Lance climbed over the fence, careful to look nonthreatening. “How about I help you skin that animal? In exchange for a little taste? Plus, you know you have to cut out its guts, right?”
“Of course I know that,” Hunter said defensively. “I was getting ready to do that.”
Zil thought it was obvious his old roommate knew no such thing. He watched, nervous and impatient, while Lance moved smoothly, confidently toward Hunter.
Hunter’s whole attention seemed to be focused on the big, good-looking boy. But he wasn’t attacking. He wasn’t even threatening.
“Now,” Zil whispered.
He and Hank were first through the gate. They moved quickly, but quietly, not quite running.
The mistake came when Lance glanced at them. Hunter saw the flicker in the boy’s eyes, looked over his shoulder, spotted Zil, turned too late, and caught Hank’s crowbar in the forehead.
He dropped like a sack of rocks.
Hank raised it up to hit him again. “That’s enough,” Zil said, staying Hank’s hand. “Tie him up. Foil his hands.” Then when Turk started tying Hunter’s hands in front of him, he said, “No, you moron, tie them in back.”
Turk grinned sheepishly. “That’s why you’re the leader.”
They bound Hunter tightly. Then Lisa came forward with a roll of Reynolds aluminum foil and wrapped it again and again around Hunter’s hands.
Turk then wound a roll of duct tape around Hunter’s hands, imprisoning the fingers.
Hunter did not move.
Zil took two steps, snatched up Hunter’s dropped knife, and cut a hunk of meat from the deer’s hindquarters. The chunk of meat was half cooked, half near raw. He attacked the meat like a hungry wolf. The others laughed and did likewise. Turk ate too much and vomited into a corner of the fence. Then came back to reload.
They fed and laughed with joy at their conquest.
Hunter began to stir. He moaned.
“Too bad we don’t have cement around,” Zil said. “Drake knew what he was doing when he plastered the freaks.”
“Drake’s a freak, though, isn’t he?” Lisa asked innocently.
The question gave Zil pause. Was Drake a freak? His whip hand had, according to legend, grown to replace the arm Sam had burned off in a fight.
“I guess he is. I don’t know for sure,” Zil said thoughtfully, chewing the venison.
“We need, like, some way of figuring out,” Turk said.
Hunter moaned louder.
“The freak’s waking up,” Lance said. “He’s going to have a headache.”
That struck Zil as funny. He laughed. And when he laughed, the others joined in. “See, guys: stick with me and we get nice, fresh meat.”
“Got that right,” Turk said.
“So, leader, is it time to deal with this chud?” Hank asked, respectful but impatient.
Zil laughed again. The food in his belly filled him with a sense of well-being. He felt almost giddy. And a little sleepy now, with the sun going down.
And he liked the use of “leader” as a title for him. It fit. It felt fine.
Zil Sperry. Leader of the Human Crew.
“Sure,” Zil said. “Let’s have ourselves a trial.” He glanced around the yard. “Turk and Hank, drag him over to the back steps, prop him up.”
Hunter could not seem to sit all the way up. He was conscious, but not fully. One of his eyeballs looked funny, and Zil realized it was because the pupil was twice as big as the other. It gave Hunter a stupid look that made Zil laugh.
“You should have just admitted you stole my jerky,” he scolded Hunter.
Hank knelt down to get right in Hunter’s face. “Do you confess that you stole the leader’s jerky?”
Hunter’s head lolled to one side. He seemed to be trying to speak, but all that came out was a slurred sound.
“Blrrrr gllll pluh,” Turk mimicked.
“I think he said, ‘Yeah, I did it,’” Hank mocked.
“I’ll interpret for him,” Turk said.
Hank asked, “Hunter, do you admit you killed Harry?”
Hunter said nothing, but Turk supplied the answer. “I sure do. I am a freak, nonhuman, chud scum who killed Harry.”
Zil laughed happily. “What can we do? He confessed.” He adopted a severe tone. “Hunter, I pronounce you guilty. Guilty as charged.”
“Now what?” Lisa wondered. “He’s hurt. Maybe we should let him go.”
