Into The Fire (The Ending Series) (2 page)

1

ZOE

MARCH
14, 1AE

No! No! This can’t be happening!

“Dani!” My voice carried throughout the eerily quiet field
as I sprinted along the pasture fence, away from the barn and toward Dani’s
bone-chilling scream. Jake was right behind me, the light from his flashlight
dancing around my bare feet. Each breath was so loud, so raspy, it was like I
could hear nothing else.

My mind started to feel odd, momentarily distracting me as I
ran, but I ignored the feeling along with the frigid air biting at my skin and
the jagged rocks poking the bottoms of my feet. My eyes blurred with unshed
tears, and I stumbled over something, barely catching myself before colliding
with the unyielding ground. I shook my head, trying to dispel the disorienting
fog that was steadily creeping into my mind.

In the darkness a few yards ahead, I could see Jason’s shadowy
form. His flashlight and gun were pointed in front of him as he swept into the
forest with Jack, Dani’s German shepherd, leading the way.

I slowed, hesitating at the edge of the forest. Seeing
Jason’s pistol raised scared the shit out of me.
Did he find something?
Who’s in there?
What’s
in there?

“D!” I cried out.

In an instant, a strong hand wrapped around my arm. I whipped
my head around to face Jake. “What—”

“We
have
to be quiet, Zoe.” His voice was low and
severe. He pointed into the woods, and I realized all I could hear was the
sound of flapping wings and a hoot from an owl off in the distance. Jason
wasn’t calling out for Dani; there were no voices.

I nodded, feeling stupid, but I still wanted to call for
her. I needed her to know that we were nearby…that we would find her.
Why is
this happening to us? Why can’t we catch a goddamn break!

Turning back to the woods, I concentrated on controlling my
breath and regaining some clarity.
Why can’t I focus?
Sanchez, Harper,
Chris, and Carlos passed me, bouncing flashlight beams lighting their way into
the dense forest. I vaguely noticed Biggs, Ben, and Ky following them, Biggs muttering
curses under his breath. My head started to throb under the massive influx of foreign
emotions. I shuttered myself against the onslaught and rushed into the woods, hardly
feeling the scraggly branches poking and scratching me.

“What was she even doing out here?” I rasped. I stopped
inside the tree line, wishing I had been levelheaded enough to grab a
flashlight and a pair of boots like everyone else.

Jake stopped beside me, but Cooper trotted passed us, his
nose skimming the ground for a scent. He locked on to a trail and began to
follow it. I heard a barrage of whispers around me before everyone broke off
into groups, but I focused on the dogs; they were following two different scent
trails.

After what felt like an hour of following, searching, and
waiting for Jack or Cooper to find some sign of Dani, both dogs’ trails
converged at a narrow, jagged tree stump. Jack whined, and Cooper sniffed the pine
needles around the base of the stump. The dogs had found something. Instinctively,
my gut balled into a knot.

Ben, who was helping to keep his brother upright, began to
say something. “I think—”

“Here,” Harper said, aiming his flashlight at the exposed
roots of the stump. Crouching, he shifted a fist-sized stone and picked
something up.

Chris stepped up behind him and peered over his shoulder. “Jason,”
she said ominously, glancing at my brother.

He moved to her side, and hesitantly, I followed. I stopped
almost instantly. Jason’s dread washed over me, a wave of nausea making my
insides lurch, and I had to close my mouth and hold my breath to avoid vomiting.
Every hair on my body stood on end at the thought of what they’d found. “What
is it?” I croaked.
Please don’t say a body part…

Stiffly, Jason squatted beside Harper, taking whatever Harper
had found from his hand.
A yellow piece of fabric?

“It’s just like the ones we saw back at Lewis-McChord,” Chris
said quietly. Rising from his seated position next to Jason, Jack stretched out
his neck to sniff the cloth and whined.

Chris glanced around at our confused faces and explained, “It’s
an armband, or at least part of one. Some of the personnel were wearing these
when they put our base on lock-down.” She shook her head. “We stole a few; it
was the only way we could get off the base. The people wearing these”—she
snatched the armband out of Jason’s hand and clenched it in her fist—“had
something to do with the Virus.”

