Plague

  But yes, something. Something moving.

  And a sound. Clickety-clackety, very fast on concrete.

  He saw flashing steel mouthparts, like moonlit machetes.

  He couldn’t tell how many of the massive creatures there were. Just that there were at least half a dozen, each the size of a city bus and close enough now that he could see red eyes glaring malignantly.

  He pointed at the spectators lounging in a parked car. “Get out of that car!”

  The two boys shrugged as if they couldn’t see why they should obey. Then, with a popping of slackening springs and the groan of metal, the car just beside them floated up off the ground.

  They got the idea. They bailed out fast.

  Caine raised the car up and up. It was hard to see color in this light but it looked like it might be blue. A small, blue SUV.

  “Let’s hope this works,” Caine breathed.

  He drew back his hand and hurled the car through the air. It whooshed over his head. It tumbled through the air toward the closest of the creatures.

  It fell short, smashed into the pavement with a crunch of metal and shattering glass, then tumbled into the bug’s mandibles.

  Caine had no time to see what effect it had because a second bug scampered without pause up and over the SUV. One of the bug’s pointed legs pierced the moonroof.

  “I got plenty of cars,” Caine said.

  He raised the station wagon the boys had been sitting in and hurled it in a quick, sidearm throw. The car turned once in the air and hit the leading bug at almost ground level.

  “Yeah, suck on that!” Caine yelled. Not exactly a kingly thing to say, but battle first, propaganda later.

  Caine couldn’t see the creature’s face, but he could see that its legs were kicking randomly, out of any rhythm.

  “Scratch one.” This was going to be easier than he’d expected.

  But just as he was congratulating himself a solid wall of creatures pushed itself up and over the first two. And worse, there were half a dozen of the creatures rushing up the highway from behind him.

  They had circled around!

  He had picked the wrong place for this fight. It was suddenly blindingly clear. The last thing he should do is fight on open ground where they could come at him from every direction like this.

  Caine’s heart thudded, his jaw clenched until his teeth cracked. He’d assumed the tales about the creatures were exaggerated. No. No. Not exaggerated.

  Caine broke and ran. He raced at right angles to the two approaching forces. He leaped a ditch, landed hard, scrambled up and ran flat out across the service road, and flew past the shocked and confused crowd in the insurance company yelling, “Run, you idiots!”

  Two of the creatures were scampering to cut him off. He snatched up a delivery van as he passed it and hurled it quickly—so quickly it flew low and almost hit him in the head as it blew past.

  The crowd in the insurance company panicked. They poured from the narrow door, jamming one another, cursing and screaming.

  A boy slipped, caught himself, but the delay was fatal. A bug speared him with a leg and swept him into gnashing, slashing mouthparts.

  “Oh, no, no, noooo!” the kid screamed. The sound died suddenly, replaced by a noise like a garbage disposal chewing up chicken bones.

  Caine ran down San Pablo with the kids pelting behind him and the swarm was forced to funnel into this more narrow space.

  Things had gone from bad to desperate far faster than Caine could have imagined.

  A second kid was caught by what looked like a black frog tongue firing from a bug’s mouth. She screamed as the bug reeled her in.

  Caine stopped in the middle of the street. Shaking all over. Jaw clenched. He couldn’t outrun them and this was as good as any place: middle of the block so he couldn’t be attacked from the sides, at least.

  The insurance company crowd splintered, kids rushing in every direction, all of them screaming, some beating helplessly against locked doors and crying to be let in. Others scrambled over fences into backyards.

  Caine raised a parked car and hurled it, then another, another, three cars in rapid succession. It was like a pileup on a freeway, crashing, smashing, glass spraying, side mirrors popping off, rims rolling down the sidewalk.

  His furious counterattack may have stopped or even killed some of the bugs—he couldn’t be sure in the darkness—but the swarm never hesitated. Up and over they rolled, like a wave.

