Outside, Emily saw a sudden shift in the light of the swarm as it broke away and began to head back in their direction, the truck’s headlights finally too much for them to resist.
What do I do? she wanted to yell, but there was no one and nothing that could help her right now.
Rhiannon’s body convulsed once . . . twice . . . then sank back into the chair like a deflated balloon, all her muscles limp, her head lolling toward her chest.
“No, no, not again, Goddamn it, not again,” Emily repeated as her fingers checked for a pulse against the girl’s throat. She exhaled a sigh of relief when she felt the slow but steady pulse of Rhiannon’s heart and saw the shallow rise of her chest.
Rhiannon was alive, but if Emily wanted them all to remain that way, then she had to get them out of there right now.
Sliding back into her seat, Emily pulled her door shut and slipped the truck into drive, edging out of the bay. Her attention was split between the unconscious body of Rhiannon slumped in the seat next to her, navigating a route to the freeway, and the glowing cloud of the swarm advancing rapidly across the half kilometer or so of open terrain still separating them. Multiple strands of the swarm extended into the air in front of the main body like antennae, probing ahead for something they knew was there but seemed unable to pinpoint.
“Hold on,” Emily said, stealing a glance at Rhiannon’s motionless body. Flipping on the high beams lit up the landscape ahead of them like it was day. She might just as well have painted a target on the truck, because the swarm instantly began to accelerate toward the vehicle. The road leading from the depot to the freeway was broken and uneven, and Emily had to resist the urge to just floor the accelerator and pop another tire.
“Come on. Come on,” she mumbled to herself as she navigated the truck over a slab of road forced up almost a quarter meter by a tangle of plants. The swarm was picking up speed now, and Emily could sense its collective excitement as it closed the gap with its prey.
The headlights illuminated the freeway ahead of her, the road in front of them clear. She pressed the accelerator pedal hard and felt the supercharged engine kick in. The truck’s front tires found the freeway, its rear tires momentarily losing traction, fishtailing the rear end of the vehicle until the tires caught again and the truck lurched forward onto the I-40. Emily swung the truck in a wide semicircle until the nose pointed toward the east.
The first few scouts of the swarm rocketed alongside her window, dodging in front of the truck, the rest of the swarm only seconds behind them now.
Emily pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, and the truck roared. In the rearview mirror the light of the swarm began to recede into the distance. Emily checked her speed; she was going a smidgen under eighty. Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror again; she had already put a half kilometer between them and the swarm, but the tenacious little fuckers were still following. She forced herself to breathe deeply; her concentration had to remain on the road. At this speed, if there was anything in the road she was going to have a matter of seconds to react.
Ten minutes later, Emily began to ease her foot off the gas pedal, allowing the needle to gradually drop to thirty. In the mirror, there was nothing but night. The glow of the swarm had disappeared completely.
With the threat of the swarm far enough behind them, at least for now, Emily pulled the truck over to the side of the road, left the engine running, and leaped out. She sprinted around to the passenger side and pulled the door open.
Rhiannon was deathly pale, slumped forward, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. Emily checked for a pulse; it was there but slow and weak. Gently lifting the girl’s injured arm to the light, Emily examined the bite or sting or whatever the fuck it was the bug had done to her. Memories of another time, with another child, tried to crowd into her mind. The bite mark on Rhiannon’s wrist looked angry and inflamed, the dot at the center a dried scab of blood. Emily lifted first Rhiannon’s left eyelid then her right with her thumb; they were both dilated, but at least they were no longer rolled back into her head. A good sign? Emily had no idea whether it was or not, because, if she were being perfectly honest, she had no clue what she was supposed to do. The light bug must have injected some kind of venom into Rhiannon when it bit her, because the reaction had been so damn fast. It had been almost a half hour since the attack, and she was still breathing, so that had to be a good thing, right? Maybe the swarm relied on multiple bites to kill its victims; maybe a single bite would simply render the victim immobile. She was still alive, so that meant there was hope.
The voice in her head tried to get her attention again: Just like Ben was still alive, remember?
