Quake (14 page)

“Press that and hold for a few seconds. That will send me a nudge.”

Dylan tried it and, sure enough, the two-way in Clay's hand vibrated three times, then went silent.

“You'll feel it, but no one will hear it. If the coast is clear then press the bar on the side and start talking. Same for me—nudge me first—in case we hit a shit storm or I've got Hotspur Chance in my scope.”

Faith had watched this interaction in silence, noting how much of a dude Dylan was. In the absence of Hawk, he'd fallen in with Clay and his nerdy gadgets.

That had been an hour before, and in that amount of time Dylan had nudged Clay four times, laughing hysterically each time Clay's tinny voice came out of the tiny speaker. The circuits or the transmission bounce or both were making Clay's voice sound as though he'd sucked in a giant hit of helium.

Faith was glad for the distraction, but it didn't soothe her the same way it did Dylan. She took out her Tablet for the third time in ten minutes and searched for a signal, found none.

“I'm beginning to wonder if they're within a thousand miles of here.” Faith sighed, discouraged by the continuous dead zone. She had also begun thinking about the inevitable communication with Hawk.

“Should we tell him about Jade?” Faith asked as she picked up her pace and they continued between the empty buildings toward the Koin Building.

Dylan knew what she was talking about. “Let's see if he's left us a message first and if it's encouraging or not. I'm leaning toward not saying anything. It will only distract him.”

“I agree, but are we thinking like soldiers or friends? I mean, wouldn't you want to know if the tables were turned and I was the one in trouble? Aren't we supposed to be honest with our friends about stuff like this, even if it's hard?”

Dylan didn't answer right away.

“He's in love with her, told me himself a few nights ago. That makes it harder to tell, ya know?”

Faith understood completely. If Jade had just been a friend it wouldn't have been a question. But Hawk was like Faith and Dylan's little brother, and he could get upset about things like this. She worried about him.

“I'm not sure we should have sent Clay on a wild-goose chase.” Dylan changed the subject.

“It will keep them occupied,” Faith said. “And out of the fray. That's about all we can hope for at this point with a zero-pulse backup team.”

Dylan nodded. “They wouldn't stand a chance against Clara or Wade, but if they cornered Hotspur Chance, different story. They could get it done.”

“It's not worth the risk. Not after what happened to Carl and Clooger.”

Dylan thought about it for another second or two and had to agree.

They walked a little farther, careful to stay out of the open as much as they could, and Dylan nudged the two-way. Clay's chipmunk voice carried quietly into the space around them, the speaker set at two out of ten. “What's up, amigo?”

Faith broke a smile at the sound of Clay's voice, high and goofy like a cartoon. “Just making sure you're still out there.”

Dylan held the receiver closer to his face. “You sound like a hamster. A hamster with spurs. And a cowboy hat.”

Five seconds expired with no response, and then Clay's chipmunk voice returned.

“Dylan doesn't deserve you, Faith. Break it off. Do it fast, don't make him suffer too much.”

Maybe it was the intensity of the situation she found herself in, or Clay's mousy voice, or the fact that it was the first genuine smile (half smile though it was) that she'd managed since the Timberline Lodge massacre—whatever the reason, Faith would find later in life that this was one of those rare, unexpected moments that would remain in her memory forever.

It might have also been the fact that when she checked her Tablet once more a signal had finally appeared.

“Dylan,” she said, holding out the Tablet in its stretched-to-large size.

“Well, we know she's not back that way,” Dylan said, a quick glance down the empty street they'd just walked. “We must have just gotten within five miles of her.”

“No, it's less than that. But it's higher elevation. Maybe it messed with the signal. Only about three miles, up that way.” Faith pointed west, in the direction of the ocean. She zoomed in on the satellite view, a function that still worked even out here, away from the States, because the old satellites had never been destroyed. They floated in space, delivering long-stored images to anyone that could tap into them.

“You're not going to believe this,” Faith said as she started walking again. “It's the Oregon Zoo.”

