“C’mon, Coop. Wake up, dude. How did you …?”
“What’s he doing out here, Jamie? How could he …?”
“Shut up.” He placed two fingers on Michael’s neck and tried to calm his own panicked breathing. “A pulse. I can feel a pulse. He’s still alive. I don’t understand. How did this happen?”
Jamie and Sammie shared a knowing glance. Before Sammie said anything, Jamie cut her off. “No way. They couldn’t know anything about Coop. He wasn’t even at my place.”
“There’s no other explanation. This can’t be a coincidence.”
Jamie ignored her, wrapping an arm around Michael and trying to lift him from the mud. Only then did the flashlight display the blood intermingled with the packed wet soil and painted across Michael’s back. The bullet holes were brown and obvious. Jamie lost control of his emotions. Tears flowed as a river while he hugged Michael, trying to keep his friend up and alive, desperation overcoming him.
“Oh, God. I left my phone at home. They must’ve found out who I was texting. It’s your fault, Sammie,” he snarled. “All of you. He didn’t have anything to do with all this crazy shit. Look what you people did.”
Sammie became drenched in tears as well, and she tried to reach out to Jamie, but his desperate growl forced her back.
“It’s not our fault, Jamie. Please. Understand. I don’t know how Coop got involved, but it means …” Sammie froze, her tears dissolving as her eyes widened. “Agatha and the others. The car. It must have been them. They’re tracking us. Mom. Dad. They’ve got to be warned.”
She started to stand up, but Jamie grabbed her by the wrist, driving his nails into her skin.
“No way. You’re not going back. You’re going to help me, Sammie. There’s a house. We gotta get Coop some help. He’ll die soon.”
“No, Jamie. It’s too late.”
“You owe me.” Jamie held Michael up with one arm and reached behind himself with the other. When he felt the gun, he brought it across his body and aimed. “We’re taking him to get help. That’s all there is to it.”
“But my parents. Your brother.”
“To hell with them. My best friend ain’t gonna die out here in the mud. Hold that light and help me lift him. Do it, Sammie.”
Jamie wrapped an arm through Michael’s left armpit and around his best friend’s back, which was wet with blood. He wiped his tear-blotted eyes with his free arm and watched as Sammie supported Michael’s right side. On a count of three, they lifted.
At the instant Jamie thought he could do this, that maybe he could pull off a miracle and get Michael to safety, the buzzing in his head returned. It was faint at first, like a swarm of bees a mile away but closing fast. Not as vicious as the million crickets, but equally exasperating.
“It’s happening again. The sounds. Like in your bedroom.”
Sammie stopped and looked away, her ears perked.
“No, Jamie. It’s not you. I can hear it too. It’s something coming. Something like …”
The buzz became a hum, and the hum developed a steady, rhythmic beat that included rapid mechanical clicks. That’s when a helicopter appeared as if launched from the forest. It curled until forming a course parallel to the shoreline, heading directly toward them from the west, red signals flashing and a search light poised in a narrow beam straight ahead. The rhythmic beat became a roar as the chopper flew over them.
Michael became much heavier; Jamie realized Sammie let go.
“It’s them,” she shouted as the roar lessened. “They’re coming to kill us all.”
“Grab Coop’s shoulder. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can’t leave them, Jamie. They’re my parents. Your brother.”
“They can fend for themselves. I’m going to save Coop, and you’re going to help.”
She twisted her panicked expression between Jamie, the gun, and the eastern shoreline.
“Help me, Sammie. Now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice cracked when she added, “Forgive me. I always loved you.”
She grabbed the pistol from his hand and dropped the flashlight in a move so fast he didn’t have a chance to blink. She ran toward the lake house. Jamie lost his hold on Michael, and they crumpled to the ground together. Jamie shouted after Sammie, but he didn’t expect her to respond. He held tight to the last person in the world he could trust.
22
J AMIE MANAGED TO reach his feet and shoulder Michael onward while keeping a wobbly flashlight focused on the trail. He sobbed because he didn’t see how help would come soon enough to save his best friend.
“I can’t let you do this, dude,” he mumbled, his voice choked. “If I’d just let them kill me when they had the chance, you’d be OK. Please, Coop. Don’t do this.”
Jamie’s lungs resisted his every step. The weight seemed overwhelming, as if Jamie never exercised a day in his life. Michael weighed ten pounds less, so Jamie didn’t understand at first why his runner’s body no longer had the stamina to move faster. Then he remembered what everyone told him about the program running through his DNA. If it was reshaping him, perhaps it was tearing down his organs.
A minute after Sammie turned and ran, Jamie heard gunfire from behind. The bursts of machine-gun blasts splintered across the still waters of the lake like hundreds of small explosions, each muffled and somehow drawn out as if delivered in slow motion. At times the gunfire snapped the air like thunder from a distant storm.
Jamie didn’t turn around. He thought of Ben but couldn’t bear to consider what might be happening to those left behind. The chaos droned for a seeming eternity, as if whole armies were battling to the death. He cared only about Michael, so he trudged onward.
He panted. “They’re killing each other. It’s