  Shaking, he stood his ground and raised trembling hands. If he couldn’t smash them maybe he could just hold them back.

  The nearest bug slammed into an invisible wall of telekinetic power. Its legs motored madly, tearing gouges in the blacktop, kicking the smashed cars, but unable to advance.

  “Yeah, try that!” Caine yelled.

  A second, a third, a fourth creature, all pressed against the barrier, all relentlessly scrambling, pushing, determined. And all the while, Caine stood alone in the middle of the street.

  But for how long? he wondered. The bugs didn’t seem to be tiring. In fact they were scrabbling over one another in a mad tangle of legs and massive silvery carapaces and scythe-mandibles and always the gnashing mouths and glowing ruby eyes.

  He faltered, seeing those eyes, and suddenly the wall of bugs surged a foot closer.

  He redoubled his focus. But he was feeling something he’d never felt before when using his power: a physical push back, as if he was holding them back with his muscles as well as his telekinetic ability.

  Without thinking, he had set his feet in a strong stance, and he could feel the weight on his calves and thighs, even more on his arms. He wasn’t just projecting power as he always had, he was pushing back, at the limit of his powers, being pressed by thousands of pounds of thrust from dozens and dozens of stabbing legs.

  They were just twenty feet away. Piling high against the invisible barrier. With a terrible shock he realized they were climbing over one another in a deliberate effort to get over the top of the invisible wall of energy.

  Then, a far worse shock: some of the creatures had come around Golding Street and were rushing him from behind.

  He switched his pose, one hand for the mass of bugs, one for the onrushing attack. But it would not do. He couldn’t hold them.

  “Should have stayed on the island,” he told himself. He had gambled and lost.

  The two invisible walls were closing in. He was holding back tons of pushing, questing monsters and he couldn’t do it, could not. He just did not have the power. And once he broke, they would be on him before he could blink.

  “Hey! Jerkwad!”

  He glanced toward the sound. Standing, arms akimbo, atop the flat roof of a two-story apartment building, was Brianna.

  “Come to gloat?” he managed.

  “See the front door of that house?”

  “What?”

  “That’s where we’re going.”

  “No time!”

  “No time,” Brianna mocked. “Please. Just go limp.”

  “Go limp?”

  “Yeah: limp. And oh, by the way: it’s going to hurt.”

  He never saw her move but he felt the linebacker impact as she hit him at blazing speed.

  Caine went flying. His shirt was ripped from his back. He spun crazily and fell hard onto the lawn. The bug armies crashed together like two waves behind him. Like the Red Sea closing behind Moses.

  Caine tried to stand, but already there were hands on his back pushing him, propelling him forward at insane speed. He hit the doorjamb on his way through. The bugs swarmed toward the door but it had already been slammed, locked, and barricaded with a chair.

  Brianna stood in the middle of the room, examining her fingernails with theatrical calm.

  “The whole superspeed thing comes in helpful at times,” she said.

  “I think you broke my back,” Caine said. He felt sharp pain in his ribs. But it was very much better than the alternative.

  The door exploded i
nward and a tangle of bug legs appeared.

  “I can hold them, but I can’t kill them all,” Caine shouted.

  “Yeah. They’re hard to kill. You got a plan?”

  Caine bit savagely at his thumb, worrying the cuticle. They were surrounded. The very walls were being battered. The windows were all smashed. They couldn’t fit through the door but they would soon make it wide enough.

  They stood, Caine and Brianna, in the kitchen, the center of the house, as far as possible from the windows, but now the bugs had their mandibles shoved in through the doors and windows, questing, slicing the air, their ropelike tongues lashing madly.

  The entire house was like a drum pounded by dozens of drumsticks.

  “You know, I’m kind of disappointed,” Brianna said. “Situation like this? Sam would come up with a plan.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  59 MINUTES

  SAM HAD COME up with a plan.

  Three, actually. One involved the very faint hope that Jack would reach Little Pete and do something awful.

