Free Jake and the Other Girl: A Tor.Com Original by Emmy Laybourne Page A

not … I’m not coming back. I can’t do it anymore.”
    It was true.
    One more day in there would kill him. He was sure of it. That feeling of being trapped, penned in, everyone so freakin’ responsible all the time and Astrid watching him. Her eyes telling him he was a failure.
    “Tell Astrid I’m sorry,” he said, and that was that.
    He was free.
    *   *   *
    It would be a walk. Lindsay lived near the high school. It was what had made their noontime forays feasible. But if there was anyone who could get him up again, it was Lindsay Morrow. Just seeing her body in her bathing suit on the photo had almost done it for him.
    *   *   *
    Astrid had always been on to him and Lindsay, anyway, probably. Astrid was the one who said their thing was an open thing. She had insisted on it.
    He did feel bad about leaving Brayden, when he was injured, but Niko would take care of him. Niko knew first aid. Brayden would understand. If Brayden had been with him, no way would he have wanted to go back to the store, with the stupid rules and the heavy atmosphere. The heavy freaking everything.
    Jake put his hand to his pocket, checking. Under the four extra layers of clothing Niko had insisted he wear, he could feel the bulge in his back pocket. Obezine. Extended release. Thank God for Pharmaceuticals.
    Yeah, he used them to brace him up somewhat. They made him feel good. In such dark times, who couldn’t use some extra lift?
    Jake turned off his headlamp. No need to draw attention to himself. Could be a type O lurking anywhere, and type Os were monsters. He headed up Highway 105. Kept to the middle, when cars weren’t in the way. But he had to go over the overpass. It was wedged solid with cars.
    Edging sideways along one, he brushed up against the weird white mold growing up from the tires on one of the cars. What was this stuff?
    It covered the tires of every car and then blew up and over, like a snowdrift.
    A side effect of one of the compounds, or maybe a different compound that had been released at the same time as the blood type one and the blackout cloud. Ate up car tires so no one could get anywhere.
    Jake pressed his finger into the foam blowing up over the hood of a Toyota Venza, maybe 2019? Silver.
    He rubbed it between his fingers and it melted into an oily stain on his glove. Then Jake saw past the foam, inside the car, and he couldn’t look away fast enough. Brown streaks of blood crusted to the windshield and driver’s window. A corpse there, old meat and bone. Type A. He edged past the side window, rolled down, and maybe, maybe there was the dried-out form of a baby strapped into a car seat but who could know for sure. He got away and fast.
    Edging, edging, edging sideways past the cars with their dead until he was off the overpass and then he ran.
    It felt good to run and it was safer, right?
    He didn’t need the fleece balaclava ski mask Niko had made him put on. It was stupid—the OTHER blood types needed protection. For type Bs the damage was already done.
    He took off the stupid fleece job and could see a bit better in the darkness.
    He had worn the five layers of clothing they had recommended on the news because Niko insisted and because it had made Astrid and the little kids feel better about him going out. Now he realized he didn’t want those things either.
    Jake stripped off the sweatpants, the sweatshirts, throwing them onto someone’s dead shrubs and getting giddy with the freedom.
    He didn’t need to be safe and cautious. Didn’t want Niko’s suffocating motherly BS. Down to his jeans and his sweater, he shouldered the backpack and he ran.
    He ran in the street, for the most part. On the lawns when the street was blocked. The white foam made the road slippery in places, but when he fell, he whooped with delight. He was running offense and no one could stop him.
    God, it felt good.
    He was free again and he was moving.
    God made him to move.
    He felt the black junk in the air in his