“I’ve seen those before too, on people from the Colony,” Jake
said. He’d been trying to convince us that the supposed safe haven was dangerous
since we first met up with him at Fort Knox. “It must’ve been them…”

An image of his sister’s dark hair and violet eyes flashed
through my mind. He was remembering her. He was remembering the men who’d
promised to help her, the men who had frightened her enough that she’d taken her
own life before
they
could.

Everyone looked at Jake, including my dangerously quiet brother.
“Why would they take Dani?” Jason asked as he rose and took a menacing step toward
Jake. “How would they even know we’re here?”

I didn’t like Jason’s accusing tone, but Jake didn’t seem to
notice. Never taking his eyes off the yellow armband, he answered, “I don’t
know how they knew we were here, but if they wanted her bad enough to kidnap
her…their resources are—were…” He paused. “It wouldn’t have been difficult for
them to take her.” The images of his sister’s final breath played through his
head…through mine. A gut-wrenching feeling of loss took root in the pit of my
stomach.

“You seem to know a lot about them,” Jason probed, taking
another step toward Jake. “Maybe you know more than you’re letting on. Maybe
you—”

“You think I’d save Zoe’s life back at Fort Knox just to put
her in danger again? You really are a piece of—” Jake inhaled and then emitted no
further sounds, like he’d decided holding his breath for a while was the safer
option. He was probably right.

He met Jason’s challenging stare a moment longer before turning
his angry gaze on me. “I warned you not to come here.” His words stung with
truth.

“Then how the fuck did they find us?” Jason’s voice was damning,
his glare focused solely on Jake. I didn’t like it and felt a sudden desire to
punch my brother in the face.

“How the hell should I know?” Jake snapped. “We’ve been here
over a month and nothing. You get here and now they know where we are.”

Jason made a noise that was part exhale, part growl. “How
exactly
do you know so much about them?”

“Because they tried to take my sister, and now she’s dead,”
Jake replied hotly.

The two men were standing less than two feet apart, Jason’s
rage barely contained. He didn’t lose control often, but when he did…I
shuddered, recalling the worst of the fights between him and our dad. Jason
cracked his knuckles, an ominous sign I was all too familiar with, and I feared
my brother wouldn’t be able to rein in his temper.

I stepped between them. “It’s not Jake’s fault, Jason, so
back off!”

My brother ignored me, instead turning his aggression on
Chris. “Stay the fuck out of my head,” he ordered, obviously feeling her
cerebral fingers trying to manipulate his mental state into something more
stable.

Jake and Jason weren’t the only ones on edge. Biggs was
worrying about Sarah and their unborn baby, and Ky was in pain, practically
folding under the weight of our collective panic. Ky’s Ability to feel
volatility—to sense and internalize everyone’s destructive emotions—was
physically debilitating him. He reached for the flask in his pocket without a
second thought. Abandoning Jason, Chris ran to Ky’s side.

The weight and amount of negativity Ky was picking up on
frightened me; it was as if he wasn’t just sensing our group, but all of the
fear and hostility surrounding us.
From Cañon City? From the Colony?
Like
Ky, I was pulled in all directions by the mounting unease and fear of everyone
around us, as though I were being emotionally drawn and quartered. I wanted to
scream.

The looming fog seemed to thicken in my brain, tangling with
the barrage of emotions.
What the hell’s going on?
I searched my convoluted
mind for something I could grasp on to—something other than anger and fear and resentment.
I’d been so fucking naïve to think everything would be okay once we found each
other.
Keep it together, Zoe,
Dani needs you.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of
the forest—the sharp smell of pine needles, damp soil, and wood
.
The fog
continued to spread its tendrils through my mind in a horrifyingly familiar
way. I felt trapped in my own head, unable to escape the encroaching numbness.
The only other time I’d felt such an overwhelming loss of mental control was
when my mind had been invaded by Crazies in the hospital back at Fort Knox.
What
if we’re wrong? What if it isn’t the Colony?

