by Jackson Ford
The ground around the man explodes upwards: a huge, circular wave of it, crashing down on top of him.
One of the women screams, sprinting forward. The man’s hand appears through a gap in the raging, roaring earth – stretching for the sky, like he’s appealing for help. Then it’s gone, the wave crashing in on him, forcing him into the ground, burying him in a surge of black earth.
Then the air is filled with screams and drifting dirt, and Matthew takes Amber’s hand again, pulling her down the hill, away from everything.
THIRTY-ONE
Teagan
Annie is on her knees in the mud. She scratches at it, throwing up huge clumps. One of her nails has broken. Snapped back, drenching her finger with blood, rivulets of wet dirt spattering her arms. She’s making this awful sound – a choked, almost strangled moan.
I can’t look away from it. I’m frozen to the spot, mouth open, trying to process what the fuck I just saw.
“Teagan,” Annie says, her voice little more than a gasp. “Help him.”
A hundred yards away, the kid and his mom – at least, I think it’s his mom – vanish into another clutch of trees. He looks back at us just before he disappears. I can’t see his expression from here, but I don’t have to. I know the same one as before: a weird grin. An insane, twisted little smile. The same one he had when he… when Paul…
“Teagan! Fucking help him!”
I snap out of it, sprint over, skidding to my knees next to her.
“Get him out of there,” she rasps. “Get him out. Get him out!”
I send my PK deep into the earth. Paul is there – seven or eight feet down, well within my range. It’s just like back on Schmidt’s plane: I can’t feel him, but I can feel the objects he has on him. Keys, belt buckle, the metal parts of his arm sling. His wedding band, on a chain around his neck.
But it’s like trying to lift a block of concrete using just the tips of my fingers. He won’t come. The sheer weight of the dirt holds him in place. And the objects… they’re moving, vibrating back and forth.
He’s still alive down there.
Twisting against the dirt.
Annie hasn’t stopped digging. The earth is packed down tight. Blood leaks onto the soil from her broken nail. “What’s wrong?” she snarls.
“He’s not…”
“Just pull him up!”
“I can’t!”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
How do I explain it to her? That this isn’t about strength, or range? There’s just not enough for me to grab onto.
Annie howls, digs in even harder. She’s about a foot deep now, but the hole isn’t even wide enough to fit her arms. Africa shouts in my earpiece – I barely register his words.
If I can’t pull Paul up, maybe I can get down to him. And I can do it much faster than Annie can.
“Wait here,” I say, scrambling to my feet.
“Where are you going?”
It takes every ounce of strength I have to let go of Paul’s belt buckle, his keys. To leave him where he is. I’m coming, man, just hold on.
I run. Moving as my fast as my short, shitty little legs will carry me, stumbling through the trees, ignoring Annie’s confused, terrified shouts.
It takes me far too long to get to the stadium parking lot. Thirty seconds at least. How many minutes can a person survive after being buried alive? How long can Paul survive? I picture him at Annie’s mom’s house, sitting at her dining room table, holding Annie’s hand. He looked at home there. Comfortable. A man in his forties, not super-fit, probably in shock…
I stop thinking about it. Because if I do, I’m just going to throw up.
I send my PK out in a wide arc ahead of me, and find what I’m looking for even before I burst out onto the flat surface of the parking lot. A car – a fucking Lamborghini, if you can believe it, bright yellow. Somehow, it’s still upright, despite the parking lot’s wrecked surface. This might be the first time I’m grateful that some dipshit in LA bought themselves a supercar. Supercars have big doors.
I grit my teeth, grab hold of the metal. A headache flares at the base of my skull as I rip the doors from their hinges. I’m expecting more resistance than I get: they’re only attached with a single hinge, designed to open upwards. The term for them comes to me, and I wish it hadn’t. Suicide doors.
I flip them through the air towards me. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone watching – nobody in the parking lot that I can see, just choppers taking off and landing over by the stadium. Not that I care if people sees me doing this. Let Tanner sort it out later.
