Me? he wondered.
And then: Yeah. Me.
The bus stopped. Hannah opened the door. Immediately two soldiers with their automatic rifles came up the steps to cover everyone. They were followed by a Hispanic man with a black goatee and a stubble of hair. He was wearing civilian clothes and had a pen in the pocket of his tan-colored shirt. “Who’s in charge here?”
“I…guess I still am,” said Olivia. “I’m Olivia Quintero.”
“Okay. I’m Dr. Hernandez. Any other doctors here?”
“Right here. John Douglas,” JayDee answered. “Sprained ankle and all.”
Jefferson Jericho had no choice but to lift his injured hand. “And here. Jeff Kushman…with a few broken fingers, I think. Going to be a little tough for me to do anything for awhile.” He cast a quick hard glance at Dave McKane, but inwardly he was thinking this had saved him from discovery…but how might it affect what he was supposed to do?
“We want to get the most severely wounded off first,” Hernandez said. “Clear the aisle as best you can, let’s get this done.” He gave a grimace as he saw the dead Gray Men. “No…first get this garbage out of here.”
The process continued. More soldiers were on hand to help with the wounded. Gary Roosa’s body was taken off, and the injured Lila Conti and Aaron Ramsey. Billy Bancroft cursed like a drunken sailor when he was picked up, but he sailed on into the mall where Dr. Hernandez told Olivia a hospital was set up, with plenty of medical supplies. Then the female soldier who’d been in the armored car came aboard the bus, and removing her helmet, she showed a tangle of auburn-colored hair, like the last of the leaves to catch flame in autumn. She was about thirty-five and had a haggard but strong-jawed face with high cheekbones and dark blue eyes. Her uniform bore the name Cpt. Walsh.
Ethan saw that she was standing about three feet from the Gorgon, who blandly stared at her and blinked his eyes a few times. Ethan felt the power in the creature, but no immediate threat. Tell Dave or not? he asked himself. The Gorgon then turned his head slightly to stare at Ethan, and the boy who realized he was something more than a boy thought he would be quiet for now, and let this play out as it would. He could defend his friends if he had to…that was enough to know for now.
“I’m Captain Ellen Walsh,” said the soldier. “I’m second-in-command here. Beautiful place to hole up for a year or two, if you like malls.” There was no hint of a smile. “Or if you like safety. Relative safety,” she amended, with a quick glance at Dave. “We’ve got about three hundred civilians here and forty-two soldiers. First thing: everybody on this bus gives up their firearm when they hit the pavement. It’ll be numbered and tagged and it’ll go into a plastic bin. You can pick it up when we say so. Second thing: everybody goes to an area where you strip down and you’re inspected. We don’t worry much about privacy here. Everybody’s going to walk single-file to the entrance, and you’ll be escorted by soldiers with guns who know how to use them real well. Where’d you come from?” The question was directed at Dave.
“Fort Collins.”
“From the frying pan into the fire. We’ve got three infrared heat sensor cameras up on towers on the roof. We picked you up about a mile out. You people are lucky, Dave. Sometimes we don’t get there quick enough. Okay, let’s move.”
Ratcoff and Vope were first and second off the bus. “You!” The captain, standing on the pavement, reached out to put a hand against Vope’s chest. “Open the backpack and let’s see what you’ve got.”
Ratcoff stopped. He almost said Nothin’ special in there but he figured that would only antagonize the woman. Vope hesitated only a few seconds. He removed the backpack and opened it, showing Captain Walsh three dirty shirts and two pairs of jeans. She patted the backpack’s sides, feeling for a firearm this Silent Sam might be trying to sneak past, and found nothing. “Okay,” she said, “pass on.” Unconsciously, she wiped her hand on her fatigues.
Ethan was following Hannah out and wondered what was going to happen when the Gorgon was stripped down. He decided to stay away from Jeff Kushman, whose index and second finger of the right hand were discolored and swollen; he didn’t want to be touched by the man, he thought there was a danger in that, but exactly what it was he did not know. The blue sphere was keeping it from him. It was powerful energy he could not crack…or, maybe, he wasn’t strong enough yet to crack.
