Monster

  Run away, run away, live to fight another day. The bit of doggerel was playing on a loop in Shade’s mind. Just leave him be. Just turn and go. Live to fight another day.

  Why the hell should I care what this lunatic does? I’m only playing hero because of Malik!

  No, that was not true. No, that was not her own thought, that was a thought that came from . . . them.

  She closed her eyes and looked inward, looked without eyes, with thought alone, at the seething, black, liquid image. She faced it cleanly, straight on.

  “What do you want from me? What is this game about?”

  Was that a ghostly laugh? Was it a sneer echoing across light-years?

  Knightmare seized the moment as the transformed Shade stared into space, frowning with crinkling plasticine features. He did the unexpected, the awkward. He swept his claw toward her, stabbing it at her.

  Shade shook off her reverie and sidestepped the blow, but this was what Knightmare expected and he had already begun the sharp, quick forward thrust of his sword arm.

  The point came within millimeters of Shade’s chest before she twisted and slipped the blow. The sword arm stabbed past her and right through the thick brick wall of the lighthouse. A narrow shaft of daylight entered through the hole.

  It was through that small hole that Shade saw something puzzling: the CHP vehicles were pulling away. Men on foot were running. And from far away she heard voices yelling, “Shade! Run! Run!”

  Not the Dark Watchers, not this time. That was Cruz and Malik.

  Shade spun and bounded back down the stairs, racing out the door, shot a look over her shoulder, and saw the F-16, high out over the water.

  She saw the plume of smoke and fire as the F-16’s Hellfire missile launched, flew, then veered unstoppably toward the lighthouse.

  Shade reached the flattened SUV and spotted Malik half in an abandoned CHP car. Cruz was in the backseat. Shade jumped into the passenger seat and began to de-morph as the Hellfire, with an enormous crack-BOOM!, annihilated the Piedras Blancas lighthouse, turning it into flying rubble.

  For Shade, the world began to move very fast as she de-morphed and sighed with intense relief when the Dark Watchers disappeared from her mind.

  Malik backed the CHP car up, executed an impressive skidding turn, and went tearing away.

  “Okay,” Cruz said, breathless as they bounced onto the 101. “That was some serious superhero stuff.”

  “And now we’re stealing a cop car,” Malik said. “Better and better.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Battle of the Lighthouse

  THIS IS WHAT Justin DeVeere—Knightmare—saw: the disturbing half plastic, half insect, half girl had suddenly run away.

  She was gone. He’d seen her blur-quick glance outside and in a heartbeat she was gone, leaving nothing but a short, sharp blast of air.

  Why?

  He followed the direction she looked, out through the hole he’d made in the side of the lighthouse, and saw the police pulling back at top speed.

  He had a very bad feeling.

  Knightmare spun, stabbed his sword through the back side of the tower, ripped it up, ripped it sideways, and beat on the wall with his claw. The bricks clattered away and he was out through the hole and leaping for the ground when he saw the missile, a blur, and actually felt the wind of it inches above his massive shoulder. It hit the tower and the whole world exploded.

  There followed a period of blackness. He was vaguely aware, vaguely conscious, but his thoughts were scrambled. He was on his face. There was something heavy on his back. He opened his one eye and saw jagged sections of brick wall piled around him.

  Erin was there, yanking at him with her weak hands, yelling things he could not hear for the ringing in his ears. But he could watch her lips, her quite pretty lips, not the time for that, and anyway what was she saying?

  Get up?

  Thoughts and memories all snapped into place and Justin knew. He shrugged off the tons of debris and struggled to his feet.

  Did the Dark Watchers just cheer?

  On his feet, feeling the pain in his eye and the new pain in his back, but defiant and with a growing rage inside him, Justin spread his arms, threw back his head, and roared, “You cannot stop me! I. Am. Knightmare!”

