TORMENT (34 page)

“You did this!” Mia shouted and then hammered him with a second shot to the face.

“Wait,” Collins said, staggering. “Please.”

“Elizabeth is dead!”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

This slowed her assault, but she wasn’t done. As she stepped toward him, he backed away. He glanced to Garbarino and Austin, his former protectors, but they seemed to understand this had to happen. They knew the same thing he did. The state of the world
was
his fault. He had ordered the assassination. He had denied the problem.
Dodged diplomatic solutions.
He had driven the world to the brink.

“I did it, okay?”

She shoved him. He fell back into the brush on the side of the road. He stood again.

“This is
all my
fault. Everything! I destroyed the world. The blood of billions is on my hands. I know that!”

“You killed her,” Mia said.

“I know.”

She grabbed hold of his shirt and shook him. He had more than fifty pounds on her and despite being older, probably out-muscled her, too. He could have broken free.
Could have fought back.
But he didn’t.

“How can you live with yourself?” she asked. “How can you stand the sight of your own face, the sound of your own voice?”

“I wanted to live long enough,” he said.

“For what?”

He looked into her eyes. They burned with hatred. Nothing he said would change her heart or bring the girl back to life. So he was honest.
“Redemption.”

Mia glared at him as the word permeated her anger. When it did, she cocked her fist back and brought it into his soft stomach. Collins doubled over with a wheeze. He struggled to catch a breath.

“Get up!” she shouted, kicking dirt at him. “Get up.” She positioned herself to kick him in the gut, when she saw him clutching at his chest instead of his stomach. Her eyes went wide with realization. She shoved him onto his back.

Collins’s face was twisted with pain.
His body rigid.
He took a frantic breath and whispered, “Forgive me.” His voice trailed off with a moan as the last air in his lungs seeped out. The President of the United States was dead.

“No!” Mia shouted. She turned to Austin. “He can’t get off this easy! Bring him back!”

Austin just watched.

She punched his chest twice. “Come back!”

Garbarino stepped forward. “Mia.”

“Bring him back, Joe,” she said. “He can’t. He doesn’t deserve this.”

Garbarino drew his weapon. “You might yet get your chance.”

Mia stood and jumped away from Collins’s body.

Visions of White, Vanderwarf, Paul and Chang filled her thoughts. She reached out to Garbarino, “Give me your gun.”

He did, and drew a second. “You can hang on to that. Five rounds left. Use them well.”

She took aim at Collins’s head, waiting for him to return so she could kill him again, and again, and again. “I intend to,” she said.

“Thirty seconds,” Austin said, standing to his feet. He walked up next to them, waiting for Collins to come back. “One shot.”

“What?” Mia asked.

“I’ll give you one shot.”

“He deserves worse.”

Austin’s voice was grim. “If you insist on ringing the dinner bell, we’re not going to wait around and see who comes running.”

They stared at each other, each waiting for the other’s will to break.

“Forty-five,” Garbarino said.

Austin’s stare intensified. “One shot.”

“Fine,” Mia said. “One shot.”

“Sixty seconds,” Garbarino said, taking another step back. He had no idea how fast Collins would be able to move once he came back.

But Mia stood rooted over his body, gun aimed at his face. Collins’s eyes were wide open. The lifeless orbs stared straight up at her. She waited, finger on the trigger, for some hint of life to return.

As the seconds ticked past, her hands began to shake, subtly at first, but then so violently that if she took a shot, she was likely to miss. She wasn’t counting, but she sensed the truth. Collins wasn’t coming back.

Garbarino confirmed it when he lowered his weapon and said, “Two minutes.”

“No,” Mia said. “No!” She kicked Collins hard in the leg. She repeated the attack while screaming in newborn rage. “You don’t deserve it! You don’t fucking deserve it!” A final kick sent something flying out of his pants pocket. She cocked her head toward it.

She instantly recognized the small black book with gold lettering on the front.
Mark Byers’s Bible.
The sight of the book and the memory of Mark deflated her anger. She stepped away, wiping her eyes. “We can go now.”

Garbarino bent down, picked up the book and brushed it off.

Austin snatched it from his hand.

“Hey,” Garbarino said in protest, but Austin had already wound up and he threw the book deep into the woods.

Mia watched the book sail into the trees and
disappear
. She didn’t care what Austin did with it. She felt numb to everything.
Cold.
All that remained was the journey.
The instinct to run.
To survive.
Nothing else mattered, and if she died, so be it. Her life held little meaning now. She started up the hill without looking back.

“What did you do that for?” Garbarino asked.

“That book has already caused enough problems for us,” Austin said, starting up the hill.

