Jack's best plan - the one he'd spent days dreaming up, planning for, imagining ways it could be implemented - was to kill every living person in Gary's fortress. He would build eight bombs, each of them containing enough VX nerve gas to wipe out a city neighborhood. He would strap these bombs to his body. Then he would run through the fortress with a detonator in his hand. Either he would make it outside and into Eggsy’s farm, where the survivors were held - and perhaps in the process get one last look at Marisol - or he would be stopped by attacking ghouls along the route. Either way he would trigger the detonator. The resulting cloud of poison gas would spread throughout this part of the city. It would take hours to dissipate. Anyone who was exposed to it, even for just a few minutes, would die. There was no immunity to VX. You couldn't even hold your breath and hope it would go away. Once it got on your skin you were dead. There would be no time to wash it off.He believed that by

The flammable liquid in Eggsy’s bathtub ignited all at once with a great FFFHWOOMPing noise as all the air in the room was sucked into the conflagration. A fireball of incredible light and heat shot upward through the open ceiling while everything in the room tried to catch fire at once. I raised my arms to protect my face as light and heat roared out at me as I tried to catch my breath. My feet left the floor and everything turned over on me and I could feel the hair on my forearms curl and singe. I lowered my arms and found myself on my back.Painfully I sat up until I could see Eggsy again. He had become a pillar of molten flame. His enormous overstuffed body shook convulsively as burning fat seeped from his broken skin and dribbled down his limbs like candle wax.As I stared - and believe me, I was staring, there was a brutal hypnotic quality about the horror before me that would not let me go - he struggled to recover himself, to regain control of his body. The pain... I can't de

I threw myself backward, knocking Jack against the wall, trying to crack his spine, trying to break his hold on my face. It only made him more determined. Jack had been a lot stronger than me in life. In death he was strong and desperate. He wrapped a forearm around my throat and pulled, trying maybe to break my neck. He succeeded in pinching closed my windpipe. I swung around wildly, my hands pulling at the legs he had wrapped around my waist. I might as well have tried to bend iron. The little air in my lungs turned to carbon dioxide but I couldn't exhale and suddenly dark stars were spinning in my vision, sparkles of light like signal fires, one each for the neurons dying in my head as I asphyxiated. I lost it, lost all reason at that point and just panicked. Without a thought in my head I dashed forward, away from the thing on my back, my subconscious mind unable to realize that it was still attached. Jack's grip on me merely tightened as my feet dug for purchase in the brick flo

We passed the personalized stamp shop on our way to the Secretariat building, a place where tourists used to be able to get their picture put on a sheet of legal, usable stamps. I barely gave it a glance but Fathia called out a sharp warning and suddenly the cold air of the lobby exploded with noise and light. I dove behind a Bauhaus-style bench and when I looked up saw what had happened. The shop's camera was set up to display a video picture of everyone who walked past as an enticement to the public. When the girls walked past they had seen their own images reversed on the screen, seeming to move toward them. Naturally they had assumed the worst: active ghouls. The video monitor was a heap of sparking shards by the time they were done.Amy - will you even remember television when you're grown? I would have let you watch more American sitcoms if I knew it wasn't going to become a habit.My hand is shaking almost spastically and I'm not sure you'll be able to read my handwriting. I kn

Then he’d accidentally stabbed me.Yep. Him. He’d aimed for the zombie snarling and biting at him; I’d stepped in to help, and, with a single touch, ashed the only thing shielding my body from his strike. Cole had yet to forgive himself.Maybe that was why he’d built a wall.Maybe he needed a reminder of just how wily I could be.“Cole,” I said huskily, and his eyelids lowered to half-mast.“Yes, Ali.”“This.” A slow smile spread as I circled my hands around his ankles—and jerked. He slid off the bed and thumped to the floor.“What the hell?”I leaped on top of him, pinning his shoulders with my knees. The action caused the scar on my stomach to throb, but I masked my wince with another smile. “What are you going to do now, Mr. Holland?”He watched me intently, amusement darkening his irises. “I think I’ll just enjoy the view.” He gripped me by the waist, squeezed just enough to make sure he had my full attention. “From this angle, I can see your—”Choking back a laugh, I took a swing