Shouts of disappointment surrounded him.
He could feel the ground beneath his feet rumbling with the shaking of the dam, as it tore itself apart from the inside. There was not much time for choosing the members of this expedition, but he had to take the time to do it. Putting his hand out, he began to touch their heads.
“You will come. And you . . . and you . . . and you.”
The followers pressed forward, each one hoping to be chosen. He saw Carol Jessup—the woman who had been one of the first to follow him. “Please, Dillon,” she begged. “After all we’ve done to help you, please take us.”
Dillon looked into her eyes, then the eyes of her daughter and husband. “I’m sorry, Carol,” he said. Then he touched her husband’s head. “You will come down with me, but your wife and daughter have to stay.” He could see the sting of betrayal in the woman’s eyes. Her husband hesitated. “I said, leave them and come with me. Now!” The man obeyed, kissing his wife and daughter, who cried at the prospect of being called, but not chosen.
He continued through the mob, looking into their eyes, making his choices that, to them, seemed random and capricious. Out of the thousand, he chose almost four hundred to march with him down the switchback trail into the depths of the canyon.
TORY, MICHAEL, AND DREW knew they only had minutes left—if that—for the echoing booms had evolved into the throaty roars of shattering stone, as the dam began to fail.
Dull thuds echoed from above, as the falling pellets of concrete sleet became hail, impacting on their backs.
Tory saw a shadow of a golf ball–sized chunk of concrete drop past her.
Wait a second . . . . A shadow?
“We’re getting closer!” Michael shouted. “Keep moving—there’s light up ahead!”
They scrambled under the hail of falling debris, pulling themselves into a corridor no more than two feet wide. In a dim gray-on-gray, they could finally see the cratered walls. The ground was littered with heavy chunks and up ahead they saw spears of light.
“I think this is the way I came in!” shouted Drew over the thundering around them. “Come on!”
They moved more quickly now that they could see, ignoring the rusted iron rebar jutting from the walls, tearing at their clothes. Finally they turned a corner, and saw what was perhaps the most wonderful sight of their lives—an open doorway flooded with light. They picked up their pace, their exhaustion quelled by the adrenaline rush of their salvation.
Drew had not intended what happened next.
He was in the lead, just a pace in front of Michael and Tory, and so was the first to emerge onto the catwalk that hugged the face of the dam—and then something struck him from above. He cried out in pain as it clipped his shoulder, breaking his left collarbone. Drew saw it only for an instant: the massive bronze form of an angel, its sharp, pointed wings aimed down instead of up, like the arms of a diver. The falling statue tore the catwalk away from the fractured face of the dam, and then plummeted through the power plant four hundred feet below, at the foot of the dam.
The catwalk swung out wildly, like a crane, with Drew still on it. He felt his body slide off, and reflexively he reached up a hand, grabbing on to the rail. With his collarbone broken, his left arm was useless, so all he could do was cling with his right hand to the railing, while his feet dangled above oblivion.
“Drew, hold on!” he heard Michael shout from the doorway in the dam. “Don’t let go!”
Drew’s fear swelled, about to overtake him, and he knew the moment it did, he was gone . . . . So he clenched his teeth, strangled his fear, and began to pump his legs back and forth as if he were on a swing, like a human pendulum.
“Go on, Drew, you can do it!”
He swung, he swung again, and once more. He kicked up a foot; it brushed the edge of the catwalk. “Damn.”
He gave a final push, swung his leg up, and hooked his ankle around it, pulling himself onto the twisted platform.
Then he saw Michael and Tory. The catwalk had swung a full twenty feet away from the dam, and the corridor where they both stood opened onto empty air. They were trapped.
“I won’t leave without you!” Drew shouted.
“Don’t be a moron!” Michael screamed back. “Get the hell out of here!”
“But . . .”
“Just shut up and go!”
