Exodus 2022 (48 page)

He didn’t understand the reason for the emotion. Didn’t know what it meant. But he felt it now spreading like a rumor across the land. Spreading out in waves from the boulder, the epicenter of the change.

Collins whispered to Ring, “What’s happening?”

Ring shook his head. Said nothing.

Beck stood rooted, motionless in the center of the great stone. Shut his eyes. Breathed.

Minutes passed, and the tension on the prairie seemed to dissipate a tiny bit. The animals shuffled. Shifted positions. Murmured.

Wind whistled around the boulder, and Beck stood frozen beneath the stars. A statue. 

Ring pulled Collins and Kehler close and whispered, the fatigue in his voice evident, “I don’t know what’s going on with Beck—but I know we have work to do.”

Kehler and Collins regarded him skeptically.

Ring said, “I still believe events here will unfold much like they did in the sea, and we need to be ready. When the Nexus Animal appears, we’ll be able to spot her. She’ll be the last to transit the gate, so there should be plenty of time to locate, track, and sedate her, before she gets near the cliff.”

Collins nodded and reached for the duffel bag containing the tranquilizer guns. He looked at Kehler. “We should prep. Run through this.”

Collins heard a noise and turned to find Beck standing over him, eyes open, face relaxed and confident in the starlight. “Weapons won’t be necessary,” he said mildly.

He lifted his eyes toward the sea of creatures waiting on the plain.

“The leader will come here,” he said. “To me. She has no choice.”

ELLA TOLLEFSON STOOD
on the edge of Beck’s makeshift camp, staring into the darkness and breathing the cool, rain-washed air. The great bear sat nearby, relaxed, watching her closely.

Ella closed her eyes and listened to the sounds on the plain, to the animals massed in the tens of thousands. She could hear deeper sounds, too: music, soft and ethereal. Flowing, it seemed, from the Earth itself.

She felt the energy and the music uniting the great host, gently calling to it, animating it, filling it with anticipation.

And now she sensed an unwelcome thread in the conversation. A discordant note in an otherwise perfect composition.

She sighed and turned toward the great boulder at the edge of the cliff. The truck had reached the foot of the massive island of granite and the men were sitting inside the vehicle.

Far from the truck though she was, Ella could hear the men. Their voices. Their heartbeats. She wondered at this. Then accepted it as fact.

She heard them exit the truck and ready the gear. Heard Collins and Kehler drag Joe toward the stone and force him to climb. Joe’s heartbeat was weak. Fading.

She focused her mind on Joe. Focused as hard as she could.

I’m here. Awake. Alive. I love you.

No response. He was, she guessed, too weak now to receive her thoughts.

She turned, tears in her eyes.

There isn’t much time
, she told herself.
Not much time at all.

Pilot Jeff Donaldson awoke to the sound of footsteps outside the Bell L4. He opened his eyes and looked around. Heard Wicks, asleep in the copilot seat, snoring softly.

Sitting up, Donaldson saw a ghostlike form glide past the front of the cockpit, assumed it was Dodd, and opened the door.

“That was quick. You even give her a kiss?”

It wasn’t Dodd. It was the girl. The prisoner. The woman who’d supposedly been sedated out of her mind.

“Where’s Dodd?” Donaldson managed, a quiver in his voice.

The woman just stared at him, an odd glint in her eyes.

Donaldson reached for his sidearm, and the woman stepped clear of the door just as an enormous shape surged forward, out of the darkness.

Donaldson squawked and fumbled for his weapon. The bear roared and smashed into the open cockpit with such force and velocity that the helicopter rose off of its left skid and shuddered sideways a few feet, tearing free of its tethers.

The bear bit down on Donaldson’s bicep and ripped him screaming out of the aircraft, into the night.

Waking instantly, fully, to screams, roars, and a shower of his friend’s warm blood, Wicks punched open his door and threw himself onto the dirt. An instant later he was on his feet, sprinting into the darkness.

Ella stepped to the L4’s rear door, opened it, and flipped on the interior light.

The dead hiker was there—a bulky, rigid form inside a zippered body bag.

