Harper grunted and leaned back against the wall. Although none of us had actually said anything aloud, we were all starting to wonder if Becca’s vision might’ve been wrong, that the location we were supposed to head him off at might’ve been different. Or maybe what she’d seen had only been one of many possible futures. What if Harper’s vision is how it all ends? Blood—a mass of soldiers… Regardless, it didn’t seem likely that Herodson would take so long to get to us. Not when we had Peter, his only son, and my mom. And it definitely didn’t seem like Becca to change the plans and not show up at all.
I folded my arms and leaned my head down on Shadow’s back. Something didn’t feel right, but there was nothing any of us could do but wait.
“I could’ve found what I needed for the neutralizer by now,” my mom muttered, and she began to pace. She glanced up at me and paused. Shutting her eyes, she rubbed her temple. “Sorry, I know it doesn’t help to dwell on what can’t be changed.” She looked outside again, no doubt wishing the answers would simply materialize and all our problems would go away. “I just wish we knew what the hell was going on.” She was beginning to worry that the General knew our plan of attack. But I shuddered to think it, because if he did know what we had planned, we wouldn’t stand a chance against him, and we would all die.
We’d scouted the surrounding area over the past thirty-two hours on foot, Dani through the animals, and me with my mind a few times. There was nothing; no one but the five other small groups of us stationed around the turnoffs and highway exits in the area, just in case Herodson decided to take a detour. With the Re-gens’ apparent absence, I resented the New Bodega council even more for not sending proper reinforcements with us. We were too spread out like this without more help; we’d be ineffective.
I opened my mind to Biggs and the New Bodega volunteers stationed with him at the Frates Road exit about five miles up the road. There was no distressing mind chatter amongst that group yet, nothing that their one-way telepath felt necessary to report, anyway. I felt only tension and restlessness.
My focus shifted to Chris, Gabe, Carlos, and another volunteer, who were waiting in the farmhouse on the opposite side of the road. They were just as impatient as we were. Gabe was pissed off, like my mom, that they hadn’t spent the time making the neutralizer, especially when our advantages were so few.
But Chris and Carlos were anxious for a completely different reason—Carlos’s possibility of burnout after using his electromagnetic pulse to shut down all the vehicles within a half-mile radius of us. Although it had seemed like our greatest advantage in the beginning, I worried our plan would leave us trapped with an army of our enemies, our numbers too few.
Come on, Becca. We need you…
I peered out at the horizon. It was glowing with the promise of daybreak, and the tractors, trucks, and trailers—leftovers from the world before—began to take form in the lifting darkness. Lucky for us, we had plenty to hide behind and use for cover.
With a huff, I stepped over to my discarded crossbow and quiver. My hand found the gun strapped to my thigh, ensuring it was still there as I crouched down and pressed my fingertip against the point of one of my arrows. It was cool and sharp. Jake had made a bunch of them for my birthday in September, and I almost smiled as I mentally compared my birthday arrows to the clothes, chocolates, flowers, and drunken pub crawls that had marked my birthdays in the past. I wasn’t sure birthdays mattered much anymore, but it was still the thought that counted. I slid the arrow back into my quiver, feeling strangely content with the new me.
Checking the clip in my pistol, I tried to focus on our array of Abilities, our training—our limited training. I silently groaned. Fighting in a battle? A war? We were a hodgepodge of soldiers, scientists, and displaced Ability wielders who had only some training at best. The thought of it made my armpits damp and my palms sweaty in spite of the cool morning.
I glanced over at Mase, who was rifling through his own bag of ammo and weapons. I was grateful he was there. The only reason he was with us instead of with Becca and the other Re-gens was because we’d needed his strength to construct the contingency barricade a half-mile past us, should any of the General’s vehicles be unaffected by Carlos’s electromagnetic pulse. To Mase, a few rusted vehicles, rebar, tractor wheels, and a couple dozen rotting fence posts might as well have been a stack of firewood for as easily as he’d moved them into place.
