Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,60

did my friend here … right before he was shot in the back by Governor Steele’s bodyguard.”

Lamar pans the camera down to his brother’s body on the ground and almost drops it as his eyes squeeze shut in pain.

You gotta get through this, buddy. Stay with me.

“How do y’all feel about Governor Steele making five billion dollars for killing our friends and family members—good people—on live TV?”

Fists and shouts fill the air.

“Greed. That’s why our species was facing extinction. Not because we were wasting our resources on ‘nonproductive citizens,’ but because our resources were being hoarded by them!” I shove my finger in the direction of the capitol building, feeling the hands around my lower legs tighten to keep me from falling.

“One percent of our population owns ninety-nine percent of the wealth on this planet! Think about that. That’s not nature’s way! No other species hoards resources like that. They take what they need, and they leave what they don’t. That’s the true law that was being violated. This isn’t about survival of the fittest; it’s about survival of the richest!”

Mr. Renshaw nods his head in agreement, and a surge of pride fills the empty hole in my chest, turning the dark, decaying tissue into something pink and pulsing again.

“Have you seen the governor’s mansion?” I ask, shouting as loud as I can.

The people yell and raise their fists in response.

“Your taxes paid for that! Have you seen his fancy new helicopter?” I gesture toward the landing pad behind me.

Their shouts and fists rise up again.

“Well, you bought it for him! Have you seen the CEO of Burger Palace’s private island?”

“No!”

“You paid for that, too, when they started charging forty dollars for a King Burger Combo! They’re killing us for profit, y’all. And that’s what’s about to happen right here, right now, to Wesson Parker if we don’t rise up and say enough!”

The crowd shouts the word, “Enough!” in unison, throwing their fists in the air.

The force of their conviction almost knocks me over. It hits me in the chest like a wrecking ball, overwhelming me with support. I felt like I was fighting this battle on my own for so long, clinging to this person I love tooth and nail while the entire world tried to take him from me. But I’m not alone anymore.

And neither are they.

“The folks who have been murdered here by Governor Steele and his executioner are good people. They’re your family, your doctors, your friends, your loved ones. They are people who were willing to die to save someone else.”

To save me.

“They are not the enemy. Doing everything we can to help each other survive isn’t what made us weak; it’s what made us human. The real enemy is the one percent of our population who took ninety-nine percent of our resources! The one percent who almost made us go extinct because of their greed. The one percent who killed a quarter of us off through mind control to make up for the lack they’d created and then told us it was our fault for turning our backs on natural selection!”

I lean over and give the microphone to Wes’s mom, who’s watching me with glistening eyes. Hold this, please, I mouth to her.

I untie the sleeves wrapped around my waist and pull the hoodie on over my head, careful not to let my gun fall out of the front pocket. As soon as those orange bones are visible, the left half of the crowd—the side with jackets matching mine—goes wild. I take the microphone back from Rhonda with a hopeful look.

Standing back up, I shove my fist into the air, and when the entire crowd does the same, it feels like the ocean itself is rising up to meet me. Except for Q, who’s smirking with her arms folded across her chest.

“They say they want the strongest to survive? Well, I say, there’s strength in numbers! Let’s show them—”

“Shoot her!” a booming Southern voice shouts from somewhere behind me.

My head swivels in that direction, and I find Governor Steele marching across the capitol lawn, pointing at me in anger, with Officer Elliott and Flip hot on his trail. Three riot cops rush across the street to drag Governor Steele away but not before he produces a gun from somewhere inside his three-piece suit and aims it directly at me.

The brute squad drops me immediately, catching me in their heavily tattooed arms as two bullets whiz through the air over my head.

The microphone slips through