The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

for a pistol. Jamie locked his eyes onto the weapon of death and felt a newfound dread. He was not reassured when Sammie emerged from behind an ancient oak, her rifle in a defensive posture. She ran to them with cat-quick silence.

“I couldn’t see anything,” she said. “We heard one car door northwest. There’s an old hunting road a couple hundred yards in that general direction, but this was closer. That’s rough terrain for anything, even with four-wheel drive. I don’t like it.”

“I agree,” Ben said.

“We should head back south.”

“Yep, but not to the boat. We tapped out that option. C’mon.”

Ben wasn’t off the porch before he said his limp was better and shared a smile with Jamie. He didn’t take his eyes off Jamie as he dropped the flash drive into his own shirt pocket. He patted Jamie on the back.

“We’ll finish this. I promise.”

Jamie shared awkward glances with his oldest friends, but he couldn’t smile. He couldn’t begin to tell Michael or Sammie what went on in the cabin, for he had a hard enough time facing the task ahead. Just when he wondered whether he’d ever know peace before he died, Jamie jerked.

A sharp thunderclap shattered the morning stillness. Yet this one did not linger, gone in a splinter of a second. Jamie did not have time to wonder where it came from, only that Sammie yelled for them to take cover. He plunged to the ground on his belly. Within seconds, he looked around and saw Sammie and Michael huddled close by. He turned to his side, feeling another presence beside him.

Jamie saw a red splatter against the base of a birch tree. Then he caught Ben’s vacant stare, which was almost hidden beneath the blood trickling from the hole in his forehead. Jamie reached for Ben’s closest arm, which was bent backward in an unnatural pose. He pulled the arm out from underneath his brother’s chest, wrapped his hands around it and huddled close. He rubbed the arm feverishly, muttering as he went.

“C’mon, Ben. C’mon, Ben. Don’t worry. I can save you. I did it before. Did it before.”

He spewed the words in a continuing cycle, oblivious to the danger. He heard Sammie’s pleas to stay down and Michael’s whispered curses, but they were background noise. Between chattering teeth and newfound panic, Jamie reached down into his gut, cleared his thoughts of all distractions, and focused on a single command: Ben can’t die; make him live.

But he knew the truth, even as all his mental energy poured into saving his brother.

Jamie knew because no matter how hard he willed it, his body gave up nothing. That life-draining sensation was gone, as if the Jewel revealed a single flaw: Even it could not bring back the dead. He would not allow himself to accept the reality of what lay before him – until he heard one particular word fall from Sammie’s lips.

“Daddy,” she said.

Then he understood. Jamie groped the soil around him for the .45 and found it at his feet. He didn’t need to hear where Sammie’s voice came from, only to hear the crunching of leaves from behind. He swung about, throwing himself to his feet, lifting the weapon with a firm grip and allowing full-on rage to take him prisoner. The world dissolved into that narrow tunnel of despair from which Ben briefly saved him. The .45 felt more than warm; it was a part of him. No more flashes of what was possible, only a release of what he needed to become.

Jamie took two steps forward, stopped, cocked the pistol, and pulled the trigger twice.

When the bullets hit their target, Jamie saw a pair of small, dark rosettes open against a white background. The screams within him were drowned out by the terrified shrill of the girl he almost loved.

“No! Jamie, no. Daddy!”

The tunnel widened, especially as Michael came to his side, grabbed Jamie’s trigger hand and brought down the weapon. He thought Michael was shaking him, demanding Jamie wake up. Indeed, Jamie thought himself lost in a dream from hell. Yet Michael’s words became clear.

Jamie saw Ben’s lifeless body, looked up into the trees, and swallowed the sunlight filtering through the thick, late spring foliage. And then he knew, with certainty, where he was. Jamie dropped the gun.

Walt Huggins fell to his knees. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth, but that was nothing compared to the massive red-black stain along the right side of the behemoth, or the two expanding blotches on the man’s belly. Walt dropped an AK to the dirt from one hand and a portable GPS device with flashing beacon from the other. His daughter rushed to his side, but Walt pasted his eyes on Jamie.

Walt whispered to his daughter, and she shook her head violently as she backed away. Walt motioned the boy closer. Jamie was only beginning to realize what he’d done, the memory of firing the pistol already a blur. He swiped hair from his face and started toward Walt.

“You’re not as weak as I believed,” Walt said, his voice slurred. He coughed twice, bringing up deep red saliva. The imposing man sat on his knees, his hands flat on his thighs, as if to support his upper body. He could have been a lumberjack upon a yoga mat. However, even as blood trickled from the corner of his closed lips, Walt maintained a smile.

“Not as weak as your brother,” he continued. “He should have known better than to leave me alive with means of tracking you. He did not have the spine of a Chancellor.”

“Daddy, please,” Sammie said. “We have to get you help.” She faced Jamie. “Save him, just like you did Michael.”

His emotions on overload and rational thought all but fried, he offered Sammie a frown.

“Why? He killed my brother.”

“Ben is