Read Apocalyptica (Book 2): Ran for Free Online Page A

bathroom. The tub drain pipe was right there.
    I put the chair down and stood on it. It took me a few very careful swipes with the blade of my tool to peel away the insulation around the wire leading to the water heater. I didn’t get all the way down to copper, leaving a paper-thin layer of plastic in place. I didn’t have gloves on, after all. Electrocution was bottom of my list of things to do today.
    Well, electrocuting myself, at any rate.
    Shoulders burning with the effort of working with my arms raised straight up—short people problems—I carefully flexed the wire, stretching the thin film of remaining plastic. I worked some slack into it, too stretched to flatten back out, and with a quiet sense of joy I snagged the little pocket of plastic and pulled.
    Glorious red metal peeked through. I jammed it against the tub drain.
    The muted flash of a spark coincided with a shout of pain and a lot of splashing. I heard my guard yell something unintelligible from her post, then rapid footsteps away from the basement door.
    I jumped down and hauled ass. I’m 90% sure I did a Barry Allen and momentarily became The Flash.
    I’m an only child, but I grew up around a lot of kids. Anyone who has ever played kid games has been chased. As I darted up the steps, memories flooded through me, no less vivid for being twenty years old. Before it had become a prison for malcontents, the basement of the giant house I grew up in was a place where children played. I’d been chased up those steps a hundred times.
    The sense of being hit by a slice of slowed time was exactly the same. You know what I’m talking about; the weird loss of momentum you feel when going from running forward to running up . Like your legs are rusted pistons and your body weighs ten tons.
    I pushed through it, though. The door grew large and suddenly I was there, praying to whatever old god looked out for wayward ladies confronted with potentially locked doors.
    I turned the handle. It opened.
    Fuck yeah.
    I stepped onto a landing. I’m sure the right side of it went into the house itself, obvious since my guard ran off that way, but I didn’t even glance that direction. All my attention was for the left, which contained another door with a square window, through which I saw the prettiest sight imaginable: open sky.
    I yanked it open and booked it, letting my legs stretch out into the longest lope I could manage. It was a rare thing for me to be in a situation where I couldn’t plan or think through the possibilities. On one hand, it was terrifying. I had no resources, no idea where I was, and no way to plan for anything past this run until I was somewhere safe.
    On the other, all I had to concern myself with was getting away. I wasn’t in a crazy guy’s basement anymore, and that seemed like a pretty good place to start.

13
     
     
     
    I’m not a survival expert by any stretch of the imagination. I know the basics better than your average person, but I can’t make medicine out of plants I find or, like, MacGyver a shelter out of a roll of tape and some old boxes. I’m smart enough to know what I need to survive, have enough ingenuity to make it happen, and enough of a realist to know when I’m beat.
    I was beat.
    I ran for what felt like miles across the open fields near the farmhouse. It was a stroke of luck that my pursuers, when they realized what happened, went for vehicles rather than chase me on foot or just shoot at me from a distance. The fields I ran through were thick with shaggy yellow grass and pocked with irregular features. One of them was a small creek I jumped. About five feet wide and cutting deep into the side of a gently rolling hill, it would have meant a nosedive into the water for the car following me.
    Sure, my captors probably knew that and had thought of a way around. But it bought me enough time to make it into the woods at the edge of the property.
    I barely slowed as I weaved my way through the trees. The land here was