The Shimmer (22 page)

When the second guard rushed into the room, Halloway shot him in the chest.

The panicked scientists ran for the door. Relieved that their direction took them away from the equipment, he shot all of them in the back.

He picked up the second guard's M4 and checked to make sure that its magazine was full. As he stepped into the corridor, he saw Taggard running toward him. Halloway blew his head off.

He searched the facility and shot two maintenance workers crouching behind boxes in a storage room. He found a female scientist hiding beneath a bunk and shot her, also.

Throughout, he was conscious of the terrible hum. He returned to the research area, satisfied himself that the first guard was finally dead, and put on the earphones.

His headache vanished as the music drifted and floated.

Chapter 38.

Beneath the airbase, Raleigh unlocked a metal door and stepped into a room that he hadn't visited for three years. The smell of dankness and must hung in the air. He saw tiny red and white lights that might have been the eyes of animals, but when he flicked a switch on the wall, overhead lamps revealed that they belonged to a vast array of electronic instruments stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Needles pulsed, and dials glowed. As he examined them closely, he saw that they registered an unusually high level of activity.

Perfect, he thought.

When he had personally supervised the installation of this array, the equipment had been state-of-the-art. Since then, major advances had made it necessary to supplement all the instruments with serious updates that his team had brought. Even so, the existing equipment was doing its job, amplifying energy from the source and transmitting it through the dish concealed in the wreckage of the hangar above him. That camouflaged dish was synchronized with the horizontal dish at the observatory.

Tomorrow night the signal would be amplified even more and beamed through a vertical dish that pointed toward a satellite.

In previous experiments, the links had failed, sometimes with disastrous results. But given the improved electronics that his team was installing, and the unusually powerful energy the source was giving off, Raleigh believed that this time he would finally be able to complete a journey that he'd begun as a boy inspired by his grandfather.

He pressed a button and activated a row of surveillance monitors.

In night-vision green, they showed the ruined hangars as well as the area around the airbase. The superior lenses on the hidden cameras allowed him to magnify images impressively. He watched the dog handler and the German shepherd patrolling the fence.

He switched his attention to the viewing area down the road, where the crowd was out of control, charging toward the fence. He hadn't counted on having human test subjects. The fact that there were hundreds of them provided an even greater benefit.

But what really mattered, he knew, were the test subjects he'd brought with him. The reaction of the men on his team would determine whether or not the project could be reliably continued. They didn't know that by setting up the experiment, they were crucial parts of it.

Chapter 39.

A shoe struck Brent's forehead. For a moment, his vision turned gray.

"Keep the cameras rolling!" he shouted into his lapel mike as people trampled over him. He worried that the director in the station's control room would stop the broadcast if he thought that Brent was being seriously injured on camera, so he did his best to sound in control.

From Brent's perspective on the gravel, everything was a blur of pant legs and dresses. The truth was, he felt smothered. Another shoe struck him, this time on the side of his neck. He wheezed and rolled, trying to get away from the mob. The gravel tore at him. His shoulder banged against the underside of the motor home. Desperate, he squirmed beneath the vehicle as far as he could manage. From this vantage point, he saw shoes, boots, and pant legs rushing past. The side of his neck throbbed.

Any closer to my throat and I might have been killed, he thought.

Suddenly the crowd was gone, and he crawled from under the truck.

"I'm okay! I'm okay!" he shouted into the microphone.

God, I hope the helicopter's getting a shot of this, he thought. The left sleeve of his suit coat was torn open. Blood trickled from his forehead.

Hearing shouts and screams from the crowd, he was about to climb to the top of the motor home and continue broadcasting, but abruptly he saw Anita and Luther Hamilton lying on the gravel. The camera was on its side, its red light still on.

He ran to Anita and heard her groan. "Are you okay? Can you stand?" he asked urgently. "I need to get you away from this crowd!"

He put one of her arms around his neck and raised her. She wavered.

"Come on, I'll take you where it's safe."

The producer and his crew scrambled from the truck. Brent gave Anita to them and hurried over to Luther Hamilton, who coughed and struggled to crawl. Brent helped him stand and guided him toward the back of the truck.

"We need an ambulance!"

"That's for sure." The producer pointed.

Brent turned and gaped at a half-dozen people lying on the gravel.

At the back of the parking lot, people charged against each other, pushing toward the darkness beyond the fence.

"I see them!"

"They're beautiful!"

"Out of my way!"

"Can't breathe!"

Brent picked up Anita's camera and gave it to the producer. "Do you remember how to use one of these?"

"You bet. I even keep paying my union dues."

"Then follow me to the top of the Winnebago."

Brent grabbed the toppled ladder and propped it against the truck.

The tremor in his right hand alarmed him. Feeling faint, he struggled up. At the top, he noted that the station's helicopter had activated its landing lights, illuminating the crowd.

Hoarse from the blow to the side of his throat, he spoke into his lapel mike, describing what he saw. "The people at the back are forcing everyone ahead. Those in the middle are being crushed. The ones in front are being squeezed against the barbed-wire fence."

Brent heard wood cracking.

"I think the fence is about to . . ."

Several posts snapped. The fence collapsed. The people in front dropped with it, screaming as they fell onto the barbed wire. The rest of the crowd surged over their backs, charging into the field.

In the distance, the lights continued to shimmer.

