But he couldn’t grab a wall or the ceiling, couldn’t grab anything to pull himself through the air. There was one thing, however, he could reach.
Max yelped as Holt grabbed him. “Hold on, pal.” Holt flung Max forward. The dog flew over the floor with relish, then passed through the edge of the void and back into normal gravity.
He fell to the floor with a thump, and Holt quickly grabbed a spool of rope from his belt and tossed an end of it to Max. Half of it fell to the floor in front of the dog as it passed through the edge of the zero-gravity. The rest still hovered weightless above.
“Pull!” Holt shouted. Max grabbed the rope and started pulling, growling with enthusiasm.
Holt held on, being towed through the air. When he reached the edge of the void and passed through, he suddenly realized something. “Wait!” he shouted at Max, but it was too late. Gravity caught him and he dropped directly into the bathtub.
Water sprayed everywhere, blowing suds and bubbles all over the room. Holt, wet and angry, burst from the tub and immediately leapt through the window.
He landed on the ground outside, looking for signs of the girl. He was in time to see her disappear into the trees a hundred yards ahead. Max landed on the ground next to him, and Holt clicked his tongue twice. The dog darted after her, barking furiously, a missile over the ground. Holt ran after him, watched Max disappear into the tree line.
Holt rushed into the forest, dodging the hulking shadows of huge pine trees in the dark. Only the moonlight filtering in from above gave him light. Ahead, he could hear Max’s barking, and he followed it as fast as he could.
When he burst through a mass of shrubs, he skidded to a stop right before careening off the edge of a steep cliff.
Only open air lay between him and a riverbank hundreds of feet below, and he stared down at it with alarm. Max was to his left, barking furiously. The girl was there, too, keeping the dog at bay with a tree branch.
Holt and the girl locked eyes. She smiled as she saw how drenched he was. “Guess you took a bath, too.”
Then she simply turned … and leapt straight off the edge of the cliff.
Holt gasped; Max barked in frustration. They both looked out over the drop-off, expecting to see her splattered on the rocks below. Instead, they saw something completely different. Mira floated gracefully through the air, light as a feather, like she was being carried by an invisible parachute.
Another artifact, Holt thought with disdain.
Maxed whined pitifully, barked once, desperate to pursue, but without a way to do so. Holt watched the figure of Mira Toombs land on the riverbank and run toward the north. He stared after her, counting each footfall until she disappeared, becoming one more shadow among thousands in the dark.
He had to admit, she was good. No wonder her bounty was so high. But she was worth it, regardless. That reward was salvation, his ticket to the east, away from all his problems, and he didn’t mind putting in a little overtime to get it.
4. FREEBOOTER
MIRA TOOMBS STARED NERVOUSLY at the huge, imposing structure across the lake.
In the World Before, it was called Clinton Station, a nuclear power plant built on the banks of Lake Clinton in Illinois, known for its bright blue domes and cooling towers. Now it was a crumbling, overgrown ruin. The towers still retained a little of their former color, but one of them had collapsed and the other was leaning badly. Holes where the facility had cratered in on itself were visible in all the surface buildings that still stood.
But it wasn’t the place’s disrepair that made Mira uneasy, or even the very real possibility of radiation. It was the fact that behind her, the sun was setting, a giant sphere that buried itself in the horizon and colored the water of the lake orange.
Normally it would be pretty, but right now it simply meant that night was falling. And that what lived inside the old power plant would very soon be awake.
Mira tried not to think about it. She had no choice, after all. She had to go inside, had to find what she had come all this way for. It wasn’t just her own life she was trying to set right, she reminded herself.
From nowhere, a blast of sound filled Mira’s mind.
It was like static, like the sound from a mistuned radio projected at full volume. The shock caused her knees to buckle, and she barely caught herself from falling when it hit.
It lasted only a moment … then receded back where it came from, to the edge of her awareness. It was still there, as always, the hissing pulse of static she could hear in the back of her mind. The ever-present effect of the Tone, the Assembly’s little gift to mankind.
She heard it constantly now, and it was growing louder, but like most survivors, she had learned to tune it out. She still hadn’t heard the voices, though, and she was grateful for that. The whispers that those who were older claimed they could hear underneath it. And it hadn’t really tested her yet, hadn’t fought her for control, but Mira knew it was all coming, the whole inevitable, grisly affair. As she got older, it would take more and more hold of her, and she would have to work harder to keep it at bay. Until, finally, she didn’t have the strength anymore …
But that was a problem for another time. Right now, she had business to attend to.
She headed toward the power plant, scaling cliffs and pushing through overgrowth as she circled the lake’s shoreline. The sun was almost all the way down by the time she finally reached the old gates and stepped through.
The open space in the middle of the plant was overgrown with weeds now. The fallen tower lay in a broken heap across the ground where it had crashed years ago. Part of it had come down on one of the administration buildings, crushing it to dust.
Unlike most abandoned places these days, Clinton Station had no graffiti, no signs of looting or pillaging, no indication that anyone at all had set foot inside in years.