“—anybody hear me?” In my ear, Africa sounds desperate. “Teggan, you OK?”
Reggie: “Paul, come—” More static. “Paul, do you read me?”
I run back through the trees, the doors trailing after me. I’m so wired that I bounce them off tree trunks several times, scarring their surfaces. Not that it matters: they are about to get a lot more fucked up than they already are.
I’ve lost track of how much time has passed. I don’t know how long Paul has but I’m going to move as fast as I can, and get him out, and then everything…
Everything will be fine.
Annie doesn’t look up as I approach. She’s still on her knees, bent over now, arms deep in the dirt. “Move,” I say, bringing the doors up and over my head.
She doesn’t look round. Doesn’t even register that I’m there. Her shoulders are shaking.
“Annie! Fucking move!”
“Wha—?” She looks over her shoulder. Her eyes are unfocused, the dirt on her face lined with tear tracks.
I drive the first door into the soil. “Out the way.”
I’ve never used my PK to dig before. I have only the barest idea of what to do – it’s not like there’s a manual for this shit. I use the doors as scoops – something they are spectacularly unsuited for, thanks to their flat shape. Most of the dirt I get just slides right out again, falling back into the pit.
And Annie keeps getting in the way. No matter how many times I shout at her to move, she keeps darting back in, scrabbling at the dirt with torn fingers. I have to work around her, doing everything I can not to cut her damn head off.
I scoop dirt as fast as I can, throwing up huge piles. The headache has blossomed, pounding on my temples. Just a few more feet. Come on. Come on!
But it never ends.
No matter how often I plunge the doors into the dirt, there’s always more of it. He’s been down there for too long, far longer than anyone could survive. The thought must have made me slow down, because Annie yells at me to hurry.
I send out another wave of PK, trying to get a fix on Paul’s position. To my surprise, we’ve almost reached him. He’s no more than two feet away now. Annie seems to sense it, throwing herself down into the pit, ignoring my shouts to get out the way as she digs at the dirt. I rip the doors away – if I keep going, I’ll either cut her in half, or do the same to Paul. Then I jump into the pit to join her.
It’s not easy. The pit is seven feet deep now, cone-shaped, with uneven, sloping sides. As I skid to a halt at the bottom, Annie gives yell of triumph. Paul’s hand is poking up out of the dirt, Annie’s fingers clutching at it.
And it’s not moving.
Together, she and I attack the last few inches of dirt. Paul’s face starts to appear. Stark white against the black soil. His eyes are open, staring at nothing.
Annie shoves me aside. She gets her hands underneath him, and with a roar, heaves his torso, head and shoulders out of the hole. She starts giving him mouth-to-mouth, and I clear the rest of the dirt away from his chest so she can give him compressions, but…
I lean back against the wall of the pit, Annie a blur of frantic motion next to me. I keep seeing the kid, the sick, delighted look on his face as he sucked Paul into the ground.
“Baby.” Annie’s voice is husky, shredded. She hasn’t stopped pumping his chest. “Baby, wake up.”
I keep thinking he�
��s going to answer her. That his eyes will spring open, that he’ll explode out of the dirt, coughing and spluttering. We’ll go back into the stadium, and before long he’ll be laughing about what a lucky escape it was, how it’s a damn good thing he was in the Navy, because they taught him how to hold his breath, giving us shit for letting the kid get away. Then we’ll figure this out, rebuild the Boutique and before long Paul will be back to planning missions, while I sit on our couch and taunt him about his stupid whiteboard…
But no matter how hard Annie pumps on Paul’s chest, or how many breaths she forces into his lungs, he doesn’t wake up.
“Teagan, help me get him out.”
“Annie…”
“No.” She wipes her mouth. Her whole body is caked with dirt now. “We’ll get him out. Get him to a doctor. Call Reggie, tell her we’re bringing him in.”
It feels like a betrayal to say my next words. And it takes everything I have to do it. “He’s gone.”