When I stared out at the pastures again, the soft hues of sunrise stretched beyond the horizon, making the overgrown, undulating grasses look to be on fire. I wondered what Dani and the others back at the farm were doing now. Were they anxiously watching the sunrise, too? Was Dani having any luck locating the Re-gens’ murky minds? Or were they too far away for her to sense, like me? Despite our current shortage of Re-gens, I hoped she at least had a group of them with her. It helped give me peace of mind that the animals at the farm would protect them, too.
“Where do you think she is?” I whispered, referring to Becca. “I mean, it’s been almost two days. Do you think they’re okay?”
“I’m not sure,” my mom said, glancing up at me. “But you know Becca as well as anyone. She’s resourceful, and she’s always got her eye on the endgame. If she’s not here, there’s a reason.”
I nodded and returned my attention to the road and surrounding minds, listening, feeling. Waiting.
“Still nothing, Baby Girl?” Harper asked again.
“Do you have a hot date, Harper?” my mom joked, and I wondered if it was the fact that he’d come along to help us fight, in spite of some of us telling him he should stay back, that was bothering him. He was the closest thing we had to a medical doctor, after all, and if anything happened to him, we’d be screwed. But he’d wanted to fight; he was a soldier, first and foremost. It was what he’d said he needed to do.
But when I really looked at Harper, I saw something in his eyes and noticed the shakiness of his hands. There was something else, a fear beyond the General and his men. His anxiety felt different from ours. As soon as I opened my mind to him, I understood. He’d had another, different vision.
“What did you see?” I couldn’t help the high pitch of my voice. “Is it Becca? Or—or us?”
“No, no. Nothing alarming.” He snorted. “Well, not that affects the rest of you, anyway.”
I glared at him through the shadows. “What does that mean?” He was hesitant to say, and I couldn’t help it; I searched deeper, needing to know. It had something to do with Chris, but she was—
A wave of minds seemed to swoosh into mine, and I nearly lost my balance. “They’re coming,” I breathed. They were moving closer, a lot of them all around us.
“He’s coming!” Sanchez shouted in our heads, closely followed by Dani’s, “Shit! Guys! A couple of the hawks just spotted movement on the road. They must’ve been using some kind of an illusion or something, but it’s down now. Get ready, and for God’s sake, be careful!”
I sobered, my heart racing.
“There are two Humvees and two trucks headed north,” Sanchez added. “That doesn’t seem like enough.”
Although smaller numbers were better odds for us, that wasn’t even close to the size of the group my mom had anticipated him bringing.
“Once they’re far enough past us, we’ll ride toward you. Carlos, get ready. At the speed they’re going, the lead vehicle will be in position in about three minutes.”
“Shit,” Harper grumbled and snatched up the duffel with extra ammo and first aid supplies. “That can’t be all of them. There were more in my dream…and he wouldn’t come with only a dozen men, not when he knows the Abilities we—”
We heard gunfire beyond us, coming from the Frates exit area.
“Biggs!” I shouted.
“They’re here! Dozens of them! There are too many; we need backup!” It was the one-way telepath from New Bodega.
I could feel dozens of new minds; all of them were trained and programmed to kill. But they were fuz
zy, and I assumed they were operating under the General’s ingrained mind commands.
“There are too many for Biggs’s team to take on alone,” I rasped. “We have to help them!”
“No,” Harper said, reaching for my arm. “We stick to the plan, Zoe. The people with Biggs are armed, they can handle themselves. They have to.” But I heard the doubt in his words. I felt it, too. “We can’t let Herodson get away from us. We have to stick to the plan and take him out, or this will never be over,” he said slowly, and my mom agreed.
I nodded, but I was distracted. The sound of gunfire filled the once-still morning, each shot a roulette game, some of the pulsing minds in my head dimming, others extinguishing completely.
“As soon as Carlos immobilizes those vehicles, I need you to get into Herodson’s head, Baby Girl. I need to know what he’s planning—where they all are and if there are more of them. That’s the only chance we have.” But he forgot we didn’t have the Re-gens to help us.
“I’ll help Biggs and the others,” Mase said, already striding toward his horse, Ghost, his ammo bag slung over his shoulder. I took a step toward him.
