Scorpion Shards

  Dillon had destroyed him.

  There were no crashes, no carnage, no evidence. And yet the wrecking-hunger was gone—it had been more satisfied than ever before; it dawned on Dillon that destroying a hillside, or crashing cars and breaking glass were nothing compared to destroying a human mind . . . . And it had been so easy to do. Finding the weakness in Dwight’s pattern was like finding the loose thread of a sweater. All Dillon had to do was to pull on the thread to make the entire fabric unravel.

  Now, with the wrecking-hunger quieted, he could only beam with satisfaction, his wonder overcoming any self-loathing he might have felt.

  That vague sense of destiny that had begun with the supernova was focused by what happened today. For too long, Dillon had fled from his catastrophes, racked with guilt—begging for forgiveness. But he was stronger than that now. Much stronger.

  “I . . . I have to go now,” said Dwight. “Good game.” Bewildered, Dwight turned and left, forgetting his ball.

  Dillon could sense a pattern now unfolding in his own life. A destiny. A purpose—and although he wasn’t quite certain what that purpose was, he knew it would soon make itself clear. He could hardly contain the excitement that came with this new reason to be. Its very power filled him with something he thought might be joy.

  I could choose this destiny, thought Dillon . . . . Or I could fight it; I could let the wrecking-hunger make me strong . . . or I could let it kill me.

  The way Dillon felt right now, the decision was as easy as it had been to whisper in Dwight Astor’s ear.

  As he watched Dwight shuffle off, Dillon made a pact with himself. No more fighting the hunger. He would feed it, he would live it, he would be the hunger . . . and if his destination was Hell, then he would learn to accept that. But he would not be alone. There would be others he’d be taking with him. Many, many others.

  INSIDE THE DEPOT, DEANNA tried to find out when the next bus came through town, but the fear of being alone overcame her, and she had to get out.

  Dillon had never acted this way toward her before. He had always been thoughtful and treated her kindly. She didn’t know what this change meant, but they had promised to protect each other, and she would protect him, no matter what he said or did. She drew some comfort from the strength of her own resolve.

  She found Dillon playing basketball across the street, alone.

  “We need to get going,” said Deanna, watching him cautiously, waiting to see how he would react.

  “Yes, we do,” he answered. “But we’re not going east anymore . . . . We’re going west.”

  Deanna studied him, thinking that it might be a joke—but then she realized that Dillon did not joke that way. “But . . . but The Others—”

  “We don’t need The Others.” His voice was calm, his body relaxed. Deanna could tell that he had fed the wrecking-hunger, but she saw no evidence of it . . . and something was different this time. He wasn’t racked by guilt. He wasn’t cursing himself. She wanted to question him, to take a step away and think about all this, before his infectious peace-of-mind drowned her panic completely.

  That’s when Dillon grabbed her and did something he had never done before. He kissed her. The kiss felt so perfect, so natural, that she would have agreed with anything he said. She didn’t know whether to feel angry because of it, or to feel relieved.

  “Listen to me, Deanna,” he told her. “Forget The Others; they’re nothing compared to us—you and I are the strongest, the most powerful!”

  It was true—Deanna had sensed that much in the vision. How loud they were—how bright they were compared to The Others as they screamed in the darkness. Her fears and Dillon’s hunger for destruction were certainly far more powerful than anything the other four had to deal with.

  Until now she had thought the strange gravity that had been drawing all of them together was impossible to resist. But if Dillon could resist it, then she could, too. They were the strong ones. This time she leaned forward to kiss him.

  “Where will we go now?” she whispered.

  Dillon struggled with his answer. “Deanna, I think I was meant to do some really big things . . . . I have to find out what those things are, and I can’t be afraid to do them . . . but I’m afraid to do them alone.”

  Her mind told her that this was wrong, but her heart was too close to Dillon’s now. Traveling to The Others might solve her troubles, but she was terrified of making that journey alone. And the thought of losing Dillon was unbearable.

