The Countdown

  Glancing around at the dry rolling hills, I realized we weren’t so far from Devil’s Hole—the place Simon and I had taken Tyler after I’d infected him.

  I closed my eyes, sick at just being so close to the place where I’d doomed Tyler to a life on the run. A life without family and without ever growing old.

  Saved was the absolute wrong word for what I’d done. Sure, he hadn’t died that night, but he was no longer the same person he’d been before.

  Now he was like me, a replica of his former self. Replaced.

  And what had Blondie said, that at least she still had a human side worth fighting for? Not Tyler and me—we were something else.

  And on top of that I was apparently some kind of countdown clock . . .

  But to what? And was there any way I could stop it?

  I inhaled, trying to tell myself to drop it—the whole thing was stupid.

  But saying it was stupid didn’t mean I could just pretend it didn’t exist. I needed answers.

  Silently I watched the scenery, and when we saw the sign, Welcome to Oregon, I felt something in my stomach unknot.

  We were so close now. Just a few hours to Portland, and then another five-, maybe six-hour bus ride to Bend. We’d have to hope to hitch another ride from there to Silent Creek, but we’d figure it out.

  For now, Chuck was decent company. It was nice to be with someone who didn’t have an agenda. Someone normal.

  Chuck had tuned into some evangelical station on the radio. The preacher had been going on about love and forgiveness in a voice that would rise to thunderous highs that demanded action, and then plunge to resonant lows begging for reflection. It was like being on an amusement park ride, trying to keep up with him. He quoted bible verses to hammer his sermon home to his listeners. And every now and again, Chuck’s eyes would go all misty and thoughtful, as if something the evangelist said had struck a chord deep inside him.

  I wondered if there was someone he should forgive, someplace he should be heading instead of Portland where he could make amends.

  When the Columbia River came into sight, the radio went all static-y, and the preacher’s voice got lost to the hum. I thought Chuck would try to tune the knob to find a better signal, or maybe turn it off altogether. But he did neither; he just kept driving, navigating the bridge that led us into Oregon.

  I waited several minutes, and even several more, until we were back on solid ground on the other side. The truck moved evenly, steadily over the highway, and then my gaze slid to Chuck. His focus was as intent as ever, listening. Concentrating.

  On what? I couldn’t help wondering, my eyes shifting to the radio, which was still spitting out static and only static.

  It hadn’t gotten any clearer, only louder. Sharper. Harsher.

  The grating sound grew until my ears began to hurt, and I finally blurted out, “Chuck . . .”

  When he didn’t respond, I reached for the knob myself, meaning to switch it off and put us all out of our misery. But Chuck’s hand shot out and caught mine.

  His grip was cruel, not at all like the Chuck I’d come to know.

  “Jeez, Chuck!” I tried to yank my hand away but he was merciless, and his fingers felt like they were going to crush my wrist.

  “Hey! What the hell’s the matter with you?” Thom leaned forward, reaching for us when the radio screeched.

  Chuck’s attention snapped toward it, and away from the road. It was so strange the way his head cocked, almost birdlike, that I nearly forgot that he’d stopped the flow of blood to my hand.

  What was he hearing that I couldn’t?

  Then, in that same weird birdlike way, his focus swiveled back to me.

  He was still Chuck, with his lopsided jowl and his hair peppered with dandruff flakes. But there was something in his eyes that made my stomach pitch. Eyes that were no longer his own.

  Even in the morning light, I swear it looked like they glowed. The way mine did.

  But that wasn’t possible . . .

  It couldn’t be . . . I knew that.

  Still . . .

  I almost couldn’t get the words past the giant lump in my throat. “What’s happening?” I wasn’t sure which of them I was asking, but Chuck heard me.

  He no longer pretended to watch the road, yet somehow we stayed on course. I’d heard of cruise control, but this was like full-on autopilot.

  Real sci-fi crap.

  Like glowing eyes.

  Chuck’s voice, when he answered me, was no longer his voice either. I’d heard that sound before . . . in the desert, the night I’d found Tyler. That freaky wheezing I realized now sounded almost electronic, as if someone had hijacked Chuck’s voice box and was transmitting through it, just like the radio.