“The Re-gens will come,” my mom said, tugging me toward the door. “They will.” I let her guide me outside, needing to push the chaos away and focus. Find the General. Kill the General. Find the General. Kill the General. Only then would it all be over—the soldiers would stop fighting, and innocent people would stop dying.
We sprinted away from the barn, in the direction of the convoy that was still out of sight but rapidly heading our way. We ducked and weaved around tree trunks and a small pump house, following the route we’d gone over and over during our preparations. Just stick to the plan…
Jogging a few more yards, we hid inside the small pump house, our temporary hideaway while we geared ourselves up for what was to come, but it barely fit the three of us. Old tractors and plowing equipment were scattered around it and the giant barn in front of us, perfect for added concealment when the firing began.
My eyes shot to my mom. “I can sense the rest of us,” I said through panting breaths. Some of our people were racing on horseback and others were getting into position, ready and waiting for a full-fledged battle. I searched for the General or any new minds that might be in the truck. “I can sense the minds in the trucks—of the soldiers by Biggs—but I can’t sense the minds in one of the Humvees.”
Harper’s eyes flashed to mine as he readied his gun, ensuring it was locked and loaded. “Can you?” Harper asked my mom.
“No, but he’s clearly in there. But I can’t null their minds if I can’t feel them,” she said. I heard the tremor in her voice as she turned to watch the vehicles approaching in the distance. “They have to be protected by someone, something bigger and stronger than nulling—a shield of some sort,” she said, frowning.
“Then what about the EMP?” I nearly screeched. “Will it still work?”
“Fuck,” Harper spat and peered out at the road.
My mom stared at me, thinking. “Let’s just hope that Gregory was so worried about protecting his mind—his control over everything—that he didn’t consider anything—”
And then it happened. My body hummed and the gunfire to the north of us faded as the sound of fast-approaching, rumbling engines sputtered to nothing. The three of us stared out the cracked door, watching the two Humvees rounding the bend in front of us roll to a stop, the rest of the caravan still further down the road. All of them stopped.
Within seconds there was another wave of gunfire across the street, followed by another down the road. There was shouting and the sound of metal on metal, and I wasn’t sure what else. I found Jake and Sanchez’s minds, but still nothing of Jason or my dad, which I assumed meant Jason was nulling all other Abilities around them and they were safe.
I strained to see out through the opening. The two Humvees nearest us were still closed up and untouched. The shield the General was using obviously hadn’t protected the function of the vehicles, since they’d been stopped by Carlos, but the people inside at least one of them were still safe from us.
Gunfire. Blaring, incessant gunfire was exchanged at the farm across the street.
“Let’s go,” Harper said, tossing me my crossbow. He turned to my mom. “Anna, stay in the shed. You’ll be safe in here for now.”
She balked and glanced at me before she took a step forward. “What? No. I’m not staying in here. I’m—”
“Going to get killed,” he said brusquely. My mom paled, but he continued. “Without Re-gen backup, our plans are shot to shit. You didn’t risk everything—all of us and the lives of your kids—so you could run out there and get yourself killed in the first five minutes by a stray bullet to the head.”
“Right,” she said. “Just like I didn’t do all of this to hide in here while my children get shot at and maybe killed!”
Harper’s tone hardened. “Do you want to end this, once and for all? Our Abilities are worthless on them, we have no backup; all we have left is the element of surprise. At this point, you might be our only weapon against Herodson.” Harper was angry, worried, struggling. But so was my mom. “Fine,” he finally said. “Go around the left side of the barn.” He pointed at what stood a dozen yards in front of the pump house and bent down. Harper unzipped the duffel with all the ammo and a few spare weapons, pulling out a handgun. He handed it to her. “I’m assuming that at some point in your twenty years at the Colony you learned how to use one of these?”
My mom nodded and accepted the gun. I could tell she didn’t like the feel of it in her hands any more than I did. “Take cover behind that dually.” He nodded in the direction of the truck a dozen or so yards to the left of the large, hay-filled barn. “Except for the Frates exit, the rest of the gunfire is south. So if you see anyone who’s not one of us coming up from the left, shoot to kill. We’ll be close; we’ll hear the shots. We need you to be our eyes.”
