Instinct, Jason Hough [acx book reading TXT] 📗

Flashlight beams swing and bounce as the buildings are systematically searched. One structure at a time, windows alive with light and shadow as the group moves through, the glow only to die again when they depart and move on to the next.

“Just burn the whole fucking place!” one of the bodyguards shouts. The alpha of the pack who gave the orders in front of Doc’s house.

“No!” comes the reply. From Doc, I think. This is immediately confirmed. “She has my notes! We need them!”

Okay, that’s good to know. Thanks, Doc. I may have some leverage after all.

I try to spot him, peering over the edge of the ditch and scanning the shadowy buildings, but it’s all too far away and there’s so little light. My guess is he’s right near the center of town, which I’m pretty sure means the police station.

Closest to me is the Gas-n-Go. The windows are dark, as are all the freezers inside, but the gas pumps are still on. Backup generator, maybe. Of Kenny there’s no sign, and my mouth goes dry at the possibility of him running around with that mob. Then comes the nightmare thought of Kyle being with them, too, and my whole body goes cold with the idea. I lower my head to the dirt and whisper, “Please don’t be part of this, Kyle. Please.”

The urge to head straight to the pub is strong, but I have to get to the police station. The arms locker. Two shotguns are kept in there, along with several boxes of shells. That’s the only way I’ll have a fighting chance against these armed bodyguards. The townspeople I resolve to avoid at all costs, because I can’t bear the idea of having to put one of them down.

A flashlight beam sweeps over me. The flare of light is almost blinding. I curse and press into the earth. The light remains fixed on my spot. It takes every ounce of will I have not to look. In my haste to duck I somehow lost my grip on the folding knife taken from Doc’s garage. I don’t dare search for it with the beam on me, though. All I can do is wait, listening, expecting to hear the man call to his companions any second, or to come walking this way for a closer look.

Somewhere in the distance a familiar sound returns, steady under the commotion. The wump-wump-wump of the helicopter’s blades. “Shit,” I mouth into the dirt. I’m completely exposed here. If they start searching from the air, it’s over.

But the sound fades, and with its departure the voice of Mrs. Conaty returns. That order to kill me, blasting on repeat, like a constant forceful nudge to those searching the town.

A nightmare image flashes into my skull. Not a mob of ten or twenty, but an army of thousands. Millions. An army that never disobeys, or questions, or even flinches, no matter what task they’ve been set.

I begin to shiver uncontrollably, crippled with a dread unlike any I’ve felt in my life. This… this vision of a global catastrophe, germinating in this quaint little place. Like the birth of some super flu, on the cusp of exploding before anyone realizes what’s happening.

And Silvertown—my town—is ground zero.

I feel as if I’m being pressed into the dirt, crushed under the weight of this waking nightmare. My whole body vibrates from fear. Not of what they’ll do to me if they catch me, but what will happen if I fail.

Get it together, Mary. Take a breath. Take another. Another.

Lifting my head a little, I peer into the beam of light, almost daring the bastard to notice me and do something. The white flare bores into my skull. But I must be too far off to discern, because nothing happens.

Ten seconds pass. Then the flashlight beam moves away. Back to scanning.

I squeeze my eyes shut again, waiting for the afterglow to fade. As the blurry freeze-frame dissipates I grope through the muck and leaves around me for the folding knife. It’s as if the ground has swallowed it up, though. Without light I’ll never find the damn thing.

I give up. Glance back toward town. See the outline of the SUV, and his form beside it. In front of all this is the vague outline of my hand on the edge of the ditch. I can just make out the three words scrawled there. Once again I’ve managed to forget about them, like that part of my brain has been hidden away behind a heavy curtain.

I need help. I need help. Repeating this, forcing it to stay in my mind, seems the only possible way to bury the instinctual dead zone in my head.

I need help. The words become a chant, a song, constantly running just beneath my inner thoughts. I need help. With each syllable I crawl slowly backward, deeper into the darkness, farther from Silvertown.

When my foot strikes the trunk of a tree I shift to a crouch and then, eyes on the town in front of me, I slip into the woods and start to circle around.

The police station had been my plan. Way too obvious, in hindsight. They’re expecting it, almost counting on it.

So I go somewhere else, instead. With any luck, the last thing they’ll expect is me coming at them from the east. From the mountain.

Keeping well back from the road, I creep along through the greenbelt that serves as a buffer between downtown and its nearest homes. Getting my bearings in the blackout takes several minutes. No streetlights, no landscape lights, no motion sensors flooding driveways. In fact, at this hour I doubt most of the residents are even aware the power’s off. Can none of them hear the commotion? Conaty’s voice? A helicopter, for fuck’s sake?

Perhaps they already did have a look. Walked into town and right into Conaty’s hands. I think about the size of that mob, marveling at how quickly it was formed. How’d they