The hatch door was almost closed now, a five-foot gap at most, moving painfully slowly. The man had leaned over the edge of the door to see if his friend was okay, but he turned now to face Mark again, full of rage. Mark felt rage, too. Like nothing he’d ever felt before. Like a storm erupting within.
He reached out and grabbed his foe’s shirt, squeezed it in his fist, then growled two words that somehow calmed the storm within him.
“Your turn.”
CHAPTER 42
“You’re going to die,” the man wheezed back through an angry breath. “You’re going to die right now.”
“No,” Mark answered. “I’m not.”
He balled his hand into a fist and smashed it into the pilot’s cheek. The man cried out, then threw his hands forward, grabbing at Mark’s hair and face and clothes. He finally caught Mark’s shirt and his shoulder and yanked him into a wrestler’s hold. They rolled against the hatch door. A metal ridge cut into Mark’s back as the pilot pressed on him from above, leaning forward with his forearm dug into Mark’s neck, cutting off the air to his windpipe.
“You messed with the wrong man today,” the pilot said in a low, vicious voice. “I’ve had enough people tick me off without you trying to steal my ship. I’m going to take my anger out on you, boy. And I’m going to do it over a very long period of time. Do you understand?”
He eased back on his arm and Mark sucked in a breath, filling his lungs. Then the pilot grabbed him by the shirt and sat up, putting all his weight on Mark’s stomach. The man reached high and swung down with a fist, hitting Mark square in the jaw. It felt as if something cracked in his face. The pilot punched him again and the pain doubled. Mark closed his eyes, tried to tamp down the rage that was building inside him like a nuclear reaction. How much could he take in one day?
“Better not let that door close for good, now,” the man said, clearly confident that he’d already won the battle. “As much as it’d be fun to hold your head out there and watch it get squeezed like a grape, I think I’d rather take a little more time.”
He slipped off Mark’s body and got to his feet, then walked over to the controls and pressed something. There was a lurch that Mark felt in his back, then a squeal, then the continued slow wrenching sound as the door started opening once again. He could see the chamber growing lighter than ever. The landing pad must’ve fully rotated and was now sinking into the ground. In a few minutes they’d be open to the entire horde of Bruce’s people, open to them charging aboard and ending it all.
Fighting the urge to move, Mark waited, letting the fury inside him continue to grow.
The pilot stepped up to Mark, then reached down and grabbed his feet, lifted them with a grunt. “Come on, now. Let’s get you in a good position.” He started to swing Mark’s body around as he walked sideways deeper into the cargo room of the Berg. “I’ll make sure you’re nice and comfy before—”
Mark sprang to life, screaming and kicking out as he twisted himself to jerk free from the pilot’s grip. The man stumbled backward until his back hit the wall next to the reopening ramp door. Mark scrambled to stand up as he lunged forward, finally slamming his shoulder into the man’s gut. The man doubled over and wrapped his arms around Mark’s back, both of them crashing to the floor. They rolled and tumbled, all swinging arms and punching fists. Mark tried to knee him in the groin, but the man blocked him, then swung up and connected with Mark’s chin.
Mark’s head snapped back and he fell off the pilot, who leaped forward, getting on top of him once again. But Mark never stopped moving, using his momentum to spin backward and throw the man off. Then he stood up and ran to the controls, realizing with a shock of horror that the ramp door had already lowered several feet. People might swarm aboard when it was fully open, for all he knew.
He quickly pushed the retract button and the door squealed, then started closing again. He was just turning back around to face his foe when the man tackled him, their bodies crashing onto the large slab of the ramp. They slid a few feet, almost to the very edge again. Mark twisted his body and grabbed the pilot’s shirt with both hands, trying to fling him off and through the gap of the door, but the man put his feet down and was able to push himself back on top of Mark.