“I’m sorry,” he wailed, wishing there was something he could do. “I’m sorry . . . .” He took one last look at them before reluctantly scrambling up the catwalk. With his left arm dangling by his side, he pulled his way along until he reached what was left of the dam’s rim. No one was foolish enough to be up there anymore. The guardrail was gone, and the disintegrating road was full of fissures spreading wider and wider.
Drew leapt over one fissure after another until he reached solid ground, and then threw himself against an outcrop of boulders, clinging to the quaking canyon for dear life, as the entire dam began to give way behind him.
IN THOSE LAST FEW moments, Michael and Tory clung to one another as concrete bolides the size of Cadillacs dropped past them, whistling against an updraft that surged up the face of the dam. The mouth of the tunnel fell away.
“Watch out!” Michael pulled Tory back as the doorway crumbled. Then, from behind, a blast of pulverized concrete dust shot past, like steam through a pipe. It shot into the updraft, and was carried away like smoke.
Updraft? thought Tory.
There were only seconds left now.
That’s Michael’s updraft! Tory realized. That wind is his will fighting the dam! But how powerful was it? How powerful could he make it in the seconds they had left? Not strong enough to stop the mountainous concrete chunks, but maybe—
She grabbed him, making him look at her.
“What’s the wind, Michael?” she demanded. Michael shook his head, not understanding.
“What does it feel like? In your gut—in your head. How does it feel inside?”
“Fear,” shouted Michael. “Terror . . .”
“Then be frightened, Michael! Be more frightened than you’ve ever been in your life. And be it now!”
Michael turned to see the dust flowing into the updraft, and finally it clicked.
He grabbed Tory, clutching her with white knuckles, then he screamed a blood-curdling shriek of absolute fear—and instantly the whistling of the updraft raised in pitch as its strength increased.
The floor gave way beneath them as Michael held Tory, screaming his terror into her ear, and she screamed back into his. Neither of them had the gift of flight—but if Michael’s updraft could make them fly as well as that boat on Pacific Coast Highway, perhaps that would be enough. They clung to that thought as they leapt from the dying dam into the wind.
A MILE DOWNSTREAM, DILLON and four hundred of his followers watched it happen. Chunk after chunk of concrete exploded away, until the entire upper face slid like a sand castle, into the powerhouse below. The powerhouse exploded. An instant later, the lower shell of the dam tumbled, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust shooting heavenward. Another explosion from the buried powerhouse, and then silence.
Behind Dillon, the chosen ones grew silent.
Through the dust, they saw what appeared to be a dark, V-shaped wall of still water—but the air was not clear enough to be sure just yet.
But Dillon was sure.
His power had grown beyond all limits, because holding back the waters of Lake Mead took so little effort, it felt like a mere reflex.
A power like that did not belong here.
Behind him, the four hundred squinted to see through the dust cloud, none of them knowing that they were already dead. Dillon had separated his followers precisely. These were the ones who had been visited by Okoya. These were the soulless. The shells of life, with nothing living inside.
They did not belong here, either.
The Shiprock Slayer had begun the task of removing the soulless—Dillon realized that now. And he also realized that he was the o
nly one who could complete it. Now he focused all his effort on the wall of water. He knew what he had to do, but it wasn’t easy to fight the order his very presence brought. He hurled his thoughts ahead of him, turning them chaotic and disjointed. He battered the water-wall with his mind, struggling to give entropy a foothold once more, so that this lake would fall out of his control, and spill free.
At last he felt his barrier fall, like the tearing of a membrane. Suddenly, the ground rumbled once more, and through the dust cloud burst a white, churning wave five hundred feet high, surging down the canyon toward them.
As the water approached, Dillon had to remind himself that he was not killing the people around him. Okoya had already done that. But for the thousands that would die downstream, Dillon had to accept responsibility.
For so long Dillon had struggled to find redemption—fixing all those who were broken so that he might forgive himself for the destruction he had once caused. But it had never been for them. He had done it for himself; to finally feel worthy. It was a selfish need, masquerading as selflessness.
No more.
