Break of the Six (The Preston Six Book 4) by Matt Ryan Read Free Book Online

bed. Everyone should get back to their bed,” she said it loud enough that her voice carried over the whole gym. People grumbled but mostly coughed.
    “Come on, I have something to show you.” Poly put her arm around his.
    They walked outside and the fading daylight gave him a chance to see the red, swollen mark on her neck. She wasn’t okay, they had hurt her. Anger built up and he stiffened, turning and glaring at the door. He wanted to march back into that death pit and put a few marks on their necks.
    Poly yanked on his arm and pointed ahead.
    Where is everyone going?
    The mob was moving toward a large white backboard with a finely dressed woman standing in front of it. He squinted and pulled Poly toward her. “Is that—”
    “Oh my God, it’s Samantha,” she confirmed.
    The woman on stage pulled her hair down and even from across the school yard, he knew it was Samantha. What could she possibly be doing there? Did she land with those helicopters in the field?
    He jogged closer and heard her words blasting through the speakers. The crowd was fifty people deep and he half thought of using his gun to clear a path. He apologized as they plowed through the crowd, the mass cheering and roaring around him. Through all the hands in the air, he spotted Samantha walking away from the platform, heading toward the helicopter.
    “Samantha!” he called. She kept walking. “Samantha!”
    She glanced over her shoulder, then turned back around and climbed into the helicopter with an armed man.
    He pushed his way to the front of the crowd where a group of guards pushed back against the front row. Julie and Lucas stood at the front as well and yelled for Samantha, but she was long gone.
    “Get off me, dude,” Lucas said to one of the guards.
    “Form an orderly line or you will not receive treatment. We have enough for everyone, so please be patient as we move as fast as we can.”
    “What are you talking about?” Poly asked.
    Men with cameras hovered in the background, pointing their large lenses at the people of Preston. The cheers had slowed to a murmur, mixed with coughs. Men with machine guns made people behave, apparently. Julie and Lucas paired up next to Poly and him, as the crowd moved around them.
    They huddled close in all the hubbub. “What the hell was that about?” Poly asked.
    Julie furiously moved her fingers around on her Panavice. She never had it out in public so she must have felt it was important enough for the risk. “I’m guessing ZRB slash Marcus recruited her for this very reason.”
    A job fair had come to the high school last year and Samantha had been wooed by this ZRB company. Joey hadn’t thought much about it, and Julie said they were a startup and probably wouldn’t make it a year, but now they were landing helicopters and delivering a message?
    “I don’t care if they find me,” Julie said, typing into her Panavice. “I’m going find out very quickly what this ZRB has turned into,” Julie said.
    “What was Samantha saying up there?” Joey asked.
    “Dude, she was all primed and looking good,” Lucas said. Julie nudged Lucas’s shoulder. “She was going on about how the world could get their cure if they just called ZRB and requested it. Something about telling the people of the world if the governments didn’t get it to them, it was because they wouldn’t agree with Zach Baker’s terms. Oh, and Preston was an example city or something for the cure.”
    Julie raised an appraising eyebrow at his lengthy synopsis.
    “Did you guys see her look at me at the end there?” Lucas said. “I mean, she looked straight at me—she heard me—but she turned anyway, and went into her helicopter.” He crossed his arms and huffed.
    “She brought a cure?” Poly stared at the white tables, watching people getting injected in the shoulder at a rapid pace.
    Joey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even when Julie showed the information to him that ZRB was possibly Marcus, he didn’t