“Jade is at a
zoo
?” Dylan asked as he caught up to Faith and took the Tablet out of her hand. What he saw was that the zoo was surrounded by a mile or more of green. “No buildings out there, no skyscrapers.”

Faith thought of something else. “Plenty of cages up there to put a prisoner in.”

“Guys, you hear me?”

Clay was back, but this time he didn't sound so upbeat.

“Yeah, we hear you,” Dylan said into the two-way. “What's up?”

“We got company,” Clay said. “Better get out of sight.”

“What kind of company?” Dylan asked as Faith motioned for him to cross the street and duck into an alley.

“Not the kind we want, that's for sure,” Clay said, his voice cutting in and out. “Drones, too many to count. The State is on to you guys. You want me to ammo up?”

“Let's have them take cover and lie low,” Faith said, pulling Dylan farther down the alley and into a recessed doorway. Dylan nodded and delivered the message.

“Don't engage, Clay. Stand down and take cover,” Dylan said. “And don't do anything crazy.”

“Same to you but more of it,” Clay said.

Faith and Dylan looked overhead, but they were standing between two buildings. They could see only a patch of blue overhead.

“There,” Faith said, pointing to the farthest right side of their view. A circular drone drifted past, just over the height of the buildings. It was followed by another, then five more, and then the sky virtually filled with drones, blotting out the sun.

“There must be thousands of them,” Dylan said as he pulled Faith back into the alcove by her forearm.

“How low can they hover?” Faith asked, thinking of what a problem it would be if they could descend to street level.

“Too low,” Dylan said as he peeked out of the alcove. Faith looked around Dylan's broad shoulder and saw the same thing he did: a dozen or more drones were slowly moving toward them, a few feet off the ground, scanning every square inch.

“Hawk and Clooger told me about these,” Dylan whispered. “Each one has a pilot sitting in the Western State. These are demolition drones.”

“What's a demolition drone?” Faith asked. Whatever it was, it sounded bad.

“This is how they level zeroed cities. These drones are bombs, Faith.”

The drones were six feet across, sleek and narrow like a disk, controlled by a series of six propellers.

“So you're saying they're about to take Portland, Oregon, off the map?” Faith asked.

Dylan shook his head, ran a hand through his thick black hair. “And the Koin Building right along with it.”

Dylan took the two-way radio out of his pocket again and called Clay.

“You need to get your people out of the city,” Dylan said. “As fast as you can. We think they're planning to level it.”

“Roger that,” Clay answered. His voice was small and static filled. “We have an escape plan; don't worry about us.”

The first detonation took place a few seconds later, about ten blocks away. They felt the earth shake underfoot as a skyscraper plunged to the ground in a pile of rubble.

“What if they hit a building and we're under it?” Faith asked, thinking of the worst-possible scenario. She could see the tons of concrete and rebar crushing Dylan in her mind.

Dylan looked around the corner once more and saw that half a dozen drones were coming down the alley from each side. They stopped moving forward and began spinning in a wobbly circle like dinner plates balanced on a pole.

“I think we better go,” Dylan said, cracking his neck to one side and then the other. “These things are about to blow.”

There was no time to run and the place they were hiding in was about to be blown to smithereens. Faith grabbed Dylan by the shoulders and pulled him in for a last kiss before all hell broke loose. She felt their combined power course through her like rocket fuel and saw, in her mind's eye, the peak of the mountain.

“Time to blow our cover?” Faith asked as she pulled away.

Dylan nodded and despite the risk of what they were about to do, he smiled. “Yeah, let's do it.”

“Let's see if we can get them to follow us,” Faith said. “Keep them away from the Koin Building.”

The words barely escaped her mouth when the first detonation hit. Within a few seconds, a dozen more explosions rocked the base of the building they'd been hiding near. As it started to crumble, Faith and Dylan pulsed, flying up as buildings collapsed all around them.