  Erin was there, yelling, and as the ringing in his ears quieted he began to hear, “It’s the girl from Iowa! It’s the girl from Iowa!” and the penny dropped as Justin realized what she was saying, and who he had just faced down in battle. The speed demon was the girl from the field in Iowa. The girl who now apparently had acquired super-speed and a desire to meddle in the affairs of Knightmare.

  You’re the villain. I’m the hero.

  Justin pushed away the pain in his eye, or told himself to at least—the pain was terrible and absolutely impossible to ignore. Her name, that unusual name, came to him and he bellowed, “Come and get me, Shade Darby! Come and fight Knightmare!”

  I’m not the villain, I’m the artist!

  But the speed demon and her friends had hopped into a CHP car, slammed into reverse, and were racing at speed for the main road as more vehicles with flashing lights closed in from north and south. The F-16 circled to come around for another attack. And now, flying low over the water, came two Apache attack helicopters.

  For a moment Justin wanted to cry.

  It’s not fair!

  Erin was just beside him, pleading with him to run, run, run!

  But he was weary. And though he was fast, he was not the girl from the Iowa cornfield, and he could not hope to outrun the missiles he saw already arcing with deadly grace toward him.

  “Sorry,” he said to Erin.

  She seemed puzzled. Her eyes widened. And there were three massive explosions.

  Justin regained consciousness as Justin, no longer Knightmare.

  He could tell that he was in the back of a tractor trailer—the dimensions of the long rectangle were the dimensions of every trailer on the highway, and he felt the vibrations of wheels on tarmac, heard the diesel engine and the sound of wind.

  He was on his back, naked, on a stainless-steel table. Titanium bands two inches thick clasped his neck, elbows, waist, thighs, and ankles. And there were heavy cement blocks encasing his hands.

  No!

  Four people in Army uniforms and maroon berets had four automatic assault rifles aimed at him.

  A middle-aged woman in an impeccable, razor-creased uniform stood watching with avid eyes. The uniform was adorned with small blue and gold rectangles framing a single brass star on the shoulders.

  “You would be Justin DeVeere,” the general said. “I am General DiMarco. Your girlfriend is vapor, thanks to you.”

  “Erin?” he moaned.

  “Let’s get this straight right from the start, you little psycho: each and every time you address me, you will do so as ‘General’ or ‘Ma’am.’” She leaned down close, close enough for him to notice a twitch in her right eye.

  “Is she . . . did . . . Is she dead?”

  The general smiled, showing too many small white teeth. Then she grabbed his nose between thumb and forefinger and twisted it viciously. He cried out and she twisted again, wringing a louder cry of pain from him.

  “What did I just tell you?”

  “I just . . . Is she dead. General?”

  “Deader ’n hell, private, deader ’n hell. You are all alone in the world, Private DeVeere, all alone in the great cruel world.”

  “Why do you keep calling me ‘Private’? General Ma’am?”

  DiMarco patted him on the side of his face. “Well, son, it’s like this: although we don’t use it, we do still have the draft on the books. So you, you sick piece of shit, are now a private in the US Army.”

  “What? I mean, what, General?”

  “Very good: you learn. I like ’em bright, easier to train that way.”

  “But I’m not . . .” The memory of their plan, the one that involved pretending that he had no control over Knight
mare, came back, like a life preserver tossed to a drowning man. “I’m not him, General, I can’t control him! Ma’am.”

  DiMarco laughed. It was a surprisingly nice laugh, full of genuine warmth and perhaps even a touch of maternal concern. But her voice when she spoke carried no such warmth.

  “Listen to me, Private, and listen good. You have two choices going forward. Choice number one is you work for me.”

  Justin was about to ask what choice number two was, but a glance at his own helplessness and the barrels of four expertly handled automatic weapons left no doubt about alternative number two.

  He sagged, exhausted, depressed, beaten. Utterly beaten. Erin, dead! He was alone, all alone, with the whole world out to kill him.

  “I guess I work for you,” he muttered under his breath. Then quickly added, “General.”

  “Welcome to the war, Private,” DiMarco said with obvious satisfaction. “Welcome to World War Three.”

