by Gregory Ashe
Another tremor shook the valley, and the Ducati’s wheel skipped along the rock shelf, the rubber squealing.
“He’s going to bring down the whole fucking mountain,” Emmett said.
Before that could happen, the Impala’s doors popped open, and Jim and Sharrika got out. Jim looked like shit: the only color left in his face was his eyes and the flurry of cinders inside them. His hair was the color of copper glinting in the sunlight, and all the rest of him looked like newsprint kept in a damp basement. Sharrika scrambled around to the Impala’s trunk, shouting Kaden’s name as she did so.
Overhead the clouds slowed, and then they sped up. A static charge raised the hairs on my arms, and my next breath carried ozone. I clutched Emmett’s waist as another tremor rolled through the valley, and the Ducati bounced with a horrible metallic jangle.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Emmett muttered.
“Whatever they’re doing, they’d better hurry.”
As though in answer to my words, Kaden sprinted past the Ducati, his face whitewashed, his shoulders curled forward. Sharrika motioned for him to help, and together they rolled a bundle of rebar out of the trunk. Speaking into Kaden’s ear—too low for me to hear over the ripples moving through the earth—Sharrika pointed. I followed her gesture, and lightning arced through the clouds overhead, and then I saw him. Kyle Stark-Taylor stood on a boulder wedged against the valley wall. Then the lightning died, and Kyle disappeared into the darkness.
Whatever Sharrika said, Kaden must have understood because he untied the bundled lengths of rebar, and they floated into the air, drifting into a line in front of him, like a row of spears ready to launch in Kyle’s direction. Another tremor ripped through the valley. And another. Harsh, distressed cracks came from the stone shelf underneath us; a few more like that, and we’d be back falling toward the river.
Sharrika said something again. Jim and Kaden both nodded.
The ground heaved and bucked. A cottonwood below us shrieked as its trunk snapped, the heavy crown of branches tumbling into the water before being whipped sideways.
Then there was fire. A huge, imperfect globe of it that swallowed the spot where Kyle had stood—and swallowed the boulder as well, and a good twenty yards in every direction. It was like a miniature sun, filling the valley with ruddy light so that I could see every blade of grass, pick out every wavering shadow. Even from several hundred yards the heat made me flinch and squint, and snowflakes hissed on the ground and boiled away, and Emmett dropped the visor on his helmet like he wanted a welding mask.
Lightning struck. I squeezed my eyes shut, but too late, and the concussive brilliance of the bolt lingered in a purple afterimage. The boom rocked Emmett and me on the Ducati, and then through my eyelids came another incandescent punch, and Sharrika was screaming something, but the thunder following those massive blasts of lightning kept me from making out the words.
Then a final clap hit me in the chest, vibrated along my bones, and darkness swept down.
I blinked an ultraviolet afterimage out of my eyes and squinted out into the night. Ozone prickled the hairs inside my nose, obliterating everything else, and for a moment, in that total darkness, it seemed like those blasts of lightning had wiped out the world.
Then a vein of blue-white bled across the sky. More lightning, I realized. Only instead of crashing down to earth, it kissed something high above the Bighorns and vanished.
No more tremors, I realized. Ahead, Jim wavered, clutching at the Impala’s passenger door, and then he fell. Kaden watched him fall. Sharrika didn’t even seem to notice; her eyes were on the clouds, where another vein of blue-white bled out, sparking against something overhead and vanishing. A cough of thunder followed, but nothing like the last wave of force that had rocked Emmett and me on the Ducati.
At the third, smaller flare of lightning, I glimpsed it: a black thread hanging from the sky. At the ground, the thread spooled around a human figure. Kyle. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t trying to bring down the mountains.
Lightning bled from the clouds again, and this time, when it licked the top of that black thread, I understood.
“It’s a goddamn lightning rod,” Emmett breathed.
I clapped him on the shoulder, grinning as I remembered what had happened last year at Belshazzar’s Feast. Electricity had disabled Makayla when she’d become seemingly indestructible; we had tried the same thing in the hospital, and it had worked. For a minute, until Kyle had torn himself free. But with Kaden keeping the metal conductor in place, and Sharrika generating a steady current—I fought a sudden smile.