As soon as Faith cleared the tallest building and found herself in the open air of blue sky over Portland, she searched for the Koin Building. It was easy to spot from overhead because it was the only pink building in the city.

“There,” Faith yelled. Dylan spotted the Koin Building and they both surveyed the situation. Drones hovered in the thousands, clustered together like flocks of crows. They descended around buildings in clouds, blowing them up with terrifying efficiency. Everything underneath Faith and Dylan was being leveled.

“We don't have much time,” Dylan said. “There's too many of them. It's happening too fast.”

Faith looked to the river and saw a rusted-out tanker moored to the dock. It was bigger than anything she'd tried to move before, but she'd felt her powers growing and thought she could do it. If Dylan could hold an entire prison in the air, she could move a ship out of the river and slice it through the sky. She closed her eyes and focused her mind, but the first thing she saw was home: Timberline Lodge, and the jagged peak that towered above. She opened her eyes and stared at the ship, focused on its rusted metal surface with a crushing gaze. Dylan had started picking up debris and hurling it with his mind, taking out one or two drones with each effort. When the drones exploded in midair it was like a fireworks display of color and light as one would blow up another and another, taking out twenty or more in one cloud of explosions.

The tanker rose out of the water like the remains of a dinosaur dripping with mud and water, a metal beast in the shape of a great knife that could cut through buildings. Faith aimed it along a line of hundreds of drones and moved the ship like an arrow. It cut through clusters of drones, shards of metal peeling away until the ship was torn asunder, raining down metal on the fallen city below.

There were still too many drones to count, and they continued moving across the city in a wave of violence.

“There are too many!” Dylan yelled as he came alongside Faith. “We can't stop them all.”

Faith thought of what this would mean as she looked down at a zeroed city on fire. They would forever lose contact with Hawk. They would never find Jade. And Hotspur Chance would very likely destroy half of the American population. She thought of the mountain peak once more—she just couldn't get it out of her mind—and then she took Dylan's hand.

“I have an idea,” she said. “It's big. Trust me?”

Dylan squeezed her hand tighter. “What is it?”

Faith didn't answer. Instead she closed her eyes and thought of Timberline Lodge, the place she wished she could call home. In her mind her gaze lifted to the massive peak and she spoke.

“Move.”

Far off in the distance, the mountain began to quake.

“What are you doing?” Dylan asked.

Faith squeezed Dylan's hand tighter still, every ounce of the power they shared focused on the mountain.

And then the unthinkable happened.

The top of the mountain, the peak she loved so much, broke free and lifted into the air. It was so far away they couldn't see it happening, not yet.

“Let's move around to the other side,” Faith said, drifting toward the Koin Building. As the mountain moved, Faith and Dylan passed over the crushing power of drone explosions, until they were the only things left standing between the Koin Building and total annihilation.

“Faith,” Dylan said. He could see the top of the mountain coming, and it took his breath away. “This is insane. You can't be doing this.”

“We're doing it,” Faith said. “It's both of us. We're doing it together.”

Explosion after explosion rocked the city below as the onslaught moved within ten city blocks of the Koin Building. Faith and Dylan landed on the roof and watched as the mountain settled in overhead, casting a massive shadow over all that lay beneath it.

“This is incredible, Faith,” Dylan said, awestruck by something this big in the air overhead.

The bottom of the peak released rocks and dirt like rain on a broken city as Faith slowly lowered. Like a great cloud of darkness, it descended. Faith didn't drop it all at once; she moved it slowly, into the first explosion and beyond. As the base of the mountain came even with the roof of the tower where Faith and Dylan stood, thousands of explosions erupted. They sounded as if they were coming from underwater as the mountain shook. The sheer supremacy of this thing coming down from the sky blotted out everything it touched.

When it came to rest over the city, Faith looked up at the peak with its sharp lines of stone and ice.

“It's almost like being home again,” she said.

Dylan just shook his head in disbelief. “Almost.”

The two-way radio came to life with Clay's chipmunk voice.