  But . . . no . . . that wasn’t . . . it couldn’t . . .

  Except wasn’t that exactly what my dad had heard, the two hikers in the woods with their radio-static voices?

  “Time,” Chuck said. “Time . . . time . . . ,” he repeated, and I tilted my head closer, trying to hear his message. He opened his mouth almost impossibly wide and spoke again: “Time . . . is . . . running out.”

  Time is running out?

  And then Chuck blinked. “Eleven.” Blink. Blink. Blink. “Eleven . . . eleven . . . eleven.” Today’s number—isn’t that what I’d heard at daybreak?—eleven. And then, his voice still electrical, “The Returned must die.”

  How could Chuck possibly know that? How could he be speaking in static the way the hikers had?

  I wondered if the hikers’ eyes had glowed too. I thought of the way Nancy had growled at me, and a thought hit me: Had Nancy seen them? Was that why my eyes had suddenly spooked her?

  “What the hell . . . ?” It was Thom, dragging me back to this. To now. To Chuck.

  Every cell in my body seemed to freeze and explode at the same time—microscopic nuclear reactions going off in every sector of my being. And even though only a second or two passed, a million things flashed through my mind at the same time, congesting my thoughts: What was happening to Chuck? What did they—eyes to the sky—want from me? Why was this happening, and what could it mean?

  Chuck’s grip started to loosen, and just as I thought he was finally coming around, that they were releasing whatever hold they’d had on him, the same way they’d eventually let Tyler go, he said, in a not-quite-normal voice, “What’s happening? What . . . did you do to me?” He looked at me with his strange glowing eyes, like this was my fault, all of it.

  And then I saw it—the mile marker—green marker number eleven on the side of the highway, and everything started to move in double time.

  Taking his other hand off the wheel, Chuck reached for me. Before I could react or move out of his way, he had ahold of me and was shoving me—my head anyway. “Make it stop!” he shrieked, remnants of static still shadowing his voice as he slammed my face hard against the passenger’s side window. I heard Thom shout, but that was only a split second before my cheekbone smashed against the glass, rattling my brain so hard I expected the window to explode.

  The glass didn’t, but the bone definitely did. Not explode exactly, but when the bone beneath the skin disintegrated, there was an eruption of light behind my eyes that blinded me.

  “What the . . . ?” Through the flashes, I saw Chuck reaching for me again at the same time Thom was launching himself at him. I tried to shield myself, thinking, This time for sure. The glass will definitely break this time.

  Thom got an arm around Chuck’s neck from behind, but that didn’t stop Chuck, and rather than shoving my head, he reached behind me. Before I realized what he was doing, he had his hand in the exact place where my gun was hidden.

  There was no way he could have known about the gun . . . except somehow he did. Just like there was no way his truck could be driving itself—staying exactly on course without wavering the tiniest bit—since Chuck’s hands weren’t even touching the wheel. But it totally was.

  “Chuck, no. Please . . . don’t
,” I begged because all I could think was I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want him to shoot Thom. Not like this. Not after everything we’d been through. Out in the middle of nowhere, with none of my questions answered. Without saying good-bye to my dad or Tyler or Simon.

  Even if I’d wanted to use my telekinesis thing, it was too late because everything was happening too fast.

  “Make it stop . . .” Chuck’s voice scratched again as he raised the gun and pointed it at my temple, safety off.

  I closed my eyes and whispered a silent apology to my friends for not being able to warn them about what I’d learned from Blondie.

  The gunshot came and I jumped, waiting for it . . . the pain . . . the numbness. The nothingness of death.

  “Kyra. Jesus. Kyra.” It was Thom, and I snapped my eyes open.

  What I saw made hot waves of shame uncoil inside me.

  Chuck was slumped over his steering wheel, an obviously self-inflicted gunshot wound in the side of his head—his good side, the less droopy side. The driver’s side window was splattered with pulpy fragments that were likely some combination of skull, flesh, blood, and brain matter. Thom had released Chuck’s neck and had collapsed back so he was leaning on his heels. He had pieces of that same flesh and blood all over his face.