For there was only one way to save the world now, and it meant that Dillon Cole had to die in disgrace and never be redeemed.
Let me be despised by the world, he silently prayed. Let my name be spoken with nothing but hatred. Let this act be so horrible, that it shatters the pattern of destruction I’ve helped to create, and sets the world back on its proper track. A world where not a single soul worships me.
The wedge of churning foam pounded forward, a quarter mile and closing. Behind Dillon, the dead-alive followers waited for Dillon to stop it.
But instead, Dillon raised up his hands to receive it.
LOURDES DID NOT SEE it, but she knew something had gone wrong. She knew because of the strange pillar of dust shooting toward the sky like a mushroom cloud. She knew because of the roar of rushing water, and she knew because of Okoya’s scream of fury from somewhere within the circle of buses, a hundred yards from where she and Winston lay doubled-over in the sand.
Apparently Okoya had not gotten what he wanted, which meant Dillon had chosen to destroy himself, rather than the world. He had chosen not to be Okoya’s ruling-puppet.
Lourdes sat up. The revulsion she felt as she had stumbled away from camp had resolved into a pain in her gut, and a sense of unreconciled need—a craving for what only Okoya could supply.
Winston sat in the dust, his hands over his eyes, weeping. All his supposed wisdom, and he couldn’t see this coming. Oh, he had grown, all right. He had grown arrogant and self-absorbed—they all had.
“How could this have happened?” cried Winston. “How could we have done this to ourselves?”
Lourdes tried to find some sympathy. She tried to find a feeling to comfort both of them, but all she found inside was the angry pit of her stomach; and so she left Winston, not caring about his tears. Fighting her hunger, she strode back toward the circle of buses.
The place was deserted. All had gone to follow Dillon. Everyone, that is, except Okoya. Okoya was stretched out against the face of a bus—his arms and legs tied in four different directions with heavy nylon tent cords. He’d pulled and tugged at his bonds, but the job had been well done—he was not getting free. It almost amused Lourdes to see this master of minds rendered impotent by mere nylon ropes.
Lourdes approached, keeping her stride steady, counting each step as she drew closer until she stopped, only a few feet away.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Release me, and—”
“And what?” Lourdes took a step closer. “You’ll crown me Queen for a Day?”
Okoya pulled against his bonds one more time. “Everything that was Dillon’s will now be yours.”
“I don’t need you for that,” said Lourdes. “I know what I’m capable of. If I want the world on a silver platter, I’ll put it there myself.”
“Then why are you here?”
“This is why.” Lourdes squeezed her hands into tight fists, and pushed forth a single nerve impulse. Instantly Okoya began to gasp for air as his heart seized in his chest.
“How does it feel to have our powers turned against you?”
“If you kill this body,” gasped Okoya, “it will free me to jump into another. There are hundreds of people on that road; I could be any one of them, and you’ll never know when I’m coming.”
Lourdes squeezed her fists tighter, but knew Okoya was telling the truth. She released the hold on his heart, and the color returned to Okoya’s face as he pulled in deep, wheezing breaths.
“You don’t know how to kill me,” Okoya sneered, “and it’s a waste of your time to try.”
Maybe so, but as long as he was in that body, he could feel every measure of its pain. Lourdes brought her fist back, and smashed it heavily across his jaw, and then again, and then again, making sure every punishing blow had the full force of her anger. But no matter how many times she struck him, it made her feel no better. In the end, Okoya’s face was bruised and swollen, but his evil spirit would not break.
“I gave you what you wanted,” he said through swollen lips. “You should be grateful.”
She turned and strode off. She did not go back to Winston, nor did she go to see the flood. Instead she headed off in the opposite direction. Okoya had put a hunger in her that could never be satisfied again. She hated Okoya for putting it there, she hated Dillon for having brought them here in the first place, and she hated Michael, for the love he had killed in her.
Her knees felt shaky, her legs weak, but her fury gave her strength to walk away from all of this and not look back.