They struggled against each other, punching and kicking. Mark was tired and hungry and weak, but he fought on, fueled by adrenaline alone. He imagined Trina out there somewhere, being held by the bonfire people, probably even crazier with another day gone and the debacle of the forest fire. He had to live. He had to find her. He couldn’t let this man stand in his way. That ball of spinning rage—the churning reactor of heat and fire and pain that had been building and building within his chest—finally exploded once and for all.
He lurched with a strength he didn’t know he had, throwing the pilot off his body. He was on top of the man before he could right himself, pushing him down onto his back, punching him. Hard. There was blood. The horrific sound of things crunching. Mark felt disconnected from his own body—he almost couldn’t see straight. Tiny bright lights danced before his eyes, his body trembled and he felt the blood boiling in his veins.
He was aware on some level that the ramp door was almost closed. On some level he noticed the walls of the chamber, people screaming and yelling, readying to attack the Berg. But Mark had lost all control.
He looked down, was surprised to see himself dragging the guy’s body to the edge of the ramp, shoving him halfway out so that the man’s head and shoulders hung over the lip of the ramp into open air. He’d tried to free himself from Mark’s grip, but Mark didn’t let him. He reached out and punched the man again. The pilot yelled and squirmed violently, obviously aware of what Mark intended.
Maybe even more aware than Mark himself. He held on, kept the man in position—half in, half out. Something had changed for Mark. His thoughts were purely focused on the man in his grip and on making him pay for everything. The anger was like a fog that had filled his head. And he couldn’t stop himself.
Something had snapped.
The ramp door closed on the pilot’s chest. Squeezed him as it strained to come fully closed. The screams that erupted from the man were horrific and pierced Mark to the core, jolting him out of the red-hot rage into which he’d sunk. As if he was seeing for the first time, he realized what he was doing. Torturing another human being. The sound of the man’s sternum and ribs breaking, the squeal of the door’s hinges as they continued to stress over the obstacle keeping the door open—Mark felt a rush of horror at himself.
He pushed on the pilot’s body, but it was wedged tight in the narrowing gap. His screams seemed to vibrate the metal of the Berg, shake the entire thing through and through. Mark scrambled around and got onto his back, pressed his elbows against the ramp, then, with all his strength, kicked out with both feet, connecting against the man’s middle. He budged a few inches more. Mark yelled as he kicked and kicked and kicked, pushing the body away from him, trying to end the man’s misery.
With a final kick, Mark knocked the pilot free. The man disappeared through the gap and the ramp door slammed shut.
CHAPTER 43
A deep and unnerving silence filled the cargo room, along with an almost complete darkness. The silence was interrupted seconds later by the grind of a motor, and then the Berg was moving on the tracks, jerking back to the central chamber.
Mark’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he pulled himself up and crawled to the wall, propping himself against it. He felt something inside that he didn’t like.
He wrapped his arms around his knees and he buried his head there. He didn’t really understand what had just happened to him. Those dancing lights, that fireball of rage, the adrenaline pumping like pistons in an old gas engine. He’d been consumed and out of control, every part of him wanting to destroy that pilot. He’d almost been happy when the man was wedged in the closing door. And then he’d come to his senses and pushed the man out.
It was like Mark had lost his …
He looked up when he realized the truth. He had lost his mind there for a second. Completely. And just because he seemed like his normal self now didn’t mean that it hadn’t begun. He slowly pushed himself up along the wall until he was standing, and folded his arms. Shivered, rubbed them with his hands.
The virus. The illness. The thing that attacked the human brain the way the man named Anton had described in the barracks. Which reminded him of something else they’d heard down there, ironically from the pilot himself when he’d heard him talking earlier. A single word.
Mark had it. His every instinct told him so. No wonder his head had been hurting so much.
He had the Flare.
CHAPTER 44
A surprising calm came over him.
