The men nodded, faces hardening with emotion. They had something to fight for again; something more concrete than just an idea. Michael had saved their lives, and now they were going to save his. Blake understood the feeling all too well. He had fought for Claudia—fought and failed. This time he would do better.
Peter and Ian followed Blake up to the intersection, where burn victims lay on old cots, some of them on blankets folded on the ground. These were people Blake knew by name. He would never see them again.
“We’ll get the automatics,” Peter said.
“No.” Blake gave the boys a serious look. “I want you to stay here, look after these people. They’re your townsfolk and they need protection.”
Ian and Peter looked at each other and then back at Blake.
“Hell no,” Peter said.
“Nuh uh,” Ian said.
“We’re going with you,” Peter said. “These men and women stopped being our people when they kicked Michael out of town.”
Blake gave a nod of defeat. “Go get two trucks. Load them up with all the weapons you can find. Then meet outside the canyon in fifteen minutes.”
With barely a nod, Peter and Ian ran off.
The soldiers gathered by the vehicles parked at the canyon’s mouth. Two of them stood behind a truck parked off the road, one showing off a brick-like object to the man next to him. Wires ran beneath the plastic encasing the brick, attached to a tiny screen.
“Just push here and set the time,” the man holding it said. “And boorrrrshhh...”
He lifted his arms to mimic an explosion.
“Looks heavy,” the other one said. “Never seen a charge like that.”
“Yup. Homemade.”
The explosive charge passed from one set of hands to the other, and in that moment, as the second man was studying its construction, the first man smacked his shoulder. “Hey, what the hell is that? Check it out.”
They forgot about the charge and studied the figure coming up the road toward them. In the background, the town still smoked from the fires. Whoever this gangly, limping figure was, the way he moved against the smoking buildings gave him the appearance of a soldier back from the dead, emerging from a battlefield. Half of his head was covered in bandages.
“Jesus,” the man holding the charge said, watching him. “Is he one of ours?”
The other man shook his head. “That’s Dominic.”
Behind them, an officer shouted an order.
“Soldiers, get in your vehicles on the double!”
By then, most of the soldiers were watching Dominic come up the road. They barely moved. Dominic limped like a man with a wooden leg. Tall and lean, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, he held a hunting rifle against his shoulder, butt end forward, his right hand leisurely draped over it.
His face resembled a gruesome mask. Long, wavy hair poured through the bandages like dirty water spraying through cracks in a shell. Half of his face was entirely covered, the other half twisted in a grimace of pain and hatred. Only one eye showed. The other was covered by bandages.
“Looks like he’s coming with us,” one soldier said.
“He’s in no condition to fight,” said another. “Someone stop him already. He’s freaking me out.”
No one moved.
As Dominic approached, he slipped the rifle off his shoulder and swept it through the air like he wanted to shoot each and every one of them.
“The last man inside those trucks gets a bullet in the ass.” He bared his teeth at them. “Move.”
The men fell into motion, Dominic climbing in after them.
Chapter 18
Warren was a mess of greasy, knotted hair. Around his red-veined eyes, caked dirt had gathered in the wrinkles of his face, looking like tribal adornments. He leaned over the steering wheel as he drove, knuckles white from the intensity of his grip.
Charlotte was disgusted at the man he’d become. She had always hated him, but at least back when John Meacham had been his boss, Warren had been a man of action and strength. Now he was just a scared fugitive with no idea where to go.
“This road will take us into one of the dead cities,” she said. “We might be able to camp there.”
“I know where it takes us,” Warren said. “And I’ll decide where we set camp, woman. From now on, you let me call the shots, you got it?”
“Relax. They’re not coming after us.”
“And just how do you know that? You cain’t feel them coming with the boy here.”
“I know that because I’m not stupid,” she said. “They all went to help Michael get my sister. Why would they care about us?”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“We need to get to a small town where we can lay low for a while.”
“Shut up,” he roared at her. “I make the decisions.”
His voice jolted her. Under different circumstances, she might have smacked him in the face, or pulled out a pistol and shot him. But she needed him. Who knew where they’d end up and what kinds of skills—her telepathy, for example, and his marksmanship—they might need?
She caught a glimpse of William’s face in the rearview mirror. A mean spark had come into his eyes. He was glowering at Warren, almost like he was biding his time.
“Stop the truck,” Charlotte said.
“What’d you say?”
“I said stop the truck.”
“We stop when I say we—”
“Now,” she screamed at him.
“Okay, okay. God damn it, woman.”
When he had pulled over, Charlotte kicked the door open and slid out, her knees almost giving out as she landed. The urge had begun as a faint stirring she recognized from all the other times she’d had to vomit.
It came out of her in spurts, a foul-smelling substance that burned her throat and mouth. When she was finished, Warren was smiling like he thought it was funny. Maybe it pleased him to see her like this, vulnerable and disarmed and on her knees.
“Back there you said it was Mike’s baby.”
“What?” She wiped the edges of her mouth, feeling a chill go through her. How much had he heard?