The bag lay twisted and askew atop other bags, as if it had been tossed into the compartment quickly, haphazardly, like a sack of trash—as a sort of final insult against an innocent young man.

Ella climbed into the compartment and knelt over the bag, straightened it as best she could, and found the zipper at the top. She tugged the zipper down a few feet, the sound grating and offensive in the still compartment.

The hiker’s eyes were open, but unseeing. His skin green and waxy in the glow of the overhead light. His hair matted, his mouth locked in an expression of pain. Shock. The area around his neck was black in the light. A pool of sticky, slowly drying blood.

Ella placed her hands gently on either side of the hiker’s head. Kept them there. Closed her eyes.

THE HIKER SAT ON
an ice chest a few paces from the helicopter, and Ella stood beside him, holding his hand.

There was a touch of gray in the eastern sky now—a slowly widening band above the Gallatin Range that glowed like polished steel.

Ella watched the sky and thought about the hiker. What had just happened. She’d known that she would be able to wake him. The knowledge had just been there.

I can walk and speak and breathe. And I can wake this man from his sleep.

Part of her had protested, of course, saying,
This is insane. Absurd. This man is dead. Has been dead for hours. He was murdered.

But then she’d taken his face in her hands, and something had passed between them, like a secret. He’d woken up then. Just as she’d known he would.

Now he was sitting. Staring into the darkness. Breathing.

“What’s your name?” Ella asked softly.

The hiker lifted his head, looked at her. His face was blank, eyes glassy—not quite registering. He stared in the dim light some more and then there was a flicker. A pulse like a darting candle flame.

“I was hiking,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” said Ella.

He nodded as if confirming his own memory. “Guidebook said there were fewer tourists above the cliffs. So I hiked up.”

“And you saw the helicopters,” said Ella. “Came to find out what was going on.”

The hiker nodded. Stared his blank stare. Kept hold of Ella’s hand.

He stretched out his free hand, flexed it. Probed his neck with his fingers.

There was blood everywhere. On his clothes, his skin. But the slash across his neck had heeled completely, as if the wound had never happened.

“He cut my throat,” he said matter-of-factly. “The leader dude.”

“Yes,” said Ella.

The hiker stared into the darkness again, probed his neck some more, as if assessing the quality of a shave.

“What happened,” he whispered. “Is happening? I can’t remember anything after—” He looked up at her. Searched her eyes. “I thought I died.”

“You did die,” said Ella. “But I need your help.”

The hiker gave her a puzzled look. Then seemed to accept her words as fact.

“Edwin,” he said.

Ella squinted at him.

“You asked my name. It’s Edwin.”

“Hi, Edwin,” said Ella. “I’m Ella.”

The hiker watched her for a long time, studying her face in the growing light. “You don’t understand everything that’s happening either, do you?”

“No,” said Ella.

“And you’re worried about what’s coming.”

“Yes. I think we’re going to fail.”

JOE STANTON LAY SHIVERING
on the cold, rain-slick boulder, wet clothes clinging to his skin, wet hair plastered to his forehead. Beck’s men hadn’t bothered to cover him with anything, and he curled into a fetal position, drifting in and out of consciousness as he faced the sunrise.

A part of him knew that this sunrise would be his last, but he wasn’t frightened or alarmed. He wasn’t even sure he was cold anymore. His discomfort actually seemed to be diminishing.

I could just go to sleep
, he thought.
Sleep would feel so good right now.

Sleep.

His eyes snapped open and a pulse of adrenaline shocked him into full wakefulness.

Going to sleep now means never waking up again.
I’m not ready for that. Not yet.

He was weak—too weak even to push the wet tangle of hair from his eyes. But he had some life remaining. A spark, flickering inside of him still.

He decided to focus on something he could control.

I can keep my eyes open. Watch the sunrise and see what it brings. I can do that much.

This simple resolution cleared his mind and calmed his nerves.

Yes. Stay awake. Alert. Something is happening. Something fantastic.

He thought about Ella and tried to find her with his mind. Send her a message. Speak to her.

