Instinct Ascending: Rabids Book 2 (8 page)

“I know. I know. It was risky; I could have lost my job. But I couldn’t help myself. It just came out, and I couldn’t stop it. It felt good at the time, like a release of pressure. But when the moment passed, I panicked, realizing how reckless it was. Then he put up that stupid sign.” She scowled. “When I saw the sign again tonight… I just snapped again.”

“You had any more exorcist attacks that I don’t know about lately?”

“No. Still nothing. Things are so quiet during the day. No Rabids. I know it’s stupid, but it makes me edgy.”

Harley nodded. While he was glad she wasn’t being put in danger, he was sure it was a big change to go from constant attacks to not one in months.  He debated mentioning the change in her eyes he’d seen earlier, but in the end he decided against it. He didn’t want to freak her out any more. For now, he’d just have to keep an eye out for any more glitches.

“Don’t worry, kid, I’m sure once you’re back on night shift, you’ll have plenty more excitement. Night shift seems to be a loud, rowdy bunch.” He winked, ruffling her hair.

“I have to admit, it will actually be nice to get back to that.” She offered a quiet chuckle before turning her attention back to the few breadsticks left on the table.

The rest of the night was filled with laughter, and plenty of jokes at Harley’s expense via Cajun and his slew of stories about their childhood. Silas even came and joined the group, laughing right along with them. He was a lonely old guy, no family or friends still alive, and his business was the only material thing he had left in the world. He was eager to enjoy the companionship they offered, and actually seemed to be an okay guy. Not once did the subject turn back to anything remotely serious, and it had been a long time since Harley had enjoyed himself so much in a group. On their way out of the restaurant, Silas waved to them all.

“Any time after closing, feel free to come by and eat — always on the house, with my gratitude. I want to do what I can to help.” With another wave, he shut the door, leaving them all in a stunned silence. Harley rubbed the back of his neck.

“Well. That was…”

“Nice,” Amiel finished with a grin. And Harley found he had to agree. He accompanied her home to ensure she arrived safely, walking her to her door. He glanced down the hallway at the Rat’s door, metaphorical hackles rising just thinking about the guy.

“Has the Rat been botherin’ you at all?”

Amiel grinned up at him with relief. “No. I think you make a good rat chaser; he hasn’t so much as said more than a hello or goodbye to me in the hallways. It’s kind of weird. But nice. ”

“Good.” Harley nodded, silently agreeing with the hint of suspicion in her eyes. It was definitely weird. The guy had gone from full-on stalker mode to barely even acknowledging the girl. He even avoided Harley, ignoring his presence completely when the guy bothered to show up to work at all. It just didn’t seem normal to go from one extreme to the other. Of course, nothing was normal about that guy. Harley hoped the Rat was a problem of the past, yet his world had taught him to never let his guard down. So until the dude completely disappeared off the face of the earth, Harley was going to keep his suspicions on high alert when it came to the Rat and his obsession with the kid.

“Okay then. I’ll head out. No worries about trainin’ tomorrow. Just get caught up on sleep and we’ll see ya before work the next day? Or do ya wanna wait a bit until things calm down?”

“No, that would be great! I still suck at fighting, but I have to admit I love the workouts. I’m determined it will sink in eventually.” She grinned brightly. Harley chuckled. She’d already made more progress than she realized. Once her insecurities stopped holding her back, she’d be a hellion.

“All right, kid, get some rest. Text if ya need anythin’.” Turning away, Harley ambled down the stairs, a grin on his face. For once, life was sailing pretty smoothly and getting into a normal routine.

If he’d known how crazy life was about to get over the next few months, he would have taken that thought back instantly. 

Amiel

Her nails scraped into the cold, slick alley walls as she collided with them, scrabbling to stay upright. Shouts sounded in the distance and her heart skipped a full two beats. The alleyway behind was blurred from the tears in her eyes, but at least it was still free of pursuit. Oxygen didn’t come often enough, and when it did it wasn’t in nearly large enough quantities. Her breath puffed out before her face, clouded in the cold temperatures. Goose bumps covered every inch of her exposed skin, the shredded t-shirt doing little to offer warmth. The world swayed as she surveyed her surroundings in desperation. She was in a dead-end alley.

“
Hide, hide, you have to hide!”
The words tumbled about the expanses of her skull over and over, desperation making them grow louder with each repetition until she gripped at her scalp in agony.

“I know, I know!” Amiel hissed, eyes once again searching the darkness. And then, there it was, her salvation: a rickety fire escape lay silhouetted against the darkening sky on the abandoned building at the end of the alley. It sat there, silently taunting her from its three-story, entirely out-of-reach height. Biting her lip to keep the whimpering at bay, Amiel stumbled toward the building. If she could find a way up, if she could just
get
to it, she might have a chance at escape. The copious amounts of adrenaline helped to mask the pain in her body as she put her weight against a dumpster and pushed with every ounce of her waning strength. It wouldn’t budge. Amiel glanced at the end of the alleyway, a desperate sob escaping her bleeding lips.