  Aboard the Okeanos Explorer

  THE COMBINATION WAS 8-4-9-6-6-1.

  It was amazing what high-def video could capture.

  Two days passed during which the Okeanos, escorted by elements of the US Navy and watched minutely by satellites belonging to most of the major nations on earth, carried its precious cargo toward the Port of Los Angeles.

  They were just forty-eight hours out of Los Angeles when a storm came up from the south and lashed the ship with near-horizontal rain. Visibility was down to less than a mile and all hands were busy working the ship.

  The box was guarded twenty-four hours a day by an armed member of the security detail, but when hiring the contractors, HSTF-66 had overlooked one small matter: three of them suffered terribly from seasickness. Especially with the ship moving like a roller coaster.

  So the box was unguarded for three hours, and that was more than enough.

  Vincent Vu punched in the combination and slipped inside. He had a flashlight, his camera, and a ball peen hammer he had swiped from the bosun. He spent some time taking pictures, but the rock was a massive gray lump inside a massive gray box and there wasn’t much he could do with that. He could, however, use the cover provided by a howling wind to chip off a goodly sized chunk of rock, which he took back to the hammock that had been slung for him in one of the storerooms.

  By this point Vincent—like everyone aboard except for the largely deaf cook—knew what the rock was. He had overheard nervous jokes from scientists talking about what the rock might do. Talk of mutations. Superpowers. A world on the brink of a revolution that might cause all of civilization to crumble.

  All that sounded good to Vincent Vu. The voices in his head liked it, too.

  He had no mortar and pestle, so he had to smash the rock as well as he could with the hammer, scooping up the flakes and crumbs with his student ID. Then, falling into a depressive state, he did nothing for the better part of a day. But when he woke in the middle of the night, feeling himself elevated into a manic state, feeling a sudden urgent need, he swallowed what he had, choking it down as the larger chunks scarred his throat.

  In the end, five ounces of rock found its way to Vincent’s stomach.

  He went to sleep after a while and dreamed of a strange sort of argument. The voices in his head were arguing with a new voice, but one that did not quite make sounds. No, this new voice did not speak, but it made itself felt, and that feeling was of vast emptiness, of impossible distances, but at the same time of intimacy so immediate it felt as if this new force had cowed his old voices. Those voices, the auditory hallucinations of his schizophrenia, faded. They did not go away, but they spoke now sotto voce, in hurried, frightened whispers.

  The new voice—the voiceless voice—was less angry than his hallucinations. These dark things, these distant yet intimate things, did not touch his auditory centers but seemed to speak directly to his emotions.

  Vincent felt that they liked him. He felt that they had high hopes for him. And he felt, somewhat to his surprise, since he had never quite bought into the hallucinations in which he appeared as Abaddon, that these Dark Watchers agreed, that they were . . . content . . . to have him truly become Abaddon.

  When he woke from the dream, Vincent found reality stranger by far. For unless this was some new hallucination, he was changing in dramatic, extreme ways.

  CHAPTER 18

  Going Home

  DEKKA WAS IN a hurry to get to the last place on earth she’d ever expected to visit again. She was on Highway 1, throttle almost all the way open, her Kawasaki throbbing steadily between her thighs . . . and a large white boy with one powerful arm around her waist. The speedometer read ninety miles an hour, and the road signs said it was another fifty miles to Perdido Beach.

  She had no phone and no apps and thus nothing to warn her of police roadblocks or speed traps ahead. She hoped the BOLO for her had expired or that something more urgent was occupying the authorities. And she was being smart, spending the better part of two days crawling southward on back roads, some no more than dirt tracks, and sleeping one night in a winery shed that smelled of fruit and mold, and the other night in a tumbledown hunter’s shack.