“Ethan?” Dave said when they were off the bus and he was giving up his Uzi to a couple of soldiers at a folding table to number, tag and then put into the plastic bin. “Hold up a minute. Captain, can I speak to you?”
“Speak.”
“Where we can have some privacy.”
“I said we don’t worry much about that here.”
Dave had one hand on Ethan’s shoulder. He took the receipt tag that was given to him, and he looked into Ellen Walsh’s eyes and said, “It’s important. Something you’ll want to know before we get inside.”
She looked from Dave to the boy and back again. Her face was hard and her eyes had seen sights that had left burn scars on her brain. She figured she’d better listen. “Over here,” she said, and motioned them both a few yards to the side.
“When this boy is stripped down,” Dave began, “you’re going to find something real different about him.” He caught sight of JayDee, limping on his rebar cane toward the entrance, and he called, “John! Come over here, will you? Olivia? You too, please.”
“What are we having?” Walsh asked. “A parking lot party?”
“Dr. Douglas can explain some things to you, maybe better than I can.” He waited for JayDee and Olivia to join them, and then he said, “You want to lift your shirt and show her, Ethan?”
“I guess,” Ethan answered, though he wasn’t too thrilled about it, and he realized if he was touched he would display the silver element, but he did it anyway.
“What the hell is that…?” The captain’s flashlight came on, directed at the area just above Ethan’s heart.
“Christ!” Dave eyes had widened. “I wanted you to see the bruises, but that’s new!”
“What is it?” Alarmed, Ethan looked down at the area touched by the captain’s light.
There were what appeared to be upraised silver tattoos above his heart. The tattoos were not large, but they stood out clearly against the black bruise.
There were four of them, and they read: .
JayDee dared to look closer. “Ethan, can I touch those?”
“Yes sir.” The same question Nikki had asked. “Go ahead.”
The doctor traced his finger over the symbols. They became slightly brighter with his touch. Ethan felt no pain, no sensation at all. A fifth symbol seemed to be coming up, a faint bit of silver rising from a dark pool, but it was impossible yet to make out its shape.
“We have a lot to tell you about this young man,” Olivia said. She offered him a faint smile and then gave it also to the captain. “Our hero,” she added.
Ethan dropped his shirt. He felt more like a freak than a hero. Now he could tell Nikki that he had tattoos too…but how they’d been delivered to him, he had no idea.
“Okay,” the captain said. And repeated it: “Okay.” She sounded shaken, which she was. “Let’s go see the doc. I’ll bring Major Fleming, and we’ll hear the story. I’ve seen a lot of freakies out here, but this one…okay.” She moved her flashlight to peer into Ethan’s eyes. She held his gaze for a few seconds, the flashlight roaming over his face, and then she switched it off. “Gotta be careful, folks,” she decided. “Juggy!” she called to one of the soldiers. “Come over here and bring your rifle. On the double!”
Dave nodded. He would’ve done the same. He gave a pat to Ethan’s back.
Under guard, Ethan walked across the parking lot with his companions. My protectors, he thought. Or was he the one protecting them? A light rain began to fall, oily to the skin. In the distance, there was a red flash: a streak of light, going somewhere. At the center of his friends, Captain Walsh and the guards, Ethan e
ntered the lit-up section of the mall into a crowd of curious onlookers—survivors all, thin and weary from the constant war—and knew now he was on a journey into the unknown that he must at all cost complete.
“I see it,” said the major. He was studying a map in an atlas on the desk before him. He looked up at Ethan, Olivia, JayDee, Dave and Captain Walsh. The cut across the bridge of Dave’s nose had been cleaned, an antiseptic applied, and then a bandage. JayDee’s sprained ankle had been strengthened with a tight wrapping of gauze and the pain diminished with two Tylenol tablets. Major Fleming’s office lamp, powered like the other lights by the mall’s generators and some solar cells the troops had scavenged when they’d holed up in here after the Cyphers and Gorgons had destroyed most of Denver over a year ago, threw a pool of illumination upon Utah, but the major was far from illuminated.
