Storm (Swipe Series)

that way.
    Of course, it didn’t take Logan long to recognize the signs. He tugged at the wet clothes that stuck uncomfortably to his skin, and he looked around the huddle with heavy, frightened eyes.
    He knew now what he had to do.

    In the morning, Logan rode his horse as fast as he could. It ate plants off the side of the road. Logan hunted squirrels and birds with a slingshot he made from his belt. He failed at that. He ate bugs. He slept each night wherever he fell. He prayed all day, every day, that he’d make it there in time.
    He stuck to the highways, broken as they were.
    It took him a month. He rode that horse through the rain. He rode all the way to Beacon.
    By the end of it, Logan was pushing himself through waves of chills. His head ached badly, and he prayed it was only exhaustion.
    But Logan wasted very little time denying the truth.
    He hadn’t quite escaped that Pledge of his after all. Unmarked but vaccinated . . . he was dying of Trumpet.
    7
    Beacon City was not as Logan had left it. The Markless celebrations during the first days of rain had died with the rise of Trumpet, and the streets were thin on crowds. Many lights were off. The sides ofthe hill were dark and somber. The ground-to-sky wallscreens on the sides of each building seemed harsh and loud against the quiet of the city. The five-tier grid system of roads and sidewalks went unused past its first level.
    Most Marked Beaconers stayed in their apartments, too sick to move, or dead, dying too fast for DOME’s Ends and Beginnings Bureau to keep up. Many Markless were with them, but some still overflowed out onto the streets. And the IMPS had cracked down on them hard. Trapped in block-long pens. Guarded by Moderators who themselves were looking worse for wear.
    Logan had left his horse at the base of Beacon’s hill. He’d walked the rest of the way up, hoping to draw less attention that way.
    He walked across City Center, too achy and shivery to run. He walked toward a familiar side alley’s “Employees Only” entrance. He opened the door.
    He descended into the old fission reactor, Beacon’s underground capital of Markless.

    In contrast with the thinning streets above, the vast turbine room at Beacon’s core was filled with people. And not just Unmarked. What had before been an organized space of designated walkways, living quarters, classrooms, church groups, dining areas, and public spaces was now simply one giant crowd, packed person to person. The medical area that had once stayed out of sight in the farthest corner of the room had spilled out across the entire floor. Marked outnumbered Markless now.
    And even still, it didn’t take Logan long to find the Dust inside that mob. Logan simply looked for the focal point of powerand people flow, and he wasn’t at all surprised to find Blake and Joanne at the very heart of it, shouting orders and offering advice on how the Markless might best take care of the ongoing flood of the afflicted.
    Joanne was in the middle of saying something about an observed mortality rate of 30 percent when she saw Logan walking toward her across the sea of sick Marked. For a moment, she stopped what she was doing altogether. Her eyes and nose quickly went red, and a tear caught in the corner of her eye.
    Reunions, these days, were nothing to be taken for granted.

    “So what brings you back?” Joanne asked, sitting around a makeshift dinner table down with the Markless huddle underground. “Erin told us about your trip out to Lahoma, but I guess we all just figured you’d be heading on back to Sierra once all that was over.”
    “You were right,” Logan said. “That was the plan. But Project Trumpet changed things.”
    “How so?” Blake wondered. “I’ve gotta say, it still seems pretty dangerous for you here. What is it Beacon has that Sierra doesn’t?”
    “Lamson,” Logan said. “First the permadrought, and now this? The rest of America might chalk these crises up to natural disaster, but I’ve seen enough to know the truth. The general has some explaining to do. And I came here for answers.”
    Tyler laughed so hard that milk came out his nose. “You’re here to talk to Lamson ? In person ?”
    “That’s correct.”
    “What are you gonna do, storm the Capitol?”
    Shawn looked at Logan with one eyebrow raised. “You know,Logan, when Tyler thinks something sounds stupid, you might be wise to take note.”
    Tyler nodded in agreement.
    But Logan was unswayable. He told them