Okoya raised his eyebrows, and shifted in his seat. “Sometimes an immune response succeeds, sometimes it fails.”
“Where will it happen, and when?” Dillon asked.
“Yes, are you ever going to tell us that?” said Winston. “Or don’t you know?”
“I suspect they will tear their way through a very large, very old scar, in the last moments of their universe,” Okoya said. “My best guess is the Greek Island of Thira, on the seventh of December, 7:53 a.m.”
Winston gasped. “Pearl Harbor! The same date and time as the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
“And the Mongol invasion,” said Okoya, “and the siege of Troy, and the fall of Jericho. Even before your calendar, and the measure of hours, all these events took place on the same date, at the same time.”
Winston nodded in an understanding Dillon had yet to grasp. “Each fraction of creation is a reflection of the whole,” Winston said.
Okoya nodded. “But you’ll need more than a fraction of a response to stop it. The three of you alone will fail; all six of you must come together again.”
Winston looked at him in surprise. “You never told me that!”
“Until you had Dillon, there was no point in discussing it.”
Winston shook his head. “Impossible. Even if we somehow won Lourdes back, there’s Deanna . . .”
Okoya smiled. “Leave Deanna to me.”
The suggestion sent a surge of adrenaline through Dillon’s body, warming his chilled extremities.
“And how about Tory?” Winston said. “You know what they did to her. There’s no way.”
Okoya seemed more sure of himself than Winston did. “The vectors have made a critical error in underestimating you, just as I did a year ago,” Okoya said. “Don’t make the same mistake, and underestimate yourselves.”
“Winston—what did you mean by ‘win Lourdes back,’ ” Dillon asked. “Don’t you think she’ll help us once she knows?”
Winston looked to Okoya, then back to Dillon. “We believe the vectors have turned her to their side.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Don’t you get the news up there in Tessic’s tower?”
“Of course I do—I’ve been keeping track of everything.”
“Well then, you should already know what happened in Daytona.”
But Dillon hadn’t heard a thing, so Winston explained.
“Ten days ago, hundreds of people in Daytona Beach, Florida, suddenly left their beach blankets and drowned themselves,” Winston said. “As if an irresistible force took them over, and they had no control over their bodies—how could you not have heard about this?”
“I don’t know.” The truth was, with the hours he spent scanning the news, he should have known. He could only assume that some events—events that might pull him away from Tessic’s comfortable sanctuary—were screened out. “There’s no question it’s Lourdes, but what the hell is she doing?”
“I would guess she’s flexing her muscles,” Okoya said. “Preparing herself.”
“For what?” Dillon wondered, but Okoya didn’t answer.
BY THE TIME THEY left the warehouse a few minutes later, the sleet had turned to rain and Dillon had to ask Michael how their little summit could possibly have affected his mood for the better.
“If I have to be hit by a train, I’d rather see it coming,” was all Michael said of it.
They piled in the Durango, waking Drew, who slept across the front seat. Dillon wondered how much of the picture Drew knew, and concluded that he was smart to ration his own awareness.
“Still want us to drop you off at Tessitech?” Winston asked.
Dillon searched for the Houston skyline, but it was obscured behind the clouds. He could imagine himself sneaking back in, sliding into bed with Maddy, forcing himself to ignore everything he had learned tonight. Then morning would come, Tessic would greet them for breakfast, and life would be as sweet, and as intoxicating, as Tessic’s liqueurs. It would be easy to give in to that temptation. So easy that he knew he could not return, not even to say good-bye to Maddy. If they succeeded, she would come to understand why he had left. And if they failed, well, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
“If we leave now, we’ll reach Dallas by nine,” Dillon said, and slid into the front passenger seat. As they drove off, Dillon closed his eyes, and warded off his regrets by counting the metronome beats of the wiper blades, until they were far out of Houston.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, FIVE thousand miles away on the island of Bermuda, an accountant and his wife were escaping from it all. These were unpalatable times, and it didn’t take a number cruncher to see the unlucky arithmetic of the days. As he lay there poolside, beside the cellulitic form of his wife, who burned a mottled pink beneath the ultraviolet rays of a midday sun, he ogled the more shapely figures on the beach, longing for his slimmer youth. He dreamed of himself surrounded by a harem of such beautiful women—not so farfetched a thought, he concluded. These were, in fact, strange days. The unusual had become commonplace; inexplicable mischief and miracles were rules rather than the exceptions. Take that bizarre mass suicide in Daytona Beach. Five hundred people, without forethought, without reason, suddenly plunged themselves into the ocean. The Coast Guard was still fishing out the bodies. The accountant had laughed and his wife had been angry.