  To her relief, Armo had been a decent traveling companion. He seldom spoke, he asked no questions, and he had managed to procure food for their overnight stay by raiding a nearby farm. He had also purloined a pair of denim overalls that were about six inches too short. Shoes remained a problem—he wore size 13E—but he’d found a pair of flip-flops that were too small but slightly better than nothing. He was less conspicuous than he’d been in nothing but stretched-out boxers, but he was still something of a spectacle.

  After much careful evasion, Dekka had rejoined Highway 1, the famous Pacific Coast Highway, planning to stay with it through the gloom of the Stefano Rey National Park and past the nuclear plant, and from there to Perdido Beach along the back roads that eventually become Ocean Boulevard.

  A XYLØ song kept going through her head:

  We’re diving in the deep end

  We can’t turn back again.

  She was between the devil, Tom Peaks, and the deep blue sea of painful memories and lingering terror that was Perdido Beach.

  She had not yet found a convenient excuse to dump Armo, and truth be told, she did not entirely mind having him around. He had certainly been formidable in taking down the helicopter. The only problem was getting him to do anything that was not his idea. She had quickly learned that she could suggest to Armo—Armo, would you be willing to fill the tank while I go take a pee?—but could not order him to do anything. Even things he wanted to do.

  While sneaking up on an isolated farm, she had had the following conversation:

  “Armo, go left, I’ll go right.”

  “You go left.”

  “Left is darker and you stand out more in the light.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So go left.”

  Long Armo silence and outthrust, pouting lip.

  “Okay, which way do you think you should go?”

  Shorter Armo silence. Followed by “I should go left. It’s darker.”

  Brief Dekka silence. “All right then. Good idea.”

  But there was, despite this, something charming about Armo, who was not bright or even slightly cooperative, but was also not a jerk or a sexist or a racist, or any other form of “ist,” unless it was “defiantist,” which was probably not a word.

  And really, Dekka had to admit, she was hardly the easiest person to get along with, either. She might not have Armo’s extreme ODD, but instinctive defiance was definitely part of her makeup.

  And the nice thing was that Armo extended the same extreme courtesy to her, never ordering, only suggesting or wondering aloud.

  Suddenly, through her helmet and the thrum of the engine, she heard sirens, and they were coming closer. She looked left and right but the highway was flanked by low hills, all covered in scrub grass and squat bushes. There was no place to hide the bike or herself, no turnoffs, no businesses to slip into.
Nothing.

  “Maybe I should . . . ,” Armo said, leaving it open.

  In her rearview mirror Dekka saw two CHP vehicles practically levitating as they topped rises and bounced through dips.

  Seconds away!

  Could she outrun them? Maybe, but not for long. They would radio ahead for a roadblock or call for a helicopter. And on four wheels they were more stable than she was, especially with two hundred pounds of passenger—one pothole and she would go tumbling down the road.

  The nearest CHP flashed its headlights and gave the siren a whoop-whoop-whoop, and Dekka realized with infinite relief that they were simply warning her to move aside. She slowed onto the shoulder and the cars flew past.

  “Now I just need to get my stomach back down out of my throat,” Dekka muttered.

  “Hey, where are we headed?” Armo asked.

  “I’m heading to Perdido Beach; would you like to come?”

  “Sure.”

  She headed south again, going fast but not so fast she looked as if she was chasing the CHP, which, in any event, were soon out of sight around a curve.

  Out of sight, but not for long.

  She motored past an abandoned roadside motel, and a sign announcing a scenic lighthouse ahead. Seconds later she saw not a lighthouse but a pillar of smoke, and a military helicopter landing, and what must be every emergency or police vehicle within fifty miles.

  It looked as if the CHP were starting to set up a roadblock on the PCH, but she was there ahead of them. She gave a saucy wave and passed by, unchallenged.

  “What the hell was that?” Armo shouted above the engine.

  “I don’t think we should stop and ask,” Dekka said. Then added, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think we should stop and ask.”

  “At least we know every CHP in the area is busy.”

  They came at last to the edge of the Stefano Rey National Forest and passed a CHP car driven not by California Highway Patrol troopers, but by a young black man with two white-looking kids as passengers.