Zil was about to agree. His rage against Hunter was mostly burned out, the flames smothered by his sense of joy at having a full belly.
“Going soft on a freak, Lisa?” Hank taunted.
“No,” Lisa said quickly.
Hank looked hard at her. “You think if we let him go he’ll just forget about this? No. He’ll get together with the other freaks and come after us. You think Sam will be gentle with us?”
Zil looked at Lance. “What do you think, big guy?”
“Me?” Lance looked troubled. “Hey, I do what you say, Zil.”
So, Zil realized, it was on him. The thought soured the happy buzz. Up until now he had known he could more or less justify his actions. He could say, ‘Look, Hunter killed Harry. I was bringing him to justice.’ Kids would accept that. Sam might not accept it, but he probably would have no choice but to let it go.
But if they actually executed Hunter, like Hank obviously wanted, then Sam and all his kids would come after Zil. And the reality was, the five of them wouldn’t last a minute in a fight with Sam.
If they killed Hunter, it would be open war with Sam. Sam would win.
Zil could not admit that, though. It would make him look pathetic.
He was trapped. If he looked soft, Hank would turn against him. And Hunter was sure to come after them if they let him go. But killing Hunter would doom Zil.
“We need more kids than just us five,” Zil said. “I mean, we need other kids to be in on this.”
Hank looked wary.
But Zil had an idea now. It was blooming like a flower in his mind. “Sam can fight the five of us, but he can’t take on the whole town, right? Who is he going to boss around if the whole town is against him?”
“How we going to get a bunch of kids to be on our side?” Hank demanded.
Zil grinned. “We have all this meat, right? Kids are really hungry. What do you think they would do for a deer steak?”
Edilio drove faster than he ever had before. Seventy miles an hour down the highway, weaving through the abandoned or crashed trucks and cars. The wind whipped words away as soon as they were spoken, so they drove in silence.
Turning onto the coast road that led to the power plant, Edilio had no choice but to slow down. There were hairpin turns, and a moment’s inattention would send them all hurtling down the slope through brush and boulders into the sea.
Suddenly Edilio screeched to a halt.
“What?” Sam said.
Edilio held up a finger. He strained to hear. And there it was. “Gunfire,” he said.
“Drive,” Sam said.
Orc was peeing when he heard Howard yell, “Ahhh!”
He didn’t care. Howard yelled more than was necessary. He was small and weak and scared easily.
He turned around just as Drake fired. He could see the muzzle flash coming from a hole in the wall.
Dekka was floating. Then falling. And Howard was pressed flat against the wall.
“Orc!” Howard shouted.
Dekka hit the ground. Not really a problem for Orc. He didn’t like Dekka much. She just ignored him, mostly, and looked away whenever he was close to her. Disgusted by the sight of him.
Well, who wasn’t? Orc disgusted himself.
Then he saw the face behind the gun. Drake. Drake had gone after Orc with his tentacle and whipped him. It hadn’t hurt much, but Orc still hadn’t liked it. Drake had been trying to kill him.
Orc didn’t like Drake. That didn’t mean he liked Dekka. But Sam did, and Sam had been fair with Orc. Sam had gotten him
beer.
Orc wished he had a beer right now.
Save Dekka, and Sam would probably reward Orc. Saving Dekka—that had to be worth at least a case. Maybe something from a foreign country. Orc hadn’t tried any of that beer yet.
Drake was a hundred yards away. Dekka was half that distance. A motorcycle was parked just five feet away.
Orc grabbed the motorcycle. He held the front wheel in one hand, the handlebars in the other. He twisted hard and the wheel came off easily.
“Someone’s shooting!” one of Drake’s soldiers yelled, rushing in.
“Yeah, guess who?” Diana said.
“Too soon,” Caine snarled. “I told him to wait. Jack. Do it.”
“I don’t want to rush and—”
Caine raised both hands, lifted Jack up in the air, and threw him into the instrument panel.
“Now!” Caine yelled.
They were out of the control room, at a separate monitor that showed the inside of the reactor itself.
