When the Sky Fell on Splendor(91)

The relief was short-lived. The sight of Droog cutting a trail through the field, galloping toward the truck, reminded me where we were.

Across the field, the soldiers were realizing Remy was missing, shouting as they dug through the still-writhing tent. The corn had taken a beating in the wind, stalks broken and blown over in every direction. It offered about as good a hiding place as a camo jacket.

“THERE!” I heard someone yell. The four of us leapt apart, as two soldiers came running toward us.

It had to be the stupidest thing we could have done in that situation, but it wasn’t the stupidest thing we’d done that night: We turned and ran.

The field was alive, dancing in the storm, grazing my skin like a hundred tiny knives as I swam through it. The wind bolstered me sideways, backward, and every step I took gave my leg muscles a feeling like being shredded—but I could see the truck in the distance, the door hanging open.

Arthur standing outside it, beckoning us on with a blown-out cigarette still hanging from his mouth. Levi reached him first, practically dove from the edge of the field into the truck, and Sofía bounded in after him, followed by Droog. Ahead of me, Remy burst from the corn next and reached the door, throwing a look back to check my progress.

I was still a good six yards off, fighting the pain in my abdomen, pushing my legs and swollen ankle hard as they could go.

Arthur was still waving me on. Remy was still watching my too-slow progress from the truck’s doorway.

His eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open, and I knew there must be someone right behind me now.

I was only a few yards away now. Almost there.

Remy took one step toward me, but Arthur grabbed the wool of his collar and jerked him back, screaming something I couldn’t hear as he shoved Remy toward the waiting semitruck, where Levi grabbed him.

Remy was screaming, but Levi wouldn’t let go of him, and Arthur was coming toward me.

My legs were numb, thudding uselessly into the wind. The world had been dark already, but now it seemed to shrink around me as my grip on consciousness slipped.

No. I had to keep running.

With the wind resistance and my fatigue, it felt like I was sprinting through Jell-O. Rushing into an ocean that kept pushing me back.

Arthur was yelling my name now, running full tilt to me, his wiry arms pumping at his sides, his cigarette falling, forgotten, from his mouth.

He was close enough that I could see the fear in his face.

Bright, unhindered horror. I couldn’t help it. I looked over my shoulder, expecting dozens of soldiers, dozens of guns.

But there was no one in the corn behind me.

Only dark clouds, congealing over the field: angry, gray things that rushed like a river, spiraling. A funnel was beginning to form, stretching down toward the ground not far behind me.

The siren was still blaring. My heart palpitated as shreds of fabric, metal shafts, paper and plastic debris skated across the ground, lifting and dropping as drafts of air caught at them.

A metal pole slingshotted toward me, and blood spurted into my mouth as my teeth caught my tongue again.

It was an instantaneous thought. Wordless, more like a feeling really, but had it known language, or had time to be translated into English, it would’ve been something like END.

Something grabbed hold of me and jerked me sideways, and the metal pole spun past, smashing into the side of the truck trailer. I spun to face Arthur. His bushy eyebrows were high up his forehead, and his mouth was taut.

I tried to say his name, but no sound came out. I couldn’t feel any part of my body. My legs were giving out. He clutched me to him and screamed into my ear, “I GOT YOU, FRAN.”

And then we were moving, my feet barely kicking as he pulled me along to the open door. I couldn’t make my legs work, but Remy and Nick were reaching down and Arthur was boosting me up, and then without any climbing, I was inside.





THIRTY-THREE



REMY PULLED ME ONTO the cot in the back with the others, and Nick hit the gas so hard the passenger door flung shut, and I fell across Remy and Levi both. Lightning struck somewhere to our left, and the thunder cracked out within a second of it.

“Where are we going?” Remy asked as he pulled me over to sit between him and Sofía. “I mean, what are we doing? Fleeing the country?”

A look passed between Arthur and Nick.

“Guys?” Remy pressed. “There is a plan, right? You didn’t just steal me from—from the U.S. Armed Forces and the FBI without a plan. . . .”

“People can’t be stolen,” Levi said. “We either abducted or rescued you.”

“And that,” Remy said, “will depend somewhat on where you’re taking me.”

Nick spun the wheel suddenly down the curvy, wooded road that connected to Old Crow Station just under the train tracks. The tail end of the truck skidded one way through the rain then back the other as Nick corrected. “The plan is to save the world. Everything beyond that is somewhat up in the air right now.”

“Okay,” Remy said. “Then how do we save the world?”

Tree branches were tearing loose ahead of us, flinging themselves across the road. Either a train was passing over the tracks now or the tornado was making a comparable sound.

Sofía made a face. “That’s somewhat up in the air right now too.”

“TBD,” Arthur confirmed.