Emily cursed under her breath and ran to the rear of the truck. She lifted up the cargo door, ushered Thor out, pulled the blanket and a sweater from Rhiannon’s backpack, and pushed their gear farther back until it was up against the backseats. She ran back to the front. Unbuckling the safety belt from around Rhiannon, Emily slipped one arm under her knees and the other around her back and carefully lifted her limp body out of the seat. The kid felt like she weighed as much as a sparrow, if there had been any sparrows left, and her skin was cold, clammy with sweat. She carried Rhiannon’s unconscious body to the rear of the truck and gently slipped her into the cargo compartment, resting her head against the rolled-up sweater, then pulled the blanket over her.
Emily took a step back from the truck and allowed herself to breathe. Now what? she wondered. She answered herself: Now we wait. That was all she could do: keep the kid warm and watch her as closely as she could . . . and if the worst-case scenario became a reality? Would she, could she, really do that again? Emily already knew the answer to that question: she would do whatever it took.
“Jesus!” Emily exhaled the word as though it had been caught in her throat for the last day. She leaned forward—sank, really—until her forehead rested against the window of the truck and allowed its coolness to sink into her skin. Maybe she could just stay like this, silent in this eye of the unseen storm she knew was whirling around her.
Thor’s soft but insistent whine brought her back to the moment. He sat at her feet, looking up expectantly at his mistress.
“She’s going to be okay,” Emily said, not sure if she was reassuring the malamute or herself.
Thor watched her, his tongue lolling from his mouth until she reached down and scratched behind his ear. The thought of losing Rhiannon was just too painful to think about, but she knew that the kid’s future was out of her hands now. Her only recourse was to watch over her and wait. And hope—she could still hope; there was still some of that precious liquid left in that shallow well.
Emily leaned her back against the side of the truck. She looked back in the direction they had come from; the very faintest glow of the fire still flickered there, but the western horizon was still clear of any sign of the swarm following them. To the east was another glow; the first rays of the morning sun, illuminating a sky peppered only with buckshot cloud and the promise of a day finally free of rain. There was nothing else visible around them other than the slightly swaying red weed.
The ache to keep moving toward her son tugged at her, but she had already decided that she was going to spend the next few hours here, watching over Rhiannon. She wasn’t going to risk moving the girl, and, if she had learned anything since the red rain, it was that the resolution would come quickly, and this was as good a place as any to wait out whatever form that resolution might take.
Emily had to pee too. She found a spot a few meters away from the side of the road. When she was done, she checked in on Rhiannon. The kid looked the same, which Emily supposed was a good thing; at least she hadn’t deteriorated. She let Thor back in the truck, then climbed into the passenger seat, locked the doors, and waited for the future to arrive.
“Em-uh-lee.” The voice floated into Emily’s sleeping mind as though blown there by a breeze. She opened her eyes, jerking awake, momentarily confounded as to why she was sitti
ng in a vehicle in the middle of nowhere, unsure of whether she had heard or dreamed her name.
Outside the truck, full-fledged morning now surrounded them.
“Em-uhhhh-leeee.” Rhiannon’s voice, barely a whisper, drifted from the back of the truck. Emily whipped around in her seat and looked toward the back cabin. She couldn’t see Rhiannon’s prone body from where she sat, but she could see a pale arm waving back and forth beyond the rear seats like a wind-bent reed.
“Rhiannon! I’m coming,” she called out, already out the door, then standing at the rear bumper in what felt like a second. She levered the hatchback up and climbed in beside a now-conscious Rhiannon, her eyes open, her pupils still dilated, though, Emily noted.
“Hi, how you feeling?” she cooed, her hand instinctively going to the girl’s forehead. She was warm again and definitely had more color than before.
“Thur-stee,” the girl replied weakly through cracked, dry lips.
Emily reached across Rhiannon to the backpack and grabbed a can of soda. She pulled the tab, slipping her free hand behind Rhiannon’s neck. “Here,” she said, lifting her head to the can.
Rhiannon drank deeply from the soda can.