He was a tall, square-shouldered man who’d been born for the United States Army. He had lost a lot of weight in the last year but the loss had just made him tougher, as it had all the men and women under his command. He was bald but meticulously shaven, had a pair of thick brown eyebrows and steel-gray eyes under his wire-rimmed glasses. He was forty-two years old, but the network of deep worry lines that cut across his face aged him by ten years.
“So you don’t know what’s there?” He directed this question to Ethan. “In fact, you don’t know if anything is there, do you?”
“No sir.” It was spoken quietly.
“What?” Ray Fleming had the habit of not liking to be spoken to quietly; he liked to hear and be heard.
“No sir, I don’t,” Ethan answered, “but I believe I have to go there. That’s all I can say.”
“You took a blood sample?” The major threw this at Dr. Hernandez, who stood in the corner.
“Yes sir. It’s normal, type A positive. His lungs are fine, his heart’s in good shape, his blood pressure is fine too. In all other ways he’s a normal fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy.”
“Anybody fail their exam?”
“None.”
Ethan gave a soft grunt that no one else heard. At last the Gorgons had perfected their disguise. They had created artificial blood and organs that could pass for human. They had made their own lifelike Visible Man, but visible only to him. He wondered how many humans had been laid open by Gorgon surgical tools before the right chemistry was achieved.
“If I had a better lab, I could do a better job,” the doctor said, indicating maybe a persistent argument between the two. “I have to make do with—”
“What you have, yes,” Fleming finished for him. The hard and careful eyes returned to Ethan. “You say you killed a Gorgon without weapons. Exactly how?”
“I wanted it gone. It blew up into pieces.”
“Not enough. Let’s hear an explanation that makes sense.”
Dave suddenly reached over and pulled up the boy’s t-shirt to expose the four strange symbols that had emerged from the darkness of the bruise. Fleming had already seen them, but Dave wanted to drive home a point. “Does this make sense? Does any of it? Like I say, he made an earthquake happen. So…killing a Gorgon without weapons…I believe that, yeah.” He let Ethan’s shirt fall back down again, which Ethan was grateful for because he still couldn’t wrap his head around the freakishness of what was changing him. Though he was outwardly calm, a little place deep within himself was a crunched-up ball of terror.
“Do all of you believe that?” The major lifted his eyebrows and waited.
“I do,” Olivia answered. “Yes, I know I do.”
JayDee smiled thinly at the major. He leaned his weight on the rebar. “I think,” he said, “that Ethan is not a Gorgon or a Cypher, nor anything created by them. I think he used to be a boy, but he’s no longer just that. I think…what he is…what he’s becoming…is something different.”
“Explain.”
“I wish I could, sir. Ethan’s condition defied all medical sense when we found him. Now…with those symbols, which look to me like ancient runes…maybe Nordic, I don’t know…I can’t explain anything.”
“Reassuring,” said the major.
“I believe,” JayDee went on, his voice stronger, “that Ethan is being called to go to that mountain. And I believe, sir, that we ought to trust whatever is calling him.”
Again the major’s penetrating gaze speared Ethan. “Do you have any idea why you would be…” He paused, deliberating before he went on. “Compelled to go to this place?”
“I do have an idea,” Ethan replied. “I think it has something to do with stopping this war.”
“Oh…you can stop the war?” Fleming gave Captain Walsh a quick sharp glance. “A kid can stop the war between aliens fighting over—”
“The border,” said Ethan. “That’s what they’re fighting over. The border between what they believe they own. And I don’t know if I can stop the war or not…but…” The next thing was hard to say, but it had been working on him since leaving Panther Ridge, and knowing the disguised Gorgon and the human Kushman were after him. “But,” he went on, “maybe what I’m turning into can.”
Fleming said nothing for awhile. He studied the map again, took another long appraisal of the boy, and then his eyes went back to the map. “That’s a long way. Tough road up in those mountains, once you get off I-70. If there’s much left of I-70.” He balled up a fist and knocked gently at the mountain on the map, as if knocking at a secret door that only Ethan Gaines could open. “So you’re wanting to continue your trip in that school bus, is that correct?”