“We’ll keep him here,” Sharrika said, wiping sweat onto her Star Trek t-shirt. “You need to hurry; they’re not going to wait—”
Something whistled through the air. I barely had time to glimpse it—a whiffle ball—before it disappeared into the tangles of grass and weeds. I whopped Emmett on the shoulder again, and he hit the gas. The Ducati leaped forward and whipped right. We missed Kaden by about six inches, but he was so concentrated on keeping that tower of rebar in the air—and cocooned around Kyle—that he didn’t even blink.
Then the whiffle ball exploded. The blast wave flattened the Junegrass, and a ring of fire and plastic shrapnel spun out. A piece of it nicked my shoulder, biting through my coat and shirt, and I had to swallow a shout. Another piece grazed my ear, spinning so close that I could hear its hum before it sliced through cartilage and was off, disappearing into the blackness of the valley.
“Go,” I shouted.
But ten yards later, Emmett turned into a skid, halting our progress as quickly as he could.
“Fuck,” he shouted. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s exactly what they want.”
He hunkered down, his brow furrowing in concentration, and the air around us stilled. He had put up one of his barriers. Something moved out in the darkness, and I had the impression of speed, and then the sound of a small motor. So. Leo wasn’t operating on foot.
Something—another whiffle ball, maybe—exploded inches from the barriers. Shards of melted plastic clung to the invisible wall, and the fire left tongues of soot hanging in the air.
Then Jake’s truck shot past us, rocking over the uneven valley floor, fishtailing as it cut hard around a rocky outcropping. The tail lights burned back at me like eyes as the truck herky-jerked across the dips and hummocks hidden by the tall grass.
Two hundred yards ahead, where the valley floor dropped toward the lake, I caught a glimpse of muzzle flare. Jake must have seen it too—or Temple Mae, maybe—because the truck swerved. I couldn’t see the projectile. I couldn’t tell if it had hit or not. I guessed it was a standard rifle round, but in Leo’s hands, nothing was standard.
The explosion was so sudden and so bright that it ruined my night vision, and I blinked again, helpless. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the truck. On its side. Burning.
Digging my fingers into Emmett’s shoulder, I said, “Go, Em. Go.”
He gave the Ducati gas, and we lurched forward. But not toward the burning truck.
“Em.” I grabbed a handful of leather. “Turn this fucking thing over there. Jake and Temple Mae—”
“Knew what they were signing up for.” He bent lower over the Ducati’s handlebars, and tension tightened his shoulders.
“Damn it, Emmett.”
But he wasn’t listening to me. He was trying to keep the Ducati upright on the rough valley floor, and he was also trying to keep a barrier in place—it flowed ahead of us, trampling the grass, leaving glossy, broken stalks behind it, their seed pods burst and peppering everything.
I glanced back at the Charger, which roared behind us. I couldn’t see Austin’s face, not with the headlights in my eyes, but he didn’t swerve toward his brother’s truck. He was still following me. They were all still following me into this mess.
The squeal of tearing metal brought my head whipping to the side, and I watched as the entire truck—an F-150, maybe the onl
y thing Jake loved as much as Temple Mae—ripped down the middle. It was like watching a can opener tear off the top of a can of tuna. And then the two halves skidded across the grass, flames spitting and catching in tiny fingerlings on the vegetation.
Two figures limped away from the truck’s shell. I wanted to shout. I wanted to warn them. Another flare from the muzzle came near the water’s edge, and—
And then something like a firefly caromed off toward the valley wall. When it exploded, the sound ran through the whole valley, and an entire slope of scree kicked and tumbled its way through the firelight toward the water. It fell with the sound of rain on a tin roof, an enormous pattering that swallowed everything else. And as it poured across the valley floor, it parted around those two limping figures.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
“I knew they’d be fine,” Emmett said with what he probably thought sounded like confidence.
I leaned into him, ready to tell him exactly what I thought about that statement.
