When the Sky Fell on Splendor(65)

For what felt like the millionth time that night, we squeezed back into the Metro and took off, but we’d barely reached the haunted bridge when the incessant ringing over Remy’s loudspeaker cut out, replaced by a clamor of voices. “Hello?” Sheriff Nakamura said over the wash of sound.

“Where are you?” Remy asked. “What’s all that noise?”

“I’m at the station.” There was a harried edge to his voice. “I know we need to talk, Rem, but right now’s not a good time. Things have suddenly . . . picked up here.”

Remy’s jaw worked anxiously. “Is it about Wayne Hastings?”

“What? No, it’s . . .” A few seconds passed, and then the drone of the busy station went silent as a door clicked closed. “Are you injured? Are you safe?”

“Injured? No,” Remy said.

A knocking sound came over the line. “Hold on a second.”

The murmuring voices crept back in and the sheriff said, “Tell Agent Rothstadt I’ll be right out.” As soon as the background noise vanished again, the sheriff sighed. “Sorry about that, bud. We got a late-night visit from the FBI.”

“The FBI?” Remy said.

My heart thudded. Remy’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, it turns out those burns in the field were caused by a piece of a satellite,” the sheriff said.

Piece of satellite, Arthur mouthed, clearly offended by the very notion. I tried to smile at him, to communicate Yeah, ridiculous, but I’d just gone so dizzy the car was capsizing before my eyes.

The FBI.

The FBI was here. Were they the ones who’d taken the video down? Did they know it was us in it? Did they care?

“We don’t know much else yet, but there are concerns about radiation,” the sheriff was saying. “They’ve got military here setting up a temporary facility and everything, so I don’t want you kids going anywhere near Jenkins Lane, got it?”

Remy stared hard into my eyes via the rearview mirror.

“Rem?” the sheriff prompted.

He pulled over onto the shoulder abruptly and put the car in park. “Got it.”

“What did you need?” the sheriff asked. “Everything okay?”

Remy’s mouth opened and closed. Bits of Bill’s frantic e-mails were carouseling through my mind, and the others must have been able to hear my heart racing guiltily, fearfully.

I should have told them.

I might be the one hosting the alien, but we were all in that video. If I’d told them what Remy knew, one of them would have talked sense into me. I would’ve turned myself in before it came to this.

Before it came to them.

“Remy?” the sheriff pressed.

Nick’s eyes bulged as if to say, Dude! Go on! and Arthur spun his finger, like Get to the point, and Levi and Sofía both leaned in, urging Remy onward.

Just then, headlights hit the rearview mirror, and a black SUV appeared on the curved bridge behind us. The long black car slid past, sleek and inky, followed immediately by another, and then another. A fourth, a fifth.

Remy was watching them with a tensed jaw. My mouth had gone dry as sandpaper; the buzz revved through me, jostling, eager, as fear coiled through my body, but I released my grip on those non-muscles, and it dispersed in my body again.

The ground shivered as the sixth and final Suburban skimmed past, and in its wake, a solid-white semitruck appeared, brakes spitting and hissing as it jerked through the corkscrew of the road.

“Are you there?” the sheriff asked.

Remy cleared his throat. “Shoot. I just blanked.”

“What?” Nick demanded from the far side of the back seat.

“I’ll call you back, Dad,” Remy said, and hung up.

“Dude,” Levi said gently. “What’s the deal?”

The semitruck rumbled past, and another one sloughed out of the blue-green foliage, followed by a third.

There was something nightmarish and impossible about it, like I was watching the woods lay eggs, long and shining in the moonlight.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Sofía demanded.

“The FBI is here,” Remy said.

“So what? They’re busy with the satellite crash! We need to get Wayne behind bars, Remy.”

“Not a satellite,” Arthur growled.

“Not the point!” Nick said. “The man who ruined our lives and stockpiled your brother’s stolen drawings is building a weapon for aliens, and Remy’s having visions about the world ending! I personally am thrilled the FBI’s here!”

The shadowy fold of the woods delivered a fourth and final semitruck.

So many trucks.

So many voices at the police station.

So many people here, all searching for us.

For the thing in me.

The power trapped under my skin was too much. The memory of light searing across my mind was too much. Their arguing was too much.

“It was supposed to be our discovery,” Arthur was saying. “Now they’re going to take over the whole thing.”

“So what?” Sofía said. “The world will still be saved!”

“Those trucks were in my vision,” Remy said, spinning in his seat to face us. “This doesn’t change anything! The FBI isn’t here to save the world.”