“Yes,” said Olivia.
“Who’s going?”
“All of us,” Dave said. “We’ve talked, and we’ve agreed.”
“You too, Doc?” Fleming’s eyes went to JayDee. “On a bad ankle?”
“Me too,” John Douglas replied. “Bad ankle or not.”
“Well,” was the major’s next comment. He took off his glasses and spent a moment polishing the lenses with a white cloth before he put them back on and spoke again. “I can’t spare you any soldiers. We have responsibilities here. Your bus has taken some damage, yes?”
“A little bit,” Dave said.
“We can fix that for you, maybe make some improvements. How are you doing for fuel? We’re down pretty low ourselves, I don’t know if I can give you any.”
“We’ll make do. Find diesel tanks at stations along the way and siphon it out.”
“Got the tools you need? The containers?”
“I could use a longer hose, say about twelve feet.”
The major nodded. “We can find one of those. Your bus is going to eat up a lot of fuel on those grades. You know that, right?”
“We know it,” Dave said. “Look…Major…I’m going to have to get some sleep. We’re all dog-tired. Can we bunk down somewhere?” They had already gone through the search procedure, and now the need for sleep was dragging Dave down. “Set us all up together?”
“We’ve got extra sleeping bags, but you ought to get some food before you crash.”
“Sleep first,” Dave said, and the others nodded agreement. Except for Ethan, who had business to tend to.
“Right. Captain Walsh, find these people a place to sack out. Mr. McKane, you don’t mind that I post a guard over this young man for the rest of the night.” It was a statement, and there was to be no argument.
“No problem.”
Ethan said nothing; it was to be expected. “All right, then. At least get yourself some water. There’s bread and soup in the food court if you change your minds.” He checked his wristwatch. “It’ll be open for about another hour. Captain, you’re in charge of them now. Find someone to stand guard duty. You’re all dismissed…except you, Carlos. Stick here a little longer.”
When Captain Walsh had escorted the group out, the major steepled his fingers and peered through the desklamp’s glow at Carlos Hernandez. “Honest answer. Am I crazy or are they?”
“Sir?”
“I want to believe,” Fleming said. “Dear Go
d…I want to believe.” He gave a sigh that sounded to him like wind past a tomb, but maybe…maybe…there were seeds of hope in that wind, and they would be scattered and take root on fertile earth. The border, the kid had said. That’s what they’re fighting over. The thing was…that sounded right. Fleming did believe him. And only something from beyond this world would know that. “You’ve got patients to take care of,” he said. “Long night ahead.”
“Yes sir,” the doctor answered, and left the office.
Fleming sat for awhile, staring at that particular landmark on the map of Utah. After a few more minutes he switched off the desklamp with a hand that no one ever saw tremble. It would be lights out in two hours, except for the hospital that was set up in what used to be a Gap store, and then the mall would be patrolled by soldiers with flashlights. He sat in the dark, thinking of what his hometown of Seattle used to be, and the wreckage of what it was now. He imagined that the rest of the world was like that, and how could it ever return to what it had been? Without comm to the outside, there was no way to know. Had all the nuclear plants been shut down by the book, or had a few of them been abandoned and melted down with no humans to control the cooling elements? And what about the hundreds of thousands—millions?—of “freakies,” as Captain Walsh termed them, loose in the ruins of the cities? Even if the war was stopped, what about all that?
But did the fate of the earth depend on the boy who had been standing before him?
If so…if it was at all possible…Major Fleming would not be the one to stand in his way. There would be plenty of things eager and hungry to do that job.
NINETEEN.
ETHAN FOUND HE COULDN’T GO TO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT THE soldier following him. No water was running, so in the green-tiled bathroom between what had been an Abercrombie and an American Eagle aluminum cans stood in for urinals and black garbage bags for toilets. The smell was rank, but at least there was toilet paper. The soldier looked away while Ethan was doing his business, but when it was done the young trooper was all bird-dog again.
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