Feeling a sudden jolt of panic, I opened my eyes. I could
see the lichen coating the tree trunks in the dim moonlight, like spots on a
leopard. But there were no snarls or howls or voices beyond our group. There were
no fiendish sounds of Crazies cackling in the distance. There were no signs giving
me cause to think anyone was there at all.

But
someone
took Dani.

A bolt of anger shot through me, jostling me from my
statue-like state. I took a step toward my brother. “What the hell was she
doing out here, Jason?” He’d always been big, bad, protective Jason—so why had
he let Dani go outside, alone, in the middle of the night?

In the faint moonlight dappling his face, I could barely
make out the hard set of his features. “Peeing,” he answered lamely.

“Peeing? Alone? In the woods?” My anger flared, fury
consuming my disbelief and fear. “I can’t believe you, Jason! I just got her
back, and now you—”

“Fuck you!” He pointed at me in warning, his eyes glinting
silver in the darkness. “She was just peeing,” he muttered.

“I can’t believe someone was just standing here,” Biggs said
and began pacing. “Were they just waiting for us this whole time? Sarah…the
baby…” He looked up at Sanchez abruptly. “We need to get out of here,” he said
evenly. “It’s not safe here anymore. We’ve—”

“Do what you want,” Jason growled. “I’m going after Dani.”

“You think you can just walk into the Colony and get her? We
need a plan first,” Jake said, facing Chris and Sanchez. “We need—”

“Need to what? To wait for them to hurt her? To do worse?”
Jason’s tone was scathing as, once again, he took a step closer to Jake.

“Calm down, Jason.” I placed myself between them again. “We
need to come up with a plan first. I mean, what if it’s Crazies and has nothing
to do with the—”

“It’s
not
Crazies,” Jake and Jason said at the same
time. They exchanged an irritated glance.

I rolled my eyes. “If it
is
the Colony, they’ll
outnumber us and—”

“Then you stay here and
plan
,” Jason said with a
smirk. “I’ll go find Dani.”

“Get over yourself already!” I seethed. “You think I’m not
worried about her? Like I haven’t been waiting to see Dani for months? Like I
haven’t been worrying about her since all this bullshit started? Like suddenly
I don’t care about her anymore because
you’re
in the picture? She’s my
best friend, remember? Or did you forget that, since everything’s always about
you?” My voice was riddled with bitterness and jealousy, and my words were
laden with twenty-six years’ worth of resentment.

To my surprise, Jason remained silent.

Sanchez cleared her throat. “Look,” she said deliberately.
“If we want to find your friend, we need to be rational. So grow the fuck up
and stop arguing, and then we can come up with a plan that
won’t
get us
all killed.”

“We can’t do much else in the dark,” Harper said, his voice breaking
through the tension. “The sun’ll be up in an hour or so, then we can continue
searching for signs of what happened.”

“I’m not finished looking for her,” Jason muttered and turned
toward his tent.

“I wasn’t implying that any of us were finished looking for
her,” Harper clarified, but Jason continued stalking away. The rest of us dispersed,
some making their way back to camp, but Jake, Harper, and I stopped at the edge
of the forest, watching…thinking.

“Look how close they were to us,” I said with a shaky
breath. I gauged the distance between where we stood and the barn. Although far
away, I could see the dim embers of the night’s fire and the outline of the hay
bales and chairs surrounding it. I watched the dark figures of my companions as
they moved around the camp. “We never even heard them.”

Suddenly, as if my skin had become animated, creeping over
my bones and muscles, I shivered. The thought of never seeing Dani alive again
after everything we’d been through—journeying across the country, surviving
homicide attempts and Crazies—caused a rogue tear to roll down my cheek.
Determination,
Zoe,
I told myself. I hurriedly wiped the tear away.

With my brother out of earshot, I turned to Harper. I
recalled the fleeting look of unease that had flashed over his dark, handsome
features when Dani had arrived the day before. Whatever he’d seen was startling
enough to have made his green eyes flare with apprehension.

“You had a vision earlier…yesterday, when you were hugging
Dani, didn’t you?” I knew I wasn’t going to like his reply the moment he closed
his eyes in…
regret
?

Harper didn’t look at me when he spoke. “I saw her in
darkness,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if she was sleeping or—”