22. TURBULENCE
* * *
A BODY-BRUISING SLAP OF COLD, AND A TUMBLING LOSS OF control—Dillon had finally given his will over to the will of the water. He felt himself whipped against boulders in the churning currents and his senses began to leave him. Then, in the midst of the maelstrom, Dillon felt a calm numbness begin to surround him like a bubble of peace within the flood, and all Dillon could hear was the heavy beat of his own heart. So this is death, Dillon thought, as he began to feel himself slip out of consciousness.
MEANWHILE, ON THE RIDGE above, the remaining followers, spectators, and a half dozen airborne news crews watched as Dillon and “the chosen ones” were taken under by the torrent. At first, the followers on the ridge didn’t know what to make of it, but as the water continued to pass, wails of anguish began to fill the air as they realized that this was not the glorious event they had been promised; and their minds began the long, arduous task of reconciling what they had just witnessed.
Somewhere in that reconciliation, they would come to accept that Dillon Cole had tricked them all; that he was just another false prophet, and in the end brought nothing but death and destruction. For all those who stood on that rim, for all those who saw Black Canyon fill with white water, there would be many sleepless nights, but in the end, the dead would be buried, and the living would return to the lives they had led before being touched by Dillon . . . and in so doing, set the world back on its balance.
This is what Dillon had wanted—and it all would have come to pass, had Dillon’s power not been stronger than even he could comprehend.
The water surged down the canyon at 200 miles per hour. By the time the canyon widened, the wave was crashing toward the hotels at Laughlin—at 175 miles per hour. In Laughlin, those unlucky enough to be stranded there caught sight of the white foam of the water-wall in the distance as it crashed toward them—at 150 miles per hour. Several new helicopters, barely able to keep up with the surge at first, found themselves easily matching the pace of the flood’s leading edge, clocking their speed at 100 miles per hour, just ten miles out of Laughlin.
There was a figure caught in the telephoto crossbars of one cameraman’s lens. He was riding the crest of the flood’s leading edge, lying on his back. By all rights, he should have been churned down into the water’s killing depths—yet somehow, was not.
Instead he was surrounded by an island of calm water amid the chaos. His eyes were closed, so there was no way of telling if he was dead, or merely unconscious.
It was five miles out of Laughlin that the rushing water inexplicably slowed to below the highway speed limit.
MICHAEL’S POWERS WERE NOT hell-bent on self-preservation.
The moment Michael and Tory fell into the powerful updraft, they were dragged skyward, and as Dillon tumbled beneath the waves during the first moments of the flood, Michael and Tory were tumbled up by the wind.
At a height of ten thousand feet, the dust-filled shaft of wind burst apart, spreading out like a mushroom cloud. Michael and Tory continued to cling to one another as they rode the shock wave of wind, no longer knowing up from down. Michael knew his skill was not one of precision, but of broad strokes. Storms and cloud sculptures were a far cry from controlled flight. The air was now too thin to fill their lungs, and unforgivingly cold. Michael tried to move his fingers and found that he couldn’t even feel them.
“What happens now?” Tory cried into Michael’s ear.
Michael knew he didn’t have to say it, because she already knew.
“Whatever happens, I won’t let you go.”
And in that instant, as he held Tory’s shivering body, he knew he had finally found in his soul the faintest glimmer of love.
But it was too late to change the course of the wind.
GRIPPING COLD.
Breaking clouds.
A long, frozen fall.
And then nothing.
The sudden sense of Michael and Tory’s death snapped Dillon to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and thought the blinding light that shone on his face was the spirit of God, until a helicopter cut across it, and he realized it was only the sun shining through the breaking clouds. He was alert enough to realize that he was alive, and to know that he was floating in strangely serene water. Yet why did he hear it churning all around him?
A moment more, and it all came back to him—everything until the moment he had lost consciousness. Now his body no longer felt the battering it had received from the water. He had already healed himself—although his lungs still felt heavy from the submerged breaths he had drawn.