  “What the . . .” But he was just looking down at his hands, like he’d been the one to pull the trigger.

  I glanced back at Chuck. Whatever had been piloting the truck was no longer in control. The steering wheel shimmied as Chuck’s bulk weighed heavily over it. At first the giant rig just vibrated beneath me, like the wheels were all out of sync. But then it pitched off course in wide sweeping arcs, first drifting lazily into the shoulder, and then coming all the way back and crossing out of our lane.

  That was when I knew we were going to crash. We were headed toward the giant cement blocks that divided the highway.

  “Hurry!” I shouted to Thom, already trying to unbuckle so we could shove Chuck aside, meaning to take the wheel. But it was far too late for that.

  The impact was both brutal and disorienting.

  The air rushed out of my lungs as the seat belt locked. My head—at least I thought it was my head—hit glass, or maybe it was the doorjamb. Everything got jumbled. I remembered sounds—rubber on pavement, metal screeching or tearing, glass splintering, maybe. And smells. They were bitter and caustic, like gasoline and oil and exhaust and burning rubber all thrown together in one toxic cloud.

  From somewhere in all that, I tried to say Thom’s name, to ask if he was okay . . . if he’d survived at all, but my voice was caught in the fumes.

  I don’t know how much time had passed, but I heard sirens. Someone must have seen the crash, or could see the smoke rising and called for help.

  Inside of me, things were broken—bones most likely. Everything hurt, and already there was the familiar tingling and itching that meant the healing had started. But breathing was hard, each inhalation a painful knife stabbing up and around my left side . . . almost worse than daybreak. I gasped and gasped, again and again, testing the sensation, until I realized it wasn’t like a stitch that could be worked out.

  With my head still against the headrest, I took in the deepest breath I could and held it before fumbling for the seat belt. I had to find Thom, and if he was still alive, we had to move. To get away from here before the police came and found Chuck with a bullet through his brain and started asking questions.

  Releasing the latch, I sat up.

  “Thom,” I rasped. I was woozy, but I could do this. I scanned the interior, which was filling with dark oily smoke. “Thom!” This time my voice took hold.

  “Here. I’m . . . here . . .” His voice was weak, but I heard him. I scrambled out of my seat as quickly as I could, which wasn’t all that fast.

  He was crumpled in a position that didn’t even look humanly feasible. But I guess that was the thing, he wasn’t entirely human. I saw Chuck too, halfway lodged beneath the enormous steering wheel. It was grotesque the way his body had broken. Thom might be hurt—no, check that, he was definitely hurt. But he wasn’t broken like Chuck, not beyond repair.

  “Can you get up?” I winced when I saw the way he clutched his wrist to keep his arm from dangling; his elbow bent at an unnatural angle.

  It was hard to distinguish where all the blood had come from, whether it was his or Chuck’s. Likely both. But even if it were Thom’s, the fact that his blood—our blood—was toxic to the non-Returned wouldn’t make a difference to any rescue workers who arrived at the scene. It had to be fresh to do its damage. After sixty seconds it was no longer dangerous.

  Thom was riddled with scrapes and bruises, but he managed to stagger to his feet, and staggering was enough.

  While Thom lurched toward the passenger door, I slipped over to Chuck. I had to work fast, and I did, rummaging through his back pockets for his wallet, not bothering to assess whether there was anything beneficial inside. I searched the floor, and beneath the seats. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding.

  I had to climb over Chuck, my fingers delving into the cavity between his seat and the driver’s side door, but when my fingers closed around the gun’s grip, I almost sighed out loud.

  My relief was short-lived as the sirens came closer and closer.

  Then, right before I was ready to follow Thom out the passenger’s side door, I hesitated and turned back to Chuck, his mangled body. I told myself forget it, even as I climbed back over and stripped him of his watch.