Garbarino looked in the direction Austin had thrown the book. For a moment, he thought about going to get it, if only just to piss Austin off. But a roar from atop the mountain they had careened down signaled the return of Henry Masters to the world. Garbarino set off after the others.

They walked into the woods.

Then they ran.

41

Leaves crackled underfoot. They heard nothing else for an hour. No one spoke and nothing seemed to be following them. Mia walked between Austin, who had the lead, and Garbarino, who kept watch behind them. Her body was sore, more from the RV ride than walking, but she hardly noticed.

Her mind was still on Collins, replaying what he’d said.
Redemption.
How could a man like Collins, who’d doomed billions of people to horrible deaths and turned the world into a living graveyard
even
begin to think he could be redeemed? And yet, he hadn’t come back.

Mia clenched her fist around a long branch she had picked up and used as a walking stick, anger tensing her body.

She felt a pang of guilt for dwelling on Collins, but if she didn’t her thoughts would turn to Liz, and that wound still hurt too much. So she focused on Collins, on how much she wanted him to come back so she could kill him again.

A wave of sadness swept through her.
Kill him? What the hell have I become
?
she
wondered. She wasn’t just thinking about killing a
man,
she wanted nothing more in the world than to put a bullet in Collins’s face. And despite her rising guilt over the desire, she’d do it now just the same. He deserved it. He deserved worse.

Without thinking, Mia swung her walking stick at a tree, grunting with anger and exertion. The thick stick cracked loudly, breaking into two pieces. “Fucker,” she muttered, picturing the tree as Collins.

Austin looked back at her, neither upset nor amused.
“Probably not a good idea.”

She nearly snapped at him for stating the obvious, but held her tongue. He had acted selflessly and thought of nothing but preserving the lives of others. Mia felt guilty for losing Elizabeth. She imagined Austin felt the same about the six others who had died under his watch.

“Austin,” she said, intending to thank him.

He looked back again as he passed through a stand of dried out ferns.
“Yeah?”

“I wanted to—”

“Hey,” Garbarino said, his voice filled with urgency. “Do you smell that?”

They stopped at the base of a forty foot hill. Mia tested the air with her nose. She hadn’t noticed the subtle change, but now that she focused on it, the scent of rot made her nose crinkle in disgust. A breeze carried a fresh waft of the scent. She put her hand to her mouth. “Something died near here.”

“That’s what doesn’t make sense,” Garbarino said. “People don’t stay dead here. There are no animals. The trees and plants are crispy dry. What could be rotting?”

“Survivors,” Austin said. He looked at Mia with sad eyes.
“If they stayed dead.”

The image made Mia cringe, but Austin was right. Rot would consume the dead until only dust remained.

“I don’t know,” Garbarino said. “The air here is dry. And there are no insects. The dead might be—” He saw the discomfort Mia had with the subject. She spared him by finishing the thought.

“Mummified,” she said. That made sense too, which validated his initial question. What could be rotting? “We should check it out,” she said.

Austin shifted. “I don’t know.”

 “If there’s even a small chance it could be other survivors, we should risk it.” Garbarino lifted some dry leaves and let them fall. The wind carried them down hill. “Whatever it is, it’s probably just over this rise.”

Austin scanned the woods around them, looking for any hint of danger. He sighed.
“Quickly.
Quietly.
If there is even a hint of danger, we leave. If we find someone alive, we take them. I doubt the killers or Masters have given up.”

Garbarino agreed with a nod. He started up the hill. Using his hands to help distribute his weight, he carefully picked each step. Mia and Austin followed. The leaves crackled under their weight, but made little more sound than a gentle breeze.

Mia tensed as they neared the top of the hill. Most of her worry had been eradicated by Elizabeth’s death. The fear of Liz getting hurt or killed had been her primary concern. And now that she was gone, all that remained was the fear of death.
Of pain.
And in comparison to losing the only person left on Earth she loved, pain and death seemed less significant, though not entirely irrelevant. Anything could be on the other side of this hill. The horde could lay in wait.
Or maybe just Masters.
Or an army of monsters just like him.
Or a vomit eating preacher.
The world had been unpredictable before. It was beyond comprehension now.

Garbarino paused at the top of the hill. The scent had grown stronger and if there was something dangerous, something that needed to be shot, he wanted all guns on hand when the time came.

Austin and Mia slid up next to him.

“Quick peeks,” Austin whispered to Mia. “Poke your head up, see what you can and then drop back down. If we see nothing dangerous, we’ll get a little closer.”

She didn’t respond. She just waited for the go ahead.

“Now,” Austin said.

All three pushed up, looking over the crest of the hill. But not one of them dropped back down.

“Oh my God,” Mia said.

Garbarino smiled.
“Pay dirt!”