The Skylar Experiment : Dead Ending (second draft)

81. The Incineration

make sure you have time to read this chapter. it's 3.5k words cus I was tired of this one scene dragging on for several chapters. It's really raw, no editing. If I edit and add smoother transitions, I'll eventually split it into 2 chapters. Hope it's not too shabby. 

LUC

I STOOD OVER the two lifeless bodies, staring longer at Chuck's. In the end, there had never been a way to make it right. Beneath his sheet-pale skin, I saw the deformed bones sticking out in his throat right over the spot I'd laid my hands on. His eyes were half-closed. I've never killed any human that wasn't a hunter before. Chuck was most definitely not a hunter.

His firearm weighed foreign across my chest, and I hoped he hadn't emptied too much of the magazine.

"Luc..." called Riley, but I couldn't bring myself to turn away.

The wind picked up and stirred the kid's curly fringe aside. Finally, the world around me clicked into awareness, and I spied the looming black hole whirring against the backdrop. It was a broad, bulky chopper, not like the kind you see in the sky on a regular Tuesday.

"Luc," she called again. "How do we—"

It moved quick; within the space of a heartbeat, I spotted nozzles on the sides of the aircraft, then auto-cannons hanging underneath them. We could only hear the hum of the speeding engine and rotor blades when the plane opened fire on the ground where we stood. Riley let out a scream. Shit.

Tension coiled through my sternum, and I threw a static-charged hand out. I watched the swarm of bullets launching for us with our names carved all over them. I felt my energy broaden across the surroundings, like a net expanding wide in the air.

I blocked the onslaught of projectiles as the chopper kept firing at us and blowing up a storm. The swarm stilled over our heads. All their speed drained away. I winced under the effort, my system already feeling the altercation with Isaac, and my hand closed into a fist. I waited for the ammo to accumulate in my possession like rain in a bucket. Not today, motherfucker.

The bullets vibrated increasingly harder until they released, then bolted towards the sky as heaps of angry hornets. A storm of clinks and taps came from the aircraft's hull as it lurched to one side, auto-cannon on pause. It was now or never. 

"Run!" I grabbed Riley's frozen wrist and pressed her forth.

She tore her attention away from the display and turned tail, hair streaming behind her back. I tagged behind by a few feet, bouncing left and right and never in a straight line.

The engine behind us roared, but we outpaced the damn thing. 

"Where do we go?" she yelled in the wind.

"Down the slope until it meets the road, that's where we'll find them! Straight ahead towards the house, then downhill!"

A tentative gunplay blasted in our direction—they missed. Not by a long shot, though. Through the treetops, home inched into view with its tilted rooftop and the chimney. My strides devoured the soil faster, hurtling down the slope at a blurry speed.

We raced right around the abandoned backyard, but as I scoured the property, something discharged and zipped by, and my back grew hot, stinging. I faltered. I lagged behind a row of evergreens, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. That did me in. Firepower rang across the forest like bombs in my ears.

More bullets landed in my back, causing my knees to buckle.

Riley must have heard me yell in pain, because she glanced over her shoulder as the distance between us lengthened, and she whipped right back around.