While she drank, Emily snuck a look at the bite mark. The inflammation had all but vanished, and it was no longer quite as angry looking; now it was just slightly raised with the red dot at its center, like a bad mosquito bite.
“Oh my God, that tastes so good,” she said after she had emptied almost half of it.
Emily could not contain her happiness and broke into a wide grin. “Any pain?” she asked, lowering Rhiannon’s head back to the makeshift pillow, smoothing the girl’s cheek with the backs of her fingers.
Rhiannon nodded slowly. “Head hurts and all my muscles feel really, really tired. Fingers have needles and pins.”
“Do you think you’re gonna be sick?”
Rhiannon shook her head. “Where are we?” she asked after she took a few more sips from the can.
“About twenty kilometers from the depot,” Emily said. “You hungry?”
“Yes,” said Rhiannon. “What time is it?”
Emily checked her watch. “About ten.”
“At night? I slept a whole day?” Rhiannon said, her voice disbelieving.
“No, silly. Ten in the morning.”
Emily saw the color drain from Rhiannon’s face again. She pulled an arm from under the blanket and waved the hand in front of her eyes, blinking her lids exaggeratedly.
“I can’t see,” Rhiannon said matter-of-factly, as if she were simply delivering a line from a script. “Emily, I’m blind.”
It took Emily a few moments to react. “What?” she said, not sure she had heard Rhiannon correctly.
“I can’t see anything. It’s all black.” Panic had begun to creep into Rhiannon’s voice.
Emily reached out and took Rhiannon’s hand in hers. “It’s alright. It’s okay. I’m right here.” Perhaps it was the simple accretion of problem laid upon problem, but Emily found herself surprised at how easy it was for her to accept this latest development in a long line of “hindrances and bothers,” as her grandmother would label any kind of setback in her own life. In this world, things did not ever seem to get better—they only stayed the same or got worse.
Slowly Emily waved the flat of her left hand in front of Rhiannon’s face. “You can’t see my hand?”
“No,” Rhiannon said, biting her lower lip to stop it from trembling.
“It’s okay, it’s all going to be alright.” Emily’s reassurances were just a distraction while her mind tried to process the situation. Perhaps Rhiannon’s blindness was just a temporary affliction, a side effect of whatever poison that single minion of the swarm had injected into her. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it was permanent and Rhiannon would never see again.
And if permanent blindness was the worst-case scenario for Rhiannon, then by God Emily would take that, because the darkness in the back of her mind was already coming up with other ways—much, much worse ways—that this could have ended. Again Emily surprised herself with her level of fatalism. But, really, what could she do about any of this? Nothing. Not a Goddamn thing. The only option she had was to try to ensure that Rhiannon remained safe, and the only way to do that was to keep moving.
Emily reached across and squeezed Rhiannon’s cheek with her hand. “It’s okay, don’t worry. It’s probably just a temporary thing. Do you feel strong enough to stand?”
Rhiannon said, “Maybe.”
“We’re going to get you to the front seat, okay?” Emily backed her way out of the rear compartment and stood. She picked up the blanket, threw it over her shoulder, then reached back inside and took both of Rhiannon’s hands. “Okay, scoot your butt forward. That’s it, now you’re on the edge of the tailgate, so just put your feet down and let me guide you.”
Rhiannon did as she was told, and Emily led her unsteadily around the truck to the front passenger door and opened it. “Okay, left leg first,” she said, guiding Rhiannon’s foot up onto the footplate. “And up.” She maneuvered the girl into the seat, placed the blanket over her body, and then fastened the safety belt. “Comfortable?”
“Yes.”
Emily placed the can of soda in Rhiannon’s hand. “Let me know if you need more.”
The clouds that had dogged their journey since they left California were finally in full-on retreat, leaving only a few stragglers behind in an otherwise lonely blue sky.
Emily drove and Rhiannon slept for most of the next two hours. Emily couldn’t tell if she was fitfully dreaming or in any discomfort, but every few minutes Rhiannon would groan and struggle against the restraint of the seat belt. A hand against her forehead or a stroke of her hand seemed to calm the girl until the next time.
