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

have become and, for that, humanity will be forever in your debt.

I need you to come back to me.

I need to show you how you can live like this without the bad parts. I know you understand.

Let these soldiers bring you to me on the Isle of Wight. You will be safe, and you can be by my side forever. Together we can live a new life.

We have much to talk about, much to work through, but I know you will do this for the greater good. That is what you do.

I’m sure you’re angry right now. I know you so well.

I hope you can forgive me.

Toni

P.S. I’m really enjoying having these wonderful children around.

54

LOGAN

Looking past the drying gore, I watched the pain on Jess’s face, despite her obvious struggle to keep her features straight as she read the page for a second time.

Closing her eyes as she came to the end, the moment hung with just the sound of the helicopters in the distance and the tinny, far away voice I thought I could hear from the soldier’s radios.

“I’m going with them,” Jess said, keeping her eyes closed, but stepping toward her, Cassie gave her no time to explain.

“What about the children?” she said, leaning forward looking between Jess and Alex. “What does it say about them? About Ellie?”

Jess didn’t reply; instead, opening her eyes, she glared to Thompson.

Cassie turned to the soldiers and repeated the question. The soldier to Thompson’s left stared at Jess, whilst the one to the right turned his head to peer across the view.

“There’s no real mention.” Jess’s words pulled Cassie to look back.

“What does it say?” I asked, looking to Jess.

“It says I have no choice,” she replied, looking me in the eye.

“No choice but what?” Cassie butted in.

“To go with them.” Jess barely finished the words before Cassie spoke again.

“Where?”

“To wherever Toni is. The woman who did all this.”

“Doctor Lytham?” I said, my eyes bulging. “But that’s where we’re trying to go.”

I couldn’t understand why she didn’t look so much happier and I turned back to Thompson, but with the shake of his head I knew the answer.

“Just Miss Carmichael.”

“Fuck you. You haven’t even asked. Why don’t you get on the radio and find the fuck out,” I said, taking a step to Thompson. As I moved, the soldier at his left dropped his rifle to its strap and drew his handgun, pointing it to my chest.

Feeling a gentle pressure at my shoulder, I held back from taking another step forward. “Doctor Lytham knows us. She gave Cassie here the cure,” I said, glaring to Thompson, but he didn’t react. I turned back, catching Jess’s eye. “Don’t go with them.”

“You always have a choice,” Alex added at my side.

Without saying a word, Jess reached out, handing over the letter with her red fingerprints still on the page.

Not even the gunshot echoing between the buildings could pull me from the words as an icy shiver ran down my spine when I read the final line.

“Go,” I said, catching her eye as I looked up from the white page. “We’ll find you.” I turned to Thompson. His subordinate had stepped back but not holstered his pistol and stared with a blank expression. “Where exactly are you taking her?”

Thompson shook his head. I held my tongue for a moment then looked around, already trying to figure out which way we would start the journey. “We’ll find you.”

“Sir,” the soldier to Thompson’s right spoke, keen to move. As if they’d read my thoughts, the double boom of a Chinook’s blades whipped up the air, sending dust in a swirling chaos around us.

Shadow barked as the left soldier motioned us back through the carpet of bodies and toward the building. When a burst of gunfire called from one of the other groups of soldiers, we ignored his instruction, instead watching as they headed our way, the sniper gone from the roof too.

I could guess the reason they were on the move, racing to fly away and leave us on our own.

With no weapons, and Jess gone too, we’d have no chance.

“Give us a gun. Please,” I shouted over the growing din of rotors and Shadow’s bark, but none of the soldiers reacted to my words. Instead, crowding around Jess, they guided her away then turned their backs as she looked out from between their helmets.

With no choice, together we backed up as I coaxed Shadow with my hand on his neck, glancing at my feet to avoid the debris of bodies and slick chunks of decaying flesh.

It wasn’t long before the sun blotted out with the bulk of the Chinook filling the view as it lowered to land beside the soldier’s protective circle. A vision of the hospital roof sprang to mind, the memory so clear of when Lane fell backwards with the spray of blood. I held my arms wide to stop any of us making that same mistake.

Another shape, an Apache gunship, caught my eye to the side as it sliced through the air with its long round gun at the front following the gunners turn as he swept for targets. I couldn’t help but wonder what his orders would be when Jess was safely spirited away.

I backed us up closer to the building, not caring for the mess down the face of the glass.

Alex saw it first. Then I caught the sight, too.

At the same time, Mandy’s sharp intake of breath told me she was the next to see the spaces between the buildings filling with figures pouncing to the air and at their backs the slow amble of those without souls.

Cassie gave no sign, even as gunshots rattled from the soldiers walking backwards to empty their weapons as