Free City of Screams by James Rollins Page B

pushed Tommy ahead of him. “Now!”
    Together, they ran, but they could not outpace the smoke.
    It overtook them. His mother coughed—a wet, tearing, unnatural sound. Tommy reached for her, not knowing what to do.
    His parents stopped running, driven to their knees.
    It was over.
    â€œTommy . . .” his father gasped. “Go . . .”
    Disobedient, he sank down beside them.
    If I’m going to die anyway , let it be on my own terms.
    With my family.
    A sense of finality calmed him. “It’s okay, Dad.” He squeezed his mom’s hand, then his dad’s. Tears flowed when he thought he had none left. “I love you, so much.”
    Both of his parents looked at him—square in the eye. Despite the terrible moment at hand, Tommy felt so warm right then.
    He hugged them both tightly and still held them as they went limp in his grasp, refusing to let gravity take them as death had. When his strength gave out, he knelt next to their bodies and waited for his own last breath.
    But as minutes passed, that last breath refused to come.
    He wiped an arm across his tearstained face and stumbled to his feet, refusing to look at his parents’ crumpled bodies, their blistered eyes, the blood on their faces. If he didn’t look, maybe they weren’t really dead. Maybe it was a dream.
    He turned in a slow circle facing away from them. The foul smoke had blown away. Bodies littered the ground. As far as he could see, everything was dead still.
    It was no dream.
    Why am I the only one still alive? I was supposed to die. Not Mom and Dad.
    He looked down again at their bodies. His grief was deeper than weeping. Deeper than all the times he’d mourned his own death.
    It was wrong. He was the sick one, the defective one. He had known for a long time that his death was coming. But his parents were supposed to carry on memories of him, frozen at the age of fourteen in a thousand snapshots. The grief was supposed to be theirs.
    He fell to his knees with a sob, thrusting his hands toward the sun, his palms upraised, both beseeching and cursing God.
    But God wasn’t done with him yet.
    As his arms stretched to the sky, one sleeve fell back, baring his wrist, pale and clear.
    He lowered his limbs, staring at his skin in disbelief.
    His melanoma had vanished.

 
    Also by James Rollins
    Bloodline
    The Devil Colony
    Altar of Eden
    The Doomsday Key
    The Last Oracle
    The Judas Strain
    Black Order
    Map of Bones
    Sandstorm
    Ice Hunt
    Amazonia
    Deep Fathom
    Excavation
    Subterranean

 
    Also by Rebecca Cantrell
    A Trace of Smoke
    A Game of Lies
    A City of Broken Glass
    A Night of Long Knives

 
    Copyright
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
    Excerpt from The Blood Gospel copyright © 2013 by James Czajkowski and Rebecca Cantrell.
    CITY OF SCREAMS. Copyright © 2012 by James Czajkowski and Rebecca Cantrell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
    EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062262561
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