Astrid saw something move up to her right, up the sheer slope of what she was thinking of as Mount Grimface. She didn’t stop, but kept moving, looked and now saw nothing.
“Don’t get spooked,” she told herself. That kind of thing had happened a lot in the forest: a noise, a sudden movement, a flash of something or other. And inevitably she’d been afraid it was Drake. Just as inevitably it had been a bird or a squirrel or a skunk.
Now, though, the sense that she was being watched was hard to shake. As if Mount Grimface really was a face and it was watching her and not liking what it saw.
Ahead the path curved away to the left, and Astrid welcomed the chance to move away from the sinister mountain, but at the same time, as she took that curve, she had an almost overpowering sense that whatever had been watching her was now behind her.
And coming closer.
The urge to break into a full-on run was hard to resist. But she couldn’t look as if she was fleeing, panicking.
She came around a blind corner and almost plowed into him.
Astrid stopped. Stared. Screamed.
Screamed so that she forgot to draw her gun until she was already screaming and backing away, and finally out came the shotgun and her fingers fumbled for the trigger. She raised the gun to her shoulder, sighted down the barrel.
She aimed for the eyes. Those awful marble-size eyes in bloody-black sockets.
It was a boy. That fact took a few long beats to penetrate her consciousness. Not some giant monster, a boy. He had strong shoulders and a deep tan. There were cuts on his face, like the claw marks of a wild animal. They seemed fresh. And she saw blood on his fingernails.
His expression was impossible to read—the eyes, those awful chickpea-size eyes—made any emotion impossible to guess.
“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,” Astrid said.
The boy stopped walking. The eyes seemed unable to locate her, looking up and left and everywhere but straight at her.
“Are you real?” the boy asked.
“I’m real. So is this shotgun.” Astrid heard the quaver in her voice, but her grip on the gun was steady and she was keeping it on target. One squeeze of her right index finger and there’d be a loud noise and that horrifying head would explode like a water balloon.
“Are you . . . Are you Astrid?”
She swallowed hard. How did it know her name? “Who are you?”
“Bradley. But everyone calls me Cigar.”
The gun lowered several inches of its own accord. “What? Cigar?”
The boy’s mouth made a sort of grin. The grin revealed broken and missing teeth.
“I see you,” Cigar said. He stretched out a bloody hand to her, but like a blind person feeling for something he couldn’t quite locate.
“Stay back,” she snapped, and the gun went to her shoulder again. “What happened to you?”
“I . . .” He tried another smile, but it twisted into a grimace and then a terrible groan, a cry of agony that stretched on and on before ending in a wild burst of laughter.
“Listen, Cigar, you need to tell me what happened,” Astrid insisted.
“Penny,” he whispered. “She showed me things. My hands were . . .” He raised his palms to look at them, but his eyes were elsewhere, and a moan came from deep in his throat.
“Penny did this?” Astrid lowered the gun. Halfway. Then, hesitantly, all the way down. But she did not sling it back over her shoulder. She kept her grip tight and her finger resting on the trigger guard.
“I like candy, see, and I did a bad thing and then the candy was in my arm and then I was eating it and oh, it tasted so good, you know, and Penny gave me more, so I ate it up and it hurt and there was blood, maybe, lots of blood, maybe, maybe.”
The tiny eyes swiveled suddenly to look past Astrid.
“It’s the little boy,” Cigar said.
Astrid glanced over her shoulder, just quick, just a glance, almost involuntary because she wasn’t ready to lower her guard yet, not ready to turn around. Her head was already turning back toward Cigar when she realized what she had seen.
Seen? Nothing much. A distortion. A twisting of the visual field.
She looked back. Nothing.
Then back to Cigar.
“What was that?”
“The little boy.” Cigar giggled and placed his hand over his mouth like he’d said a dirty word. Then in a low whisper, “The little boy.”
Astrid’s throat was tight. The flesh on her arms rose into goose bumps. “What little boy, Cigar?”