  The second involved something purely insane. Flying a huge container of missiles through the air, dropping them in just the right place, finding a vehicle with gas and a functioning battery, then figuring out how to fire the missiles in time to save the town.

  That was insane.

  The third plan involved Dekka. He wasn’t even going to tell her about that. Because it wasn’t just insane, it was monstrous.

  None of the plans had a chance of working. Sam knew that.

  Sam’s foot was beyond pain. It was agony. Dekka was doing all she could for him by lessening gravity somewhat but he still had to move forward, and he had to move as fast as he could.

  “How are you doing, Dekka?” he gasped as he hobble-trotted.

  “Stop asking, Sam,” she said.

  “You have to—,” he began.

  “What? What do I have to do, Sam? They’re eating me from the inside, what do you want me to say?”

  “She’s telling the truth—”

  “Shut your stupid mouth, you freak!” Dekka snapped at Toto.

  They were close, Sam could feel it. They had to be. They had to reach the train before the bugs finally burst from Dekka and ate her alive.

  He needed her to live a while longer. To the bitter, bitter end, he needed her and she was spending her last minutes running and trying to help him and he was helpless, could do nothing but keep hoping she would stay alive, suffer some more, conquer her fear, all for a stupid, pointless, doomed plan.

  “There!” Toto said. “I see the train.”

  The light was faint, gray, watery, and inadequate. But yes, Sam could see the train.

  He gritted his teeth and ran now, full out, every step like a knife plunged into his foot with the pain radiating all the way up his leg.

  “I can’t even see which container it was, Spidey.”

  Sam cupped his hands and grew a ball of sickly greenish-tinged light. It swelled until he could see the two faces of his companions. To his horror the light showed a bug had eaten its way through the front of Dekka’s blouse. She was trembling.

  “Dekka,” he said. “You don’t have to . . . I can . . .”

  She grabbed his arm with a painfully hard grip. “I’m with you, Sam. I guess I don’t get to take the easy way out.”

  “This is the container with the weapons,” Toto called. Then, as an afterthought he added, “That’s true.”

  “Sam,” Dekka said. “If I die . . .”

  “Then we fall,” Sam said. “You and me, Dekka. If I have to go, it’ll be an honor to be with you.”

  Sam slammed the container shut and the three of them climbed to the top. The container was not perfectly flat on top, it was ribbed for strength. But the steel ribs were no more than six inches high. They flattened themselves down on their backs, facing up.

  “Here we go,” Dekka said. She spread her hands flat against the container, palms downward.

  The container rose.

  Sam lay staring up at the sky, which was no real sky. The stars were paling. The moon had set.

  How fast were they rising? The barrier was quite near, just a few dozen yards away from the train. For the first time in his life, he wished he’d paid more attention in geometry. There was no doubt a formula for how long it would be before they scraped against the barrier.

  If Astrid were here, she would be able to—

  Scrreeech!

  The door end of the container was scraping and the entire container tilted wildly.

  “Hold on!” Sam yelled.

  He gripped the ribs even tighter. But he realized with a pleasant surprise that he was weightless against the container. He was holding on to keep from floating up.

  Chunk! Chunk! Screeee!

  The container banged a couple of times, tilted even more sharply, and yet rose. Rose!

  Suddenly Sam’s knuckles, chest, and face were against the barrier. It was like grabbing a power line. Pain that obliterated every other thought. It was not his first time touching the barrier, but it was the first time he’d had his face pressed against it.

  “Dekka!” Sam cried.

  “Doing my best!” she yelled.

  The container became more nearly level and Sam could at least loosen his grip on the steel ribs, which allowed him to press his hands down by his side and keep them from being crushed.

  The barrier moved away from his face, blessed relief, but all the while the screeching sound of steel being dragged along the barrier continued.

  Screeeeee.

  Still rising. Faster. The air rushed past as their speed increased.

