Fear (Gone #5)(117)

One of the soldiers snagged Abana as she ran, but Connie dodged, and only as she ran past him, only when he called out, “Connie! No!” did she realize that the third soldier was Darius.

She reached the barrier.

Reached it. Stopped. Stared at it, at the eternal gray wall.

Darius was behind her, breathless. “Connie. It’s too late. It’s too late, babe. Something’s happened to the device.”

She turned on him, somehow believing he was reproaching her, too emotional to understand what he was saying. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “It’s my boys in there. It’s my babies!”

He took her in his arms, squeezed her tight, and said, “They tried to stop the countdown. It worked, the message got out, and they tried to stop it.”

“What?”

Abana came running up then. The MPs had given up holding her back. The soldiers wore identically strained expressions. Neither seemed interested in the two women anymore.

“Listen to me,” Darius said. “They can’t stop it. It’s this place. Something went wrong and they can’t stop the countdown.”

At last his words penetrated.

“How long?” Connie asked.

Darius looked at the MPs. And now Connie understood the passive, strained look on their faces. “One minute and ten seconds,” the larger of the two MPs, a lieutenant, said. And he knelt on the pavement, folded his hands, and prayed.

Sam was torn between spreading light with abandon and being seen coming, or going without light and moving much more slowly. He chose a compromise. He tossed off Sammy suns at a run as he and Caine made their way to the beach, and then along the beach until they were hidden from view beneath the cliffs.

The ocean had a faint, very faint phosphorescence that seemed almost bright. It could be seen not as particular waves or even ripples, but as a fuzzy mass that was only dark as opposed to utterly black.

“Here,” Sam said, hanging a sun. He pointed at the forbidding wall of stone to their left. “The climb isn’t too bad.”

“You don’t need to climb.”

Sam felt himself lifted off his feet. He rose through the air with the cliff face just within reach. In the eerie light, the rock face look like the blades of broken knives.

Sam scrambled to get from Caine’s grip onto solid ground. Did he dare hang a light? No. Too near the highway. He could sense—at least, he hoped he could—Clifftop off to his right. If he was where he thought he was, he could easily cross the driveway, the access road, a sand berm, and then descend at the point where the highway ran into the barrier.

Caine landed beside him.

“You going to light up?”

“No. Let’s try for surprise number two.”

They stumbled across rough ground, tripping, falling, silencing their curses.

They were just beside the sand berm, a sand wind barrier that ran within fifty feet of the road, when they heard a crack. It was like a peal of thunder, but with no lightning.

It seemed to go on forever and ever.

“It begins,” a strange, childlike, but beautiful voice said. “The egg cracks! Soon! Soon!”

“She speaks!” Diana cried.

“We’re getting out,” Drake cried. “It’s opening!”

“Now,” Sam hissed.

He and Caine motored up the side of the sand. As soon as Caine could see his target he swept his hands down and literally threw himself into the air. The swoosh gave him away, and Penny saw him in an instant.

Sam aimed carefully, but Diana moved between him and Penny. Calm, fluid, as if she’d known he was there.

“Get her!” Caine screamed in despair as a horrific vision left him plummeting, screaming, to the ground.

Sam ran straight for them. He fired once, hitting Drake full in the face. It didn’t kill him, but it would keep him from talking for a while.

Sam shouldered Diana roughly aside, seeing tiny blue eyes follow him.

Penny spun.

Sam fired wildly.

Penny’s left leg caught fire. She screeched and ran in panic, spreading the flames to her clothing.

“No, Sam!” Diana cried.

An unimaginably powerful force threw Sam spinning into the air. It was like someone had set a bomb off under him. And then he stopped spinning. He stopped falling back to earth.

He looked down and saw the baby looking up at him and laughing and clapping her hands. Then the baby took her chubby little fingers and made a motion like she was stretching dough.

Sam felt his body pulling in opposite directions. It squeezed the air from his lungs. It was as if two giant hands had each taken a rough grip on him and were tearing him apart.

He heard his bones cracking.

Felt the sharp pain of ribs separating from cartilage.

The baby was bringing him closer now. Like she wanted to see better. Like she wanted to be sprayed with his very blood as he was ripped in—

Diana stumbled forward. She plowed into her child and both fell, but without hitting the ground.

Sam fell to earth. But he, too, did not quite smash onto the concrete.

Dekka!

She was panting like she’d just run a marathon. She stood in the middle of the road, glaring furiously, hands raised. She looked, Sam thought, like she’d taken a trip to hell. But she had shown excellent timing.

Sam did not hesitate. As soon as his feet touched the ground he jumped up, ignoring the bone-shattering pain in his body.