The Countdown (The Taking #3)(27)

I didn’t stop myself with worry over whether I might actually hurt him. He’d hurt me. I concentrated, instead, on getting out of here, reminding myself he was standing between me and freedom. Between getting help for Thom.

It happened then, like a whirlwind . . . the first pieces of debris shooting up and hitting Eddie Ray from behind. Pelting him in the back of his skull.

He tried to shield himself, the way anyone would. He raised his arms to defend himself. But even I saw the pieces he couldn’t guard against, tearing his cheek and chin. A jagged-edged brick cut into his forehead, slicing wickedly down and across his face. If he hadn’t been Returned, he’d have been left with a gruesome scar.

Blinking through the screen of blood, he tried to wipe his eyes. But the debris kept coming at him.

It was more than I’d meant to summon, but I had no idea how to curb it. Maybe I didn’t want to.

Thom took some hits too, smaller stuff mostly, and I felt bad for that, but it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t have enough experience. I couldn’t control where it struck.

I didn’t stay to watch. Instead I bolted, leaving Eddie Ray curled in a fetal position, crippled by the rubble that viciously pelted him. I’d come back for Thom, but one of us had to get out.

Climbing the rubble I hadn’t yet cleared, I hit the release lever to the exit. Relief coursed through me as the crisp nighttime air rushed in and I lifted my face to meet it.

This was it. I was going to make it. Just a few more steps and I would be free from these lunatics forever.

My feet sank in the unmowed lawn. It was soggy and damp, and its moss-laden patches were soothing to my bare feet as I ran.

When the alarm shrieked, it wasn’t a result of the door I’d opened . . . not even a delayed response would have been that delayed. But the sound was more intense than anything I’d ever heard, causing me to stumble.

Reaching up to cover my ears, I scanned for its source, concentrating on each step I took . . . one and then another. The noise filled my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull and making my teeth rattle. My steps felt sluggish.

When I staggered again, I glanced up. Planted around the perimeter, high on tall steel posts, were loudspeakers. Ones I hadn’t noticed before.

I noticed now, though.

The pain in my head was a thousand times worse than the cuts and tears that had shredded my feet, and I wondered if this was the kind of damage that could ever be repaired.

Like Eddie Ray behind me, I finally gave in to the assault and dropped all the way down, even while I told myself . . . screamed at myself to run, run . . . run!

Except . . . I couldn’t manage it. And in a single instant I knew: there’d be no escaping. Not today.

There was only this . . . folding in on myself, tucking my knees to my chest as I covered my ears against this horrible, incessant blaring that rattled and echoed and made my brain vibrate.

When the hands closed in on me I knew . . .

It was over. They’d beaten me.

And then somewhere, in the jumble of noise and ache in my head, I felt it again, the stab . . . the sting . . .





TYLER


“HOW MUCH FARTHER?” IT WAS THE ONLY QUESTION that mattered, and Jett answered without skipping a beat: “Less than two hours.”

He’d already done the math; that was two hours taking into account our breakneck speed.

One hundred twenty minutes.

A lifetime.

I liked Jett, maybe more than I liked anyone else in the vehicle we were in—one of the two we’d taken. Ours was the SUV. Ben took his truck, along with two of Griffin’s guys, and Nancy.

I liked that Jett thought in terms of numbers. Statistics. Percentages.

I’d never been a numbers whiz, I was always more into books and music and art. But Jett didn’t make me want to shove my fist down his throat the way Simon did. Jett was ordered, logical. Simon was rude. The kind of guy my dad always called an SOB.

Even more though, I liked that Jett was almost as anxious to find Kyra as the rest of us, but without all the ulterior motives Simon and I had. Jett didn’t have something to prove. He wasn’t thinking about her lips or how he could convince her to choose him.

Or at least if he was, he was hiding it like a champ.

“What have you found out about the place?” I asked.

“It’s an asylum,” Jett announced. “Look.” He turned the beat-up laptop he carried everywhere and showed us some sort of official site with titles or deeds or something.

I leaned forward to get a better look even though I had no idea what I was looking at. “I didn’t even know those things existed anymore.”

“They don’t. Or this one doesn’t. It was shut down in the early seventies. According to the public records, it’s been bought and sold a couple times, but never actually converted into anything useful. Empty mostly. The bank foreclosed on the last owner over five years ago.” He tapped the screen again.

Simon, who just had to know something about everything, added, “Makes it the perfect hideout.”

Jett nodded, as usual agreeing with everything his fearless leader had to say. The hero worship was nauseating and a strike against Jett as far as I was concerned. Beside me, Griffin stayed silent, which from her was as good as agreement. An asylum it was, I supposed, and prayed Jett was half as smart as these people thought he was.