  How high? They would either stall or fall or, if somehow Dekka could keep it up, they would rise and follow the curve of the dome. As they reached the top of the arc, their faces would be crushed against the barrier again. Sam wasn’t looking forward to that.

  Sam rolled onto his stomach and wormed his way to the edge of the container. There wasn’t much to see below. No lights. No way to know exactly where they were. He wished he had Albert’s map, maybe he could make some sense out of the patterns of shadow and dimly perceived, starlit heights.

  Looking up, he could not see the barrier at this height; it was not the smooth, pearly translucence he was used to. It was more as if he was pressed against glass, seeing stars beyond it. He’d halfway expected to find the stars were something painted on, but of course that was crazy. The barrier maintained the illusion even up here. He felt himself flying, staring out into the near-void of space.

  “How are you doing, Dekka?”

  “I can’t believe it’s working. But Sam . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m numb, I can’t feel it, it doesn’t hurt, but I can hear them, Sam. I can hear mouths chewing, Sam.”

  What did he say to that? “Hang in there, Dekka.”

  “It’s like we’re floating through the stars,” Dekka said. “I’m pretending we’re floating up to heaven.”

  “Kind of hope we’re not,” Sam said.

  The screeching sound had changed pitch as speed built. And there was a very stiff breeze now, pressing down on him as the container, unbound from gravity, flew and screeched.

  “I wish you had not found me,” Toto said. “I was happier alone.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that,” Sam said.

  Sam tried to guess how fast they were going by judging the wind. He tried to visualize being in a car with the window down. How hard did that wind blow when the car was going thirty or sixty or eighty miles an hour?

  Was it blowing that hard now?

  “Oh God, oh God, no, no, I see it, I see it!” Dekka cried and the container lurched hard and sank like a dropping elevator.

  It stabilized quickly and rose to once again scrape along the dome.

  In an unnatural voice Dekka said, “Sorry. I looked. It’s eating my . . .” She couldn’t finish. “I don’t think I have long, Sam.”

  “Glide path,” Sam whispered. If they were
moving as quickly as he hoped, wouldn’t they keep some of that forward momentum even if Dekka dropped them?

  Yes. And they’d hit the ground at terminal velocity and that would be that.

  It felt as if the speed might actually be dropping now and when Sam stuck his hand up he got a shocking jolt. They were nearing the top of the dome and it was flattening out. Soon it would be full body contact and how long could they stand that?

  Not long.

  As the slope lessened their speed would drop and they’d be more and more pressed against the barrier.

  “It’s enough, Dekka,” Sam said. “Start lowering us. But not slowly.”

  “What?”

  “Move your gravity field so it’s stronger at the back end and weaker at the front.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing so that we’d stay tilted away from the barrier.”

  “Yeah. Just do it more. Weaken it all, but more at the front end, right? It should be like sliding down a slope, right?”

  To his amazement Dekka laughed aloud. “If I gotta die, this is the way to go. Wouldn’t have missed this craziness for anything.”

  Suddenly the constant screech stopped.

  The container lurched so wildly that Toto lost his grip and came tumbling downhill toward Sam. He tumbled slowly— they were in reduced gravity—and Sam grabbed him.

  “The people back at the facility would have liked to meet Dekka,” Toto said, with his face inches from Sam’s.

  “I’m sure they would.”

  Another wild lurch and suddenly the container was sliding, dropping away forward. It was like a sled running down well-packed snow on a long slope.

  “I can’t see the ground,” Dekka said. “I don’t want to move. You have to tell me when we’re close.”

  Sam peered into the dark below, trying to pick out anything that might tell him where they were, where they were heading. But it was hills and scrubland and he’d never seen any of it from miles up in the air.

  They were moving fast, sliding down an invisible slope, letting gravity pull them forward as much as downward.

  “My—,” Dekka cried out.

  Like an elevator with the cable cut, the bottom dropped. The container spun sideways. Sam, Toto, and Dekka spilled off.