In The End Box Set | Books 1-3 Stevens, GJ (story books to read TXT) 📖

I could bring myself to speak. When she edged closer, I backed off, my shoulders tensing.

“I still don’t get it. One outbreak and it’s like we’re in Nazi Germany,” I said, watching her purpling cheeks twitch at my words.

Toni leant forward. “It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen. Forget Spanish Flu, Pneumonic plague, Ebola. Those are like the common cold compared to this. Our predictions show a mortality rate of one hundred percent. We’re talking global killer. Full stop. The decision came from very high up.”

“So why not go to the media? Tell the people something so they would cooperate?”

“Not my decision,” she replied in a sharp tone, as if she was losing patience with the questions. “I called you.”

I raised a brow. “Yes, you did,” I said. “And they singled me out to become the first human test subject.”

Toni looked away, but her reaction was so different to what I was expecting. Her arms had fallen to her side, but lifted to wrap around her stomach as she turned back.

“I thought I’d...” she started to say, but again changed her mind, taking a great breath before she spoke. “They knew about you. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t sit back. I had to call. They found me on the phone, beat me until I told them what I’d said. If you hadn’t come here, they were coming to get you anyway. Some sick revenge for my betrayal. I’m so sorry. I knew what they were going to do but I was powerless to stop it.”

A single tear ran down the purpling skin on her face as she barely reacted to the growing echoes of gunshots filling the background.

We stood, neither of us able to talk, neither of us listening to the litter of explosions and the chatter of the gunfire until, finally, Toni pulled in a great breath and let her arms fall as she straightened up.

“We have to go, or we’ll never leave this place alive,” she said, her gaze near, but she wasn’t able to look me square in the eye.

“I know why they'll kill me, but you? You’re part of the solution.”

“I won’t let them do anything to you. I saved your life and I'll do it again. I'll do it every minute of the day if you need me to. I’ve lost their trust. I’m a security breach and I have to be silenced for the greater good of the project.”

I turned away, ignoring her words, then felt her grip around my upper arm. She tugged, pulling me to the window.

“Look,” she said, and I turned to face the glass. The swarm was still there, but now lines of camouflaged soldiers streamed from trucks out in the yard, each looking left and right, their rifles levelled as they piled into every building.

A door burst open in the courtyard below, a creature leapt out, its hunched-over form the only sign of its humanity. The arc of its jump was a feat greater than an Olympian in his peak. Only tattered rags remained of its blue gown circling around its neck as dark veins spidered out across its skin.

Heads turned its way, followed by rifles. Soldiers dropped to their knees, their eyes peering through the scopes, but each gave an inexplicable pause. None pulled the trigger and I asked myself what they’d been told to expect as I watched on, rearing back as the creature tangled to one of their colleagues whose flesh flew from his face, ripped and discarded into the air.

My head shook as I took in the melee. I’d seen this before and worse already, but those images felt like I’d seen them through someone else’s point of view. Like on TV; my consciousness removed.

Taking this in for the first time, my body shook, panic radiating in waves. Only Toni’s hand held tight in mine stopped me from curling into a ball and giving up.

Machine-gun fire burst out from the side-lines, a frantic chatter of bullets exploding into the crowd. I counted three soldiers down before the creature and its victim took the brunt of the barrage. A hundred other rounds swiftly joined the onslaught, every soldier cutting them down.

I felt my breath heavy as I watched, Toni’s warm hand clutching at mine, but I couldn’t press back; my body so numb I thought I might collapse.

“You’d be dead if I hadn’t helped. You’ll be dead when they see you. We have to go. They can’t let you get out. You’re already their best chance. They’ll want to pull you apart and see why it worked when so many before you hadn’t.”

“But,” I said, turning away from the reforming line, soldier’s rushing in to check for survivors, “I’m not immune. It didn’t work,” I said in a low voice. “Before. Before,” I repeated, “I was like them. I wanted to do so much. The hunger felt so overwhelming.”

Her hand clamped tighter and she turned me around by the shoulder, peering into my eyes.

“No, you’re not like them. Won’t be. You’re alive. They’re dead. You’re human and I’ve given your body a chance to fight back. We’ve got to go. They’re in the building already.”

I stayed where I stood, unable to move as I watched her rush to the wardrobe, pulling out a rucksack while shouldering a rifle.

Beckoning me forward with the pistol in her hand, I paused while I asked myself why the hell she had a rifle in her wardrobe. I started towards the door as she pulled down the red outfit and stuffed it into the bag before opening the fridge, but with her back to me I couldn’t see what she’d pushed away.

As she took hold of the handle I stopped, hearing a noise the other side.

Toni heard it, too, and threw herself to the floor just in time for an explosion to