A sudden weight dragged me off balance—dragging the Ducati off balance too, as Emmett swore and tried to correct—and a line of heat opened along my shoulder. The knife that should have taken me across the throat skipped off bone instead.
The pain lit up my brain brighter than the fires in the valley. It took me only a few seconds to process what I was seeing: the Crow boy had come out of nowhere, and somehow he was clutching onto me, his weight all on the right side of the bike, and in his free hand he carried a knife.
As I turned my head, the Crow boy braced his feet, leaned out, and slashed again. I moved to block him, catching his arm with my own. He passed through my grasp like air as the weight vanished and the bike overcorrected in the opposite direction.
Some part of my brain remembered his trick in the hospital, and my body twisted more out of instinct than anything else. A fresh weight pulled directly behind me, and a second blade skipped along my ribs. I couldn’t look back—I didn’t have time, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the little fucker in front of me—so I threw an elbow back hard and felt the Crow boy’s nose crumple.
“Em,” I called as the boy on the side of me—his nose now busted and bloodied, even though my elbow had only caught the one behind me—readied another slash. The one behind me was choking on blood.
Emmett reached back and grabbed my coat, shouting, “I’m laying it down. Stay on top of it and follow it down.”
Then he laid the bike down on its right side, and I moved left with him, losing sight of the Crow boy. I heard a high-pitched scream as a sudden weight pulled me to the right and then was gone.
We hadn’t been going very fast, thank God, and the valley floor was carpeted with last year’s dead grasses and the tender crop from this spring, all packed down by Emmett’s barrier. I clung on to Emmett and rolled left with him, mostly keeping the bike under me. We skidded and slid over the uneven terrain. We slowed; then we came to an abrupt halt as we collided with a deadfall mostly hidden in the grass. I spilled off the bike onto the ground.
My head was spinning from the adrenaline rush, and white dots floated in my vision. Not stars. Not even those forking bolts of lightning. Just white like snow.
And then, I realized, it was snow. And it was coming down even harder. Snow in fucking April. That felt like the ultimate outrage, and the fact that it made me so upset left part of me wondering if I’d gotten a concussion.
I pushed myself up and looked around, even with the cuts on my shoulder and my ribs screaming at me. Smoke drifted across the valley now; multiple fires burned along the north slope, including the burning wreckage of Jake’s truck. More fires were good, I thought, coughing as each breath brought the smell of burnt grass and cooking rubber. More fires meant Temple Mae was still alive, still fighting, throwing back Leo’s explosive.
I turned back and could just make out the outline of the Crow boy against the light snow pack. He limped toward me, a knife in each hand. It looked like it hurt him to move, and that made me smile. I flicked a glance left, then right. Two more coming from either side, and they were limping too.
“That’s a good trick,” I said.
They kept coming.
Someone was jogging toward me, just a silhouette against the fires burning on the north side of the valley. Emmett? Austin? I guessed Austin because he was carrying a rifle, and Emmett hadn’t had a gun.
“You make these little copies of yourself,” I said. “But only one of them is real. Is that it?”
They closed another yard. I had maybe thirty feet left.
“Nobody ever sees you coming. They think they’ve got you, and then you’re right behind them.” I glanced over my shoulder, and there he was. Four of them.
Another yard. And then another.
“One of you is real. The rest of you are just smoke and mirrors.”
For the first time in all our encounters, the Crow boy smiled. It was vicious—too mature and too horrible for a boy his age. His canine teeth looked like they’d been sharpened.
No, I thought. That wasn’t right. Not smoke and mirrors. Because the boy on my right side had stabbed me as I was unbalanced by his weight. But so had the second boy, as he dragged me backward with his weight.
They were both real. And heavy.
But I couldn’t touch the boy hanging on my right. And I couldn’t feel his weight anymore either. I couldn’t touch the copies of the Crow boy in the hospital. It had been like running my hands through smoke, every time except when I’d elbowed—
When I’d elbowed the one behind me without looking at him. Just like tonight, when I elbowed the one behind me without looking at him. When the weight had slammed down on me, he had been real. When I wasn’t looking at him.