The freeway was mostly clear of debris, and Emily found her mind beginning to drift as the thrum of the truck’s tires against the hardtop lulled her into a meditative state; she was confident she would find her son, of that there was no doubt in her mind, but after that . . . ? What then? The future was opaque. They could go back to Point Loma, as long as she had Adam. The original charges against her would have to be dropped, but she knew that Valentine would be quick to level more accusations against her for the deaths of the two guards. She might be able to fight them too, with Rhiannon’s help, but any semblance of a trial would be colored by Valentine’s influence. And who knew if the woman had any more assassins willing to carry out her dirty work. Besides, all of that was a moot point anyway; she had no way of getting back to Point Loma. The red jungle lay between them and what had become home. Hundreds of kilometers deep, Emily had already learned her lesson of how deadly even a small sortie into it could be. The chances of them making it all the way back to California were all but nonexistent.
Of course, there was always Mac and the crew of the Vengeance. If there was just some way that she could contact him . . .
Rhiannon moaned and twisted in her seat. Emily’s eyes flicked to her, her fingers mechanically reaching to take the girl’s hand. Rhiannon settled again, her head resting against the leather back of the seat. Her arm was exposed, and Emily got a good look at the wound on her wrist, half expecting to see the same striations that had marked the transformation of her little brother. But there was nothing. The inflammation had all but subsided, leaving only the small red puncture wound marking her pale skin to show that anything had happened at all. And the blindness, of course.
It must have been some kind of nerve toxin, Emily thought. Like a spider bite, it was designed to paralyze, immobilizing the victim long enough that the swarm could overwhelm rather than outright kill. Still, Emily’s mind kept returning to Rhiannon’s brother, Ben, and how swiftly he had changed. But that did not mean the same was going to happen to Rhiannon.
Rhiannon stirred, yawning as she woke. She stretched both arms above her head, pressing the flats of her hands against the truck’s roof, yawned again, and pulled the blanket back around her.
&n
bsp; “Hi. How’d you sleep?”
“Okay. My neck’s a bit stiff.”
“Well, you were sitting kind of awkwardly,” said Emily. She glanced over at her passenger . . . and stared, her heart suddenly grasped by an icy fist that threatened to squeeze it until it burst.
“Christ!” The truck had drifted almost into the center divider in the few seconds that Emily had been looking at Rhiannon. She yanked the wheel to the right, buffeting everyone inside, and slowed the truck to a stop.
“What is it?” Rhiannon said, panicked. “What’s happening?”
Emily continued to stare at the kid. “Nothing . . . just something in the road,” she lied.
Rhiannon relaxed and turned her unseeing eyes back toward Emily, eyes that were now nothing but red orbs staring out from Rhiannon’s pale, freckled face. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be blind,” she said, mustering a convincing laugh to accompany the statement.
Emily took a shallow breath. “How are you feeling?” she said, attempting to sound as nonchalant as possible.
Rhiannon must have caught something in the tone of Emily’s question. “Why?” she asked, suspicious.
“No reason. You feeling okay? No fever? Any pain at all?” She reached out a hand and laid it against Rhiannon’s head. It felt normal.
Rhiannon pulled back. “Like I said, apart from a stiff neck, I feel okay. What’s wrong, Emily?” The last three words were spoken with a tone that said she suspected Emily wasn’t telling her everything. “Tell me.”
“Nothing’s wrong. Just checking you’re okay, is all.” Emily’s feigned lack of concern was about as far away as possible from what she actually felt. It was unsettling to see those two blood-red orbs blindly looking back at her, but, apart from the physical change to her eyes, Rhiannon seemed perfectly fine. When Ben had been stung by the thing back in Stuyvesant, he had become sick soon after, quickly deteriorating as the venom swept through his body, changing him into . . . something that Emily did not want to remember. She leaned in closer to Rhiannon, looking over every inch of visible skin. There was no indication of change. In Emily’s experience, nothing of the old world ever survived contact with this new world without changing in some way, even if it were only in some minor manner. So maybe this would be the extent of it, for Rhiannon. So many damn “maybes.”
Extinction Point (Book 4): Genesis Page 21