Never Fade (The Darkest Minds #2)(90)

Footsteps fell fast and heavy on the cement. I felt someone rush behind me, muttering something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch—one glance over my shoulder told me that half of the group, struggling under the new weight of their packs, was doing one last loop through the different aisles.

“Ruby!”

It wasn’t the crack in Jude’s voice that sent me spinning back—it was the sudden, overwhelming stench of stale cigarette smoke.

I wasn’t fast enough. I shifted, meaning to throw up an arm to block the blow, but the knife found me a moment before the punch to the back of the head did.

I don’t know if I screamed. My jaw dropped with the burst of pain. I tried to catch myself as I pitched forward into the tubs, but a hand fisted around my ponytail and wrenched me back. I didn’t have a chance to regain my balance. The gun was ripped out from the back of my pants before I could think clearly enough to pull it.

Michael was breathing ragged and uneven, more with fury, I thought, than the effort of the attack. The knife, or whatever he’d used, twisted in my lower back, and that time I knew I screamed. The arm across my chest slid up to press against my throat, my gun fisted tight in his hand. He pressed it up under my chin, forcing it as high as the bones in my neck would allow without snapping. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move.

“Miss me?” he hissed.

I tried throwing my head back, twisting, anything to get away. You’re okay, I told myself. Not your spine, not your kidney, just—

“Thanks for finding this place,” he continued, slamming me forward against the tubs. Michael leaned down low, bringing his lips up to my ear. “You and the others can get your sweet fill until the PSFs get here, yeah?”

The force of Jude ramming into us shoulder-first wasn’t enough to throw Michael off me completely, but it was powerful enough that I could turn and drive my knee up into his center. I heard the knife give way from my skin with a sucking sound and clatter against the floor. Jude’s mop of curling hair dove for it at the same time Michael did. My entire right side screamed in pain as my foot went flying toward his face.

“Bitch!” he screamed, and then I was flying back, slamming into the shelves opposite us. Jude was sent flying in another direction, back toward Brett and Olivia, who were coming down the aisle to see what was happening. One shot fired—another one—and the lights changed from white to a flashing red, and everything after was swallowed by a pulsing screech.

TWENTY

I DON’T KNOW HOW I got from the back of the hangar to the front, only that when the black fuzz lifted from my brain and the nauseating brightness of the overhead lights warmed to an unbearable glow, Jude had me propped up at one shoulder, Olivia at the other, and we were watching as Michael and four others collected our guns and sacks of food rations.

To the right of them, shaking like the last leaf on an autumn tree, was a blank-stared Knox.

So that was where Michael and the others had gone—to find their old pack leader. A lot of good it seemed like it was doing for them now, though. Knox muttered to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels, the same word forming on his lips: Leave, leave, leave.

“—your choice,” Michael shouted. The noise had cut out, but not the flashing lights. “You chose strangers over Knox! Over me! You wanna take everything from us and kick us out? We found that damn warehouse! We set everything up!”

Jude was shaking—not from fear or the cold but from blistering anger. “So if you can’t have it, no one can—is that it?” he said, his hand tightening around my waist. “You hate your life, so you have to make everyone else just as miserable and hungry and pathetic as you are?”

“I am not pathetic—none of us are! If she hadn’t messed him up, Knox would be telling you this! Look at him—look! You want her to do this to you? You want another performance of her freak show?”

“Believe me…” I shook my head in a weak attempt to clear the spots from my vision. “If you don’t drop those bags and get the hell out of my sight in two seconds, you’ll be next.”

He raised his gun, but Olivia and Brett both stepped directly in front of me.

There was a quick movement to my left. I looked over just in time to see one of Michael’s team yank the door to open it again. One of them must have shut it, I realized. That’s why the alarms had gone off in the first place.

“Time to go,” the boy shouted. “They’re pulling up!”

My core settled to stone. If they were here, it was already too late.

“Don’t—!” Brett warned, but Michael grabbed Knox and followed the others out into the night anyway. There were two beats of silence. I closed my eyes and turned away from the shouting, the whining of cars, and guns and uniforms. One shot was fired. A hundred answered.

“Down!” I commanded, tackling Jude. For the most part, the bullets pinged off the large hangar door, just to the right of the smaller side access door we’d come through, but some passed through the thin metal and buried themselves in the same shelves of supplies we had just ransacked.

My mind was fraying at the edges, a pounding headache echoing every throb of pain in my lower back. I swiped at the sweat beading on my upper lip. I didn’t need to get up with Brett, or find a way to look outside. I knew what I’d see—four dumb, dead kids and a swarm of black and camo setting up a line of defense.