“The hell he is. Baby, wake up. Please. Wake up. Wake up!”
She’s crying again. So am I now. And then, as if our conversation didn’t happen, she goes back to pumping his chest. She’s doing it so hard now that she’s actually pushing him further down into the dirt.
I lever myself up, get my arms around Annie. She bucks me off, but I come back, refusing to let go. I’m not just doing it for her. I’m doing it for me. If I don’t grab hold of something, or someone, I’m going to be swept away.
Again and again she pushes me off, until her strength gives out and all she can do is lean on Paul’s body, hands still resting on his chest.
I wrap my arms around Annie and hold her tight as her words turn to sobs, as her sobs turn to screams, and her screams turn to a single, long howl, echoing out into the trees.
THIRTY-TWO
Teagan
How are you supposed to feel when someone dies?
I should know. My parents, my sister… all dead. The ranch house going up in flames. Adam, my psychotic brother, laughing as it burned.
Afterwards, I felt… nothing. Utter numbness. It was way, way too much to process. Too big. I felt it later, sure, when the government got its hooks into me. When the therapists and counsellors they sent my way forced the emotion to the surface, the way a diver will pry an oyster off a rock.
I’m expecting to feel the same way this time. That’s my first reaction, when I stare down at Paul’s white face, with its horrible blank eyes. I’m almost ready for it – ready for my brain to shut down, my body to go on autopilot. Blue screen of death. Please refer to your dealer warranty. Which means I am utterly and totally unprepared for what happens next.
A phantom fist socks me in the gut. It’s an actual, physical sensation: a sick ache deep in my stomach that blooms through my body like ink in water. I hug myself, bent over, a dry retch crawling its way up my throat. I’m looking at Paul as it happens, and it’s followed by an urge to look away: an urge so powerful, so everywhere, that I nearly fall over trying to obey it. I clutch at my stomach, eyes squeezed shut, taking deep breaths that come and go without giving me any air at all. I’m shaking, trembling, like I’m a hundred years old. It’s got nothing to do with the rain, or the chilly night air.
Annie’s shaking too, hunched on the edge of the hole, head down. Dead still. The kid, I think. We should go after him. Oh, yeah. OK. Let’s go hunt the boy who just buried Paul alive.
“Will somebody respond?” In my ear, Reggie sounds like she’s this close to losing her shit. “Teagan, Paul, anyb—tell me what’s happening out—”
She goes away, comes back, the signal fading in and out.
After a while, I stop retching. The shakes are still there, though. I have to interlace my fingers to get them to simmer down. Is it lighter in the sky now? Or is it just my imagination?
My blue-screened brain reboots into recovery mode. I lift the car doors again, thinking I can use them to at least get Paul out of the ground. Only: what then? Carry him back to the stadium? That’s the sensible thing to do… they’ll have a morgue, or a tent to keep the dead in. Right?
Only: how do we get him back there? I can’t float him in on the suicide doors, not without causing a panic. He’s too heavy for me to carry by myself. And there is no way – at all, ever – that I’m asking Annie to carry him. It would be the worst kind of betrayal.
Call an ambulance. I am so fucking out of it that I find myself reaching for my useless phone. In the hole, Paul stares at nothing.
I can’t leave him down there. Nope. Nuh-uh. No sir no ma’am no way.
Except… what the fuck else choice do we have?
I sink to my knees next to Annie, a hand on her shoulder. Another phantom punch to my gut, this one almost as bad as the first. It takes a second for my own words to make sense. “I can’t carry him out of here with my PK.”
She makes a sound that is halfway between a groan and a snarl.
“I mean, I can, I could put him on one of the doors, but it’s not… I don’t want to…”
I don’t want to leave him. Not like this. But the only alternative is carrying him back to the stadium ourselves, and even the thought of doing that… carrying him like a sack of grain across that endless parking lot…
And I can’t ask Annie to bury him.
I can’t tell her that we have to put him under the dirt, right after we got him out. I won’t.
