The Anomaly(94)

It was the middle of the night and dark but it was a different kind of dark. It was the kind of dark where you know there will be light at some future time.

A few minutes into the climb the side of the canyon seemed to shake as if something deep within was finally triggered, and then a wall of fire burst out of the cavern entrance above us. We waited, clinging onto the wall, in case anything else happened afterward, but it did not.

We climbed down slowly, ten feet apart. It took a long time. It took forever. I had to keep stopping every few yards to catch my breath, to refocus my attention on the rock in front of me. There was water at the bottom, I knew. I had no idea how safe it was to drink the Colorado River but there was no question it was going to happen.

We climbed in isolation but we climbed together.

We made it down.





Chapter

55



The dinghy was tied to a rock at the bottom, for which I was very grateful. We clambered and half fell in, and then leaned over the edge and—mindful of not overdoing it—got some water in our mouths. And over our faces. It was very, very cold. It tasted of the outside. It was unbelievably awesome.

The river was flowing fast but we realized we didn’t even know how far we had to go to reach anything passing for civilization. Molly’s GPS device was back up in the main room of the complex: after so many hours of it being useless, she’d forgotten to add it to the hard drives in Pierre’s backpack. My phone ran out of battery and died as I tried to use it. Even if we’d known the right place to head for, we were in no shape to make a six-hour hike up to the top.

We sat staring at each other, goggle-eyed at this latest realization, and when Ken suggested trying to make it back to the beach we’d last camped on and setting off in the morning, nobody disagreed.

Molly and I took the oars and Ken untied us. After a hectic period of almost capsizing the boat as a result of near-total ignorance of how to work a dinghy, we got it together and started floating down the river. It felt like emerging from a spaceship onto the waterway of some new, unknown planet.

After about twenty minutes the general shape of the outcroppings on the right bank began to look familiar—and then yes, the beach was there, a hundred yards away.

We used the oars to direct us toward it. I couldn’t tell whether my stomach and chest muscles were hurting a little less or maybe I wasn’t actually feeling them anymore, but trying to move fluently—shoving against water that felt like it was actively fighting our attempts to change course—made it clear they weren’t working properly. Ken saw I was struggling and stood up to come over and help.

And that’s when the big raft came sailing silently out of the darkness behind and rammed straight into us.



I landed in shallow water, on my head. My face, in fact, smacking down into the stones under the surface with a crunch that had me seeing stars. Again.

When I got up to hands and knees, still trying to work out what the hell had just happened, I saw that Pierre had landed worse. He was unconscious, head half-under the water.

I grabbed his good arm and hauled him up onto the beach. He spluttered, pulled in huge breaths. Molly was already on the shore, turning to look back at the river.

The raft was jammed up against the rock on the side of the beach, where it had overturned the dinghy.

Feather was standing on it.

“You people really don’t give up, do you,” she said as she jumped down onto the gravel. She was holding a chef’s knife—the knife, presumably, that Dylan had used to make our food.

“Dylan said you’d left to bring in Palinhem.”

“They’re on their way. In the meantime he was supposed to kill you if you got out, which is the only thing he’s actually any good at. Clearly he failed. Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Good. He was an asshole.”

“Is…is what he told us true?”

“I’ve no idea what he said. He’s just a field grunt. Or was. He wasn’t supposed to say anything. I simply need you three remaining problems resolved so matters can unfold in the manner of my choosing.”

“Your choosing?”

“Of course,” she said. “You don’t think I’m going to let the old fools at Palinhem actually run this, do you? All they do is hide. They’ve spent a thousand years navel-gazing and have forgotten how to act. I found you. I found this. It will be for me and my associates to govern.”

“It’s not going to happen,” I said. “You failed. The site’s resetting.”

“I don’t believe you, and I don’t have time for this. I’m sorry, Nolan. You’re the anomaly in this situation. You have to go.”

“Three?” Molly said. “Shit, Nolan—Ken!”

I realized he wasn’t on the beach with us. He wasn’t in the dinghy, either.

“Go!” Molly shouted.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Feather said, advancing on me with the knife. “This is the end of it.”

She slashed out at me, the movement measured and assured. I know nothing about knife-fighting but even I could tell she knew what she was doing.

I took a hurried step back, turned my foot on the pebbles and started to lose my balance. She side-kicked me in the chest, right where the gashes were.

Half a second later I was flat on my back and Feather was standing over me. “Webcasts season two, episode five,” she said. “‘Is There an Afterlife?’ You’re about to find out.”