The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(3)
“I don’t like it here.”
“I know.”
“It’s cold in the bubble and I want to go home.”
Robert didn’t know what she meant by “bubble.” He didn’t care. He clutched her against his chest, just as Amanda climbed out the door and wrapped herself around Melanie.
“Mom . . .”
Thick tears warmed Melanie’s cheeks. “Stay with me, sweetie. Don’t let go.”
Soon the family stood gathered outside the minivan. Robert held his wary gaze on the strangers. “Can you please tell me what—”
They ignored him and split up. The man in the baseball cap turned around and moved a few yards ahead. The woman took a shepherding flank behind the Givens. The white-haired man stayed in place, bouncing his harsh blue stare between Robert and Melanie.
“We walk now,” he said. “Tread carefully and stay within the field. If even a finger escapes, you won’t enjoy the consequences.”
They began traveling. Robert noticed that everything within thirty feet of them existed at normal speed and color, a pocket of sanity in the sluggish blue yonder. The field seemed to move at the whim of the man in the Yankees cap. He walked with strain, fingers extended, as if pushing an invisible boulder.
Battling his panic, Robert retreated into his head and imagined the analytical discussion he and Amanda might have in a calmer state of mind.
“Daddy, what did he mean about the finger and the field?”
“Not sure, hon. I’m guessing it’s not healthy for a body to move at two different speeds.”
“Did they slow down the world or did they speed us up?”
“Good question. I don’t know. In either case, I figure we’re just a blur to the people in the other cars.”
“How is this happening?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. It’s entirely possible that I’ve lost my mind.”
He looked up and saw exactly where the drizzling rain stopped, a perfect dome that extended all around them. A bubble.
Suddenly his inner Amanda posed a dark new stumper.
“Daddy, how did Hannah know the shape of the field?”
Robert’s heart pounded with new dread, enough for Hannah to feel it through his blazer. She wrapped her shivering arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. The air outside the dome carried a thick and smoky taste in her thoughts, like a million trees burning. She just wanted it to go away, along with the freezing cold and the scary white tiger-man.
Her mother and sister trailed five feet behind them, their arms locked together. Melanie’s stomach lurched every time Amanda threw a backward glance at the fuel truck. For all she knew, one more peek would turn the girl into a pillar of salt.
“Honey, don’t look. Just keep moving.”
“But there are still people back there.”
“Amanda . . .”
“We can’t just leave them!”
Melanie bit her lip and winced new tears. Though her daughter often wielded her morality like a cudgel, there was no denying the depth of her virtue. The girl was good to the core.
Five feet behind them, the female stranger shined a soft smile at Amanda. “You’re a noble one to worry, child, but little can be done. Even those who survive have short years ahead. I see the strings. I know the death that comes.”
Amanda had been nervously avoiding eye contact with the woman, but now drew a second look. She was a shade over six feet tall, with an immaculate face that put her anywhere between a weathered thirty and a blessed sixty. Whatever her age, she was jarringly beautiful, at least on the outside. Her dark eyes twinkled with instability, like matches over oil.
“W-what do you mean?” Amanda asked.
Melanie tugged her forward. “Don’t talk to her.”
“It’s no matter,” the woman replied. “Just take comfort that you have a future, my pretty rose. I’ve seen you, tall and red.”
“Leave her alone,” Melanie hissed.
The stranger’s smile vanished. Her stare turned cold and brutal.
“Be careful how you speak to me, cow. We spare you and your husband as a courtesy. Perhaps we should slay you both and rear the little ones ourselves.”
“NO!” Amanda screamed.
The white-haired man sighed patiently at his companion. “Sehmeer . . .”
“Nu’a purtua shi’i kien Esis,” said the other man, without turning around.
The madwoman pursed her lips in a childish pout, then narrowed her eyes at Melanie.
“My wealth and heart oppose the idea. Pity. Your flawed little gems would thrive in our care.” She tossed Amanda another crooked smile. “We’d make them shine.”
The Givens moved in tight-knuckled silence for the rest of their journey—past the turnpike, over the guardrail, and up a steep embankment.
The tall ones stopped at the peak and surveyed the falling truck in the distance. The fuel tank had just touched the concrete and was starting to come apart.
“Brace yourself,” said the white-haired man, for all the good it did.
In the span of a gasp, the bubble of time vanished and a thunderous explosion rattled the Givens. Robert covered Hannah as a fireball rose sixty feet above the overpass. A searing blast of heat drove Melanie and Amanda screaming to the ground.