Thief Of Souls ss-2

by Нил Шустерман

  ***

  Michael and Tory arrived at the dam five minutes behind them, and as they reached the road, they saw Drew and Okoya immediately. Their moving figures on the catwalk stood out across the halogen-lit face of the dam. Tory was about to race toward them, but Michael grabbed her hand.

  “No,” he said. “This way.” And he thanked God for the fact that his father was a heavy gambler, for he had dragged Michael to Las Vegas countless times as a child, and had visited Hoover Dam more than once. He remembered enough to know that the best way into the dam wasn’t through the dam itself, but through an el­evator shaft in the adjacent Visitors Center, that de­scended 520 feet into the bedrock of the canyon.

  They broke out a window of the Visitors Center, climbed through, quickly found an elevator, and began a long drop into the bowels of the Earth.

  ***

  Drew raced blindly though the black corridors, smashing into walls, his hands out in front of him. He tumbled down a staircase, slipped down some sort of spillway, then plummeted through a shaft that depos­ited him in an unseen, foul-smelling muck. With hands stretched before him, he groped forward until finding a hint of light, which led him to yet another stairway heading down.

  Finally, Drew came flying out through an open gate and landed with a metallic clang against a platform that hung above the massive, moaning turbines of the great power plant. He could hear the rush of water, as Lake Mead once again became the Colorado River, surging through the powerful turbines, generating electricity. As he had hoped, there were workers down there—enough to protect him. Even if they didn’t believe a word of his story, at least he would be safe.

  He made a move to head down the ladder, when he was grabbed from behind. He turned, and Okoya, not even winded from the chase, gripped Drew by his shirt, lifted him up, and held him out over the platform rail­ing. Drew screamed, trying to draw the attention of anyone down below, but the drone of the generators was just too loud for him to be heard. Now the only thing keeping Drew from falling to his death was Okoya’s angry grip.

  “Please!” begged Drew. “I’ll do anything, anything! I won’t tell anyone what I saw. I’ll spy on Michael and the others for you—would you like that? Just please, please don’t hurt me!”

  “Your cowardice disgusts me.”

  Drew was certain that Okoya would release his grip and let him die a painful, coward’s death. But instead, something else happened.

  Red tendrils lashed out from Okoya’s eyes, gripping something deep within Drew . . . tearing it from him . . . and in that moment, Drew Camden ceased to exist.

  ***

  Michael and Tory arrived just in time to see it hap­pen, and there was nothing they could do.

  “Put him down!” screamed Michael. The soulless Drew still squirmed in panic in Okoya’s grip, his legs dangling out over the generator floor fifty feet below.

  “Thank goodness you’re here!” said Okoya. “He’s a traitor! He tried to sabotage Dillon’s plan.” He lifted Drew back over the railing, and dropped him on the platform. Drew scrambled away to a safe corner behind Michael and Tory.

  “Stop the lies,” Tory said. “We know what you are.”

  Okoya then flashed them his superior grin. “Do you?”

  “I’ve seen the soulless shells you leave behind,” Mi­chael said, taking a step closer. His legs shook, and his muscles felt as if they’d been flayed, but he forced him­self to stand firm against Okoya.

  Okoya dropped all pretenses then. “Your kind dines on flesh,” he said; “mine dines on spirit. Are we all that different?”

  “We’re nothing like you,” growled Michael.

  “Are you so sure?” Okoya got a radar fix on Mi­chael’s eyes, as he had done so many times before. “You, Tory, and the others have now risen to the top of the food chain . . . just like me.” He looked at Tory. “Feeling hungry, Tory? Feeling dirty? You’ve grown beyond the need for normal food—you know that, don’t you?”

  Tory took a shuddering step back.

  “And what about you, Michael? There’s no strength left in you at all. I can give you what you hunger for—the food of the gods—if you’re willing to admit to yourself how much you desire it.”

  Then Okoya cupped his hands before him, and Mi­chael watched as the pores in Okoya’s arm opened up, spilling forth a red, glowing perspiration that rolled in rivulets down his wrists, and into his cupped hands, becoming a thick, viscous pool of liquid light. Okoya’s high-energy diet.

