Hardwired by Trisha Leaver Read Free Book Online Page B

I choked out, cursing myself for not making it to them sooner, for wasting precious seconds resting in the snow rather than racing up to help them. “They were alive.”
    â€œWe tried,” Chris said, falling to his knees beside me.
    I shook my head, my world spinning violently with the motion. The fact that I’d tried wasn’t good enough for me. All that mattered was that I’d failed.

eight
    The pain I’d been pushing aside crashed into me with a vengeance. I coughed, ignoring the tinge of blood I could taste circling my mouth, and focused instead on the burning pinpricks biting at my legs.
    The road was littered with glass and shards of metal, and I was kneeling in it, had been for the last ten minutes. I forced myself to stand and searched for a clean spot to rest. But no matter where I looked, all I saw was dirty snow littered with debris. Debris and the occasional splatter of blood.
    â€œYou going to be all right?” Chris asked.
    I shook my head, unable to grab on to a single one of the thousand thoughts flying through my brain. Everything hurt and nothing made sense. In the end, the only thing that struck me with any clarity was the image of a guy’s hand pressing against the window of that van and my inability to help him.
    I tried to heave myself off the ground, but my body protested, an impressive array of dark spots clouding my vision. I finally gave up and slumped back to the road, content to just die right there.
    Chris sat down next to me and began poking at a hole in his jeans like he was trying to wedge something free. It wasn’t until I heard the clink of glass bouncing off what was left of the guardrail that I realized what he was doing—pulling a large shard of glass out of his leg.
    â€œYou made it all the way up here with that thing stuck in you?” I asked, amazed at his tolerance for pain.
    â€œNope. I’m pretty sure I got it on the way up here.”
    I looked down at my own pants. They were torn in several places, dirt and tiny pieces of glass stuck in the fabric. But I wasn’t bleeding, not as bad as Chris anyway.
    â€œAny ideas?” I asked. The road was deserted, only one set of tracks coming in each direction, and even those were beginning to disappear under the still-falling snow.
    â€œStart walking, I guess,” Chris said. “Sitting here isn’t exactly an option. It’s not like we passed a crapload of gas stations or 7-Elevens.”
    He was right. My toes were already numb and most of my body ached. Plus, sitting here, staring at the charred remains of the vans down below, wasn’t something I wanted to do. I’d walk as far as I could until either my body or daylight gave out.
    â€œSounds like a plan,” I said, struggling to my feet.
    â€œAny idea which way we came from?” Chris asked.
    â€œThat way, I think,” I said, turning a complete circle in the road. “The guardrail was on our right, which means we were coming from that way.”
    Less than a quarter-mile down the road, Chris stopped walking and bent over, trying to catch his breath. He was hurt but fighting it. I wasn’t in much better shape. My lungs burned, my ribs ached, and the throbbing in my shoulder was getting worse. Between the pain and the cold that had lodged itself in my bones, I wasn’t going to make it much farther myself.
    We spotted a break in the road up ahead, a small path that looked like it led into the woods. “Think we should stop for a while and wait the storm out?” I asked, pointing to the path.
    â€œNope, I’m fine,” Chris replied as he straightened up. “I just need a minute to rest.”
    I doubted a minute was going to make that much of a difference. What we needed was to find a place where we could sit down for a few hours, a place where the wind wasn’t constantly lashing at our backs. “This road is like one giant wind tunnel,” I said as I dug my hands