Mira wasn’t surprised. Some stories were scary enough to keep anyone out of a place, and given the original purpose of the power plant, those stories were undoubtedly hiding and waiting in the dark tunnels beneath her feet.
She moved for the nearest building, her footfalls echoing far too loudly for her comfort.
She stood at the door there a long time, trying to convince herself to simply open it. It wasn’t easy. She could feel the fear trembling through her, fear of what might be beyond. But she hadn’t come all this way, risked everything she had risked, to freeze up here.
Mira steeled herself and reached for the handle. The door opened with a groan of rusty hinges …
… and nothing whatsoever happened. No sounds of spindly legs rushed forward; no shadows writhed and twisted and lunged at her. Everything beyond the door seemed empty and devoid of life.
Mira stepped inside cautiously nonetheless.
It had been a control room of some kind, Mira guessed. The banks of knobs and dials were still in one piece, but covered in so much dust, they were impossible to make out. She brushed some of it away, revealing a host of gauges and switches whose original purposes were long forgotten.
She surveyed the room quickly, found what she was looking for. A big, thick, faded red door in the far wall. She moved to it and wiped the dust away from a sign fastened on its surface.
Clinton Station: main access route. Entry beyond this point limited to authorized personnel only.
“Jackpot,” Mira said to herself, smiling.
But what if it wasn’t here? She had traded a lot of artifacts (useful, valuable artifacts) for the information that led her here. Everyone she traded with had seemed trustworthy, but the world had evolved a certain degree of dishonesty. Everyone was a good liar when they had to be. You just never knew anymore.
It would be here, she told herself. It had to be.
Through a window in the control room, Mira saw the last traces of color fading from the sky, being consumed by the dark. She didn’t have much time now.
She pulled her pack loose, set it down on the floor. On the front of it, something had been
embroidered into the fabric in bright red thread. A letter from the Greek alphabet, the δ symbol, a marking used the world over now to identify “active” artifacts from the Strange Lands. Her pack was overloaded with them—batteries, watches, vials full of glittering powders, springs, pencils, a bag of paper clips, magnets, lightbulbs, nails, and, of course, dozens of different coins, each wrapped in separate pieces of plastic.
Whenever she looked at the artifacts, they all seemed to writhe and push away from one another, as if some subtle, invisible force was slipping in and out between them. Mira had never decided if it was a real phenomenon or just her imagination.
She shifted through them and found what she was looking for. A large antique lantern that looked like it was ready to fall apart … but Mira knew it never would. At least not outside the Strange Lands. Artifacts were virtually indestructible once taken out. Mira remembered the Librarian’s theory that it was because their molecular structures “froze” once they were extracted. It was a good enough explanation for her.
Mira added oil to the lantern pan, then stuck a wick into a small hole in the bottom and fed it up through the top. But she didn’t light it. Not yet. Not until it was time.
Mira slipped her pack on, grabbed the lantern, pulled a flashlight from her belt … and stared at the big red door waiting in front of her. Her heart beat heavy and thick in her chest. Outside, the sun had set. It was now or never.
Mira opened the door and stepped through. When it shut behind her, pitch black fell over her.
5. UNDERNEATH
MIRA NEVER KNEW A PLACE could be so dark. Shadows hung like thick curtains all around her. She quickly flipped on the flashlight, sending a beam of light shooting forward. It did very little to drive away the shadows that pushed against the illumination.
She was at the top of a concrete stairwell that descended downward into the dark. Her light didn’t reach very far down, and where it ended, the stairs were swallowed by the thick blackness. Nervously, she started down, each footstep echoing loudly in the tight, concrete confines. Much too loudly.
As she descended the stairs, the shadows crushed in on her. But nothing moved within them. Not yet, anyway. The light in her hand wavered as her hands shook, and each step downward seemed to require more effort on her part to accomplish.
But Mira took every step. After moving for an eternity, she finally reached the bottom, where the tight confines of the stairwell gave way to a much larger tunnel.
Her light still didn’t reach very far, but she could see the chalky concrete tunnel was lined with dark, dust-covered doors leading to different areas of the power plant’s underworkings.
She tried to remember the map the kid in Faust had shown her, even though he wasn’t willing to trade for it. The storage room should be near the end of—
A shuffling from behind her, like something slithering along the floor.
Mira spun quickly around, raised the light. She saw something dark scamper back into the shadows at the other end of the tunnel.
Or had she? Maybe her fear had imagined it for her.
She held the light where she had last seen … whatever it was, but nothing moved there now. Her heart beat heavy in her chest again; her breathing was quick and ragged.
More scampering, something moving for her from the other direction.
She spun once more, shone her light … and saw shadows slither away along the floor. Strange, unsettling clicking sounds—as if from dozens of teeth grinding against each other—echoed from the dark … then faded away.
Okay, that she most certainly had not imagined, and she forced herself to study every open door in front of or behind her.
And in the places where her light could not fully penetrate … the shadows moved. Dark masses of slow movement that writhed just out of reach of the light, waiting and watching.
More scampering, more shapes. This time on the ceiling behind her. Her light pushed it back. More from a door to her left, the hungry clicking sounds came again, louder.
