Quake (25 page)

“Okay, now it's empty,” Clay said with more confidence than Faith was willing to buy into.

They all waited a few minutes while Jade did a quick fly over the zoo, just to make sure, while Faith looked across the expanse of the grounds and the park that surrounded it, four hundred acres of abandoned space.

“Dylan, I need you,” she said, holding a hand out toward him. When their hands touched she thought of what they'd done in the fallen city, the mountain she had somehow moved with her mind. Dylan tightened his grip and closed his eyes, but Faith looked to the sky.

“What is that?” Clay asked. He heard it first—then they all did—the sound of something unimaginably huge moving off the ground in the distance.

“Come to me,” Faith said. “Cover this darkness once and for all. Do it now.”

The mountain rushed up into the sky and tumbled end over end in the air. It cut the space between the city and zoo in half faster than any of them could believe. Dylan opened his eyes and looked at Earl.

“You might want to back up a little.”

“No doubt,” Earl agreed, pushing his team back to the farthest edge of the parking lot and all the way into the woods.

Jade, Faith, and Dylan flew up into the air and backed away from the zoo, leaving only Wade and Clara in harm's way. The cage they were held aloft in was right on the edge of the entry gate.

“Don't do this, Faith,” Clara pleaded as the mountain rapidly approached. “Please.”

Wade used what little strength he had left to pick up a car with his mind and hurl it in the direction of the sky. It was a feeble effort, hitting the mountain like a spitball and crashing back to the earth.

Faith brought the mountain in low and let it hover and spin, dropping chunks of earth like rain. It covered every square inch of the zoo and cast a shadow over the ivy cage that took Clara's breath away. It was the thing that could end Wade and Clara, a monster of such breathtaking proportion it made them both cower inside the cage.

“Always remember, I could have put an end to you both,” Faith said. “Right here, right now. And I chose not to.”

Faith pushed her hands forward and the mountain pitched forward, away from the ivy cage and farther over the zoo.

And then she dropped it.

The sound was deep and primordial, a huge dust cloud gathering into the air as the concrete of the parking lot buckled. Faith felt a rumbling wave of power in the air—the
quake
—as a billion tons of earth ripped through the ground and the mountain settled into place. Everything under the zoo was crushed, demolished, hidden like a dinosaur fossil for all time.

“Hot damn!” Clay yelled from the woods off in the distance.

When all the dust settled the whole cowboy clan started talking about a barbecue down at the river and getting out the guitars, and Faith had to cut them short. She put an arm around Jade and looked up at the cage that hung in the sky and the mountain sitting behind it.

“We have a little more work to do. Let's get these ropes cut.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

They traveled low over the ground, pushing the ivy-covered cage through the air with their minds, until they reached the border between Oregon and Nevada, moving the prison cell just above the tallest structures. The four ropes that had held it in place dangled like boneless legs beneath the box while Clara and Wade complained endlessly. They complained about snakebites, squirrel bites, the speed that jostled them into walls and burned their skin, but mostly they threatened to kill Faith and Dylan when they got out. That was the Quinns: always sure they would come out on top eventually.

At a certain point along the way Faith and Dylan stopped and tied the jail they'd built between a gathering of tall trees.

“Are you still sure about this?” Dylan asked. “Wouldn't it be safer if we just killed them both?”

It was the second time Dylan had questioned her logic, and this time she offered a deal if he wanted to take it.

“If you really think we should do that, then I'll go along. But I have a condition.”

Dylan kicked the ground with the toe of his boot, waited silently until Faith spoke again.

“You have to do it with your bare hands. No hiding behind your pulse. If you're going to kill two people in cold blood, you need to take responsibility for how that's going to feel.”

Dylan looked up at the cage thoughtfully, then back at Faith. She secretly hoped he wouldn't take the bait, because she wanted to believe the man she loved couldn't do it, not even to the Quinns.

He surprised her by flying up to the cage and peering inside, and not being able to help herself, she followed. Inside, both Clara and Wade were badly weakened. It would be easy enough to pull them against their will into the ivy and hold them until they stopped breathing.

“I'll open the door for you if this is really what you want,” Faith said. “I understand how much they took from you.”

For a long moment Dylan stared at the two people who had caused him so much pain. He turned to Faith, put an arm around her, pulled her close.

“Keeping you safe is all I care about. But I can't do it. I won't.”

Faith turned into an embrace and they kissed. She touched his battered arms and looked into his eyes, smiling. She didn't have to speak. Dylan knew how she felt.
It makes me happy you couldn't do it.

“Get a room, losers,” Clara said.

Faith and Dylan laughed a little bit at Clara's bitterness and spiraled to the ground, their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

They rested for the night, taking turns watching the cage, and an hour before dawn they moved once more. As the sun came up over the Western State, they found themselves surrounded by an armed air patrol. These soldiers knew by now what they were dealing with in Faith and Dylan—two second pulses, unstoppable—and when they were a mile away from the Western State a negotiation ensued.

“We can't let you any closer than this,” a voice said. “Too risky. We don't know what you might do. Our only choice would be to open fire with everything we've got.”

The commander was inside the Western State, no doubt sitting next to the president, but he was communicating through a hover drone floating fifty yards away from Faith. A few dozen more armed drones flew like honeybees around the perimeter, along with a whole battalion of Western State troops in jet packs and hovercraft.