“Smart girl,” Warren said. “Mike won’t come after you if he thinks the little bugger’s his instead of mine.”
Another voice joined the conversation.
“He is Michael’s baby, and he’s gonna be my brother.”
Charlotte winced. Oh shit.
William. He had climbed down out of the truck and was squinting up at Warren.
“What’d you say, you little creep?” Warren said.
Charlotte had never seen her son look so steady on his feet. She’d never heard such cruelty in his voice.
“My momma’s pregnant, and the baby’s not yours. You know it’s true. You’re nothing like Michael. He’s better than you. He’s—”
Warren lunged at the boy and grabbed him by the throat.
“You shut your smart ass little mouth before I give you a beatin’, you hear me, boy?”
William’s head tilted to the side like he was about to fall asleep, eyes narrowing above a mouth that had gone slack.
“Dumb little cripple,” Warren said.
William’s eyes were trained on his mother, and suddenly, Charlotte understood. She knew what her young son had been planning, the meaning behind the expression she’d caught in the mirror, and why he had told Warren what he did.
“Hurt him, Willy,” she whispered to him.
Warren glanced at her, and then at her son, and immediately he had his pistol out, safety off and ready to fire.
“Both of you get back in the truck,” he said.
“He called you a cripple,” Charlotte told her son. “He’s just like Aidan, just like all those boys, and everyone else who wants to hurt you.”
“Shut your mouth,” Warren said, aiming the pistol at her forehead.
William’s nostrils flared. The anger was building.
“He’s going to kill me,” Charlotte said. “H
elp me, baby.”
Warren grabbed a clump of her hair and yanked her up to her feet. She let out a scream more dramatic than necessary. Tears flooded her eyes. She was a great actress when she needed to be.
“I told you to shut your—”
Warren’s voice was cut off as his eyes widened with fear.
This was it.
A hot, pulsing sensation flooded William’s head. He gripped his ears, clenched his teeth, and tried as hard as he could to think straight. His mother needed him, he had to help her somehow or Warren was going to kill her, he was going to kill her, that stupid, stupid jerk!
The flooding warmth became sparkling pain, white stars flashing behind his eyelids, and then he was screaming for Warren to stop.
When William opened his eyes again, he saw a strange thing: Warren was on his knees, hands up around his throat, his eyes wide open and bulging. Like he was choking on a bit of food. The tendons in his neck were visible beneath his red skin. The pistol lay on the ground next to him.
“That’s it, Willy,” his mother said, no longer seeming afraid. She reached down and snatched the pistol, and aimed it at Warren’s head.
“Don’t—you—fucking—dare,” Warren said, choking on each word.
He appeared to be strangling himself. But why? Then William understood. He looked down and saw that one of his hands was squeezing the wrist of the other. The harder he squeezed, the more pain Warren brought to himself, and the redder the man’s face became.
“That’s it,” Charlotte said. “Practice, Willy. Make him do it. Figure out how it works.”
William squeezed his wrist harder, imagining he had control of Warren’s hands. Warren grunted and shut his eyes before falling backward and thrashing against the ground, at war with his own fingers.
A strange sensation took hold of William. He felt as if the life was leaving Warren’s body and entering his own, seeping in like a cool, rejuvenating breeze. After what felt like a few seconds, Warren collapsed, and William released all the breath he’d been holding in.
Something tickled his cheeks.
He reached up and touched it, then looked at his fingers. They were red and wet.
“Oh God,” his mother said, gaping at him. He’d never seen her look so terrified.
Pain filled William’s skull like hundreds of bees stinging the tissue of his brain, spitting their poison into his thoughts. The bloody tears running down his face reached his lips and tasted like metal in his mouth. The pain was too much. He felt sick from all the pain.
His mother lurched toward him and grabbed him as he fell to the ground, and she was saying something he couldn’t understand—it sounded like his name, but warped and thick, like she was talking underwater—and all he wanted at that moment was to curl up next to her and fall asleep, and never wake up again.
Charlotte allowed herself just one moment to hold her unconscious son and weep before she composed herself and carried him back to the truck. Midas Ford could fix this. Despite all that had happened, Midas would take care of them—at least William, who was innocent of all that had happened.
Innocent? Her son had killed Warren. He had forced Warren to strangle himself to death.
And he was going to die if she didn’t get help.
A sharp, stabbing sensation in her belly almost made her double over. She managed to pull herself behind the wheel of the truck when she felt something leak from her body, a warm wetness gathering between her thighs.
At first, she thought it was urine. Watching her son kill a man in a way she’d never thought possible for such a young boy had caused her to lose control of her bodily functions. She was the boy’s mother after all, it made perfect sense, it had to, because she couldn’t be having her baby right now, she just couldn’t!
But it didn’t smell like urine, and as she started the truck and began a three-point turn that would take her in the direction of Gulch, a seizing sensation in her belly made her visualize the baby curled up inside of her. It wanted to come out. Somehow she knew, not by telepathy, of course; that was impossible. But something else, maybe a mother’s intuition, led her to believe with a conviction she couldn’t name that this baby wanted to come out of her, and now, of all times.
