Read Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) for Free Online Page B

she’ll never be what she was before.  Killing her might be the kindest thing you can do for her.  But that’s up to you.”
    Kara put her hand on the doorknob and looked over her shoulder at Mackie.  He felt like he should say something, offer an apology if nothing else, but no words formed in his parched mouth.  She was right.  He wasn’t much use to anybody right now.
    Kara stepped out into the hallway.  The door closed with an echo of finality.
    Mackie pulled Allie close to him and held her tightly as her body convulsed.
    At least we still have each other.
    He cackled a dry laugh and looked at the syringes of morphine in his hands.
    Stay or go?
    If he left, Mackie couldn’t take Allie with him, knew deep down that there was no cure for what the solar storms had done to her.  He didn’t even know what she was experiencing—she might be in agony, or completely without a soul.
    He could end her pain right here.
    End his own, as well.
    They had both been happy here once.  Now they could die here together.  Why not?  What was left out there worth taking the next breath for?
    It would almost be romantic.
    Not so special, considering billions were dead, but it would make a cute postcard in hell.
    Mackie pulled Allie against him as tightly as he could while she thrashed, pressed his nose against her damp hair.
    He wanted to die.
    He wanted to be with Allie.
    And he wanted to see Lucas Krider dead.
    But now, more than anything, all he wanted to do was sleep.
    He drifted off as Kara’s footsteps echoed down the hall.
     
    ###
     
    Mackie didn’t see them when they burst into the room, had barely opened his eyes before something crashed into his nose and forehead.  The voices came as if he were underwater, one of them with a Hispanic accent, and then the hard tips of boots pounded into his ribs and lower back.
    Before everything went dark again, he glanced at Allie’s face twisted into an unrecognizable contortion.  The angry voices in the room drowned out the tortured moans rumbling up from her throat.  Fists and feet flailed around him, belonging to shadows.  Another blow exploded across the back of his skull, lime-green lightning bolts shot across the backs of his eyelids and down to the base of his skull, and all was dark again.

 
     
     
    6.
     
    Mackie awoke to a faint smoky odor and a soupy murk.  His eyes burned, his parched tongue had a sandpaper texture, and his throat felt as if he’d swallowed a handful of staples.
    He gradually became aware of a soft orange light painting the gloom at intervals.  Candles.
    He was lying flat on a thin fabric, a pillow beneath his head and a blanket covering him.
    He ran his fingers over the material beneath him.  Not felt.  Billiard cloth.  He was lying on a pool table.
    Mackie knew where he was then.  The student union.  He’d racked quite a few games of eight-ball here, ten-dollar bets that he’d lost more often than he’d won.
    Someone spoke, the familiar voice raspy but honeyed with a light Southern inflection.  “Almost makes you believe in Providence, doesn’t it, Mackie?”
    Mackie was sure he was dreaming.  Dreaming, or in the throes of a massive narcotic overdose.  Maybe he had swallowed a bottle of pills before drifting off.
    Maybe he was dead.
    Maybe this was Hell.   That would be Providence.
    With Krider and Satan playing chess like a pair of retired seniors in a park somewhere.
    He tried sitting up, but a supernova of pain exploded inside his skull and gravity had its giant hand on his chest.  Shards of glass pierced his brain.  Electric ice raced through his veins.  His breath sat like wet cement in his lungs.
    Again, that Southern-honeyed rasp.  Like gravel soaked in cane sugar and syrup, coaxing, sibilant as a copperhead.  “I think you can use this.  I need you calm for what happens next.”
    Something wrapped around Mackie’s right arm just above the elbow, and then a vice-like pressure choked his entire arm.
    A moment