In Time Read Online Free PDF

fight back.
    “Hey!” A shout slices through the silence, echoing down the open road. I spin around, searching for the source. One of the beards is running for us. There’s a flash of silver, like the light is giving me a wink. That’s where my brain goes. Not that it’s a gun, not that I should drop that kid and book it for my car, but Oh, look! A sparkle!
    “Drop it!” he hollers.
    The bullet slams into the warped frame of the SUV, making me jump. I’ve seen them—guns, I mean—before on TV, and in movies, and in games. But real guns, they’re loud. Angrier.
    I can’t move. Physically cannot put one foot in front of the other. I can feel my brain racing in circles around the realization of what’s going to happen if I don’t get my ass in gear. Why don’t I have a gun? Why didn’t I save enough to buy one before I left?
    It makes me feel stupid, like I’m some elementary school kid who shows up for varsity tryouts.
    A sharp pain shoots through my lower back. The little girl jams her bony elbow against my kidney again. It hurts like a bitch, but I stumble forward, and once I’m moving, I don’t stop, not for anything. I can’t. The beard is right there. As I reach the truck, I see him stop and brace himself, and I know what that means even before he raises his arms and aims. I practically throw the girl into the truck’s cab and dive in after her. One-two-three bangs—Jesus, this guy is trying to kill me.
    I’m trying to keep myself from shaking. I’m trying to keep from thinking about the freak thing buckling herself into the seat next to me. I’m trying to remember which pedal is gas and which is the brake, and all of a sudden we’re flying backward instead of forward. Bullets ping against the tailgate. In the rearview mirror, the beard has to dive to avoid being crushed under my wheels. Reality comes back like a blow to the head, and suddenly, I’m whipping the car around, shifting the gears. The truck squeals and moans at the pressure I’m putting on the gas, but it gets the job done. I watch the other beard run out of the charred trees, waving his arms through the air. The first one snags the rifle off his shoulder and brings it up to eye level, but we’re too far away. I finally let my eyes drop from the mirror and realize I’m driving down the middle of the road again.
    We’re out of there.
    I don’t know why the relief comes out as a laugh. This is zero percent funny. Zero percent. The gas light is glowing like a red demon and those guys have a car that’s about twenty years younger than mine, but as the minutes tick on, I realize they’re not following. They would have caught me by now.
    Then I remember.
    I glance to my right, at the kid—the freak sitting next to me staring out the window. There’s something almost…I don’t want to say that she looks broken, because I know she is. They all are; otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. It’s more that her face has gone completely blank, and she’s staring at the passing forest but not seeing it. The reflection I see in her window, with the blood caked beneath her nose and across her forehead, makes me feel like she’s kicking me all over again.
    It is kicking me all over again. I can’t even get that part right. It is not human. It is a living creature with needs, but it is not one of us.
    “Did you do something to their car?” I ask, surprised at how rough my voice sounds. I worry for a second I was somehow screaming without hearing or feeling it.
    She nods.
    “That makes you what?” I almost don’t want to know, because I know the answer is not going to be Green. My luck is never, ever that good. I can barely keep the stupid color system straight. They tried to model it after the old terrorist warning scale. That whole threat level is orange, so you should feel above-average levels of fear that someone is going to blow up your plane . That system. I think Red is when the kid can explode things