Positive (48 page)

 

CHAPTER 144

T
he signal was supposed to be two gunshots in quick succession—­I'd told Strong to put them right in Kate's heart, if she could. I waited and waited for the sound of the shots, but they never came.

Instead, one of the stalkers tripped on a piece of debris outside of a burned-­out house. He dropped to all fours, then, as he stood up, he started shouting.

One of my positives, a boy maybe thirteen years old, came running out of the house. The stalker must have seen him. The boy cut the stalker's leg with a sharpened adze, but the stalker just smacked the kid backward into the street. He drew a club from his belt and stepped into the shadows after the boy. I couldn't see what happened next, for which I was thankful.

I had no time to think about it. I could see Red Kate running across the main square, shouting orders at her stalkers, and I knew she was on to us. “Spread out! Find them! Don't let yourselves get boxed in!”

My turn. “Go,” I shouted, running down the stairs, slapping ­people on the back as I passed them. “Go—­let's go!”

Positives poured out of the municipal building, jumping out of every window. Right in front of me I saw a woman land on top of a stalker and smash in his helmet with a rock until he stopped moving. I pushed my way out of the front door as positives rushed past me, armed with knives and tools and whatever they could carry.

It wasn't how I wanted it to go down. It was a mistake, though one I'd been forced to make. I don't know how it could have gone differently, but I had hoped—­I had gambled—­that Strong and her marksmen would engage the stalkers before we had to.

I'd figured out one secret Red Kate really didn't want me to know. She was almost out of bullets.

It was pretty obvious when I thought about it. She'd talked about reinforcements, but they never came. She had no heavy weapons. I figured that Anubis couldn't spare any more materiel to use on us, just like the army wouldn't.

She only had what she could carry when she came to Hearth, and that couldn't last forever. She had stopped raiding Hearth with assault rifles and turned to firebombs instead. When her ­people did get inside the wall for the first time, they'd come at us with hand weapons or with assault rifles that carried only one or two bullets each. She must have burned through her ammunition even faster than we did.

But like us, she'd been smart enough to ration what she had. She'd kept a reserve—­enough for each stalker to kill a ­couple of us.

Had Strong been able to drag her into a protracted firefight, right at the start of this battle, we could have forced Kate to use what bullets she had left. Then, and only then, were we supposed to fall on them with our improvised knives and clubs.

Now we had been forced to reveal ourselves too early. While she still had enough bullets to go around, if her ­people were careful with them.

Even as I ran out into the main square, my knife in my hand, I knew I was running toward a bloodbath.

 

CHAPTER 145

I
heard the sputtering sound of the assault rifles immediately, as they chewed through their last bullets. A positive standing right next to me was cut down, a guy in a plaid shirt that turned black as his blood leaked through it. He grabbed my arm as he fell and nearly pulled me down. I shrugged him off and ran into the melee.

There were stalkers everywhere, and screaming positives, and half the town was still on fire. I ignored the bullets whizzing all around me and threw myself into the fight. I found a stalker, and I slashed and hacked at him with my knife, the knife that still had Costa's blood ground into its blade. The knife I'd taken from Red Kate.

Another stalker came at me with a shovel. I cut low and sliced through the thick muscles of his thigh, and his screams echoed inside his black helmet. He tried to cut my foot off with his shovel, and I stabbed again, up and under the bottom rim of the helmet, aiming for his throat. I think I cut his face instead—­he reached for it with both hands, seemingly not comprehending that the helmet was in the way.

A bullet scored my left shoulder and I cried out a little at the sudden pain, but it didn't even slow me down. I turned and saw bodies lying before me, turned around again and found two stalkers trying to flank me. I lunged, and one of them jumped back, but I knew the other one would get me—­he had a knife almost as fancy as the one Red Kate carried, and I expected it to drive right through my guts and out my stomach at any second. When it didn't happen, I spared a moment and saw that he was dead, knocked down by a positive with a sledgehammer. I nodded my thanks and moved on.

I tried to focus on keeping my ­people alive. I wasn't always successful.