He yawned, and tried to roll over to sun his back, but found that gravity had shifted. No, it wasn’t gravity; it was him. He was no longer lying on the lounge chair, instead he was standing in front of it. He did not remember getting up. When he turned, he found his wife standing as well. In fact, everyone around the pool was beginning to stand like a reluctant ovation.
At first he found this merely curious, not threatening, for his life experience gave him no way to distill a threat from this aberrant occurrence. He didn’t realize he was walking until his third step, because he had not told his feet to do so—yet they were impelled to move. Soon he was jostled by the bodies around him—a mob as surprised by their sudden migration as he. He tried to crane his neck to see his wife, but he couldn’t move his neck at all; the most he could gain control of was his eyeballs and they darted back and forth with growing concern. He smashed his shin on a chaise lounge and tumbled over, hitting his head on the concrete. He couldn’t even scream from the pain, for his vocal cords were locked as tight as his jaw.
The man got up and moved from the pool, then down a set of stepping stones to the beach, where he realized it was more than just those lounging at his hotel caught in this wave of motion. They were coming from all directions—from all the Bermudan resorts within his line of sight. They ran from restaurants and lobbies, they abandoned their cars, and now in this moment of absolute helplessness, the terror and panic truly set in, for he was on the beach now, marching with thousands of others toward the surf.
And he was in the front line.
Now he understood the terror of the mob in Daytona—understood how their limbs could be torn from their control—how their bodies could rebel and drown them, leaving no survivors to tell how it had been. His feet sank into the wet sand at the edge of the surf, but he kept on moving, the mob pushing behind him. The water rolled across his toes, churning a cloud of foam and sand. He knew the bottom dropped off suddenly a few feet out and although he could swim, he knew his body would continue walking even as his lungs filled with water. He would die and no one would understand.
But then his feet stopped as quickly as they had begun moving, and he stood at attention with the water lapping at his ankles, and there he stayed. The sun beat down on his bald head for more than a half an hour that way. He felt the sunburn on his forehead, nose and shoulders. He felt it would burn him through, but still he could not move. And then came a different kind of radiance; a type of magnetism tugging at his being. He knew, even before she moved into his line of sight, that she was the one who had seized control of his body and the thousands of other bodies lining the beach, as far as the eye could see. She strode befo
re him, ankle deep in the surf surveying the crowd. Not as if looking for someone, but rather taking it in as a whole. Like a general, he thought. A general appraising his troops.
She was a young woman, attractive and formidable in both stature and presence. She caught his gaze for an instant and in that instant he could feel her heartbeat. It was his own heartbeat. He could feel the pace of her breath; it was his own. And he knew this powerful girl could end his life; shut down his heart with a single errant thought. But in an instant her eyes moved on, and he knew he was nothing to her—not even worth the thought it would take to kill him. He didn’t know which was worse—the pain of his will usurped, or the pain of his insignificance.
Ten minutes more and he was released. The entire beach was released. People fell to their knees, crying, whimpering, but still alive. She had brought them to the edge of the surf and had stopped them, then released them. For what reason he didn’t know.
Could she have been one of the—but he cut the thought short. No. That freakish gaggle of teens all died when Hoover Dam fell. But now he wasn’t so certain, for he could still feel a hint of the girl’s presence like static in the air.
