Read The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious for Free Online Page B

floor, and now it feels like a labyrinth of death. But, as long as I stick close to Jorge, I suppose I’m safe.
    Jorge motions us up the staircase to the roof. The muffled whup whup of helicopters makes its way through the thick door. When Jorge pulls it open, the sound thumps like a second heart in my chest and the acrid aroma of electrical fire stings my nose.
    I’m afraid to see, but afraid not to. Maybe the world isn’t ending, though it sounds and smells as if it is. Either way, I want to know—I need to know. My shoulder presses to Grace’s as we walk to the center of the roof. I’d envisioned a helicopter pad, but the roof is only vents and tar paper, with a large, round wooden water tank and metal rectangles that house mechanical things.
    Smoke drifts above our heads. Something pounds from a distance, like a giant hammer beating at the city. Helicopters swing and dip over the water. Gunshots pop. Car horns bleat under it all. It mixes into a disharmony that makes my heart misfire.
    We trail Jorge and Bart to one end of the roof. I stand well away from the edge and look to the wide expanse of water a block away. New York Bay stretches for a few miles, I think, until it hits the shore of northern New Jersey. And every inch of it is full of boats—small boats and yachts and ships, and the bravest of souls in kayaks. They must be trying for Jersey or open water past the Verrazano, but no one in the jam of boats has gotten far.
    A ship loaded with containers blows its horn. Ant-sized figures run and wave on the smaller vessels, but the ship stays on course. The figures jump into the water before the metal plows through, leaving fiberglass and wood and bodies in its wake. A yacht bursts into flames and a solid wall of black envelops the scene. Maybe the ship couldn’t stop, or maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, people just died in front of my eyes. Again. My hand rises to my mouth of its own accord, as shaky as my breath.
    To the right, boats attempt to dock on the crowded shores of the oval of Governors Island. Farther upriver, swirling dust and smoke hide Manhattan from view. Bart bends to the street below and shakes his head. Grace does the same and comes toward me, eyes tearing from the particles in the air or the hopelessness of the view.
    “They’re everywhere!” she yells in my ear.
    A prickly, awful kind of awe spreads to my limbs and numbs my brain. We’re trapped—in the hospital, in the city, in this world that barely resembles the world of yesterday.
    A plane roars overhead. Seconds later, thundering explosions send me to the tar paper, arms over my head. When I’m brave enough to stand, the bay smolders. Another bomb—it had to be. The remaining boats bob and tip until they flip or slip beneath the waves. A man overboard swims amid the wreckage. He struggles atop an overturned hull and then plunges back into the water when the spinning, fiery yacht reduces the hull to shreds.
    I search the choppy water, willing him to surface, but he doesn’t. They’re killing him. They’re killing everyone. This is a war zone, a genocide. A populicide. I’ve never put much faith in the government to look out for the little people, but this brazen murder has me icy with shock. Grace clutches my arm. Every bang makes us flinch. Nothing would stop them from dropping a bomb here. In fact, the hospital might be the best place to bomb.
    A helicopter hovers at the other end of the roof, where the rest of Brooklyn spreads into the distance. Maria and Craig wave their arms, hair whipping in the air currents of the rotors. It swings and lowers. Maybe they’ll evacuate the sickest patients. Save some of us. Tell us what to do.
    Grace and I force our frozen legs that way. It’s only when we near, after Maria’s and Craig’s arms drop, that I see the man who trains a camera on us from above. A news copter getting a close up of the people left to die, to play for someone, somewhere. Bart said the virus is everywhere, but