I couldn't get to Lucy in time. The radio operator had a ball-­peen hammer in either hand, and three stalkers were trying to get close enough to take them away from her. She smacked one of them across the kneecap and he dropped; she hit another on top of his helmet and it was enough to disorient him, to make him lower his guard so she could smash in the right side of his rib cage.

The third stalker had a long chain. He whipped it around her neck and pulled, and she stumbled, falling down the steps in front of the municipal building. I could hear the pop as her neck snapped.

I squeezed my eyes shut in rage, but only for a moment. There was plenty of killing left to do.

I found a stalker carrying an assault rifle and stomped right toward him, not caring if he shot me. He pointed the weapon at me and shouted for me to get down on my knees. When I just kept coming, he actually threw the gun at me. It bounced off my chest—­I didn't even feel it. He was defenseless when I got to him, completely unarmed.

I pulled his helmet off and slashed his throat until he bled out.

I was in no mood to be merciful. These assholes had burned down half of Hearth. They'd killed my ­people. Even if we surrendered, they would still have killed a tenth of us—­and me. They didn't get any sympathy.

They certainly weren't giving any.

I walked right past the corpse of our chief swineherd, Harry. He had been a good kid, cheerful even when we were starving in the winter. The stalkers had smashed his face in until I recognized him only by the glasses twisted across what used to be his nose.

I saw them cut down Jane, who used to sing for us to keep us entertained on our long walk from the medical camp. She had a voice so sweet it was like listening to the wind sigh through the trees on a moonlit night. The stalkers broke her legs, then stabbed her four times in the back as she tried to crawl away.

And then I saw them surround Luke—­my old friend from the medical camp. Chief among my advisers. Luke, who'd shown us how to keep the fire from consuming the entire town. Three stalkers came at him at once. I raced toward him, and my blood ran cold because I knew I wouldn't make it in time, ran faster until I thought the wound in my belly would open. Ran right past a stalker who tried to knock me down with a club.

I collided with one of the stalkers who had pinned Luke down, knocked him sideways, away from my friend. Lashed out with my knife and hamstringed another of the three.

The third one had his hands wrapped around Luke's throat. He was going to strangle Luke, but before he could I jabbed upward, and my knife sank through yielding flesh, inside his rib cage. He let go of Luke and was dead before he hit the ground.

Luke tried to say something, but I shook my head. The stalker I had knocked sideways had already recovered and was coming at me with what looked like a sickle. I slashed at him and he jumped backward.

“Finn,” Luke croaked out. “Finn—­”

The sickle came around, shimmering in the air, orange with reflected fire light. I leaned back, almost falling on my ass, as its point tore through my shirt. He was fast—­he recovered almost instantly and aimed another swing, this time at my legs. I stabbed downward with my knife and impaled his arm and he started screaming. I grabbed him and threw him aside, even as the other stalker, the one I'd hamstringed, started grabbing at my ankles.

Luke brought one boot down hard on the stalker's back, then kicked his helmet a few times for good measure. “Finn,” he said.

I had to wrestle with the bloodlust singing in my head before I could acknowledge him. “What is it, Luke?” I said, and I think some rage must have remained in my voice, because he flinched backward. “Jesus. Just say it.”

“Finn . . .” He couldn't even look at me. “Finn—­Red Kate.”

I turned around, and she was standing right there. Smiling at me.

“Hi, Stones,” she said. She pulled a pistol from her belt and smacked me across the face with it, stunning me. Then she flipped it around and shot Luke right through his left eye.

 

CHAPTER 146

I
didn't lose consciousness. Black spots swam before my eyes, and I heard a high-­pitched tone that was loud enough to deafen me. But I could still kind of see, and I wasn't completely unable to use my muscles.

I couldn't stop Kate, though, as she plucked the knife from my hand and shoved it into her own belt. She put the barrel of her gun under my chin and looked me right in the eye. “You figured it out, huh? That we were low on ammo.”

“Not low enough,” I said, “judging by the number of my ­people you got.” I glanced out over the main square, not moving my head, not giving her any reason to pull her trigger. “Though we seem to have done okay for ourselves.” There were a lot of bodies out there. Not so many ­people standing up—­but the majority of the living looked like positives.