He went to find his wife, so they could tend to each other’s sunburns, and they did not speak of it. Not even that afternoon when they chanced to see a cruise ship heading across the Atlantic, and felt the girl’s pervasive aura fade as the ship fell off the horizon.
28. THE MEMORY OF DUST
* * *
THE EMPTY FIELDS FIVE MILES NORTH OF DALLAS/FORT Worth airport had browned and died more than a month ago. Although the weather was clear, the temperature stayed a brisk thirty-five. At one o’clock in the afternoon, a red Durango turned off a sparsely traveled two-lane road, churning up dust. Then it stopped at no place in particular, letting out its five occupants. Three of them walked farther out into the field, the dead brush beneath them turning green and growing denser beneath their feet. Wild mustard bloomed yellow around sudden pockets of bluebonnet and red cosmos.
Drew and Okoya stood beside each other back at the Durango watching the greening of the field—and although Drew swore he’d never allow himself to be left alone with Okoya again, neither did he want to be out in the field with Dillon, Winston, and Michael. Getting here had been an undertaking in and of itself. While the storm over southeastern Texas had ended, so many roads were washed out between Houston and Dallas, that a four-hour drive had stretched into eight.
Up above, a United jet screamed its way heavenward against the pull of gravity. When Drew looked back from the ascending jet, the field before him was almost entirely green.
Dillon was quite aware of the field renewing around him. He also knew there would be no disguising it from anyone who cared to notice, so he didn’t worry himself with it. Like smash-and-grab robbers, they would accomplish this deed by brute force, rather than subtle scheming. There was no time for anything else.
Dillon looked around, realizing that he was a pace ahead of Winston and Michael. As had been the case so many times before, they were following him.
Winston realized this as well, and knew he could have taken the lead. A part of him wanted to, but there was something very natural about being a wing to Dillon’s center. Winston had long since learned that whatever came naturally to the shards was not to be fought.
Michael, on the other hand did not care who took the lead. He had no time for such thoughts, because his task had already begun. He knew what he had to do, and kept telling himself that he was up for it, bolstering his confidence, and thereby bringing clarity to the skies. Compared to Winston and Dillon he felt like a novice, for their skills were so exact and precise; fine brush strokes to Michael’s sloppy finger-painting. Every few moments a doubt would invade his confidence, reminding him that what they were about to attempt was like seeking a single grain of sand in a hundred miles of beach. Such negative thinking was a formidable enemy for him now, because everything depended on his ability to manipulate his own emotions on cue, like an actor.
Dillon stopped about two hundred yards away from the car. “This is as good a place as any.”
“So what do we do now?” Winston asked. “How do we begin this?”
“It has to start with Michael,” Dillon said.
“No pressure.” Michael closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “How far away do you want it to start?”
“I don’t know,” said Dillon. “Fifty miles? Can you do that?”
“Let’s find out.” He took off his jacket and held his hands out wide as if to receive an embrace, but kept his eyes closed. In the cold, it was easy for him to feel the fine hairs on his arms and legs rise, tightening into gooseflesh. He concentrated on the feeling, bringing his attention to his extremities. Then he began to generate turbulence. He thought of bad times and brutal fights from his past; arguments at home; acts of violence directed at him, and acts he directed out at the world. Some were memories, others fabrications, but they had the desired effect. He could feel his fingertips and toes begin to tremble with anxiety, and slowly, slowly he let the anxiety sweep inward.
Two hundred yards away, Drew and Okoya stood beside Drew’s car, watching and waiting. Drew couldn’t feel the slightest change in the breeze. All he felt was . . . unsettled. “Nothing’s happening.”
“It would seem that way,” Okoya agreed.
After fifteen minutes, Drew saw Michael put his hands down, too tired to hold them up anymore. Now he just stood there, with Winston and Dillon pacing behind him through an ever-increasing tangle of brush. At twenty minutes Drew was close to panic. “It’s not working,” he said. “He’s not ready, it’s too soon!”
