Marcus crested the plateau, me close behind him, and what lay before us was so different from the landscape of stark beauty we’d stepped away from fifteen minutes before, it was as if we’d entered another world entirely.
The cliff-top was shrouded in green smoke, billowing here and there, seeping up from the very ground, it seemed. Within that smoke, figures darted, weaving in and out, sometimes visible, sometimes not. I could hear people moaning. Someone crying for help. It was like a war zone.
Another volley of gunfire shattered the air to our right.
“Get down!” Marcus said, grabbing me and throwing me to the ground between several small boulders. Then he was down too, practically on top of me, his gun held out in front of us and trained in the direction the gunshots had come from.
The wind gusted, swirling some smoke in our direction, and my eyes began to sting and water.
“Shit,” he said. “That’s tear gas.”
I could feel him scrambling in his jacket for something, and then he handed me a pocket knife.
“Cut off some of your robe,” he directed. “Two pieces, big enough to tie around our faces. And something to cover your hand too.” He nodded at my glowing ghost hand.
I took the knife, popped the blade, and curled myself around so I could hack at the hem. Once I had a hole in the material, the rest was a matter of ripping it into a long strip, and tearing that in three.
I handed Marcus his knife and then his piece of cloth, and we both wrapped our mouths and noses, tying them behind our heads. Then I wrapped my hand, masking my PSS as best I could.
“Hold it right there,” a voice boomed.
I froze.
Marcus froze too, his gun aimed at the silhouette of an armed, combat-ready CAMFer standing about ten feet in front of us.
“Don’t shoot!” someone called from right behind me. “We surrender. Please don’t shoot.”
“Come forward with your hands in the air,” the CAMFer commanded.
Gravel crunched and feet shuffled past me, our fellow watchers from the viewing ledge stumbling toward the CAMFer, only inches from where Marcus and I lay.
I thought they’d all gone by, when something heavy slammed into the back of my leg, grinding it into the dirt. I felt an awful popping sound from my knee as a groupie in a robe literally tripped over me. I bit back a cry of pain, and the guy glanced down, greeted by the slightest shake of Marcus’s head and the dark barrel of his gun.
“Come on, you. Get over here,” the CAMFer barked, and knee-stepper looked up and moved away, joining the rest of his group to stand in a line before their captor, hands on their heads as directed.
I don’t know how Marcus knew, how he understood before I did, but just as the guy raised his gun to mow down that line, Marcus raised his gun and tagged him right in the throat.
Blood spurted from his neck once, twice, three times before the guy toppled over onto his face.
Marcus jumped up, leaving me lying between the rocks, and grabbed the dead man’s weapon, handing it to the guy who’d stepped on my knee. “Get your group to the cliff,” Marcus told him. “Shoot anyone who tries to stop you.”
The guy took the gun, but none of them moved.
“Go, now,” Marcus said, shoving knee-stepper toward the cliff, and he shambled away into the dissipating smoke, his little group of stunned lambs following after him.
“We need to move.” Marcus was already back to me, trying to haul me up by my arm.
I tried to stand, but instead I fell against a rock, pain exploding in my knee.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking me up and down with concern.
“Knee,” I said through gritted teeth. “Popped out of joint, I think.”
“Can you walk?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay.” He bent over and scooped me up in his arms.
“Fuck!” I said, grabbing his shirt and twisting it in my hands. Just having his arms beneath my knee hurt, but probably not as much as walking would have.
“Sorry.” He looked down at me. “But we can’t stay here. We have to find the others and get the hell off this cliff. Can you take the gun? I can’t shoot and carry you at the same time.”
“Yeah, okay.” I took it from him.
“If someone’s coming at us, take a shot,” he said. “Otherwise, we need to conserve ammo.”
More gunshots cut through the night, coming from the area of the stairway.
Then a shadow was charging us, the outline of a gun jutting out in front of it.
I scrambled to aim the gun, to even get my shaking fingers on the trigger.
“Don’t fuckin’ shoot,” Jason called out, running up to us, gun in one hand and dragging Passion behind him with the other. They each had one of Jason’s camouflage bandanas tied over their faces, but their eyes were red and swollen. “They have the stairs,” Jason huffed, trying to catch his breath. “I held them off as long as I could, but there were just too many. They kept getting through.”
There was no question of who “they” were. But why would CAMFers shoot Samantha? It didn’t make sense. If she was on their list, they didn’t want her dead—they wanted her PSS. Then again, they hadn’t killed her; they’d injured her and knocked her off the cliff.
“We have to jump,” Marcus said.
“I can’t do it,” Passion whimpered, her eyes pools of fear.
“What if they’re down there too, waiting for us?” I asked. “What if this is a way to funnel all of us into a much easier extraction point?”
“So, what? We stand here and let them take us instead?” Marcus asked, turning toward the jumping cliff. “We have a better chance of getting away down there than up here.”
“I can’t jump. My knee is fucked,” I reminded him. “And I can’t swim with one leg. Leave me here with a gun.” I tried to remove myself from his arms. “I can distract them and give you more time.”
