One last glance into the bus showed the girl spring up and land in a crouch. Hissing again, she ran at him, her bare feet pattering against the wooden floor.
After a deep breath, Jake pushed off and jumped for daylight.
Rising above the hole, Jake found a lump of metal and grabbed it with his left hand. Pulling himself up, the girl hit his dangling foot, but Jake managed to get free before she could pull him back in.
Scrabbling away, Jake fell onto his side and gasped. With blurred vision, he stared at the devastation surrounding him, and his body felt like it would never work again.
As Jake lay there, he listened. Despite the strong wind, he could hear the snarling and hissing in the bus below.
Once Jake had recovered, he got to his feet. The grit on the wind stuck to his sweaty face and he shook violently. Walking over to the hole on wobbly legs, he peered in.
Pacing up and down the aisle, she kept her face turned towards Jake. Her red eyes glared death and her open mouth was a black pit.
Jake stared at the creature below. Despite having a human form, her actions were alien. There was a twitchiness to her gait that Jake had never seen in a living creature. “What are you going to do now, you horrible cunt?”
When her lips pulled back, it revealed sharp teeth.
“You can’t do anything down there, can you?”
She hissed.
Teetering on the edge of the opening was a lump of reinforced concrete that was almost as big as the girl. Thank god that hadn’t fallen in when he was down there. Sidestepping around the hole, Jake watched the thing and she watched him right back.
“You killed my friend, you little bitch.” Tears stood in his eyes when he gave the concrete the gentlest shove. It toppled in.
Flinching at the wet crunch, Jake looked down and saw the girl’s limbs protruding from beneath the concrete at unnatural angles, broken like a spider beneath a mug. Her porcelain appendages with their black veins lay limp. An ever-increasing dark pool spread outwards.
Watching the thick blood coat her skin, Jake kicked more rubble in after her, lifted his scarf, and spat into the hole.
“Horrible little shit.” Spinning around, he walked away, tears still in his eyes. Surely that would be the last he saw of her. It had to be.
Hopefully Rixon wasn’t on her side.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Walking over the craggy ground beneath the dark grey sky, Jake’s body was slowly failing. The black of night had come and gone twice since he’d last stopped. If he rested, he wouldn’t get back up again.
Wincing against the splints that shot up his shins, he fought to fill his grit-damaged lungs. Each inhalation drew less air than the last, his vision swimming as he ploughed on.
Holding his chest with his left hand, Jake’s heart played its increasingly irregular beat against his palm. The wind battered his exposed face and ears.
Every time he looked up, he expected to see the tall frame of his friend. Although they often went hours without talking, just knowing there was someone there prevented Jake from feeling lonely. Looking up at the sky as if Tom were watching down, Jake sighed and returned his attention to the ground, carefully mapping out each step.
Tears streamed from beneath his glasses, pulling what moisture he had left from his body. A trickle of snot dripped down the back of his throat. The viscous, salty secretion tasted like sand. Swallowing it with his dry mouth was like chugging glue.
One step fell into the next as Jake walked with a zombie gait. The momentum of the stumbling trudge, moments away from falling face-first, pushed him on.
Mistaking a sheet of wood for masonry, he stood on it and it shot from beneath him. Fire exploded in his left buttock when he hit the ground, his back arcing, thrusting his stomach towards the sky. Screaming, he rolled around before falling limp.
Gulping more of the thick snot in his throat, Jake lay still, his thigh and lower belly held in a nauseating grip that was radiating outwards. Lying helpless and hopeless like a discarded doll, he cried harder than ever.
Engaged in a palsied battle against his pain, Jake finally gave up and rested his tired head against a rock. It was the first time he’d laid down since leaving Tom. Sleep wasn’t an option without his friend to watch over him, but his safety didn’t matter now. There wouldn’t be a morning after this slumber.
When he closed his eyes, he saw an image of Rory lying just out of reach of his dad. What was he doing? He couldn’t control the outcome of his life, but he could control when he gave up.
Clenching his jaw, Jake fought against the aches and lethargy in his body and stood up.
When he was fully upright, the force of the wind rocked him. Leaning into the gales, he fell forwards into his weary gait and moved on again.
Hours had passed, and Jake barely had the strength left to lift each foot. With leaden legs and a heavy heart, he was virtually at a standstill. Dropping his gaze to the floor, he suddenly saw it.
Nestled in a crack, sheltered on all sides from the wind, was the tiniest splash of pink. Forgetting his aches, Jake fell into a crouch and peered into the tiny crevice. A small flower stared back at him, trembling in the diminished breeze. Its green stalk was barely more than an inch long, and its pink petals stretched out from its yellow centre. It looked like a pink daisy. For something so fragile, it had monumental strength. Having fought its way through tons of rubble, it now stood in open defiance of the corporate giant that owned this world. It reached for the sky in a clear act of beautiful rebellion.
After staring at the only other survivor Jake had seen in days, he lifted his face to the grey clouds, the grit on the wind stinging his cheeks. “This is it, Tom. This is why I didn’t want to play the game. I knew nature would win out. Life’s too strong.”
Leaning over again, he stroked the delicate petals. With the dust and callouses on his hands, it was impossible to feel the tiny flower, but he saw it move against his touch. That was enough.
When a warmth pressed against the back of his head, he pulled back and looked up again. Deferring to the flower’s needs, he moved aside and watched it sparkle in the first beam of sunlight he’d seen in years. Staring at the tiny flower, he smiled, his tears flowing harder than ever. “Thank you, Tom.”
Sitting up straight to keep her tired eyes from closing, she continued watching her monitors. Some showed beaches with tanned and toned men being oiled down by scantily clad women. Some showed sports scenes where winning points were being scored in the most dramatic of fashions. The scenes kept changing, the screens blinking from one shot to the next, all of them showing a reality greater than the user could possibly hope to experience unaided.
All except one.
Having locked the screen hours ago, she continued to stare at Jake lying on the floor of the bus. Her boss had gone to lunch that morning, and she was waiting for him to return.
When she finally felt him walk up behind her, she kept her eyes on the image of the broken man. “Jake Weston.” She said it so quietly it sounded like a low growl. “I’ve been watching this one for a while. There were things keeping him stuck in his negative projection. His imagined best friend. The city he chose to stay in. Some weird creature things following him. As I watched, those things eventually changed, but he still didn’t pull out of it.”
Her boss’s heavy hand rested on her shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do for a negative projection, Marie. There’s no one thing dragging them down. You could take away every element of their experience, and they’d simply refill it with another miserable projection. Termination is the only way.” Laughing, he squeezed his grip. The cruelty in his tone sent a cold chill running through her. “At least you’ve popped your cherry. Your first termination is a big deal.”