The Countdown (The Taking #3)(41)

I waited several minutes, and even several more, until we were back on solid ground on the other side. The truck moved evenly, steadily over the highway, and then my gaze slid to Chuck. His focus was as intent as ever, listening. Concentrating.

On what? I couldn’t help wondering, my eyes shifting to the radio, which was still spitting out static and only static.

It hadn’t gotten any clearer, only louder. Sharper. Harsher.

The grating sound grew until my ears began to hurt, and I finally blurted out, “Chuck . . .”

When he didn’t respond, I reached for the knob myself, meaning to switch it off and put us all out of our misery. But Chuck’s hand shot out and caught mine.

His grip was cruel, not at all like the Chuck I’d come to know.

“Jeez, Chuck!” I tried to yank my hand away but he was merciless, and his fingers felt like they were going to crush my wrist.

“Hey! What the hell’s the matter with you?” Thom leaned forward, reaching for us when the radio screeched.

Chuck’s attention snapped toward it, and away from the road. It was so strange the way his head cocked, almost birdlike, that I nearly forgot that he’d stopped the flow of blood to my hand.

What was he hearing that I couldn’t?

Then, in that same weird birdlike way, his focus swiveled back to me.

He was still Chuck, with his lopsided jowl and his hair peppered with dandruff flakes. But there was something in his eyes that made my stomach pitch. Eyes that were no longer his own.

Even in the morning light, I swear it looked like they glowed. The way mine did.

But that wasn’t possible . . .

It couldn’t be . . . I knew that.

Still . . .

I almost couldn’t get the words past the giant lump in my throat. “What’s happening?” I wasn’t sure which of them I was asking, but Chuck heard me.

He no longer pretended to watch the road, yet somehow we stayed on course. I’d heard of cruise control, but this was like full-on autopilot.

Real sci-fi crap.

Like glowing eyes.

Chuck’s voice, when he answered me, was no longer his voice either. I’d heard that sound before . . . in the desert, the night I’d found Tyler. That freaky wheezing I realized now sounded almost electronic, as if someone had hijacked Chuck’s voice box and was transmitting through it, just like the radio.

But . . . no . . . that wasn’t . . . it couldn’t . . .

Except wasn’t that exactly what my dad had heard, the two hikers in the woods with their radio-static voices?

“Time,” Chuck said. “Time . . . time . . . ,” he repeated, and I tilted my head closer, trying to hear his message. He opened his mouth almost impossibly wide and spoke again: “Time . . . is . . . running out.”

Time is running out?

And then Chuck blinked. “Eleven.” Blink. Blink. Blink. “Eleven . . . eleven . . . eleven.” Today’s number—isn’t that what I’d heard at daybreak?—eleven. And then, his voice still electrical, “The Returned must die.”

How could Chuck possibly know that? How could he be speaking in static the way the hikers had?

I wondered if the hikers’ eyes had glowed too. I thought of the way Nancy had growled at me, and a thought hit me: Had Nancy seen them? Was that why my eyes had suddenly spooked her?

“What the hell . . . ?” It was Thom, dragging me back to this. To now. To Chuck.

Every cell in my body seemed to freeze and explode at the same time—microscopic nuclear reactions going off in every sector of my being. And even though only a second or two passed, a million things flashed through my mind at the same time, congesting my thoughts: What was happening to Chuck? What did they—eyes to the sky—want from me? Why was this happening, and what could it mean?

Chuck’s grip started to loosen, and just as I thought he was finally coming around, that they were releasing whatever hold they’d had on him, the same way they’d eventually let Tyler go, he said, in a not-quite-normal voice, “What’s happening? What . . . did you do to me?” He looked at me with his strange glowing eyes, like this was my fault, all of it.

And then I saw it—the mile marker—green marker number eleven on the side of the highway, and everything started to move in double time.

Taking his other hand off the wheel, Chuck reached for me. Before I could react or move out of his way, he had ahold of me and was shoving me—my head anyway. “Make it stop!” he shrieked, remnants of static still shadowing his voice as he slammed my face hard against the passenger’s side window. I heard Thom shout, but that was only a split second before my cheekbone smashed against the glass, rattling my brain so hard I expected the window to explode.

The glass didn’t, but the bone definitely did. Not explode exactly, but when the bone beneath the skin disintegrated, there was an eruption of light behind my eyes that blinded me.

“What the . . . ?” Through the flashes, I saw Chuck reaching for me again at the same time Thom was launching himself at him. I tried to shield myself, thinking, This time for sure. The glass will definitely break this time.

Thom got an arm around Chuck’s neck from behind, but that didn’t stop Chuck, and rather than shoving my head, he reached behind me. Before I realized what he was doing, he had his hand in the exact place where my gun was hidden.