Page 23 of Talk to Me

Something tickled against my awareness. Something I noticed but I hadn’t seen. I kept us moving. We still had another sixty meters to go.

Fifty meters.

Forty.

Thirty.

Twenty—

The man surged out from behind one of the cars. He had a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. If I started a gunfight, we were going to draw attention. I couldn’t give him time to either alert others or risk random fire hitting one of the kids.

I cataloged the options, sorted through my choices, then struck in the same breath as the man charged me. Yeah, I was the biggest threat. I struck him across the face with the stock of the Harbinger. It knocked more than one tooth out.

He sliced down my arm. The body armor took care of most of it, but the blade managed to cut my forearm. The blood and sting just reminded me I was alive. I twisted his arm, took the blade and then drove it right through his throat.

The fight was brutal, efficient, and over in seconds. It wasn’t until I lowered him to the ground that I noticed the military clothing.

Yeah. I didn’t want to hurt a civilian, but this guy came at me looking for the fight. I glanced around for the kids. They’d huddled near one of the stalled cars.

“Let’s go,” I told them. “Eyes up. Don’t look at him.”

For once, not a single one even tried to give a bravado-laced glance at the dead man. Mr. Maxwell’s face was pale beneath the soot. The man rallied however.

We made it to the next block just as the rockets fired up again. Twenty minutes of raining hell that kept getting closer, before we got our next break.

The five hundred meters to the sea seemed to take hours, but the kids stuck with me. We’d encountered others fleeing the fire, but unlike the man with the knife, they didn’t offer violence.

Live and let live worked for me.

The breeze rolling in off the ocean had never been more welcome in my life. The salty air promised something refreshing even if smoke still filled the dark skies.

The moonless night worked in our favor. The lack of cloud cover did too, it let the smoke keep rising instead of pushing it down. The inflatable was where I’d stowed it.

“We’re going out over the water?” One of the girl’s asked, teeth chattering. Her name was Jane, I thought.

“Yes.” Another sweep, and I was pointing them to the water. The waves were low and slow. This was the perfect time to get out past them.

I secured my weapons.

“Stay together, we’re going to push the inflatable out into the water. Everyone holds onto it. Don’t let the waves push you back in. Once we’re past them, swim and then we’ll get you inside.”

“I can’t swim,” Jane said, seemingly turning to stone.

“Everyone else can?” I checked with all of them and one by one they nodded.

“I mean, yeah in a pool,” Jonathon said. “But—yeah.”

“Okay.” I peeled off a deflated lifejacket. I didn’t have enough for all of them. “This isn’t inflated, you tug here and here and it will. Don’t do it.”

I tugged it over Jane’s head and secured it. She blinked up at me.

“Hang onto the boat. Jonathon, you’re with Jane. Stay together, if you lose your grip, you can inflate the lifejacket, it will keep you above the water. We don’t want the resistance getting out.”

The terror crawling over her face was enough to give me pause but we didn’t have any more time.

“You can do this, Jane. Trust me.”

It wasn’t a request.

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