“No.” He gripped me even tighter. “I can jump with you and help you swim. We’re not leaving you. Let’s go,” he said.
And then we were moving, with Jason and Passion behind us. The terrain was rough, and we had to weave and stay low for cover. Pain blossomed in my knee with every jostle, but I pressed my face into Marcus’s shirt and tried not to cry out. This was a bad idea. My injury was going to get us all killed or captured.
Suddenly, Marcus stopped, staggering back, his legs going weak under us both.
“Put me down. I’m too heavy for you,” I pleaded softly, looking up to find him staring at the ground to our right, a look on his face that stopped my heart cold.
“What?” I craned my neck to see.
Five robed figures lay strewn out in a line looking almost asleep, except for the blood wetting their robes to a slick sheen and pooling on the rocks beneath them. They’d all been shot in the back multiple times and fallen where they’d stood. The one in the middle had his head angled to the side and his hood pushed back enough for me to see his face, Yale’s face, Yale’s eyes open and staring at nothing. Yale who had hated guns and would never have his power.
Jason crouched down next to him and touched his neck. He looked up at Marcus and shook his head. I don’t know why he even did it. We all knew.
“No, not Yale,” Passion moaned next to us, just before she bent over and vomited.
“When the first few got past me, they must have shot into the back of the line,” Jason whispered.
“Where’s Nose?” Passion asked desperately, standing up and wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
But I already knew what was coming. Yale and Nose would have been standing together, side-by-side, waiting for their chance to jump.
Jason moved to the body on Yale’s left and pulled back the hood, revealing a strange ski-masked face and, for a moment, my heart sang with hope and I thought, “That’s not Nose.”
The face looked sunken, like a skull, the nose caved in where his PSS had blinked out of existence the moment he had. He wasn??
?t Nose without his Nose. He wasn’t anything, anymore. Ever again.
Passion moaned again, and I think she would have fallen down on them both and stopped right there, but Jason pulled her away, putting her hand in mine. She clung to Marcus as she silently wept.
“Check for Grant,” Marcus said and a shock went through me. I’d forgotten Grant. Marcus had remembered him, but I hadn’t.
“Oh God, what about Samantha?” Passion scanned the remaining bodies, her face gone utterly white. “Did you see Samantha?” she asked me and Marcus.
“She’s okay,” I said. “She went over the cliff.” I was surprised Passion didn’t know what had happened. Maybe she hadn’t been able to see from the woods, or she and Jason had been too occupied with the oncoming CAMFers, but wouldn’t they have noticed that first lone gunshot?
“She got away?” Passion asked, relief in her voice.
“Yeah,” I nodded. Hey, it was true. Sort of. And at that moment it was more important to keep things together for Passion than to provide her with the details of Samantha’s “escape”.
“He’s not here,” Jason said, stepping back from the bodies. He’d pulled their hoods back and I saw the empty, staring faces of another guy and two girls, none of them Grant.
Jason returned to Nose’s body and reached within his robe, pulling out Nose’s handgun. He checked the clip. “Fully loaded,” he said, looking at Marcus, some silent message passing between them.
“We need you and the ammo with us,” Marcus said, glancing at Passion.
Gunfire sounded again, behind us but moving closer, and under it all the strange humming sound still grew.
“I’ll lead,” Jason said, taking Passion’s hand back.
And then I understood. Jason had wanted to take Nose’s gun, leave us, and exact some calculated revenge on the murderers of our friends. But we needed him and that gun to make sure we all made it to the cliff ledge alive. Marcus had to carry me. And Passion wasn’t going to make that jump under her own power. Revenge would have to wait.
Marcus stumbled, following Jason and Passion now, and this time when he crushed me in his arms, squeezing me until it hurt, I didn’t cry out or say anything. It felt good compared to the stabbing pain inside of me. It was all one pain. Mine. His. Ours.
Finally, we came to the jumping cliff, that flat slab of rock jutting out over the river.
Even as we stood there, two more robed figures rushed past us, hurling themselves down into the gorge, hand in hand.
Shots rang out behind us, very close.
Marcus turned and I raised his gun just as two CAMFers came charging out of the smoke.
My fingers didn’t fumble this time. I pulled the trigger, not once, but over and over again, feeling the satisfying kick back of the gun against my hands, the sound echoing down into the river gorge. The closest guy collided with the ground, his dropped semiautomatic skidding across the rock and straight off the edge of the cliff. I looked up to see that Jason had tagged the other guy but he wasn’t quite dead. It took one more bullet to finish him.
I had killed my first human being. Blood was now pooling from under his chest.
Marcus spun me around toward the cliff so I couldn’t see anymore. “Take off your robes,” he demanded, his voice urgent, setting me on my feet next to a rock I could lean against. He took his gun from me, checked the clip, frowned, and set it on the rock next to me.
The humming was much louder on the ledge, barreling down the gorge like a train coming through a tunnel. And my tags were still absolutely silent. Why would CAMFers come with guns but no minus meters? Why would they shoot Yale and Nose? And where was Grant? Had he jumped already? Was he captured? Was he dead, lying alone in a pool of his own blood somewhere?