“He knows you,” Cigar said, very confidential, like he was telling a secret. “Screaming yellow hair. Stabby blue eyes. He knows you, he told me.”
Astrid tried to speak and couldn’t. Couldn’t ask the question. Couldn’t accept what the answer might be. But at last, strangled words came from her mouth.
“The little boy. Is his name Pete?”
Cigar reached to touch his own eye, but stopped. He looked for a moment as if he were listening to something, though there was nothing but the sounds of gentle breeze and grating grasshoppers. Then he nodded eagerly and said, “Little boy says: ‘Hello, sister.’”
OUTSIDE
SERGEANT DARIUS ASHTON was very good with a truck engine. This did not mean he was necessarily good with an air compressor. But his lieutenant said a mechanic was needed at a site around the far side of the dome.
“That’s the air base, Lieutenant,” Darius protested. “They don’t have an HVAC mechanic over there?”
“Not one with your security clearance,” the lieutenant said.
“A security clearance for an air conditioner?”
The lieutenant wasn’t a bad guy, young but not arrogant. He said, “Sergeant, I would have thought by now, with your long experience in uniform, you’d know better than to expect everything to make sense.”
Darius couldn’t argue with that. He saluted and turned on his heel. A cheerful female driver, a corporal who knew the drive well, was waiting behind the wheel of a Humvee. Darius loaded his tools in the back. How was he supposed to know what to bring if he didn’t even know what he was supposed to be fixing?
The corporal had done a tour in Kabul, something she and Darius had in common, so they talked about that on the long, circuitous drive. And they talked about this supposedly great new Cuban pitcher who had reached the United States on a raft. The Angels were going to sign him.
The drive went up the highway, then onto a series of gravel side roads. There was another way to reach the Evanston Air National Guard base, but it would mean going all the way to I-5, then back south. This path was bumpy and dusty but it was quicker.
Much of the drive was within sight of the bowl. Darius had gotten used to it. Ten miles high, twenty miles across. It looked like someone had dropped a small, smoothly polished moon down on the Southern California coastline.
But there was no crater, no fracture lines. It hadn’t landed; it hadn’t exploded; it had just suddenly existed. A gigantic terrarium.
“Been here long?” Darius asked, nodding at the dome.
“Just transferred in last month,” the corporal said. “I saw it on TV, like everyone else. But it’s something in person.”
“It is that.”
“Weird thinking there are kids in there.”
They pulled up at a facility that had obviously been recently built. It had all the usual obsessive military neatness and order. A dozen buildings in ruler-straight rows. A barracks, an officers’ quarters, a number of command trailers, a communications building bristling with dishes and antennae.
The base was a hive of activity. Men and women bustling back and forth with very busy expressions on their faces. No one was lounging or grabbing a smoke or chatting on the phone. There was a self-conscious sense of Very Important Stuff Happening.
The facility was ringed with chain link topped with extremely serious-looking razor wire. The gate was guarded by unsmiling military police. IDs were checked against
a manifest showing that yes, they were both expected.
One of the MPs accompanied them to one of the trailers. The corporal peeled off and Darius stepped into a blast of air-conditioning.
A sergeant asked him again for his ID. Then he handed Darius a paper to sign. The paper required him to reveal nothing of the purpose of his visit, of the existence of the facility, of the work there, of any of the personnel assigned there.
There was a great deal of official-ese and some decidedly threatening language.
“You understand, Sergeant, that you are governed by this security protocol?”
“Yes, Sergeant. I do.”
“You understand that any violation will result in criminal prosecution?”
The word “will” had been emphasized, and not subtly.
“I believe I’m getting the message, Sarge.”
The sergeant smiled. “They keep a very tight lid. Report to building oh-one-four. Your driver will know where it is.”
The driver did.
Building 014 was half a mile from the rest of the camp, which put it a full mile away from the dome wall. It was a vast, hangar-style tin structure. Huge and imposing. It was painted the color of the surrounding desert.