  “It can be anything you want it to be, Michael. A musical feast for your ears, a perfect texture you can feel against your flesh, an aromatic salve, or a banquet fit for a king. Whatever sense you choose to feed.” The pool of light in Okoya’s hand then changed, becoming silver and reflective. “Or perhaps you’d like to feast your eyes on a vision of your own’ future.”

  And as Michael gazed into the silver pool, it became a window, and Michael could not look away. Cupped in Okoya’s hands, he saw a shimmering city. Glorious spires beneath crystal-clear skies. A place that did not yet exist . . . but would.

  “They will build entire cities to you, Michael. Thousands of gleaming towers lovingly erected to your name.”

  There was a magnificent dwelling, open to the sky, because the elements of nature had no hold over this place. In the center of all this, surrounded by an opu­lence that made Hearst Castle seem like costume jew­elry, Michael saw himself, clothed in light, surrounded by thousands—millions—who lived only to satisfy his pleasure, whose greatest joy was to be in his presence, deep within the inner core of his powerful sphere of influence.

  “Why not satisfy all your senses at once?” Okoya brought his hands forward, and Michael found himself cupping his own hands to receive the liquid vision.

  “Michael, don’t!”

  But he could barely hear Tory’s voice anymore. The vision poured from Okoya’s hands into Michael’s, not a bit of it spilling. The image in the surface shimmered, but the vision stayed in focus. He could hear it now: the sounds of worship. Singing voices—Okoya’s music multiplied a thousandfold. He could smell the future—a luscious aroma of all his favorite foods swirled into one. He longed to take this vision inside him. To drink it in, to taste it. To feel it flow through him, infusing him with the strength of his own future. It was every­thing Michael had ever craved. All he had to do was take it in . . .

  But as he gazed at it, as he listened, there was some­thing else he heard there, too. It had been there all along in the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors Okoya had put before them—but Michael had not been at­tuned to its frequency until now.

  This pool of light was alive.

  And it was screaming.

  Michael pulled his gaze away from it, forcing him­self to see Drew who still cowered in the corner. Even from here, Michael could tell that Drew’s soul had been taken from him by Okoya. And suddenly Michael knew exactly who he was about to dine upon.

  Still, he brought this liquid manna closer to his face. To smell it. To feel it. To taste it.

  “I knew I could count on you, Michael,” said Okoya triumphantly.

  Although Michael’s mind and body wanted to drink it in, he fought the crushing urge and instead hurled it away.

  In the direction of Drew.

  “No!” cried Okoya.

  The shimmering globule of life-energy struck Drew in the chest, and exploded like mercury into a thousand droplets that coursed around Drew’s body. Drew arched his back and gasped, as his soul returned to him through the pores of his skin, and back to that intangible place in­side.

  Okoya’s surprise only lasted for an instant, then his face became blizzard-cold.

  “You’ve squandered your last chance for greatness, Michael,” he said. “You and Tory have both outlived your usefulness.”

  Suddenly Drew bolted from the corner, heading to­ward the doorway that led back into the inner structure of the dam.

  “Drew, no!” Michael leapt after him. And in that moment of co
nfusion, Okoya grabbed Tory, twisted her arm behind her back, then pushed her into the opening as well, slamming the gate. With one hand Okoya held the gate closed, and with the other, ripped an iron rail-post from the concrete wall—partly with his human strength, and partly with the sheer force of his will. Then he jammed the pole through the handles of the gate, securing it so firmly that it didn’t give an inch, Tory and Michael rammed their bodies against the gate, but it was no use—and their screams would never be heard over the turbines—nor would they be seen from this unlit, remote corner of the rafters.

  Okoya laughed heartily. “How marvelous!” said Okoya. “I don’t have to kill you now; Dillon will do it for me—and he won’t even know it!”

  Okoya strode away, his laughter dissolving into the awful warbling whine of the turbines.