“Come on!
Please move
!” The crooked and broken wheels squealed in protest, scraping along the cracked concrete until it jarred to a halt a full four feet away from her destination.  It would have to do; she didn’t have the time or energy to wrestle it any closer. Examining the walls, she quickly assessed her next move.

The first-floor windows had all been bricked up years ago, probably when the outbreak had first begun. But the second-story windows were only barred. If she could gain enough height from the dumpster, perhaps she could jump the remaining distance. Amiel pulled herself atop the dumpster, crouching as she worked to gather the courage to make the jump.

“You can do this. It’s easy. Just like playing hopscotch, really. Simple.” Before she let herself think too deeply on the logic of that statement, she vaulted from the dumpster, fingers barely gripping the brick windowsill. More tears sprang free of their prison as three nails popped off of their fingers. Gritting her teeth against a sob of pain, Amiel shifted so that first one hand and then the other could grip the bars. She fought to move quickly, the free-flowing blood making her grip precarious. Pulling herself to a wobbly crouch in the thin space allotted to her on the sill, Amiel fixed her gaze on the next goal. The floor of the fire escape had been ripped free at some point, leaving behind only the jagged remains of a metal ladder. The distance this time would be more difficult to make, about a foot farther than the last jump. The first jump had been hard enough — this one felt nearly impossible.

Giving herself another pep talk, Amiel held her breath, jumped… and missed.  Time seemed to hold still for the briefest of moments as a gasp lodged in her throat. Then it sped up, the dumpster seemingly flying upward to meet her with tense inevitability. Bouncing off of the edge of the metal lid with a deafening bang, she tumbled across the pavement. 

Becoming acquainted with metal and pavement at a bone-jarring intensity had the unfailing tendency to do a lot of things to a person. For one, the little breath she had managed to collect before that moment was swiftly yanked from her lungs. Now breathing wasn’t just difficult, it was impossible. Her mind was momentarily sent into a panic, as though it were drowning with no water to blame. Then the pain overwhelmed all panic, slamming into her like a truck, lungs and ribs burning like a thousand fire pokers being stabbed into her at once. An eternity seemed to pass before the oxygen floodgates finally opened, air rushing down her throat to fill the barren voids within her chest. A gut-wrenching sob escaped before she could contain it, echoing down the alleyway like a beacon to those chasing her.

“Get up! Get up or die, Amiel!”
The voice in her mind shouted warning once more. Amiel rolled to her side, sobbing out again as the pain wracked her body.
“We’re not dying here. Get up!”

“I can’t!” Amiel gasped in defeat. She wanted nothing more than to ignore the voice, to roll over and allow whatever chased her to finish it. Seemingly in answer to her silent surrender, the sounds of her pursuers echoed toward her, so much closer now than before. They had found her trail. It wouldn’t be long now. This time, the voice came gentler, the tone entirely different from the one heard in her mind only moments before.

“Get up, Baby Girl.”
As though encased in warmth after years of ice, the silent words soothed her in a way no other could.

“Jaron?”  Amiel’s eyes opened, searching the night. The words had sounded so close, so like her brother, it was almost as though he were at her side, holding her in his protective grasp. But looking around, she saw no one, and the answering silence was deafening. “Jaron, come back! Please don’t leave me again,” Amiel whispered in raspy desperation. In reply, she heard only one word.

“Survive.”
Simple as it was, it was all that she needed. Jaron was still out there somewhere, keeping an eye on her. And right now he was telling her to survive.  Rolling to her knees with a whimper, Amiel crawled to the dumpster. Pulling herself upward was difficult, and spots swirled in her vision by the time she was standing atop it. She winced at the noticeable dent in the metal, hoping that hadn’t been from the impact of her body. More tears poured down her cheeks as she removed her t-shirt, ribs screaming in agony.

Ripping the tattered remains of fabric, she wrapped a piece around each of her hands, hoping the additional layers would make her blood-soaked grip more sure than it had been last time. Blowing out a shallow breath, she ran and leapt toward the sill. The fabric did help her grip, but the slamming into the wall did nothing to help her ribs. The strain put on them from holding her weight sent such a sheer rift of pain through her body that she teetered on the edge of consciousness. She was pretty sure she lost another fingernail in the process as well. Yet the sounds of approaching voices and barking dogs spurred her onward and somehow she found herself crouched in the sill, once more readying herself for the next terrifying leap.

“You’ll make it. Go!”
that inner voice assured her. Amiel had no time to doubt. Taking a few false starts, she finally forced her feet to leave the relative safety of the windowsill. For the second time that night, time slowed, the metal bars nearing her fingertips with a maddening leisure.

Somehow her hands closed around the bars, the metal saving her from what would have surely been a fatal fall; if not death from the fall, it would be death by her would-be captors. The voices were so near, Amiel dared not cry out in misery as her torso extended, the fiery torment leaving no doubt that most, if not all, of the ribs on her left side were broken. Her arms went numb from the shock of pain, fingers nearly losing their grip. Blood gushed into her mouth from where her teeth sank into flesh to subdue the cries of anguish that threatened to give away her location.