She had to get back to Gulch before the worst took place, before William died and the baby inside of her killed them both. An hour of staying conscious and alert; that was all she needed to get back. That was how long it had taken to get this far.
God, please! She would save her son’s life and have this baby if those were the last two things she did while she was still alive.
She floored the gas pedal and headed back toward Gulch.
Chapter 19
The sun followed him westward, on his back for most of the ride.
It was late evening when Michael parked a mile outside of Gadlin, a true ghost town if he’d ever seen one, the only activity being that of the soldiers guarding the hospital a few streets over. Night fell around him as he scoped the place, Arielle’s heartbeat thrumming at the edge of his telepathic awareness, guiding him, giving him strength. Flood lamps cast brilliant white light around the perimeter. Men with rifles stood atop towers, tiny silhouettes in the distance, watching and waiting for him.
Michael lifted his right hand as if to wipe fog off a pane of glass. He closed his eyes and completed the wiping motion, letting the souls of the men become visible in the darkness behind his eyelids. Tiny white smudges, each one a person—a soldier waiting on high alert. And one of them, shivering fiercely, was Arielle.
Her mind responded to his, though she was too weak to reach him with a message. Michael made his way forward, hands deep in the pockets of his sweatshirt, face hidden within the hood.
“You heard what he did to those prison guards,” one of the soldiers said, reaching up to swat at the mosquitoes circling his blond head.
“Of course I heard,” said the other, who was darker of feature and kept clearing his throat as if he was nervous.
Both men were standing guard at the entrance to Gadlin, which had been heavily fortified in just the past day. It was amazing how quickly they could erect guard towers and put up all that fencing. All of it just for one man.
No, not even a man. If the rumors were true, he was just a nineteen-year-old boy. A kid who could kill with the power of thought alone. It was just a fantasy, of course; they were out here tonight in case Louis Blake and his gang showed up. The Ascendant thing was just to scare them into staying fresh and alert.
The blond soldier looked out at the countryside. He couldn’t see anything beyond the reach of the flood lamps, of course, just the silhouettes of trees in the process of shedding their leaves for the winter. They were standing just outside the hospital, at a makeshift checkpoint that cast its lights out into the dark, though not nearly far enough.
“Nineteen years old,” the blond soldier said.
“That’s bullshit. He’s at least twenty-five. Ask James, he knows. His uncle’s a Party member who invested in the experiment ’bout twenty years ago.”
“It was top secret, though. No one really knows what happened. Not even the Party.”
“Are you kidding? People know. They just don’t talk about it west of the Line.”
“What about that girl they got inside? She can’t be older than seventeen.”
The dark-haired soldier turned to his partner. “How the hell do you know anything about what’s going on inside?”
The blond one shrugged. “Rumors.”
“Well, your rumors are gonna get us transferred to lavatory duty. Just shut up and do your job.”
They fell silent as something snapped out beyond the reach of the lights.
“What was that?” the blond one said.
“Sounded like a twig. Probably nothing.”
“Animal, maybe?”
“I don’t know, but I got my hand on the alarm. Keep quiet.”
The dark-haired soldier was now resting his hand on a red latch. He scanned the a
rea as his partner took a step forward, rifle aimed straight ahead. The road and the dead trees around it were silent.
Something snapped.
“There it is again,” the blond one said. “You think it’s a coyote or something?”
“Dunno,” the other said, keeping his hand on the latch, only his fingers touching it now. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
Take your hand off the alarm, a voice said, having wormed its way into both of their skulls.
The dark-haired soldier staggered away from the latch.
“What is it?” the blond one said.
“It’s—it’s him.”
Darkness swooped over the guards, leaving them standing as before, their bodies perfectly alive. They stayed that way—glazed, dead eyes staring straight ahead—a pair of shells and nothing more.
Chapter 20
Blake issued a silent prayer that began with, Please, dear God…
They had arrived. The NDR soldiers split into two groups, one led by Blake and Peter, the other by Dominic and Ian. Blake’s men waited for Dominic to take out the snipers in the nearest rooftops.
Shots rang out, quick and clean. Blake felt the snipers blink out of existence. Their minds, anyway.
He’s here already, Ian sent.
A moment after the bodies dropped from the rooftops, an alarm began to wail. Blake led his men into the town.
Dominic’s face itched as he climbed up to a rooftop.
He stared with his good eye into the scope. Each shot made a heavy metallic snapping sound, the force of which eased the web of pain on his face. He could smell the damage the fire had done to him, the blood oozing beneath the bandages, the sweat seeping in around the edges.
He reloaded so fast his entire skeleton shivered.
Snap, snap, went the rifle.
Two skulls exploded.
Snap. A soldier arched his back as he fell to his knees, the position reminding Dominic for a moment of a man raising his arms in religious ecstasy.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
He reloaded so fast it was like his hand was in three places at once. With each snap, another one of Harris Kole’s soldiers died. Down below, Blake’s men were advancing on the hospital.
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