It was a shoddy plan, sending her to the opposite side of the barn alone, but there was little we could do about that amid the ringing of gunshots to the right and left of us. I knew Harper was just trying to keep her alive. I gave my mom a tight-lipped smile.
Harper tossed her two extra clips. “Watch your ass out there.” He nodded at her, then looked at me. “Okay, let’s move it,” he said, and the three of us ran out of the pump house, heading toward the front of the barn—toward the road—and the junk piles south-side just in front of the road. “You see anyone, kill them!” Harper said to us, just loud enough to hear over the gunfire. “If they aren’t our people—they’re dangerous.” I wholeheartedly agreed.
My mom nodded to us as we drew closer to the back of the barn, and we parted ways—my mom heading around the north while we went south. I watched as she disappeared around the side of the building, headed toward the dually, and I hoped—prayed—she would be okay.
After a few more pounding heartbeats and a couple missteps, Harper and I noticed the back door of the second Humvee was open.
“Shit,” I heard Harper say, and we stopped behind the barn to regroup. “They’re mobile,” he said, his voice low, and I could tell the wheels in his mind were turning—recalibrating our plan.
My ears were ringing, though the gunshots seemed fewer than before. “I’m not sure where they are. I still can’t feel their minds.”
Harper opened his mouth, but however he was intending to respond, he was cut short by a saccharine voice, shouting above the gunfire.
“I can feel your mind, handsome!” It was a woman.
What the hell? We both straightened, readying our weapons.
“I heard voices, so I know you’re not alone. Why don’t you bring your friend on out here?” The voice was getting closer, growing louder. How she wasn’t afraid of getting shot at, I couldn’t fathom.
Without warning, Harper nudged me past the barn. “Go,” he commanded.
But I dug my heels into the ground and glared at him. “Go? What are—”
&nb
sp; Harper’s rifle was aimed at my forehead.
43
DANI
DECEMBER 21, 1AE
The Farm, California
“Shit! Guys!” The telepathic curse was out of my mouth before I could think. I hadn’t meant to shout at the many human minds I was connected to between the farm and the eucalyptus grove. I took a deep breath, focusing on what was important. “A couple of the hawks just spotted movement on the road,” I told our scattered troops. “They must’ve been using some kind of an illusion or something, but it’s down now. Get ready, and for God’s sake, be careful!”
“Get into the cottage, Red,” Jason said, his response drowning out the others. “You’ve done everything you can for us. Now you need to protect yourself and the farm.”
“Okay,” I said, biting my lip. I took two steps toward the front door of the cottage, but hesitated before entering and joining the others who’d stayed behind and placed both hands over my barely there baby bump. I bowed my head and closed my eyes. “I love you,” I said to Jason right before I slipped through the front door into Peter’s nulling field, severing our telepathic connection. In that single action, I severed all of my connections, human and animal alike. And therein lay the problem, so far as I was concerned.
I’d recruited hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures to help us defend ourselves and our valley, but what none of the others currently out in the battlefield seemed to understand was how useless the animals’ desire to assist us would be without me there to direct them. It was their active connection to me that helped them decide where to go, who the “good guys” were, and who wasn’t. It was the animals’ connection to me that made it possible for them to even recognize the enemy. And right now, encased as I was in Peter’s nulling field—which protected me from having my mind influenced by another Ability, let alone detected by one—I had zero connection with the animals.
I hurried over to the kitchen table, where Grayson, Larissa, Camille, Vanessa, Peter, Sam, and Annie were seated, Ellie and Everett in their carriers on the floor nearby and the dogs and our resident cat family lounging nearer to the hearth. “Alright,” I said, pacing alongside the table. “Herodson’s here—or there, or whatever.” I waved one hand frantically, then scanned the faces of my companions. “We’re all in agreement—I’m heading out to direct the animal troops, right? This is what’s best, no matter what happens?” The seven of us had come up with an extension of the plan to defend our home after the others had departed, one that they—specifically Jason—couldn’t argue against, since they weren’t here.
The Ending Series: The Complete Series Page 167