"I hear a sound," Brent said into his microphone. "Luther Hamilton mentioned that sometimes a sound accompanies the lights. I wonder if that's happening now. No, I'm wrong. The sound has nothing to do with the lights. It's--"

Chapter 40.

Standing next to a car at the side of the dark road, Page gaped toward the observation area, where the crowd was out of control. If he'd been alone, he'd have run to help the police, although he couldn't imagine how even ten times as many officers would be able to handle what he was witnessing.

Right now, Tori was all he cared about.

"You were right to stay away from the crowd," he said.

He turned.

She wasn't next to him.

He frowned toward the shadowy road, then stepped toward the space between the parked cars, but he still didn't see her.

"Tori?"

He hurried back to her Saturn. She wasn't inside. He studied the darkness on the far side of the row of parked cars. No sign of her.

"Tori!"

Page doubted that she'd have gone toward the crowd, which had become a single mass that was trampling over the barbed-wire fence, crushing people, and disappearing into the night.

But if she hadn't gone in that direction, there was only one other possibility.

Thunder rumbled.

Page swung toward the murky grassland and ran toward it. Tori had been right when she'd guessed that the observation area was an arbitrary spot from which to try to see the lights. They could be detected from other points along the road, and tonight, to his surprise, he'd had no trouble spotting them. When Tori had pointed excitedly toward the dark horizon, he'd seen them immediately.

I must have learned to see them, he thought. The way I learned to see the cuttlefish.

Or am I just fooling myself?

In the distance, the colors bobbed and drifted. Not only did Page see them much more quickly than on the previous night, but he also saw them more clearly. It was as if a haze had been removed from his eyes. Radiant, they swirled, far away and yet close. His skin seemed to ripple.

"Tori!"

Thunder rumbled louder, the storm approaching rapidly.

Page made his way toward the fence. Thanks to his pilot training, he knew that the best way to see at night was to try to detect objects from the periphery of his vision. Staring straight ahead at something in the darkness achieved less results than if he worked to detect it from the corners of his eyes because the eye cells designed for night vision, known as rods, were located on the eye's perimeter.

He looked obliquely past the barbed wire. To his right, he heard shouts from the viewing area. Over there, wraith-like shadows moved farther into the grassland, attracted to the lights. He also heard groans.

"Damn it, I told you to stop shoving me!" someone yelled.

Lightning flashed, revealing silhouettes in a struggle. A man punched another man in the stomach. When the second man doubled over, the first man knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the head. Other people grappled in similar frenzied fights, so many that Page knew he couldn't stop them.

Then darkness swooped back, seeming deeper than before because Page's night vision was compromised. Unable to wait for his eyes to adjust, he gripped a post and climbed it, using the barbed wire as a ladder, jumping to the ground on the other side. His holstered handgun dug into him.

"Tori!"

A sudden wind hurled dust into his face. He raised his left arm to shield his eyes and moved forward into the murky field. Scrub grass crunched under his sneakers. A drop of rain struck his nose.

He almost tripped over a rock. When he regained his balance, he shifted ahead and tried to continue in a straight line toward the distant lights. The dust made him shut his eyes for a moment. More drops of rain pelted his forehead.

The next flash of lightning revealed silhouettes closer ahead. Once the crowd had reached the field, everyone had separated, desperate to avoid the crush of people that had propelled them over the toppled fence. They looked confused, as if they suddenly realized where they were.

Thunder shook Page's chest. Then he was sightless again, overwhelmed by darkness.

The next moment, the storm unloaded, the force of the downpour making him stoop. Shockingly cold, it enveloped him, obliterating the distant lights. Without them, he had no bearings. Even the lights back at the observation platform were no longer visible.

"Tori!"

Gusts whipped his face. His wet clothes clung to his skin, the cold rain making him shiver. The next flash of lightning struck nearby. He saw its multiple forks and heard a crack. The two-second blaze of light revealed a figure stumbling ahead of him. Then darkness enveloped him again. Propelled by thunder, he shifted toward where his memory told him he'd seen the figure.

Abruptly they collided. He knew at once that the figure was Tori.

Ten years of marriage made it impossible for him not to be able to recognize the feel of her body in the dark.

"Thank God, I found you," he said. "Come on. We need to get back to the car."

"No."

The rumble of thunder made him think he hadn't heard her correctly. "What?"

"Leave me alone."

"You're not safe out here."

Page gripped Tori's hand, but the rain slicked her skin, and she was able to pull away, rushing from him.

"Tori!" he yelled. "We need to get back to the car!"

For a panicked moment, Page couldn't see her. Then lightning revealed her outline, and he charged after her.

"Tori, you could get killed out here!"

Page grabbed her shoulders. Standing behind her, he tried to turn her in the direction from which he'd come. She rammed her elbow into his stomach, knocking him away.

The unexpected blow made him struggle to breathe. Holding himself, he realized that she'd disappeared again.

The next time lightning flashed, he saw that she'd gone much farther than he'd expected. He ran to catch up to her. Again he grabbed her from behind, but this time, his arms pinned her elbows to her sides. He linked his hands around her stomach and lifted her, trying to carry her backward.

She kicked her heels against his knees. When the pain in his legs made him drop her, she spun.

"You bastard, don't take me away from the lights again!"

"Again?"

"If you'd let me stay, if you hadn't grabbed me and shoved me into the car--"

Stunned, Page realized she thought he was someone else. "Tori, I'm not your father."