“It’s his anxiety you’re feeling, not your own,” Okoya reminded him. “Which means it is working. Why don’t you turn on the radio.”
Desperate for any diversion, Drew powered up the Durango, and turned on the radio.
“Now find a local news station.”
Drew searched the AM band until finding one. The big news of the hour was a weather advisory. A wind storm. Gale force gusts had already swept west through Dallas, east through Fort Worth, and appeared to be zeroing in on the airport in between. Callers from the north and south reported winds as well, again moving in converging directions. The winds and accompanying dust storm had shredded signs, torn down traffic lights, and brought the twin metropolitan areas to a standstill. Drew turned to see Okoya smile.
“Michael doesn’t know his own strength.”
Now when Drew looked toward the horizon, he could see it had taken on a strange amber shade in all directions.
Meanwhile, out in the field, Michael concentrated. He didn’t look to the horizon, he didn’t open his eyes. He focused on his anticipation and turmoil, letting his heart rate increase, feeling his heartbeat in his fingertips, then his wrists, then his elbows. Tension bubbled within him. He had no idea how far away the wind was, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Michael,” Dillon said. “Get ready to brace yourself.” Dillon’s voice cracked as he spoke.
Then Michael opened his eyes, and saw his creation. A tumbling wall of dust, hundreds of feet high. A brown tidal wave bearing down on them from all directions. Michael closed his eyes again, his anxiety closing in on his heart.
Back at the Durango, Okoya laughed with glee at the sight, and Drew could only stand with one hand on the open door of the car, staring at this mountain rolling toward them, engulfing the earth.
A jet, perhaps the last one with departure clearance, fought its way heavenward on a trajectory taking it directly toward the dust storm. It looked as though it might clear it, but then the plane disappeared into the cloud’s roiling head. Drew didn’t know what became of it, because now there was a roar in the air, and the ground began to shake like an earthquake.
Suddenly Drew realized they were out in the middle of nowhere. There was no structure they could run to. No place they could go.
In the distance a farmhouse vanished beneath the dust. A stri
ng of telephone poles disappeared one by one, measuring the distance. It was five poles away.
Drew practically threw Okoya into the car, and threw himself in after him. When he turned to reach for the door, the leading edge of the dust storm was upon them. He pulled the door closed just as it hit.
Two hundred yards away, Winston saw the Durango disappear and he panicked. “Slow it down!” he screamed at Michael. “It’s coming too fast!”
“I can’t!” he screamed back. “I’m trying, I—”
It hit them from all directions at once, banging them into one another, lifting them off their feet and tumbling them through the shredding brush.
Michael felt his flesh abrading away and regenerating. He could have died a hundred times in those first few seconds, before self-preservation kicked in. He bore down, held his breath and found, in the middle of it all, a seed of peace in which he now centered his awareness. Almost instantaneously the wind pushed outward, leaving a gap in the center of the maelstrom; a ten-foot bubble of still air, an eye in his storm in which the three of them now huddled, coughing and trembling.
Dillon was the first to stand and assess the situation. The violent sands that raged around their air pocket kept shifting and changing—but it wasn’t random—nothing in Dillon’s presence ever was. The dust now swirled in shifting moiré patterns. Spirals within spirals, like galaxies revolving.
Now the burden was on Dillon.
This was by far the most difficult task Dillon had ever been asked to perform. It was not just reconstructing a life out of cinders, but sifting out those ashes from a trillion particles of dust—and although Okoya told them this was possible, Dillon’s own faith was sorely lacking.
To Dillon’s right, Michael hunched on all fours, straining to keep the winds churning around the low-pressure eye. To Dillon’s left, Winston tried to tell him something, but Dillon couldn’t hear a thing over the roar of the wind.
The particles of dust churning in the air were already coalescing into a rougher grit, taking on texture and color. Particles of leaves, bits of bark and feather down. The memory of the dust over Dallas.