  “These things that you have to do,” asked Deanna, “are they terrible things?”

  Dillon bit his lip. She knew he wouldn’t lie to her. “They might be,” he said.

  Deanna nodded, knowing she would have given him the same answer, no matter what he said. “Then I’ll go with you . . . so you don’t have to face those things alone.”

  As she said the words, she felt something changing around her like a great river suddenly shifting course. Perhaps this was what Dillon felt when he saw a pattern change, and she wondered how large this shift must have been if she could feel it too.

  It was too huge a thing to think about, so she decided not to. She ignored it, pretending it didn’t matter, and after a moment, it all felt okay. In a few minutes they were hitchhiking west on the interstate.

  Meanwhile, in a house not too far away, Dwight Astor poured himself a glass of scotch, downed it, and then poured himself another.

  Part III

  Scorpion Shards

  7. THE SUM OF THE PARTS

  * * *

  I want to forget who I am.

  I never want to leave here.

  I want to stay in this tight circle of four forever.

  SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DUSK AND DAWN, BETWEEN HERE AND there, Tory, Winston, Lourdes, and Michael lay close, touching each other in some way—hand to hand, toe to toe, head to chest, huddling like a litter of mice. This closed circuit of four felt more joyous, more peaceful than anything any of them had ever felt before. Their hearts beat in unison, their breath came and went in a single tide. It felt wonderful to finally be whole.

  Almost whole.

  The place was as solitary and secluded as a place could be; a corn silo on the edge of town, part of an abandoned farm. The dome of the silo had long since turned to rubble, the victim of storms and neglect, leaving a round hole high above them filled with stars, like a portal to another universe. The storm had been washed away when the four of them had come together, and now the air was so tranquil and calm it didn’t even feel cold.

  They were silent for a long time as they rested, and when they finally began to talk, the words that came out were things they never dared to speak out loud.

  “I shared a room with my sisters until my parents fixed up the attic for me,” said Lourdes, her voice so heavy and thick that her very words seemed to sink to the ground. “They said it was to give me more room, but I knew it was to hide me away. That first night in the attic, I dreamed I was floating down Broadway in the Thanksgiving Day parade, so bloated with helium I could burst. A hundred people held me with strings, and all I could do was hang there bouncing back and forth between the skyscrapers, while thousands of people stared and laughed. When I woke up, I could feel myself growing . . . I could feel my body drawing energy right out of the air—maybe even pulling it from other people’s bodies. I had stopped eating, but I still grew. That’s when I knew the problem wasn’t just food.”

  Then Lourdes gently squeezed Michael’s hand, which rested so calmly in hers; Michael focused his eyes on the distant stars. “When I was thirteen,” he said, “my friends dared me to talk to this high school girl who I had a crush on. She was three years older, and a head taller than me, but the crush I had on her was out of control, so I just had to talk to her. I went up to her, but before I could open my mouth to say anything, she looked at me and WHAM! I felt there was some sort of weird connection, like I was draining something out of her, right through her eyes—and I knew right then I should have stopped and
walked away, but I didn’t, because I liked the way it felt. It was cold out, but suddenly the whole street began to feel hot like it was summer. I asked her out, and she said ‘yes.’ Ever since then no girl has ever said ‘no’ to me, and no guy has wanted to be my friend.”

  Winston moved his Nike against Tory’s shoe and shifted his head against the comfortable pillow of Lourdes’s sleeve, making sure not to break the circle.

  “My mother used to get these swollen feet ’cause she stood all day long working at the bank,” Winston began. “It was always my job to massage her feet when she got home. We already knew I had stopped growing, but that’s all we knew. Then one day, I’m massaging her feet, and she tells me how good it feels, ’cause she can’t feel the pain no more, so I keep on massaging. And then, when she tries to get up, she can’t. She tries to feel her legs, but she can’t feel nothin’. Doctors said it was some kind of freak virus, but we all know the truth, even if Mama won’t say it. I paralyzed her legs. A few weeks later, we knew for sure that I was growing backward, too.”