Fifteen feet.
“No,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “Not smoke and mirrors. Not exactly, right? You’re real. All of you. But you’re only in one place at a time. And you’re always in the place I’m not looking.”
Ten feet.
The silhouette coming toward me had slowed. The head cocked. Was he listening? Or was he lost? Was he trying to figure out which one was the real one?
Eight feet.
“Austin,” I shouted. “Austin, get a bead on one of these motherfuckers, close your eyes, and shoot.”
Five feet.
I dropped, the wet grass brushing under my chin, the sudden thickness of the green smell of crushed stalks making my stomach turn, and I waited for the sound of a thrust as the closest Crow boy stabbed. When I heard him, I’d kick out as hard as I could and hope to catch him right in his pubescent balls.
The shot sounded right overhead, a clap of thunder so loud that it ran down my back like a hand. I waited for something. Anything.
“Vie?” And then a warm, callused hand on my neck.
Austin’s eyes. Blue-green even in the twilight. And the smell of gunpowder and his sweat as he grabbed a handful of my coat and yanked me upright.
“Are you ok?”
“Jesus.”
“Vie?”
“Jesus Christ, did you shoot him?”
“He’s gone. He disappeared.”
“Fuck.” I scrambled to my feet, wobbled. Someone jogged at us with a flashlight, the brilliant white cone slashing back and forth over the valley floor, picking out a patch of Queen Anne’s lace that had somehow so far survived tonight’s battle. And then the light dipped, splashed over a pair of Chucks, and I could see Becca’s eyes.
“Emmett?” I asked.
The disappointment came down in Austin’s eyes like a hard black veil. He shook his head. “I haven’t seen him.”
Becca shook her head too.
“We’ve got to—”
“You’ve got to get to that cabin, Vie.” Austin’s hand swallowed my shoulder, spinning me toward the lake and, beyond it, the shelf of stone on which the ancient building stood. “Right now, while the way is clear.”
“That Crow boy—
”
“I heard you. I know how he works now. We’ll get him.”
I hesitated. Austin and Becca were at my back; before me, the slate mirror of the lake, and the cracks of yellow light where the cabin broke the darkness.
“I’ll find him,” Austin said. Then he shoved me. “I’ll make sure he’s ok.”
I wanted to—I don’t know. Say sorry, I guess. Or explain.
But I glanced back, and he shrugged and turned away, the rifle coming down, and said, “You’d better go.”
“Becca.”
“Vie, you’d better go.”
Austin looked once at me. His eyes could have been the far side of the moon, all the blue and green washed out, just a lunar gray like death.
I turned and ran.
I’d been running for a long time. For years. And this was the only time it had ever really mattered, so I ran, and I ran as fast and as hard as I could. Buffalo grass and cheatgrass and heavy-head purple thistles scratched at my jeans. Smoke and the lingering ozone filled my lungs, but as I got farther around the lake, the haze thinned, and the stars came out. I gulped down air that was clear and tasted of mud and steelhead trout and the bruised leaves of cow parsley.
I’d gone thirty yards when a gunshot rang out behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder, swerved to keep my footing, saw nothing but a gauze of smoke thickening, heard nothing but my own breathing—no shouts, no screams, no cries for help. No Austin. No Emmett. Then another gunshot, but off to my left, where I’d last seen Jake and Temple Mae. No explosion followed the crack of this bullet, and that meant Leo hadn’t been the one who fired it—and that meant Jake was still going. Or Temple Mae. Or both, God, let them both be all right.
At the edge of the lake, my sneakers caught a rock smoothed by the lap of lake water, and it spun out, skipped once like it had cracked against ice, and then disappeared under the surface. The ripples from its passage shattered the slate mirror, turning it into a thousand distorted reflections, a thousand different sunken cabins with a thousand different swimming lights. It reminded me of throwing stones at Lake Thunderbird. I jagged hard to the right, following the lake’s muddy shoulder, and cold mud slopped up over my sneaker; it squelched every other step.