The Rising(106)

They tumbled down the slight hill as a group, fearing the world beneath them had been pulled out like a rug, until all their gazes fixed on the crumbling remnants of Alcatraz prison as it vanished in a blinding burst of white light.





105

MELTDOWN

IT FELT FOR A moment that the very night had been sucked away, trapping them in a kind of vacuum where they felt weak and weightless. Their clothes alternately billowing and then sticking to their skin, the color seeming to blanch from their faces, only to return in the next instant as the world kept jumping from color to black and white and back again.

Alex was squeezing Sam’s hand so tight it actually hurt. She thought her lungs should have been burning from lack of oxygen, but it didn’t seem like she needed to breathe, felt as if she were floating over the ground instead of standing on it.

Back beyond them, up the slight hill half a football-field length away, what was left of the prison building didn’t explode or burn so much as melt. Its shape receded in the blinding light, and when the light finally began to dim the entire structure was gone, just a sprawling expanse of scorched ground left in its place, minus any char or smoke.

Sam felt buffeted by a thick wind and just like that the air was back along with the sky, which, she realized, had seemed to vanish as well, stolen from the world in those brief moments along with everything else. She looked down, expecting to see her clothes melted or torn free, but found them still in place, soiled but not shredded and smelling of something that reminded her of the scent that lifted off a campfire to cling to fabric like glue. And the air felt … well, funny. Kind of staticky, a vague hum that reminded her of a swarm of insects buzzing about coming from inside her head.

She turned and saw Dr. Donati picking himself off the ground, too busy checking his watch to realize blood was running down his face from where he must have struck his head when he fell.

“It … stopped,” he said dazedly.

Sam rotated her gaze about, the San Francisco skyline having gone utterly dark as well. Then it sprang back to life, the entire world returning.

“Hey, it’s working again,” Dr. Donati said, still eyeing his watch.

Something told her that it had been actually working all along, that what just happened had transpired somehow between the passage of seconds. Or perhaps the destruction of the particle accelerator that would have opened the wormhole on this side had frozen time for the briefest of moments, the world, or at least this part of it, needing to catch its breath.

“My head,” Alex said suddenly.

“Is the pain bad again?” Donati asked him.

“No, it’s … gone. I mean really gone. No trace at all.”

“Meaning…,” Sam began, and they all turned back toward the empty patch of ground where Alcatraz prison had stood. She realized the humming in her ears was gone, but the air still felt strange, like poking at it might give her finger a shock.

“Do you know what that was?” Donati said, almost squealing in excitement. “Do you know what we just saw? A black hole! A black hole, I tell you! It’s the only explana—”

Donati stopped short, the brakes slammed on his sentence. Then he fell over like a severed tree, straight down to the ground.

Raiff rushed to him, hand pressed against the head wound from which the blood was spilling. “There’s a first-aid kit back in the life raft,” he called out to Alex and Sam. “Get it.”

But Alex moved toward him first. “Let me borrow your whip thing. Just in case.”

“You won’t be able to make it work.”

“I just saved this world, Raiff. I think you can trust me.”

Raiff handed his stick over reluctantly.

Sam and Alex started off, moving as fast as they dared. They took a circuitous route to keep them as far as possible from the empty, dead patch of ground that had been Alacatraz prison.

“Did that,” she murmured, clinging to him, “did we…”

Alex didn’t answer, just held her close and felt her breathing return to normal. His, too, as they neared the dock, the lights flickering over the San Francisco skyline showing him the world was, in fact, intact, and whatever hole punched deep below the island must have closed.

Then he felt Sam stiffen against him, heard her mutter, “Alex.”

And saw the gunmen holding pistols to the heads of Sam’s parents.

*

“You’re coming with me, boy,” said an older man standing slightly in front of them, his eyes rooted on Alex. “You’re coming with me or the girl’s parents die.”

Alex shoved Sam behind him, thinking fast. Read and react, just like on the football field, where decisions were made in the time between seconds.

He eased Raiff’s stick from his belt and held it low by his hip. “Tell your men to lower their weapons.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear what I said.”

“I heard. But let me repeat what I just said: tell your men to lower their weapons and let the girl’s parents go.”

“And if I don’t?”

Alex snapped the stick forward and up, felt it turn into a snake in his hand, slithering out through the air, following the picture he made in his mind. It twirled through the air, finding the gunman holding Sam’s father and then the gunman holding Sam’s mother. Impacting with a snap against both their skulls, their legs left to crumple as they dropped to the ground.