Нора Робертс - Year One

“I do trust you. I want to get out, Max, get somewhere guns aren’t necessary, and knives aren’t a precaution. Let’s go. Let’s just go.”

She started to put on the cashmere coat—blue as her eyes—he’d given her for Christmas, but at his head shake, switched to her parka. At least he didn’t quibble about the cashmere scarf she wrapped around her neck.

He helped her shoulder her backpack. “Can you handle it?”

She made a fist, bent her arm at the elbow. “I’m an urbanite who uses the gym. Or used to.”

With it, she picked up her purse, put it on cross-body.

“Lana, you don’t need—”

“I’m leaving my food processor, my Dutch oven, my worn exactly once Louboutin over-the-knee boots, but I’m not leaving without my purse.” Rolling her shoulders to adjust the pack, she gave him a steady, challenging stare. “Doom or no Doom, there are lines, Max. There are lines.”

“Were those the boots you walked into my office wearing—with one of my shirts?”

“Right. That makes worn twice.”

“I’ll miss them as much as you.”

It was good, she thought, good they’d made each other smile before they left their home.

He hefted the bag she’d packed. Opened the door.

“We keep moving,” he told her. “Just keep moving north until we find a truck or an SUV.”

As her smile dropped away, she only nodded.

They moved toward the stairway at the end of the common hall. The door of the last unit opened a crack.

“Don’t go out there.”

“Keep moving,” Max ordered when Lana stopped.

The door opened a little wider. Through the opening, Lana saw the woman she knew casually as Michelle. Worked in advertising, some family money, divorced, active social life.

Now Michelle’s hair, the mad tangles of it, flew around her face as if in a wild wind.

Behind her dishes, glassware, pillows, and photos flew in circles.

“Don’t go out there,” she repeated. “There’s death out there.” Then she grinned, horribly, as she whirled her fingers in the air. “I can’t stop! I just can’t stop! We’re all mad here. All. Mad. Here.”

She slammed the door.

“Can’t we help her?” Lana asked him.

Max just took her arm, pulling her to the stairwell. “Keep moving.”

“She’s one of us, Max.”

“And some like us couldn’t handle what turned on inside them. They’ve gone mad, like she has. Immune to the virus, doomed anyway. That’s the reality, Lana. Keep moving.”

They walked down three floors to the narrow lobby.

Mail slots gaped open, their doors broken off or hanging out like tongues. Graffiti smeared the walls. She smelled urine, harsh and stale.

“I didn’t know they’d made it into the building.”

“Up to the second floor,” Max told her. “Most of the tenants took off before that. I’m not sure if anyone’s still in the building below the third floor.”

They stepped out into the winter sunlight and snapping wind. Lana smelled smoke and ash, food gone rotten, and what she knew was death.

She kept moving, said nothing as they walked quickly through what had been her little world of streets and shops and cafes.

In its place lay destruction, desolation, and deserted streets scattered with wrecked and abandoned cars. A terrible quiet made their footsteps echo.

She yearned for the engines, the horns, the voices, the clashing, crashing music of the city. She mourned it as she walked north.

“Max, God, Max, there are bodies in that car.”

“Some were too sick to get out or to the hospital, but tried anyway. I see more every time I come out. We can’t stop, Lana. There’s nothing we can do.”

“It’s wrong to leave them like this, but everything about this is wrong. Even if they started dispensing a vaccine tomorrow…” She heard it in his silence, as truly as if he had spoken. “You don’t think there’ll be a vaccine.”

“I think there are more dead than reported, and will be more to come. I don’t think they’re close to finding a cure.”

“We can’t think like that. Max, we can’t—”

As she spoke, a girl—she couldn’t have been more than fifteen—jumped out of a smashed display window, a bulging knapsack on her back.

Lana started to speak, reassuring words on her tongue. The girl smiled as she yanked a toothy knife out of her belt.

“How about you dump the backpacks, the bags, and keep walking? Then I won’t cut you.”

Shock as much as fear had Lana cringing back. Max shifted in front of her.

“Do us all a favor,” he suggested. “Turn around, walk away.”

The girl, pale hair spiking out beneath a wool cap, sliced the knife in the air. It whistled in the silence. “Your bitch won’t look so pretty when I put a few holes in her. Dump your shit unless you want to bleed.”

When the girl lunged, jabbing with the knife, Lana reacted instinctively. She threw up a hand, fear screaming inside her head.

With pain widening her eyes, the girl jerked back, cried out. Those few seconds gave Max time to pull out the gun on his hip.

“Back off. Walk away.”

“You’re one of them.” Eyes, full of hate now, narrowed on Lana. “You’re an Uncanny. You did this. You did all this. You’re fucking filth.” She spat at their feet and ran.

“Max, my God—”

“Move! She might have friends.”

She broke into a jog with him, noting he kept the gun out. “What did she mean by—”

“Later. There, that silver SUV. See it?”

She saw it, saw its bumper crumpled by a sedan. Just as she saw the bodies sprawled on the street beside them.

Max shoved the gun back in its holster, gripped her hand. Now she had to sprint to keep up with his longer legs.

“Max. The blood…” It soaked into the street.

“Ignore it.”

As he wrenched the door open, the roar of an engine broke the silence. “Get in!”

Lana had to step through blood and over death to throw herself awkwardly into the car. She couldn’t block the short scream at the thunder of gunfire and sat trembling as Max launched himself behind the wheel, heaving the bag into the back. She watched the bag slap then bounce onto an empty car seat.

A line of colorful plastic rings jingled as he held a hand out to the starter. A motorcycle streaked around the corner, racing toward them. The girl rode pillion behind a man whose red-streaked black hair flew in the wind.

“Get the Uncannys!” she screamed. “Kill them!”

A group of four, possibly five, people swarmed after them, firing at the SUV. Sweat shimmered on Max’s face as he clenched his jaw. “Come on, come on,” he urged.

Thinking of the life they might have had, the world that might have been, Lana closed her eyes. At least they’d die together, she thought, gripping his arm.

The engine sprang to life. Max shoved it into Drive, stomped on the gas.

“Hold on,” he warned and, wrenching the wheel, steered away from the mob, tires screaming.

Lana jolted when the side mirror exploded from a bullet, and the SUV bumped hard over the curb, banged back. It kissed the side of another wrecked car before Max floored it.

They streaked down the street with the motorcycle in pursuit.

Max didn’t slow when they came to more wrecks, more abandoned cars, but threaded through them at a dangerous speed. Sparks flew when he veered close enough for metal to skim against metal.

She risked a look behind. “I think they’re gaining. My Jesus, Max, the girl—that same girl—she has a gun. She’s—”

Bullets singed the air. She heard glass breaking.

“Taillight,” he said grimly, cut the corner at Fiftieth Street and had the SUV rocking, pushed east. “I might have to slow to get across town, Lana, to get through abandoned cars. He’s got more maneuverability. Do what you did back on the street.”