Shoving the pain to the side once more, she began the agonizing process of pulling herself upward. Her feet made contact with the cool metal landing just as the dogs turned the corner of the alleyway, darting forward with their noses to the ground. Moving as swiftly and silently as possible, Amiel climbed the stairs, making her way up the fire escape. She made it to the fourth floor before the men caught up to the animals below her and she dared not move another inch. Looking upward, she lamented the single floor that lay between her and the relative safety of the roof.

“Are you sure she came this way?” A voice drifted up to her ears.

“I’m sure
it
came this way, yeah.” The second voice corrected the first angrily. Something about it sounded hauntingly familiar. The dogs let out a howl as they sniffed at the ground, and the angry figure released a grunt of satisfaction.

“Blood! See, I told you!”

“Yeah, well, it’s a dead end. If that is its blood, exactly where did she…
it
go, then?” Flashlights moved about the alleyway, the dogs barking frantically as they hunted around the dumpster.

“There’s blood on the dumpster.” The voices suddenly came in a more cautiously hushed tone, and Amiel winced. One of the men tossed the lid of the dumpster upward with a loud clanging. They waited, guns at the ready, but when nothing immediately popped upward, they released frustrated groans.

“Nothing’s in there. Another dead end. So what now, fearless leader?” the first man grunted sarcastically. Amiel held a shaking hand to her mouth and nose in an effort to shield the ragged breaths that sounded unjustly loud in her ears. Go or stay, go or stay? Did she dare try to move? She rolled the deliberation about in her mind, hoping Jaron would give her more advice.

He stayed frustratingly silent, as did the internal voice of warning. Squeezing her eyes shut and breathing out a quietly pained breath, Amiel shifted to move onward. Five steps into her escape, the grate below her feet protested. She froze, huddling down on herself and waiting as the flash lights suddenly whisked upward.

“How about up there?”

“Up there? You’re kidding, right?”

“Why not?”

“It’s too high! No one could make it up there.”

“
It
could. Look, that’s gotta be blood on that windowsill,” the man argued stubbornly. Amiel squeezed her eyes shut, her body quaking from the cold and fear.

“That
might
be blood. Or it
might
just be the same grimy sludge the rest of this putrid alley is covered in,” the first man replied in a snarky, bored tone.

“I’ve seen them jump that high before.”

“Duane, you got no proof she was one of them.”

“I didn’t see a tattoo,” a timid third voice added to the conversation. Amiel wondered just how many of them were down there, masked in the shadows, and how many had guns. Mostly she wondered how long this fire escape would continue to hold her weight.

“She took down five of them!”

“We didn’t see it,” the third man replied quietly.

“Yeah. That’s right. None of us saw it but you, Duane. That’s not proof.”

“I seen what I seen! No one can fight Rabids like that and not be one of
them
!” Duane spit on the ground in disgust. Sudden recognition floored Amiel. Duane! The Cutthroat that had tried to rape and/or kill her the night she met Harley. Oh, this was not going to end well.  If the thug got his hands on her, Amiel had no doubt as to the outcome of her well-being this time around. And if Harley got ahold of Duane? Well, she had no doubts as to how that would end, either.

“If she took down five of them, why would she be running from
us
?”

“I don’t know,” Duane grumbled. “But, look at all this blood. Obviously it got hurt when I hit it with the bus. Maybe it’s too hurt to fight back.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Look, they only put bars on the second floor and up. If Rabids couldn’t jump that high, neither could a Halfer.”

“Where else could it go, Drake!” Duane shouted wildly. “Like you said, it’s a dead end and there’s nowhere else it coulda gone. If a Halfer and Rabid couldn’t jump that high, a Clean wouldn’t be able to, either! So, where is it? Besides, look at the damned dogs. They smell it everywhere.  It was here!”

“Fine, if you can make it up there, be my guest — go find it.”

“I ain’t climbing that thing. There’s got to be a door around here somewhere. We break it down, me and the dogs head up while you three stay down here.”

Amiel winced again. She hadn’t thought about a door. It was more than likely barricaded somehow, but if they made it through, she would be a sitting duck stuck between two sets of enemies.

“Fine, let’s find a freakin’ door, then,” the first man grumbled. The flashlights swept over the walls of the alleys, searching for a way in, and Amiel took her chance. Moving as quietly as she could, she scaled the last bits of fire escape, breathing a slight sigh of relief when she touched foot on the graveled rooftop without alerting those below. Squinting into the dark, Amiel found her target. The neighboring rooftop looked to be the same distance away as the fire escape had been. If she did it once, she could do it again. She hoped. Excited shouts met her ears below. They’d found a way in.

Gritting her teeth, Amiel sprinted across the rooftop, pushing off at the last minute. Soaring through the air for the third time that night, she touched down inches from missing the ledge. Lurching forward, she rolled several feet before rolling back toward the ledge and lying flat. The ledge was just high enough that she could remain hidden if she lay very still. Battered and bruised, she shivered in the night, staring up at the shimmering stars, ears straining to pick up every sound. Duane burst onto the roof, and Amiel could hear the dogs scrambling across the gravel in search of her, followed by their confused whines when the scent simply disappeared.