Iron Mike Read Free Page B

they were both very, very dead. As if to punctuate that reality, Delronda lost her bowel function. Kari gasped, backing up out of the bedroom as fast as she could, almost tripping over Jerome’s body in the hallway. She looked around, her breaths coming in fast, hysterical pants. There were almost thirty people in Malik’s house, stayovers from the party last night.
    She was the only one standing.

Mike
     
    Mike performed CPR until the sweat poured from his face, and his arms trembled from exhaustion. He heard and felt his mother’s ribs crack at one point, but he kept on, begging her and God to please, please let her be alive. He had known it wouldn’t work, but he couldn’t give up until he was too exhausted to move. Kneeling numbly over his mother’s body, he stared at her, feeling Jennifer’s horrified eyes on him.
    “Emergency broadcast system … major terrorist attacks … not a drill … Louisville and Lexington … dead … confirmed nationwide … emergency broadcast system … shelters opening … Washington, D.C. … major cities nationwide … hundreds of thousands confirmed … emergency broadcast system.”
    The words from the television barely penetrated. Mike stood stiffly, feeling the pins and needles run through his right foot and ignoring them. He picked his cell phone up from the floor where it had dropped out of his pocket and hit the speed dial to his dad’s office. There was nothing but silence. Moving automatically, he stepped over to the landline and picked it up. He wasn’t surprised when he heard no dial tone.
    Mike looked at the phone for a long moment, and then looked at the television. The images were chaotic, the photographer obviously running as he filmed. He saw several of the distinctive buildings in downtown Louisville collapse, huge clouds of dust billowing up as the skyscrapers slowly disintegrated. He saw people – so many people! – just drop to the street, many falling before the buildings did. He heard the screams of the reporter – no, the photographer, because the reporter was dead – as whining noise filled the airwaves. A tornado-shaped formation of airships like nothing he’d seen in his life whirled through the city, wreaking even more destruction in its wake. And then it started from the beginning. It was three minutes of news footage on an infinite loop, with the voice of the emergency broadcast system in the background repeating that this was not a drill.
    Mike stared at the television for a moment longer, and a part of his brain simply shut off. He slid the blue and white afghan off the couch and draped it over his mother’s body, covering her face. Jennifer sat, unmoving, on the stairs. She wasn’t crying – she was simply staring at her mother’s body, her face white with shock.
    Mike began moving quickly, his brain ticking off items in his head like an inventory. Gran’s. He needed to get Jennifer to Gran’s, and they needed survival gear Gran didn’t have. He moved through the house on automatic pilot, pulling out camping supplies and hunting gear, stacking items on the kitchen table. His bow. The shotgun with the boxes of ammo Dad kept on hand and the razor sharp buck knife, complete with gut hook, he’d gotten for Christmas this year. The first-aid kit, of course. All the canned food one backpack could hold and the two cases of water. He knew Gran’s pantry was always full, and he would get them to Gran’s but … just in case.
    He looked over at his little sister as he took the stairs two at a time, moving into her bedroom and grabbing first her Barbie doll case and next her Justin Bieber backpack, which he stuffed with her socks and underwear. He slung it over his shoulder, moving to her closet where he grabbed several pair of jeans, some lightweight tops for inside Gran’s house and some heavy sweaters and mittens.
    He carried the stack into the hall and dumped the clothes unceremoniously into the Samsonite softsider he’d pulled from the