The shakes and the ache in my gut have given way to something else: lucidity. Control. My mind is suddenly agonisingly clear. It won’t let me check out, no matter how desperate I am to do it. We can get a message to the people at the stadium. The National Guard, the doctors, emergency workers. Whoever is in charge. We’ll have to come up with a story – tell them he fell into a hole, something like that. Or that the ground collapsed. They won’t question it – why would they? They have so much on their plates, they won’t even have time to. And they can come get him, pull him out…
I tell Annie this, but all she does is shake her head. Doesn’t stop. Just keeps rocking, sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees.
“Annie, please. We have to.”
Long minutes go by while I talk to her. I can’t believe how calm I sound. Slowly, very slowly, I make her understand. Or at least, not try and stop me.
We start walking. My arm around Annie. I try not to picture Paul’s body, down in the dirt.
I’m sorry, man. I’m so fucking sorry.
The kid knew what he was doing. He knew he was about to kill someone.
And he liked it.
The next thing I know, we’re heading back across the parking lot to the stadium. I can’t even remember us walking away from the gra—from where it happened.
“We’re coming in,” I say, keying my comms.
A long fuzz of static. “Teagan? Is that you? What the—out there? Paul and Annie aren’t answer—out of range?”
In the end, all I can think to say is, “Annie’s with me.”
“Did their—damaged?” Her voice is very distant now, almost inaudible.
“We’ll meet you at the medical tent.”
No answer. The only thing I get back is static.
It takes a while to get into the stadium. There are even more people now, crowds bottlenecking the entry tunnels, streaming in from everywhere. A dirty, heaving mass of exhausted faces and slow, shuffling bodies. We have to stand in line, despite the black slashes on the backs of our hands.
You know that whole thing about grief, where you can’t understand how the world can keep ticking along after someone you love has died? I get it now. Everybody’s standing around, not doing much, and they don’t know that Paul is dead. They have no idea, and if they did, they wouldn’t even care. The crowd is huge, like we’re trying to get into a Beyoncé show. But it’s quiet, dull, and even the soldiers checking us off don’t give us more than a passing glance. Annie is crying again, silent tears making tracks down her dirt-smeared cheeks
Inside. Same tents, same mud. Reg
gie comes back in my comms, goes away again, static swallowing her. In the huge crush of bodies, every one of them radiating exhaustion and hopelessness, Annie and I get separated.
It happens almost without me noticing. I’m just concentrating on shuffling forward, trying not to get muscled out of the way, and a few seconds later she’s just gone.
She was right behind me. She was right fucking here. I push though the crowd, shouting her name, squeezing between tents and bouncing off people like a pinball.
It takes me a long minute to find her, sagged against the wall of one of the tents. Staring at nothing. Face grey, mud caked on her legs on arms. When I take her hand, she doesn’t resist, just lets me lead her. It’s like she’s gone deep inside herself.
OK. Where the fuck is the medical tent? Or… shit, is there more than one? I really don’t feel like leading Annie on a little hike right now, but at least the thought gets me moving again. I start walking, arm around Annie’s waist, heading in what I think is the right direction.
We stumble down between the tents. Every so often, I’ll call out for Reggie or Africa on the comms, raising my voice over the crowd.
It’s not long before we’re lost. I feel like the tent should be over by third base, but I must have gotten turned around somewhere.
“Come on, A-Team,” I mutter to Annie, changing our direction. It’s like trying to do a three-point turn in an eighteen-wheeler. “Long way to go. We just need to—”
The ground beneath me gives way, plunging my right foot into a calf-high sinkhole of brown water. Freezing mud floods my shoe, trickling between my toes.
Paul’s hand, appearing over the wave of dirt, sucked into the ground like—
I drop my head, take a deep, shaky breath. Beside me, Annie sways in place. If she goes down, I am never going to be able to lift her up, no matter what my superpowers are.
“Teggan – over here.”
Africa’s eyes are huge, his face caked with dirt. He gets an arm under Annie’s on the other side, helps me lift her.