“Yeah, well this gun's still pretty full. You understand?”

“Sure,” I said.

She frog-­marched me to the nearest house, just a few yards away. She shoved me inside and sent me sprawling. “Stay down,” she said, “on all fours like a dog. Got it?”

I made no attempt to jump up and lunge for her. I'd seen how Luke died. The pistol was no joke.

Jesus. Luke—­Luke was dead. He'd come so far with me. He'd been by my side so long. I'd depended on him—­

Kate got my attention with a kick to my ribs. “Looks like you won this one,” she said, pacing back toward the house's front windows. She gestured for me to come and take a look. That meant getting up into a sort of half crouch, but she allowed it. It wasn't like I could do much while she kept her gun trained on me the whole time.

She wanted me to look through the window and see what was going on out there. I did take a quick look. I saw the remaining stalkers had taken up a defensive position, standing back to back in the middle of the square. They slashed and clubbed at anyone who tried to get close to them. The positives surrounding them kept moving, testing them, looking for an opening.

On the far side of the square I saw Strong, with one of her snipers leaning on her shoulder for support. They both looked pretty beat-­up. Originally the plan had been for her team—­which had numbered four ­people—­to come through town hitting the stalkers from behind. Clearly they'd met more resistance than expected. But the fact that two of them made it into town meant there was no reserve force of stalkers out there.

The battle was over. We'd won.

Red Kate, however, clearly intended to live to fight another day.

Not if I can help it,
I thought. Once I'd taken in the scene in the square, I glanced down at her belt. My knife, the knife I'd taken from her my first day in the wilderness, was right there. I could grab the hilt, pull it free, bury it in her heart in less than a second.

Of course, she could pull her trigger a lot faster than that.

Outside in the square someone shouted for attention. I looked back out there and saw Kylie, her huge pregnant belly preceding her. There was blood on her shirt, but it didn't look like her own. She waved her hands in the air and called for peace. “You can live,” she said to the stalkers. “If you all surrender.”

Some of them threw down their weapons immediately. A few kept slashing and jabbing. Without their friends supporting them, though, they were vulnerable, and my positives swept in and finished things. Some of the stalkers just had their weapons knocked out of their hands. Some were butchered like pigs. I didn't like that much, but I wasn't in a position to make new laws about being graceful in victory.

Besides—­for me, the battle wasn't over yet.

 

CHAPTER 147

H
ey,” Red Kate shouted, as the positives got the surviving stalkers down on the ground and started tying their hands. “Hey! Kylie!” When there was no response, Kate smashed the glass out of the window and leaned her head through. “Hey!” she called.

Kylie looked over and saw us both framed in the window. I saw fear and confusion wash across her features.

“I think we might need to make a deal,” Kate said.

Kylie came closer. I tried to warn her away with my eyes—­I didn't want Kate shooting her out of spite. But Kylie came within ten yards of us and stared in through the window. Our eyes met, and I saw she knew I was in trouble.

“You make any moves I don't like,” Kate said, “and Stones is dead. You understand?”

Kylie nodded.

“I know the score here,” Kate told her. “I get that you can just flood this house with your little friends. Throw ­people at me until one of them gets me. But I figure my hostage gives me a little room for negotiation.”

Kate pushed me forward until my head was out the window, too. She stuck the barrel of the gun against the top of my head. I could feel the agitation in her, feel her heart thudding against my back.

“Are you listening to me? Do you hear me, whore?”

Kylie nodded. “Yes, I hear you. What do you want?”

“Me and my guys walk out of here, unharmed. That's it. We just walk away.”

Kylie's face lost all expression. I knew what that meant.

“Well, K? What's your answer?”

“No,” Kylie said.

Kate couldn't believe it. She flinched against my back, her whole body convulsing at the idea that Kylie might defy her. “No? What do you mean, no? I've got your guy right here. Your fucking babydaddy! Don't you care if he lives or dies?”

“Of course I do,” Kylie said.

“Then—­”

“But I also know,” Kylie went on, “that if anyone is willing to die for Hearth, it's Finn. So the answer is no. Kill him or don't—­you aren't leaving here alive.”