Faith observed all the firepower that surrounded her and fairly marveled at the fact that none of it was capable of inflicting so much as a scratch across her skin.

“We don't need to go any closer than this,” Faith said. She didn't have to yell over the sound of all the machinery in the air, because it was all whisper-silent tech. “This is far enough.”

The commander drone, sheathed in blue with a white star for a nose, proceeded closer.

“You'll need to come inside for processing,” the commander said through its crystal-clear audio system. “Will you do that willingly?”

“They do have great technology,” Dylan said. “Maybe we could ask for a home theater system and a crate of movies as part of the—”

“Dylan.” Faith put up a hand in his face. “I love you, but we've got a few warheads pointing in our direction and some net bombs that could actually complicate this situation. Can we cool it on the jokes for five?”

Dylan wilted comically. “Was I joking?” He'd moved past worrying about ammo pointed in his direction and gone straight to comic relief.

“Just stay here and hold down the fort. Can you do that for me?”

“Get the
Matrix
trilogy and all the
Star Wars
movies in high definition and you got a deal.”

Faith rolled her eyes. “It's like working with a nine-year-old.”

“And
Star Trek
,” Jade added. “The original show, not the movies.”

Faith pulled away from Jade and Dylan and hoped the two of them would stay put and keep quiet. When she was close enough to have what could be laughingly called a private conversation, she spoke to the commander of the Western State armed forces.

“I'm Faith Daniels. Behind me are Dylan and Jade Gilmore. We mean you no harm. We've never done anything but try our best to protect you. It's possible that everything we've done will never be known by a single soul in the Western State or any other State system. And we're okay with that. We'd prefer it that way, actually.”

The drone stared at Faith, wobbling gently in the sky, like a jagged eye that never blinked. There was no reply.

“We're not like anyone inside. We're different,” Faith said, glancing around the space she was floating in. “Obviously you already know that. You're just going to have to trust us when we say we've done some good things for you. We've protected you. And we brought you Prisoner One's two children. Clara and Wade Quinn.”

Faith raised her chin to the side, her long blond ponytail jumping softly behind her in the gentle breeze. Clara and Wade hadn't talked for more than an hour, but they talked now.

“She's lying!” Clara screamed, ramming her body into the walls of the ivy cage in abject frustration. It was an act of defiance that must have really hurt given her weakened condition.

“You couldn't hold my father,” Wade said defiantly. “You're sure as hell not going to hold us.”

The words were hollow, said through the mouth of a boy who had become a very bad man. There was nearly no fight left in the sound of Wade's voice.

Faith looked at the drone as if it really was the commander of the army and she moved close enough to reach out and touch it. “We killed Prisoner One. He's gone. He's not going to cause you any more trouble. And we brought you these two. One of them killed my best friend. The other one killed my parents. They've killed other people we love. And they plotted to kill every living soul in there.”

Faith pointed to the Western State and finally a voice emerged from the drone. But it wasn't the commander's this time.

“Ms. Daniels, this is the president of the Western State. I have before me a report created by a hacker who calls himself Aslan.”

“Hawk!” Jade yelled. “He's talking about Hawk!”

Faith turned and put a hand up.
Please, Jade, keep quiet.

“This report, which appears to be completely valid, contains video and audio files of a kind that we would prefer not to share with the general population of the State system. It traces much of your activity over these many months, including the deaths of your parents, Liz Brinn, Gretchen Quinn, a drifter known only as Clooger, a man named Carl, Meredith Gilmore, and a drifter with a known alias of Glory.”

Hearing the names of all the people Faith and Dylan had lost, stacked up neat and tidy like cordwood, took the wind out of Faith. She felt her knees shaking, her mind faltering with the weight of sadness. Dylan came up beside her, then Jade on the other side.

“We've lost a lot of people we love,” Dylan said. His voice was strong and firm, the humor gone. “We'd like to get one back, if you don't mind.”

“We'll give you the Quinns,” Jade said in her defiant way. “We could have just killed them, but we didn't. We could have let them die in the cage. But we don't go around killing people. Even bad people.”

Faith got her legs back and started to speak, but the president started in first.

“As I've already said, we are aware of what you've done. And while it flies well outside the bounds of Western State regulations, we're prepared to look the other way. Aslan has agreed to terminate all copies of this report —”

Faith cut him short: “But only if you grant some requests.”

There was a lengthy silence on the other end in which Faith could imagine the president of the Western State grinding his teeth and hating the fact that he was being told what to do. When he resumed, he spoke in the same measured tone as before.

“We in turn have agreed to take in these two prisoners and release a recent entry into the State system who goes by the name of Hawk. Finally, we agree to let you leave in peace, to live outside the State system, and to do so without a trace. That is the whole of our arrangement. That is our offer. Do you comply?”

Dylan nudged Faith with his elbow but didn't look at her.

“Seriously?”

She got no answer and felt, in the end, that it couldn't hurt to at least ask.

“There are some movies we'd like to have. And possibly a screen to play them on. And some speakers.”

“I've arranged for Hawk to receive a Tablet with every movie and television show on file to date. Commander?”

“Approximately twenty-nine million files, sir.”

“I will assume this complies with your viewing pleasure and we are agreed on terms. I must stress, once again: your story can never be told. These records can never be released. And if you should come across this hacker, Aslan, we ask that you allow us the opportunity to speak with him privately.”