Jack punched a sequence of numbers into a keypad.
The electromagnets switched off.
The cadmium control rods plunged like daggers.
It was all silent on the black-and-white monitor. But the effect was immediate. The vibration of the turbines, the steady hum that had been part of the background, suddenly dropped in pitch.
Lights flickered. The monitor picture wobbled then stabilized.
“Is it safe to go in?” Caine demanded.
“Sure, what could be dangerous about a nuclear—”
“Shut up!” Caine shouted. “Open it up, Jack.”
Jack obeyed.
They stepped into a vast room that seemed to be made almost entirely of stainless steel. Stainless-steel floor. Stainless-steel catwalks. Cranes. Caine had the impression of a gigantic restaurant kitchen.
What wasn’t stainless steel was safety yellow. Safety railings. The risers on steps. Signs in yellow and black warning of what surely no one who had made it here needed to be reminded of: radiation hazard.
The dome overhead was like something out of a cathedral. But there were no frescoes decorating the painted concrete.
Caine felt abashed by the scale of the place.
At the center of it all, a circular pit, like some ghastly blue-glowing swimming pool. Not that any sane person would ever be tempted to jump in.
A catwalk went all the way around. And a robotic crane hovered over it. Down there, below, in the sinister depths, were the fuel rods. Each filled with gray pellets that looked like nothing much. Stubby gray cylinders of what might as easily be lead.
A massive forklift held a steel barrel in midair, poised. Right where the driver left it when he poofed.
“I’m starting the sequence,” Jack said, typing furiously, rattled, terrified, but giddy, too.
The robot moved faster than Caine had expected. It perched like a predatory insect above the too-blue water.
It was hot in the room. The emergency generators didn’t keep the air-conditioning running and the temperature began rising almost instantly.
“How long?” Caine demanded.
“To extract it, make it relatively safe, transport it to the used-fuel cooling facility and—”
“We aren’t going to have time for all that,” Caine said. “Drake’s already shooting. We need to get out of here.”
“Caine, there’s no way to—” Jack began.
“Just grab the fuel rod. Yank it up out of that pool. I’ll take care of the rest,” Caine said.
“Caine, we have to follow procedure just to get the rod out of here. The only way out is through—”
Caine raised both hands. He focused on the convex dome over their heads, the containment vessel that would hold the radiation in if there was ever an accident.
He blasted the concrete with all his power. There was a wallop of sound that hurt Caine’s eardrums.
“What are you doing?” Jack cried.
“Caine!” Diana shouted.
The concrete would not give. Not at this distance. Not with nothing to use as a projectile.
Caine aimed his power at the forklift.
“Be ready, Jack,” Caine grated.
The forklift flew. Like an invisible god had kicked it. It hurtled in a straight line. So fast, it broke the sound barrier with a loud bang that was immediately swallowed up in the far louder crash of steel and iron blowing a hole through concrete.
“How strong you think that fuel rod is?” Caine asked.
“Are you insane?” Diana cried.
“Just in a hurry,” Caine said.
Drake squeezed the trigger.
A line of bullets chewed concrete just in front of Dekka.
Drake fought the recoil and raised the weapon just slightly, and the impacts advanced toward Dekka, who just stared at onrushing death.
Suddenly Drake was on his back. The gun, still in his hands, was blazing away at the ceiling.
A wheel bounced crazily around the room then fell onto a desk with a loud crash.
Drake let go of the trigger. He scrambled to his feet. He looked at the wheel, unable to make sense of it. How had a wheel gone flying through the air, through the hole?
Orc.
Drake ejected the magazine and racked in a replacement. He was bruised and shaken but not badly hurt. He crept back to the hole, cautious lest something else came flying in.
Dekka was no longer on the ground.
Orc was…
A massive gravel hand reached in and missed Drake’s head by inches.
Drake fired blindly at the hole.
Then he turned and ran.
THIRTY-SEVEN
01 HOUR, 6 MINUTES
THE JEEP BLEW through the gate. Edilio drove straight to where a shaken, bruised, and seriously angry Dekka was picking herself up off the concrete.