“I don’t like water,” Passion whimpered, as Jason stripped her robe over her head for her, then took off his own, letting the wind pull both of them out of his hand and over the cliff.
As I watched them spiral down, I noticed tiny forms below in the river. Most splashing and moving toward the shore. But one or two floated peacefully in place, their robes like black angel wings, floating around them. Thankfully, Passion was too scared to look down.
I scanned the shore for any signs of men with guns, but I didn’t see any. I didn’t see Samantha either, or Renzo or Juliana. Hopefully they’d gotten her back to a car and were on their way to a hospital.
“Olivia, take off your robe,” Marcus barked and then he was yanking it over my head and tossing it to the wind, the wrap around my ghost hand coming undone and flying after it.
Jason was throwing his guns down, letting them fall with a clatter onto the rock.
“What are you doing?” I asked, appalled.
“No more bullets,” he said, Nose’s gun the only one left in his hand.
“You and Passion go first,” Marcus said to Jason, glancing behind us. “I may need you to help me with Olivia in the water.”
“Then take this,” Jason said, handing Nose’s gun to him.
“I can’t do it,” Passion cried, trying to bolt, but Jason still had her hand and he pulled her back, wrapping both his arms around her in a vice hold.
“Okay, here we go,” Jason said and then he stepped off the cliff as casually as if he were stepping off his front porch, a thrashing Passion trapped in his arms.
But they didn’t fall.
They didn’t even go down.
They went out, Jason’s feet treading the air like solid ground, his first step turning into another and another, legs moving forward, propelling him and Passion out into space about ten paces where they finally stopped, just hanging there facing away from us like a pair of lost human helium balloons whose strings had tangled.
“What the fuck?” Jason said, glancing frantically over his shoulder at us, and that small motion seemed to turn him in mid-air slowly, until he was facing us again, still standing out there in the middle of the gorge.
It was his ability. Jason’s PSS leg had finally manifested a power. Apparently, he could air-walk off a cliff and defy gravity.
Passion didn’t move. She was frozen in Jason’s embrace, looking back at me, her eyes gone beyond terror to where terror hides from things. And then she went limp in his arms.
Gunshots rang out behind Marcus and me, and something whizzed past my head.
Marcus turned, firing into the dark, aiming for the shadows moving toward us.
The humming sound coming from the gorge was growing louder and louder, chopping at the air, grinding into my bones.
I looked back at Jason and he was still there, clinging to Passion and hanging in space, and then something huge and metallic and bug-eyed rose up behind them.
It was a helicopter, a gunned helicopter, closing in on us and obviously lining up Passion and Jason in its sights.
“Marcus!” I cried, and he turned back to me, taking it all in with one glance.
“Grab on to me. Now!” he said, tossing Nose’s gun aside and running at me.
And I did. I didn’t even think about it. I reached out to him, extending my ghost hand and winding long ethereal bands around the both of us like rope, binding us and pulling us together as one the moment he reached me.
We flew off the cliff edge, air whooshing past and wind buffeting us as we went hurtling out over the river and collided with Jason and Passion.
The helicopter was so close that I could see the look of concentration on the pilot’s face as he took aim. I could feel the cut of the blades as they displaced the air, thrusting it at us and trying to blow us apart.
I looked up, saw Jason and Passion hanging above us, Marcus now clinging to Jason’s left leg.
And still, we didn’t fall.
Marcus’s hand was slipping. I could see it slipping, so I wound a PSS tendril up his arm and around Jason’s leg, binding us all together as one.
The helicopter made a sound, a blast of sound, and then the world dropped out from under us, my stomach jumping into my throat.
I looked down to see the river rising to meet us.
35
WAITING AND OTHER THINGS THAT SUCK
Pain.
Smacking, cold, drenching pain.
The impact was hard, knocking the air straight out of me.
Someone kneed or kicked me in the chin.
Water surged up my nose, clawing its way to my lungs.
I opened my eyes and every direction was dark and murky.
How was I supposed to swim to the light when there was no light?
And then I saw something. A dark person-shaped shadow moving away from me. Not swimming. Not moving. Just sinking.
So, that way was down.
And the other way was up. The way to air and light and life.
I kicked, ignoring that logic, trying to push myself down toward that shadow and catch hold of it.
Pain instantly shot through my knee and up into my thigh, the agony making me gasp in a little water and whole lot of panic. Shit. I’d forgotten about my fucked-up knee.
I collided with something and turned to face it.
It was Marcus, his eyes wide open, two bullet holes in his shirt, which was drifting around him revealing the empty gape of his chest.
Without air in its lungs for buoyancy, the human body sinks. And Marcus no longer had lungs because his PSS had been disrupted. Even now, he was drifting away from me into the deep dark black.
I reached out and grabbed his wrist with my ghost hand. I willed it to wind around him, to bind him to me like it had up on the cliff, to never let go of him even if he dragged me down into the blackness with him forever.
But my ghost hand refused to obey me. It didn’t like the cold wet world.
And then someone grabbed my other arm, yanking me up, practically pulling my shoulder right out of its socket and I lost my grip on him. I was being pulled away. He was going down. I was losing him.