Mira knew the flashlight was about to become useless. They knew she was here now, they would be on her any second …
She struck a match from a pocket and lit the wick jutting out of the lantern.
Brilliant light pulsed outward in a powerful flash unlike anything a normal lantern could create. A bright, radiant sphere formed around Mira, wavering and flaring intently, filling the tunnel with its luminescence, burning bright.
Mira held it up like a shield.
In its intense light, the skittering shadows all around her were horribly revealed. Hundreds of them, stuck to the floors and walls, dripping off the ceiling, pulsing inside the doorways. Hulking, cancerous masses of goo, thick and black, like oil, constantly morphing and blending into new shapes.
Jaws of black teeth jutted out from their bodies, formed for the express purpose of collectively shrieking in pain. Mira held her ears, almost dropped the lantern as the sickening screeching that flooded the tight tunnel. The creatures withdrew from the powerful light, disappeared into darker rooms and hallways of the old station.
It was just as she had expected. A Fallout Swarm.
When the Assembly arrived on Earth, their ships were covered in billions of microorganisms carried from the vast reaches of space. Their reaction to exposure with Earth’s environment and atmosphere was to grow. Quickly. Within a year, they had become the huge, abhorant organisms they were now.
Globulous masses of putrid blackness that constantly changed shape and could form and dissolve eyes, maws, and other appendages as needed.
They were predatory to the extreme. Instead of the Assembly, the Fallout Swarms may well have overrun the Earth, if not for the fact that they found bright sources of light intolerably painful. Plus, they were attracted to sources of radiation; they seemed to live off it. Places like Clinton Station were natural homes for them, with its leftover radiation and its inherent darkness.
This Fallout Swarm had temporarily been pushed back by Mira’s artifact. It was a major artifact, from deeper into the Strange Lands, and she had traded for it in Midnight City long before she had been forced to flee, thinking she might one day need it for just such an adventure. It was one of the few things she could think of that might help her survive entering a Fallout Swarm lair.
So far, it was working. In the bright light, Mira could see from one end of the tunnel to the next. And there was no sign of the swarm.
Except for the clicking. The sounds of gnashing teeth, from hundreds of sources, all ticking and grinding and echoing everywhere.
The swarm may not have been visible … but it was nearby. Looking for its chance to get to her and rip her apart.
She rushed down the hall, looking for the door she wanted. She knew the lantern wouldn’t burn forever, She had to hurry. As she moved, the bright light pushed into and through each door she passed, followed by shrieks from inside as the Fallout Swarm twisted and crawled back into the dark. All around her, at the edge of the lantern light, the shadows writhed and fluctuated, following hungrily after her.
She found the door she was looking for and stepped quickly through it.
The room on the other side was immense, stretching high above her, most likely all the way to the surface. In the light, she could see crates of all kinds and shapes, stacked high off the floor, all sitting untouched and covered in dust.
It had been the power plant’s main storage area, as big as a warehouse, and it was what she was looking for.
A lift mechanism sat in the center of the room, directly underneath a large mechanical door in the “ceiling” above. Mira assumed it was used for bringing material to and from the surface.
The Fallout Swarm had made this room its main lair, it seemed. It was revoltingly, impossibly, densely covered with the black, oozing creatures, all swarming and contorting throughout the room, dripping from the walls, the ceiling, the floor.
When Mira’s pulsing lantern light entered, they emitted a collective shriek of pain and
anger, swarmed up and away in a shuddering wave of blackness that receded into the shadows.
The clicking sounds were overpowering now, echoing everywhere. If the lantern were to fail … she wouldn’t last long.
Mira’s heart raced as she moved toward a series of stacked metallic crates. They were sturdy and solid, seemed to have weathered the years well. It was a good sign. She wiped the dust off one, revealing a circular symbol divided into six yellow and black triangles pointing at a black circle in the center.
In the World Before, it had meant radiation.
Mira’s relief and elation were enough to make her forget about the clicking sounds filling her ears, the swarming mass of blackness trying to get to her outside her light. It was what she had risked everything for. And she had found it.
One of the crates sat by itself, and she undid the locks on its front, yanked it open. Inside, completely dust-free, was a layer of black foam protectively holding half a dozen water-filled glass cylinders. The cylinders were full of slivers of a dull, brownish compound.
Mira smiled at the sight. She reached for one of the canisters and pulled it free of its foam. At the same time she took something else from her pack. A strange conglomeration of different, mundane items: dimes and quarters, a green marble, coiled copper wire, two triple-A batteries, and other things, all wrapped in gold chain and blue thread. It wasn’t big, Mira could hold the entire packet in her fist, and it was attached to a large watch band.
It was an artifact combination called a Dampener that she’d made before entering the dam. It would absorb all the radiation and heat the plutonium naturally gave off, making it safe to carry.
She quickly wrapped the band around the cylinder and tightened it. When the object touched the glass, there was a spark of light … and then a hum, like something electrical powering up. Mira felt the hair on her arms stand up at the charge.
Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) Page 3