  For more than half an hour, the three of them kicked at the gate. Michael hurled a wind at it, but it only sifted like water through a sieve. Finally they realized the only way out was up, into the cold concrete hell of the dam.

  “We’ll get out, right?” asked Drew, searching for some hint of reassurance. “I mean, it might take some time, but we’ll get out of here, won’t we?”

  Michael and Tory both turned to him. Could it be that he didn’t know?

  “What is it?” said Drew. “It better not be bad news. I’m not ready for bad news.”

  “We don’t have any time,” Tory said coldly. “In a few hours Dillon’s going to shatter the dam.”

  20. Dammed

  Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the world, stretched for 115 miles behind the half-million-ton concrete plug called Hoover Dam. Although it had never seen the likes of Dillon Cole, the dam was by no means a stranger to the bizarre; from the psychotic be­havior of heat-maddened workers during its construc­tion, to the ninety-four deaths recorded by the time it was complete. Most of those deaths were workers boiled under the heat of the unforgiving sun. But then there was the scaler, who fell into the pit of Black Canyon, only to have his body bickered over by the Nevada and Arizona coroners for hours because, during construction, there was no Colorado River to divide the two states, and no one could agree in which state—besides postmortem—the body lay. There were macabre tales of dying laborers crawling across the un­finished concrete abutments of the dam, just to get to the Arizona side before they died, because death ben­efits in Arizona were far better than in Nevada. And then, of course, there was the eerie fact that the last person to die while building the dam, was the son of the first person to die while building it. But, to the disappointment of tourists everywhere, the horrific tales of hapless workers slipping into the wet concrete, only to be sealed within the walls, were untrue. No one had been entombed in Hoover Dam. Yet.

  ***

  Dillon, refreshingly chilled from a night com­muning with himself, woke up in time to see the sun­rise. It spilled over the red mountains, shimmering on Lake Mead to his left, and cutting across the pit of Black Canyon to his right.

  By seven a.m., Dillon stood at a view spot on the rim of the dam, near a broken window at the Visitors Center. Before him were two identical bronze statues, massive, with stylized human faces, muscular chests, and sharp, pointed wings held straight up, as if poised to puncture Heaven. He looked down at a star chart beneath his feet. Tiny dots of brass stars were imbed­ded in blue concrete, each star perfectly placed to be a precise image of the night sky. But it wasn’t quite per­fect, was it?

  Dillon knelt down, and pressed his thumb over a single star, erasing it for a moment from the constel­lation of Scorpius.

  Mentarsus-H—a star which was no longer there, but its living soul was here on earth. Or at least five-sixths of it, thought Dillon. And, reflexively, Dillon turned up to the winged statue that looked so much like the Spirit of Destruction that had tricked him into killing Deanna. Her gift had been the conquest of fear, and a trans­forming power of faith. There was no telling how much smoother today’s event would have gone with the strength of Deanna’s faith, and her love.

  But he couldn’t let himself dwell on Deanna, either. Events were turning much too quickly now, and he had come here for a reason.

  Although the Visitors Center hadn’t officially opened yet, there were already tourists wandering the deck. So far, no one had recognized him, and he hoped no one would.

  He strolled around the Visitors Center, and down the road that curved along the rim of the dam. He knelt to the ground, putting his ear to the curb, like someone might put their ear to a railroad track to listen for an approaching train. By now he had gained the attention of a few tourists, who laughed, wondering what might be wrong with him. He didn’t bother to look at them; he just moved on, rubbing his hands along the concrete, until finding a spot on the sidewalk where a tiny weed grew through an insignificant hairline crack. He traced his finger along that crack until stopping at a single point, and then, when no one was looking, he pulled a small stone out of his pocket, and tapped the spot three times . . .

  . . . click. . . click . . . click.

  Then he stood, stretched, and casually left, heading back across the desert to his circle of followers three miles away.

  Behind him, the two noisy lanes of traffic crossing the dam made it impossible for anyone to hear the tiny triplet of sounds that slowly grew louder as it echoed back and forth through the concrete superstructure.