  I pocketed that, along with the wallet, and shoved the gun into the back of my jeans before hopping out of the cab as I half limped half ran into the thick brush that skirted the length of the freeway where Thom was already waiting for me.

  Now, more than ever, we needed to get west . . . to safety.

  If there was such a thing anymore.

  PART TWO

  Certainly, no fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the wide and repeated exterminations of its inhabitants.

  —Charles Darwin

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOTHING SCREAMED LUXURY LIKE A THREADBARE motel bedspread. But after being strapped to a rusting metal gurney for almost a week, I lay back and spread my fingers wide, running my hands over the green and yellow stripes, petting the polyester fibers like they were spun from gold. For the first time in days, my damp hair didn’t contain bits of other people’s brains, and even the scratchy motel robe was heavenly against my clean skin. I felt like I’d won the freaking lottery.

  I was free. Not safe. Not yet . . . just free.

  It was crazy how low my expectations had dropped.

  At least I no longer hurt. The breaks in my right arm and wrist, and the cracked ribs—however many of them had been broken—had healed. I think my lung had been damaged too, punctured maybe by one of the ribs, but eventually even that had mended, and I could breathe just fine now.

  The cuts and bruises were gone now as well, and I wondered when I’d ever get used to that, the remarkable healing abilities of this strange new body of mine. Also, when I’d get used to calling it “this strange new body of mine,” since I still felt like just plain old me.

  If only that were true.

  As soon as Thom and I had run far enough from Chuck’s “accident” to feel like we wouldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves, we’d stopped at a small gas station where I’d planned on using the pay phone in the lot to call a cab. All we really knew was we were somewhere outside a town called Umatilla, a place so small I was pretty sure even the gas station would qualify as a recreational outing.

  Turned out, though, that phone booths these days were really just props. The phone itself wasn’t just dead; the handset was missing altogether.

  So Thom and I had done our best to clean ourselves up in the dingy restrooms out back so we could go inside to see if there was a phone we could borrow. But there wasn’t enough cheap hand soap in the world to make Thom presentable and he’d had to wait outsi
de.

  The kid behind the counter had been cool about it when I’d asked to use his phone, not mentioning the smears of pink I’d made on my own shirt when I’d tried to blot away the blood. He’d passed me a grease-covered cordless phone that had a retractable metal antenna, circa 1990. But at least that phone had worked, and the cab had come for us within twenty minutes.

  For an extra twenty bucks, the cabbie had even taken us as far as Pasco, Washington, which was back over the bridge Chuck had just brought us across, but it was also the closest place he said we could catch a Greyhound bus.

  The bad news was that the next bus wasn’t scheduled until eight the next morning.

  The good news was that Chuck’s wallet had been fat with cash; over three hundred bucks worth, which was partly why it had been like winning the lottery. If you could say “winning the lottery” after some guy blew his brains out while being hijacked by an interstellar transmission.

  So, yeah, winning the lottery might not have been exactly right, but Chuck’s money meant Thom and I could get a motel room for the night while we waited for the next bus to Portland, where we’d buy our connecting tickets.

  It also meant I was able to take a nice hot shower. It was crazy how hard I’d had to scrub to get all the dried bits of brain matter off, both Blondie’s and Chuck’s.

  While Thom took his turn in the shower, I switched on the news to search for reports of the crashed semi.

  What I was really looking for was anything that said the cops had known Thom or I had been there. I had no idea how—fingerprints or witnesses—whatever it was they did to locate people.

  “Anything?” Thom asked, when he came out of the bathroom. He was cleaner after showering, but he’d already put on the clothes he’d been wearing before, the ones we’d had to “borrow” for him back at the asylum. The sweatpants were loose on him, and not his usual neat, khaki style. Made worse now because they were torn and stained.

  Chuck’s cash would come in handy for more than just motels and bus tickets if we planned to go unnoticed.

  I shook my head. “Not yet.” I turned the volume all the way down, but left the newsfeed on, just in case. “You look better.” And he did. The cuts on his face had healed, only a faint pucker remained to show anything had happened at all. With a little more time, those too would fade. Eventually there’d be no evidence at all.