Ray. And Zoe was flagging, Mira dead beat. Up on the wall, she picked out two more guns, their barrels aimed somewhere over her head.

“We won’t say anything,” she tried. “We just need the clinic, and then we’ll move on.”

“The clinic’s a morgue now,” came that young voice again. “You take your friend there, you can kiss him goodbye.”

Kelly glanced at Eddie. He shrugged—don’t ask me. She stretched, slow and careful, to finger Ray’s throat. At first, she felt nothing, just his flaky, dry skin, and the soft bumps of bug bites under his chin. Then she felt his pulse, or maybe her own. It ran fast and thready, a scared-rabbit beat.

“Kate’s coming out,” said the man at the gate.

Kelly frowned. “Who’s Kate?”

The man didn’t answer. He went back inside. The gate slid shut behind him, smooth on its tracks. Jackson muttered something under his breath. He glanced at Ray, stiffened, and Kelly shook her head.

“Hey,” he called.

“Don’t.”

Jackson ignored her. “If we leave, will you shoot us? If we walk away?”

Nobody spoke. A rifle swung toward Jackson, a laser dot on his chest.

“They’re scared too,” she said, hoping it was true. Hoping this Kate had run from the plague, and holed up with her family in this old hospital. She could see it was derelict, with the sun coming up, its walls green and mossy, its lawn overgrown. Someone had patched the roof with new copper tile, but the gutters were ancient, mottled with rust.

“You can sit if you want. Set your friend down.”

Mira sat down. No one else moved.

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