“What happened?” Sam demanded, leaping from the front seat.
The adrenaline was finally kicking in. But even now he felt strangely disconnected. Even now, rushing toward trouble. Like it wasn’t really his trouble. Like it was some other part of him that was doing this.
“I tried to fly,” Dekka said in a low growl. She shook her head and bent over to squeeze her knee. “Ow.”
“We heard something louder than gunfire,” Edilio said. “Like thunder. Or like an explosion.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t noticing thunder,” Dekka said.
Orc came loping over from one direction and Howard from the other.
“Orc, man, that was a seriously cool move,” Howard enthused. He ran to his friend and slapped the monster on the shoulder repeatedly.
“I owe you, Orc,” Dekka said.
“What just happened?” Sam repeated.
Howard answered. “Drake, man. He took a shot at Dekka. Dekka goes zooming up. Then, bam, comes down hard. Orc, man, Orc snatches up this motorcycle, right? He yanks the wheel off it and throws it at Drake. Like a Frisbee.” Howard actually clapped his hands in glee. “Right through the hole you burned in the wall, Sammy. Like sinking a full-court shot.”
“Gonna cost you,” Orc grumbled.
“Oh yeah,” Howard seconded. “Gonna cost. Orc doesn’t save the day for free.”
“No one else heard a really big sound?” Edilio pressed.
“We kind of had guns going off, Edilio,” Dekka snapped.
“You okay, Dekka?” Sam asked.
“I’ll live,” she said.
“Dekka: what do you think would happen to a cave or a mine shaft if you turned off gravity?” Sam asked.
“Is this a quiz?”
“No.”
Dekka nodded. “Okay. I guess if I hit it a few times, on-off, on-off, like that, I guess it would start to crumble. Probably collapse.”
“Yeah.” Sam put his hand on her shoulder. “I have to ask you to do something.”
“I’m going to guess that you want me to crash a cave or a mine shaft. So?”
“So it’s not just some mine shaft,” Edilio said darkl
y. “There’s a thing inside it. It’s…I don’t know how to explain it. It gets inside you. It makes you scared.”
“I need you to go with Edilio. Seal this thing in,” Sam said. “Howard? I need you and Orc to get back to town. I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but I need you two to keep an eye on things in town.”
“That’s going to cost—”
“Yeah. I know,” Sam interrupted Howard. “How about we negotiate later?”
Howard shrugged. “Okay, but I’m trusting you.” He pointed at his own eyes, then at Sam, making an “I’m watching you” gesture.
“What are you going to do?” Dekka asked Sam.
“I’m going to deal with Caine. I have to stop him here.”
“You don’t want to go at Caine and Drake by yourself,” Edilio objected. “No way. I’m not letting you kill yourself.”
Sam forced a laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Howard, as soon as you get to town, find Breeze if you don’t pass her on the way. If you don’t find Brianna, find Taylor. Tell them to send help. And tell them I need someone to let me know what’s going on with you guys at the mine.”
“Maybe should have turned on the phones, huh?” Edilio said. He winced, realizing too late that it sounded like sniping.
Sam said, “Yeah. Add that to the list of mistakes I’ve made lately.”
“Yeah, here’s one not to make, Sam: don’t go in there by yourself.”
“Didn’t I just say I wouldn’t?” Sam said evenly.
Edilio looked him in the eyes. Sam looked down and said, “But in case anything happens to me, you all take orders from Edilio.”
Dekka nodded solemnly.
“Do not do that to me,” Edilio said. “Do not die on me, Sam.”
The fuel rod. Twelve feet long. Sheathed in lead now, but still so dangerous, so deadly.
Jack held what looked like an oversized remote control. His eyes bulged. He swallowed convulsively. He tapped a button on the remote, and the rod stopped moving. He let go a shaky sigh.
The fuel rod hung from the crane, swinging just slightly. Caine found himself drawn to it, wanting to touch it. But it was hot. From twenty feet away it brought beads of sweat out on Caine’s forehead.