Hadn’t he expected this? Hadn’t he come to terms with the fact that their odds of not catching the disease were almost zero? Trina probably had it. Lana and Alec, too. Why Deedee seemed immune to the thing—she’d actually been shot with a dart two months ago—was beyond him. But what was it Bruce had said? It made sense: anyone who risked unleashing a virus had to have protection for themselves. There had to be a treatment, an antidote somewhere. It just didn’t make sense otherwise.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a spark of hope. Maybe.
How many times had he faced death in the last year or so? He was used to it by now. All he could do was focus on the next rung of the ladder: Trina. He had to find Trina. If for no other reason than so he could die with her.
He was startled when the Berg suddenly jolted to a stop. Then there were more sounds of cranking and grinding of gears and pulleys. The landing pad was finally rising toward the sky. The Berg sprang to life—lights flickering overhead and engines and machinery revving.
With an unexpected burst of excitement, Mark sprinted for the door of the cargo room. If Alec was really going to fly this thing, he had to see it with his own eyes.
Alec looked more comfortable in the cockpit than Mark had ever seen him. He was a blur of activity—pushing buttons, flipping switches and adjusting levers.
“What in the world took you so long?” the man asked, not even pausing long enough to shoot Mark a glance.
“I ran into a little trouble.” The last thing Mark wanted to do was talk about it right then. “You’re really going to be able to fly us away in this thing?”
“Oh yeah. She’s half filled with fuel cells and lookin’ right sharp and pretty.” He nodded at the windows in front of him, where Mark could see a line of trees coming into view. “But we better hurry before the nut jobs swarm over us and break in somehow.”
Mark rushed forward to take a better look. Leaning in, he could see that quite a few of Bruce’s people had congregated outside at the rim of the landing station. They seemed a little out of sorts, pointing this way and that, obviously unsure of what to do. But a couple of them were really close to the ship, busy doing something, though Mark didn’t have a good enough angle to see what. An alarming thought popped into his head.
“What about the hatch door?” he asked. “You were able to open it from the outside, right?”
“First thing I did was lock out that function. Don’t worry.” He was still busy at the controls. “We’ll be launching this baby in about one minute. You might wanna perch that skinny butt of yours down in a seat and strap in.”
“Okay.” He wanted to get another look outside first, though. He stepped around Alec and went to the other end of the line of windows to take a peek. This side faced the wall of the canyon a little more, and the gray stone grabbed his attention before he could look down. His eyes were just running along the length of the granite walls when something flashed in the corner of his vision and he froze. The head of a huge hammer swung up and came at the glass. It made contact with a shattering thud, sending a web of cracks in every direction. Someone had climbed up the side of the Berg.
Mark jumped back as Alec yelped in surprise.
“Hurry, get us up in the air!” Mark called out.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Alec rushed his efforts even more, focusing on the central panel of the controls, holding his finger above a bright green button on the screen.
Mark looked back at the window just in time to see the hammer come down again, breaking all the way through with a horrible crunch and a shower of glass pellets across the controls—the hammer itself followed, bouncing off a panel and hitting the floor. Then a man’s face appeared at the opening he’d created, followed by hands and arms as he started to climb in.
“Get rid of that guy!” Alec yelled. At the same time he tapped the green button and the Berg lurched off the ground, the sound of thrusters filling the air like the roar of angry lions.
Mark caught his balance and reached down for the hammer. Just as his fingers closed around the handle someone grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked. An alien screech tore out of his mouth at the pain and he dropped the hammer, beat his fists against the hand and arm that had taken hold of him. But the man held firm and quickly slipped his other arm around Mark’s neck, then pulled back, bringing Mark with him.
Mark’s head smacked the top edge of the missing window’s frame and slipped through it, out into the hot air of the morning. Then half of his body was out, up to the waist—he gripped the window frame to stop himself from falling completely. All he could see were the tops of the trees and blue sky beyond, and he realized with a wave of horror that the man was literally hanging off of him, still holding on to his hair and neck. For the second time that day, Mark couldn’t breathe.