Darius hefted his tool bag and was met at the door by an MP. One more ID check. Then Darius stepped inside the hangar.
What he saw made him stare. A half dozen trucks filled with dirt. A tower that looked like it had been assembled from leftover bits and pieces of a suspension bridge or maybe the Eiffel Tower.
The MP took him to a civilian in a construction worker’s helmet and handed him off. The civilian shook his hand and identified himself as “Charlie. Just Charlie. Sorry to drag you out here, but our head HVAC mechanic is on maternity leave, and her assistant managed to break an ankle surfing. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
The question surprised Darius. “Why?”
“Because we are going deep. The unit we need you to look at is a blower at kilometer six.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we’re going two miles down, my friend. Two clicks straight down and four clicks south. Kilometer six.”
Darius felt cold. “That would put you . . . up against the dome. Why . . . I mean, what . . .”
Charlie shrugged and said, “My friend, the first thing you learn working here is don’t ask questions.”
The elevator ride down seemed endless.
And yet quicker than the narrow-gauge train that carried Darius along an impressive and oppressive tunnel, wide enough to accommodate two rail lines with space on either side. The tunnel was shored up at regular intervals with railroad ties.
Kilometer six turned out to be a cavern bigger than the hangar. The far end was formed by the barrier. Here it was black, not pearly gray.
“It was good luck finding this cave,” Charlie said. “Would have been a long, hard job carving it out. You know, usually we’d have a hundred guys down here. But as you can probably smell, the air is getting a bit thick.”
“That’s why I’m here, right?”
In the cave stood a tall scaffolding tilted at a strange, Leaning Tower of Pisa angle. Darius knew enough about machinery to recognize a drilling platform.
From this spot they were drilling farther still, down below the dome. Not a tunnel for humans. Just a round shaft into which a bomb could be lowered to the lowest point beneath the dome.
Charlie must have seen the look in Darius’s eyes. He gripped Darius’s arm and pulled him aside. They were alone, but Charlie whispered anyway. “Okay, you’re not a fool. You know what’s going on here. But you need to know that security watches everyone who comes in or out of this place. I mean, from now on your cell phone will be monitored, and your room may be bugged. Word to the wise.”
Darius nodded.
“What really happened to your HVAC guy?”
Charlie laughed mirthlessly. “Opened his mouth in a bar. Thirty minutes later the FBI picked him up as he was getting into his car.”
TWENTY-FOUR
14 HOURS, 2 MINUTES
ASTRID HAD MANAGED to get Cigar to follow her off the path. She worried that someone might come along—if she could get lost en route from the lake to Perdido Beach, so could others.
She found a place beside what had been the stream, hidden by a huge, dying rhododendron bush. She asked Cigar to sit down. She helped to move him into position to do so on a dirt ledge that almost formed a bench.
She sat a few feet away, careful to keep her face toward the grim-faced hill. Even now its shadow bothered her in a way she could not define.
Astrid still felt the relentless tick-tock, tick-tock urging her toward Perdido Beach. But it was possible this was even more important.
And anyway, she couldn’t leave. Not with what she had heard from Cigar.
“Bradley. I want this to be easy for you. I’m going to ask you questions. All you have to say is yes or no. Okay?”
The tiny eyeballs swerved wildly. But he said, “Okay. Why does he say your hair screams? You’re an angel with wings and shiny, shiny, and a long sword with flames and—”
“Just listen, okay?”
He nodded, and revealed a shy grin.
“You did something bad.”
“Yes,” he said solemnly.
“And they punished you by giving you to Penny for a half hour.”
“Half hour.” He giggled and his jaw twisted so hard she thought he might dislocate it. Like he was trying to break his own teeth. “Not a half hour.”
“They gave you to Penny,” Astrid repeated patiently.
“Sunrise sunset.”
At first Astrid thought he was talking about the eerie sky. Only gradually did the suspicion grow and take shape. “They put you with Penny for a full day? All day long?”