No luck.

Not thinking clearly enough for that anymore
.

He heard Ring behind him, tapping on a keyboard, eavesdropping on his subconscious. On the flow of information from Mia’s terrestrial counterpart.

Joe didn’t know what Ring was seeing on his screens, but he felt violated all the same. Ring, Heintzel, and Beck had collaborated to hack into his private thoughts. Into a stream of communication meant only for him. He wished he could leap up and sweep Ring and his computers off the boulder, but he didn’t have the strength. Nothing close to the strength required for something like that. Not anymore.

He focused on the sunrise, on the broad swath of prairie revealed in the growing light, and realized his eyesight had worsened.

The landscape before him resembled an impressionist painting. The shapes made sense. But appeared soft. Indistinct. The snow-topped Gallatin Mountains seemed to Joe disconnected from the Earth, as if the entire range were levitating above the plain. Even the animals massed around the great boulder—stamping, breathing, turning, swishing tails and shaking dew from their bodies—seemed to float in soft, individual halos that blended and overlapped with one another to make a larger, shimmering, respirating organism.

Joe watched and felt anew the tension and despair radiating out from the host. It seemed to him that the whole of the assemblage—perhaps all of the creatures massed before all of the nascent gates across the world—was teetering on a knife-edge, walking the thinnest of lines between joy and fear, ecstasy and sorrow.

On one side of the equation: Beck, or, rather, the thing that Beck had become—floating over the stone, radiating darkness, warping, bending and distorting the energy on the prairie, like an enormous black hole. On the other side: the leader, whoever and wherever she was, coming to show the way.

For the umpteenth time, Joe wondered about the identity of the leader. What kind of animal she was. How she and Mia had managed to connect. He believed he could feel her now: A reassuring presence. A friend slowly approaching through the gray dawn mist.

Ultimately, as always, his thoughts returned to Ella, to the woman he loved more than anyone he’d ever met. More than anything in the world.

Ella. Where are you?

Ella, I love you.

Ella.

He wished he could see her again, or at least touch her, with his mind. He knew that neither wish was likely to come true, and tears filled his eyes.

Beck’s men could feel the growing tension, too, and for Kehler, it was becoming unbearable.

He hadn’t slept. His nose was swollen to the size of a tennis ball—and exquisitely painful to the touch. Blood still oozed from his nostrils.

He sat in the predawn light next to Collins, eyes flicking between Ring—hunched over his glowing screens—and Beck, standing rigid and immovable in the center of the great stone. Beck’s eyes were closed still and his body moved not at all. Kehler watched for the rise and fall of his boss’s chest—to confirm that the man was breathing—and couldn’t even see that.

More blood dripped from Kehler’s nose, through the filthy cotton wad taped to his nostrils, and he lost the battle to control his temper. He twisted on the stone and grabbed Ring by the arm.

“What the hell is going on?”

Ring looked up, blinking, a superior, impatient twist to his mouth.

“With what?”

Kehler grunted and made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “With Beck. With the goddamned animals. With everything.”

Ring turned back to his screens like the question barely merited a response. “That’s what I’m trying to ascertain.”

Kehler batted Ring’s laptop with his hand and leaned closer. “You don’t need a fucking computer to tell you this is messed up.” He cast his eyes toward Beck. “That the boss is messed up.”

Ring pulled his laptop stiffly back into position. “Thank you for that valuable insight, Mr. Kehler. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Kehler leaned back next to Collins and sat there, staring out, nose bleeding, as if weighing what to do. He relaxed. His shoulders sagged. Then smoothly, abruptly, he rose to his feet and swung toward Beck in a fluid arc.

“Kehler!” shouted Collins.

Too late.

Kehler raised his gun so that it was an inch from the side of Beck’s head.

Beck moved not at all and his eyes stayed shut, but as Kehler squeezed the trigger the gun melted in his hand and his arm burst into flame.

Kehler screamed, fell back on the stone, and a reverberating, excruciatingly loud
boom
shook the plain—as if the bones of the Earth were breaking, exploding, directly beneath the prairie.