  Winston wiped a tear from his eye, and Tory began to speak. “There was this blind boy in my neighborhood, with allergy problems so bad a skunk could have walked into the room, and he wouldn’t have smelled it. Once I started breaking out, he was the only boy who liked me. Then one day he brushed his fingertips across my face. He pulled his hand away and turned white as a ghost, then he ran off to wash his hands over and over again, trying to wash the feel of my face off his fingers. He came down with pneumonia a few days later and was in the hospital for weeks. He was the first one to get sick from touching me. And that’s how I knew it wasn’t just zits.”

  No one spoke for a while. They rested their voices and minds, listening to the singular whoosh of their breaths, feeling each other’s parallel heartbeats, and it seemed to make everything okay. They needed no more words to express how they felt.

  I want to forget who I am.

  I never want to leave here.

  I want to stay in this tight circle of four forever.

  But they couldn’t stay like this, could they? They would freeze to death. They would starve to death. And they would never solve the mystery of who they were, and why they were dying these miserable deaths.

  Yes, they were dying. Although they never dared to say it out loud, they all knew the truth. Tory’s disease would eat away at her until there was nothing left. Michael’s passion would consume him like a fire, Lourdes would become so heavy her bones would no longer be able to hold her, and Winston would wither until he became an infant in search of a womb to return to, but there would be none.

  Better not to think about that.

  I want to forget who I am . . .

  While the others seemed content to shut their minds down, Tory could not. Mysteries did not sit well with her and she despised riddles of any sort. From the moment they had come together, she, more than the others, had struggled to understand the truth behind their shared vision, and their shared journey, but all she had were half-truths.

  She knew they belonged together, but why?

  The vision told them that two were missing, but who?

  They must have known each other from somewhere, but how?

  The vision had been so contorted, confusing, and overwhelming that it only left more questions in its wake. Questions—and this collective state of blissful shock.

  “The truth is bigger than any of us want to know,” Lourdes had proclaimed.

  “The truth is something we’re not supposed to know,” Winston had declared.

  “What we don’t know can’t hurt us,” Michael had decreed.

  But those were all just excuses. Cop-outs. Tory could not accept that.

  Up above, a crescent moon was coming into view within the circle of stars . . . but something was missing, thought Tory. What was it? Of course! It was the nova on the edge of the horizon. She could not see it, but she knew it was there. The dying star.

  The dying star?

  It began as a single thought, that suddenly grew until it became the key to the vision . . . but not just the vision . . . the key to everything! It was so simple, yet so staggering, she didn’t know whether to believe it or just crawl up into a ball and disappear.

  She broke the circle of four, and the moment the connection was broken, the world around them became cold and hostile once more. The ruined silo was no longer a haven, it was just a lonely, forgotten place where they could all die and no one would ever find them.

  As they all sat up, they began to shiver. It was like coming out of a dream. “What’s wrong?” Winston asked Tory. Now that they were apart, they moved away from one another, withdrawing to the walls of the silo, as if, now that their senses had returned, they were ashamed of the words they had spoken and the heartbeat they had shared.

  “You sick or something?” he asked.

  Tory just shook her head, still reeling from the thoughts playing in her mind.

  “You figured something out, didn’t you?” asked Lourdes. “Tell us.”

  Tory began to shake and tried to control it. “I’m afraid to tell you,” she said, “ ’cause what I’m thinking is crazy.”

  “We won’t think you’re crazy,” said Lourdes.

  “I’m not afraid of that . . . . I’m afraid you’ll think I’m right.”

  Winston looked at Lourdes, and Michael just looked down. A wind now breathed across the open silo above them, and the heavy stone ruin began to resonate with a deep moan, like someone blowing across the lip of a bottle.