  ***

  The dam was only forty-five feet wide at its rim, but at its base it extended back beneath the waters of the lake to a width of five hundred feet. Five miles of tun­nel wove through the concrete dam and the bedrock on either side of it. Some tunnels were built for maintenance, others for drainage, and still more seemed to serve no function at all, beyond being havens for rats. There were even some crawlways that didn’t exist on any blueprint—cavities left by unscrupulous foremen hoping to conserve concrete and time when the dam was being built. The result was a lightless, interlocking maze, full of hopeless dead ends and stagnant dead air.

  “What time is it?” Michael asked. “I don’t even know if it’s daylight yet.”

  Holding hands to keep from losing each other, Mi­chael, Tory, and Drew squeezed forward between the slimy stone walls of the catacomb.

  “I don’t know,” said Tory. “I can’t see my watch.”

  Drew, who fearfully brought up the rear, said noth­ing. For hours they had poked around in absolute dark­ness, following the squeals of rats that ran over their feet—only to find them disappearing into holes too small for humans to fit. Michael had begun to leave scratch-marks on the wall with his pocketknife. But as they pressed forward, going this way and that, sliding down spillways, and scratching their way up chimney­like shafts, they began to feel their fingertips coming across those same scratch-marks again. They were go­ing in circles.

  “I’ll create a storm high above the dam,” Michael suggested, “so they’ll see it from the campsite, and they’ll know we’re here.”

  He concentrated on shaping an angry cumulus into a pointing finger far above their heads. Soon they began to hear the rain, but it didn’t quite sound right . . . and then water began to rush past their ankles.

  “Michael,” asked Tory, “what did you do?”

  “I don’t like this,” complained Drew. “I don’t like this at all.”

  The rats around them were swimming now. They could feel them clawing at their pantlegs for purchase.

  “Make them stop,” said Drew. “Please make them stop!”

  Michael pushed his stormy feelings out one more time. Now the water not only came from below, but from above—raining on them in the narrow corridors, spilling down the walls, and Michael realized exactly what had happened. His power wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the hundred yards of concrete above. His storm had nowhere to go but the narrow passageways around them, pulling moisture from the stone and con­densing into a drowning flood.

  “Stop it, Michael!” shouted Tory. “It’s not working!”

  Michael shut t
he storm down, but it was too late. He could hear the rush of water draining from passageways above. “Hold on!” Michael yelled, but there was noth­ing to hold on to. The flash flood surged past them, heading for lower ground, and the current pulled them off their feet. Coughing and sputtering, they were dragged down, deeper still, into the dam, until finally landing in a chamber where the water spilled from a dozen holes above their heads.

  The three tried to find each other in the darkness.

  “Where are we? What is this place!” cried Drew, as if someone would be able to answer him.

  How stupid, thought Michael, to have all the power they had, and yet be unable to escape from a big block of concrete. Between himself and Tory, they could do little more than drown themselves and create tunnels full of disease-free rats.

  “Do something!” screamed Drew.

  But Michael was out of ideas. “I don’t know what to do!” The water, which only a moment ago was at their knees, was already rising past their waists. In the icy chill, Michael could feel his muscles threatening to cramp.

  “I can’t drown in here!” wailed Drew. “I can’t die in a place like this!”

  “Shut up!” screamed Tory impatiently.

  They lost each other, each trying to find a spot where water wasn’t cascading down over their heads. The wa­ter reached their chins, and Michael felt his feet leave the floor. He kicked to stay afloat, but breathed in a mouthful of water, beginning to gag.

  That’s when he heard the clanging of a machine as it roared to life.

  In an instant the water level began to drop.

  “It’s a pump!” shouted Tory.

  Michael felt the floor beneath his feet again. “This room must be some sort of sump,” he said. “A place to catch the seepage from the dam! It probably pumps the water right out into the Colorado River . . . . If we can find the intake, we could get out that way . . .”

  “And be dragged through the paddles of the tur­bines,” added Tory. “Thanks, but no thanks.”