Plagued: Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

films  in Tactical. Maybe they'd just bulldoze the vast empty suburbs, plow them under and turn the valley back to farm land. Like it was before. Other cities the government just burned with phosphorus bombs. The best way to deal with the rot. There was still a lot of popular resistance to bombing L.A. like that. Sky couldn't understand why.
    Nowadays capitalism was firmly back in place, the smartest corporations had survived and adapted, and the blood lottery spread the chances of recovery more evenly around the country.
    Sky loved her school. Loved going to school instead of sitting in front of a computer screen for online classes. Redwood High was laid out in a Spanish Mission style. Adobe colored with a traditional red-tiled roof and tall campanile bell tower.
    Sky made her first of two daily stops at the secure lockers by the bus stop: One to drop off her weapons; one to pick them up. The heavily armed guard scanned the bar code on her neck that gave her and other Tactical trainees access to the gear lockers. Behind him, two more soldiers stood watch in bullet-proof compartments. The precautions were necessary in case of an attack by Victims Army terrorists looking to steal weapons.
    She threw her heavy duffle bag inside, stepped back through the metal detector and was re-scanned out. Weapons were not allowed on school grounds, of course. Every piece of equipment emitted a digital signature that could be tracked down to the square foot. Sensors all around the school automatically scanned for weapons technology, metal or plastic. Not that anything had ever happened. Not since the plague, at least. The adults said a lot of the crazy seemed to have died out of America with most of the population. Even the Victims Army had never targeted a school.
    The school rambled over a full acre and had stretched even those boundaries back in the day. Now, Redwood High needed only the two floors of the main building and a gym. Inside, the floor and lockers were an ugly industrial gray green. The walls, though, were a succession of murals painted by each class since the high school re-opened four years ago.
    Having a real school was so much better. It felt normal. Everyone young and old wanted to feel normal again. However they interpreted that. For Sky, it was school and bells and noisy voices full of life like she'd seen in movies and on TV throughout her childhood.
    “McShane!” She called, seeing the tall boy ahead. “Chase, hey! Wait.”
    She ran to catch up with him as he walked into their homeroom class, tugging on the sleeve of his hoodie. “Hey, thanks for last night.”
    He was a good looking boy with creamy brown skin. He kept his tightly curled hair short which brought out his broad cheekbones and signature big smile. His brows came together in a troubled frown. “What do you mean?”
    “You know. You stepped in after I got smacked down by the goblins. Probably saved my life.”
    “Not me.” He dropped his backpack next to a metal and wooden desk all the way in the back. “I was supposed to be behind Daphne but the Sarge sent me to check out a reading from the flybots. I wasn't even close.”
    “No,” Sky protested. “I saw a boy. Bending over me after I went down. He said I was going to be okay. He took off my helmet. You were the only guy besides the sergeant in the field last night. Raj didn't come on patrol. So it had to be you.”
    “Nope, not me.” He threw himself into the chair and pulled out his tablet PC for class. “You must have gotten hit pretty hard.”
    Confused, Sky found her own seat. She'd been sure it was Chase. Who else could it have been?
    The teacher came in, everyone's tablet flickered into life, and the school day began.
    Rickey found her in the cafeteria at lunchtime, rolling up in his wheelchair and spinning several wheelies. The people around them clapped. Rickey could make his chair do just about anything.
    “Hey, how are you? Is your head better?”
    She rubbed the sore spot on her