Page 22

“If you weren’t so capable, I wouldn’t have worried about you turning the tables on me.” Silence. “That’s not bullshit. I’m not saying it to stroke your ego. I’m saying it because it’s true. You got the jump on me once. I didn’t want to risk it happening again.”

August turned his head slightly. “How hard was that to admit?”

“Hard.”

There’d been thick foliage on either side of us for the last few miles, too thick for the sunlight to have much of an effect. Every now and again, movement caught my eye, but we were traveling too fast to tell whether it was human—or once human now controlled by a virus—animal, or just my imagination. “I don’t see why we have to be enemies. We’ve both made mistakes. Both acted dishonorably.”

“’Dishonorably.’” August’s laugh said he found my word choice amusing. “You were in the army too long. The rest of us don’t give a fuck about honor.”

“That’s not true. There are still decent people left in the world. You might choose not to be one of them, but it is a choice.”

“Yeah… right.”

“There are.”

August lapsed into silence. More movement in the trees, my head swiveling that way. A flash of something pale and then it was gone. Were we being followed?”

“You really want those suppressants, don’t you?” August asked. “Why? What’s so important about them?”

“I already told you. I have a long journey ahead of me. One that’ll be far easier if I don’t have to worry about the effects of getting caught in the rain.”

“Yeah, but why? Where are you trying to go? And for what purpose?”

“That’s my business.”

“Suit yourself.” August took a right-hand turn, his body leaning into it and mine going with it.

“Listen,” August said after a pause. “About the suppressants.”

“What about them?”

“I…” He took another turn, the change in wind direction stealing his next words. Something on the road a few feet ahead caught my eye. Something slick and iridescent. Pretty like a rainbow. I stopped thinking it was pretty when the bike hit it and lost grip. “August?”

“Hang on. It’s…”

But the bike was already in a sideways slide. We went with it for a few feet, August still gripping onto the handlebars and me to him. That was never going to last before momentum had the bike going one way and us the other. Which was preferable to it landing on top of us.

My skin didn’t exactly agree about this being the best outcome as I was dragged across the tarmac, August ripped from my grasp. I was suddenly glad for the thick fireman’s jacket, my upper body faring far better than my lower half because of it.

I tumbled over and over before eventually reaching an inevitable stop. I gave myself thirty seconds to feel winded before lifting my head to seek out August. He lay completely still a few feet away. “August?” Nothing.

I scrambled over to him, my thigh stinging where friction had burned a hole through my jeans. Another hole, great. Abraded skin beaded with blood showed through the gap. My left palm had suffered the same fate. August’s eyes were closed when I reached him, blood streaming from a cut on his forehead and quite the goose egg already forming. I shook him and repeated his name, louder this time.

When his eyes opened, relief loosened the tight band around my chest. Not dead. “Oil on the road,” August said, his voice hoarse. “There was nothing I could do to avoid it.”

“Yeah…” I stood, looking round for the bike. It had come to a stop just short of the trees on the left side of the road. “Can you stand?” August lifted his hand to his head, wincing when his fingers came away covered in blood. “It’s just a scratch,” I said. “You don’t need to be a baby about it.”

“A baby!”

The jibe had done what I’d intended, bringing some life back into August’s dull eyes. “Yeah, a baby. Two of us came off that bike and only one of us is standing. The other is lying there like he thinks he’s due an afternoon nap.” I held out the hand that hadn’t tangled with the tarmac and come off worst. After a pause that said he really would prefer to lie there, August took it. I didn’t give him any time to change his mind as I yanked him to his feet. As soon as I let go, he stumbled. Feeling guilty, I went to grab him again, but he shook me off. “I’m fine.”

The limp over to the bike started slow and gradually built up momentum once he trusted his legs to hold him up. While August picked the bike up and checked it over, I did a quick inventory of myself and everything I carried. My crossbow had come loose, but was easily retrieved. It didn’t seem to have fared too badly in terms of anything being obviously bent or broken, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I fired it.

My backpack had stayed on my back, and I hadn’t been skewered by August’s axe, which would have been the ultimate irony to have had my spinal column severed by a weapon I’d confiscated so it couldn’t be used to hurt me.

My palm felt better once I’d picked all the visible bits of gravel out of it and used water to wash away as much of the dirt as I could. There wasn’t much I could do about my thigh. Or my jeans. But if I couldn’t put up with a bit of stinging, I’d be the baby I’d accused August of being.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”