“Yes,” Cigar said, suddenly calm and sounding quite reasonable.
Astrid did not feel reasonable. What kind of creep would sentence this kid to a day with Penny? No wonder he was insane.
It occurred to her then that he had clawed his own eyes out. The image made her need to throw up. But she couldn’t do that. No.
“These new eyes,” Astrid said. “Are they from Lana?”
“Lana is an angel, too. But it touches her. It tries to take her.”
“Yes, it does,” Astrid said. “But she’s too strong.”
“Mighty!”
Astrid nodded. So he had been driven mad by Penny. And Lana had done what she could. And somehow he had ended up wandering lost out of town, all alone.
Which meant things were very bad in Perdido Beach. Cigar was one of Quinn’s fishermen, or had been when last she’d heard. “You’re one of Quinn’s fishermen, aren’t you?”
“Yay!” Cigar said, and smiled his lunatic grin while his brow furrowed into deep crevices of anxiety. “Fish. Hah, hah.”
“Now, the little boy . . .”
“Fish! Fish!”
“The little boy,” Astrid persisted. She reached and placed her hand over his. He reacted like he’d been shocked. He yanked his hand back and she feared he might bolt.
“Stay, Cigar. Stay. Quinn would tell you to stay and talk to me.”
“Quinn,” he said, and sobbed and finally screamed. “He came for me. He hit Penny. I couldn’t see it but I heard it—Quinn and bam and waaah and we’re going to Lana I’ll kill you witch.”
“He’s a good guy, Quinn.”
“Yes,” Cigar said.
“He wants you to tell me about the little boy.”
“Little boy? He’s next to you.”
Astrid fought the urge to turn and look. No one was beside her. “I don’t see him.”
Cigar nodded as though he knew this, as though it was a given fact. “He’s a little boy. But he’s big, too. He can touch the sky.”
Astrid choked out the words, “Can he?”
“Oh, yes. Little boy is better than an angel, you know; he has the light so bright it shines through you. Tseeeew! Right thro
ugh you.”
“And his name is Petey?”
Cigar was silent. He lowered his head. Again it was as if he was listening. But maybe he was listening only to the terrible nightmare screams in his own head.
Then, with perfect lucidity that was stranger in its way than all his tics and sudden eruptions and weird gestures, Cigar said, “He was Pete.”
Astrid sobbed.
“That was his body name.”
“Yes,” Astrid said, too paralyzed even to wipe away the tears. “Can I . . . Can he hear me?”
“He can hear . . . anything!” And again the mad cackle, an almost ecstatic sound.
“I’m sorry, Petey,” Astrid said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Little boy is free now,” Cigar said in a singsong voice. “He’s playing a game.”
“I know,” Astrid said. “Petey? You can’t play that game. You’re hurting people.”
Once again Cigar lowered his head to listen. But even though Astrid waited a long time, he said nothing more.
So in a quiet voice Astrid said, “Petey. The barrier is turning dark. Can you stop it? Do you have the power to stop it?”
Cigar laughed. “Little boy is gone.”
And Astrid could feel the truth of it. The sense of something unseen looking at her was gone.
Sanjit did not travel alone. He had intended to, and Lana had said he should, but by the time he got onto the highway heading in the direction of the turnoff to the lake, he was in a gaggle of kids.
People were fleeing Perdido Beach. Sanjit could see at least twenty, arrayed in groups of two or three. A cluster of three had formed around him. Two twelve-year-old girls, Keira and Tabitha, and a little boy of maybe three with the very grown-up-sounding name of Mason.
Mason was trying to be a good little soldier, but just a half mile out of town he was already stumbling on very tired legs. The girls were hardier—they’d both put in time working the fields, so they were strong and had the stamina for long hours on the road. But Mason was a little kid hauling a backpack filled with his favorite things—some broken toys, a picture book called Owl Babies, a framed picture of his family.
Gone Series Complete Collection Page 171