  “Tell us,” said Lourdes.

  Tory took a deep breath and clenched her fists until her knuckles were white. She forced her thoughts into words. “We know that all of this started when that Scorpion Star blew up last week, right?”

  The others nodded in agreement.

  “But . . . that star didn’t just blow up, did it?” continued Tory. “We’re just seeing it now, because of the speed of light, and stuff, but it really blew up sixteen years ago.”

  Winston shifted uncomfortably. “What are you getting at?”

  “Winston, you believe we have a soul, don’t you?” asked Tory.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So does every living thing have a soul?”

  He took a moment to weigh the question. “I don’t know—maybe.”

  “How about a star?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Michael. “A star’s not a living thing!”

  Tory looked him right in the eye. “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s just a ball of gas.”

  “So? When it comes right down to it, we’re all just piles of dirt, aren’t we? Dirt and a whole lot of water.”

  Michael zipped his jacket as high as it would go, but it wasn’t just the cold he was trying to keep out. “Speak for yourself,” he said.

  “Let her talk!” demanded Lourdes.

  “I know this sounds wild,” said Tory, “but the more I think about that vision we had, the more it makes sense . . . because it wasn’t a vision at all. It was a memory.”

  Tory took a deep breath and finally spat out what she was thinking. “What if the Scorpion Star was alive? What if it had a soul, or a spirit, or whatever you want to call it . . . and when it blew up all those years ago, its soul blew up, too . . . into six pieces that flew through space a zillion times faster than light, and ended up right here on earth. What if it became our souls? What if it became us?”

  Lourdes heaved herself closer to Tory. “And sixteen years later,” added Lourdes, “when we saw the light of the explosion, it reminded us . . . and we started to move toward one another like it was an instinct.”

  “No!” Winston shook his head furiously. “No, you’re crazy.” He put his hands over his ears and pulled his knees up. “And anyway,” he said, “if it’s true, we’d all have been born on the same day, wouldn’t we? The same day the star exploded.”

  Tory hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t thought it through that far yet
.

  “When’s your birthday?” Winston asked her.

  “May twenty-third?” she offered.

  “Ha!” shouted Winston. “My birthday’s June fifteenth! You’re wrong!”

  “Maybe not,” said Michael, and all eyes turned to him. “I was born on April twentieth, but I was six weeks premature. I was supposed to be born at the beginning of June.” He turned to Tory. “Were you early or late?”

  Tory shrugged. “Don’t know. My mother and me . . . we didn’t talk much.”

  “I was right on time,” chimed in Lourdes. “June second.”

  Everyone turned to Winston.

  “June fifteenth, huh?” said Michael. “I’ll bet you were two weeks late, weren’t you?”

  Winston wouldn’t look him in the eye. He pulled his knees up to his chest again.

  “Well, Winston?” said Tory.

  Winston picked the ground with a twig and finally said, “My mom always said I was too stubborn to come into this world when I was expected. I came in my own time . . . two weeks late.”

  Tory gasped. “Then we were all supposed to be born on the same day!”

  Michael nodded. “Not just the same day . . . but the same second, I’ll bet.” He looked down, and found in the debris of the silo the shattered remains of an ancient Coke bottle—he picked it up and pieced the shards of the bottle together. “Check this out—sixteen years ago, our parents conceived each of us at the same instant in time . . . and at that same moment . . . BOOM!” He dropped the bottle, and the shards scattered as they hit the hard earth. “. . . The star died . . . and we got ready to be born.”

  Winston stared at the broken glass, looking a little bit sick. He didn’t say anything—just closed his eyes and held his knees tightly to his chest. Tory could tell that he was trying desperately to make this information go away. The way he looked at things—it’s like he wanted all of creation to fit nice and neatly in a little box, and whatever didn’t fit he just ignored. Well, this time Tory knew he couldn’t ignore it—he’d have to stretch that little box.