Edge of Valor: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller(57)
The copper taste of fear coated her tongue. Dread coagulated in her stomach. The sky was clear in all directions. She couldn’t see a thing.
But something was coming.
“Milo! Come on!”
Milo darted to her side, Ghost right beside him, his hackles raised. Tail stiff, he nudged Milo toward Quinn, herding them both.
Quinn whirled, taking everything in. Chaos reigned in the street in front of the schools. People sprinted from the soccer and football fields, yelling and shouting for their loved ones.
Dozens more streamed down the road from Main Street, others cutting through the alleys between Tresses Hair Salon, Brite Smiles Dental, and a small single-story post office.
At the front door of the school, Hannah and Principal King shouted instructions and directed people through the double doors.
Inside, Evelyn and Lee would move the injured and sick on stretchers from the medical ward to the basement bomb shelter.
In the distance came a low whomp, whomp, whomp.
The rumble of thunder before the storm. The tremor beneath your feet before the earthquake erupted. A terrible portend that promised destruction—and death.
Screams shattered the air. People shouting and crying. Everyone stampeded for the school shelters.
The security teams raced in the opposite direction, running to their fighting positions.
In the middle of the street, someone knocked an elderly man over. A haggard middle-aged couple stopped to help, but the crowd dragged them along.
In their panic, they’d trample each other.
Quinn grabbed Jonas’s arm and pointed. “Help him!”
Without a word, Jonas handed off the kid and sprinted into the oncoming crowd. Ghost bounded around them, barking, nosing them insistently on the sides and thighs as he directed them toward Hannah.
“Quinn!” Dave caught sight of her and gestured for her to run toward the shelter. “Come on!”
But Quinn couldn’t. Not yet.
She turned to Milo and pressed the girl’s hand to his. “Take her! Help her find her mom, okay?”
Nodding solemnly, Milo gripped the older girl’s hand and pulled her toward the high school. Nearly jerked off her feet, she stumbled after him. Ghost bounded beside Milo, barking at him to hurry the hell up.
People streamed into the school. By fives and tens, then more and more. The security teams took up their positions on the roof of the school and hid themselves in fortified windows and doorways.
She should be with them. But she couldn’t, not until she found Gran.
Travis appeared, a baby in each arm. Several ragged children ran behind him, along with a few of the teachers.
Darryl Wiggins, the former banker, was actually useful. He jogged ahead of the children, arms spread wide, pushing folks out of the way to make a path.
Jonas got the old man to his feet and helped him limp across the street. Robert Vinson, the pharmacist, aided a mother with two small children.
The whomping grew louder, joined by the deep growl of an aircraft’s engine. A foreign sound after so many months of empty skies.
Quinn spun and flung up her arm to shield her eyes.
There, in the distance to the northwest. A black speck on the horizon. It grew steadily closer.
A harbinger of death, a great wheeling bird of prey.
The ground tilted beneath her. Her hands went clammy, her mouth bone dry.
Her AR-15 wouldn’t do a thing against an armored helicopter. She had to get these people out of here. She had to get Gran.
Heart in her throat, Quinn kept searching, wildly scanning each familiar face. Not her, not her, not her.
And then there she was. Fifty yards away, Gran hobbled down the middle of the street. She held a little tow-headed toddler, her cane hooked uselessly over one arm.
Two boys no older than ten ran beside her, one dragging a screaming preschooler by the hand, the other clutching Gran’s Mossberg aimed downward, the barrel banging his skinny legs.
Their neighbors. The four orphaned boys that Annette King had taken under her wing after their mother drank contaminated river water. Gran had been showing them how to milk Oreo and make homemade cheese from goat’s milk.
Blind panic gripped Quinn.
Gran wasn’t moving fast enough. She wouldn’t make it.
The helicopter roared closer. Rotors beat the air. The engines growled like a living creature.
A predator on the hunt.
40
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Thirteen
Quinn started toward them. “Gran!”
The Black Hawk swooped low.
The townspeople shrieked and ducked as the great mechanical beast beat the air above them, casting a menacing shadow.
From the sandbagged rooftops, Fall Creek’s shooters fired at the helo. At least two of the stolen M60 belt-fed machine guns opened fire.
The Black Hawk swerved and kept going. It soared past them to the end of the road before banking sharply and heading back in their direction.
It pitched back and forth, avoiding the small-arms fire, veering to and fro like a dragon. Like some prehistoric monster hunting them, attempting to flush them out like frightened mice.
They hadn’t fired yet. Didn’t mean they wouldn’t.
Quinn sprinted toward Gran and the kids, running against the flow of frantic people, elbows and knees bumping and banging into her. Her sore muscles ached, her ribs throbbing.