The Dark Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

cannon-wielding tank, aiming at the Cave doors. It’s not firing, though. And there are some soldiers in hazmat suits, but they’re facing the other way, toward the road, where Jimmy can see three sheriff cars have pulled up, men standing behind their doors, talking, waving. The deputy who gave him a ticket for riding his bike on the sidewalk. Prick. Guess the secret’s out. Fenton knows about the quarantine by now. Jimmy’s veins freeze. Maybe it’s spread farther. Maybe his parents are sick.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” Jimmy asks. Veronica has tossed herself into a seat and is flipping through channels like his roomie on a rainy day.
    â€œI’m not sure,” she says. “But it isn’t good.”
    â€œWhere is everyone?”
    â€œDon’t know. Don’t know anything.”
    She stops at a still image of an open vault, the map shining bright in the center of its domed room. Chuck, the other Westbrook alum, lying on the floor. Veronica curses, but keeps going. “Where are you where are you where are you?”
    Then she pauses again, at a feed from the greenhouses, where Jimmy and the others had snuck in. The back entrance to the Cave. The door’s open. How’d that happen? The greenhouses filled with hybrid creations are a tattered mess of broken glass and steam. Odessa—the botanist—lets out a moan. She, more than he, understands exactly what’s being lost. Veronica keeps flipping, slower now, almost resigned, like she knows what’s coming.
    Maybe she does.
    There’s Sutton and a group of heavily armed men, crouch-running with their rifles up. They must’ve entered the Cave through the back door, even though Mia blew up the Aqueduct to try to stop them. Jimmy tries to imagine a bucket brigade of soldiers in hazmat suits passing rocks down the hill until they’ve cleared enough space to enter the tunnels. On the monitor, they’ve hit the elevator doors to the well. Veronica patches in another monitor, simultaneously showing the cavern where the well is. There’s Mia, Rob, Jo. They’re standing on the catwalk, yelling at one another, their mouths moving even if their voices don’t come through.
    â€œRun! He’s almost there!” Jimmy shouts at the screen.
    â€œThey can’t hear you,” Veronica says.
    â€œBut can’t you speak to them through the loudspeakers or something? Like you did to us back at the greenhouses?” Odessa asks.
    Veronica flips a switch, but before she gets a chance to speak, Mia jumps. It’s as if the switch was for Mia, as if Veronica just made her do it. Mia
dives
into the well. Rob and Jo look at each other and then do it too, one after the other, disappearing below the surface. It’s only when the water settles that Jimmy realizes there’s
actually water in the well,
while before, it was empty, and that whole story Mia’s dad had told them about the water coming every seventeen years was really real. The virus is real, the water is real. Jimmy’s an adult now. Everything’s real.
    â€œShe can’t do that. That’s impossible,” Veronica says, shaking her head at the screen.
    â€œWhat just happened?” Odessa murmurs.
    Veronica flips the switch again, turning off the intercom. Just in time, because there’s a flash, blinding the screen, and soon after, Sutton’s there, at the water, with his guys. He makes a motion and they fan out, running to search all the nooks and crannies in the Cave—fat luck there. A number of other soldiers hurry to activate the pumps and suck water into the fifty-five-gallon blue plastic barrels Mr. Kish had set up for storing the water. Sutton bends over and takes a mouthful of the water. Jimmy can see him relax as he sits down and drinks more. He motions to someone. Odessa grabs Jimmy’s arm and squeezes, like they’re watching a thriller, like she can’t bear to see what’s