The monster was right behind them, reaching a hand for Ava.
Griffin swerved right a notch, not enough to slow them down, but just enough so that the monster’s hand swept through open air instead of Ava’s head.
BongBongBongBongBongBongBongBongBong.
Griffin aimed for a slab of granite that sloped up toward the paved road. The front wheels of the quad hit the stone and Griffin said a prayer.
A wave of glittering bright light flared in his face, and Griffin squeezed his eyes tightly shut as the ATV launched into the air.
The church bell stopped ringing.
26
A powerful jolt knocked Griffin’s hands from the ATV’s handlebars and he lost control. Knocked free, he tumbled through the air, Avalon no longer clinging to him. When he opened his eyes, everything was bright. And spinning.
The whole world was spinning.
Then he landed on a bed of snow-covered pine needles, the scent crisp and clear in his nose, as if his sense of smell had come back after a long cold. He rolled and tumbled, and he came to stop against a tree.
He groaned as his mind imagined the injuries he’d sustained.
But there was no pain.
He opened his eyes and looked up at a clear, bright blue sky.
He turned to his side and saw trees. He’d been flung into the woods lining the road, just inside the town border. The Humvee was still pinned to the end of the road. The ATV lay on its side in the grass, by the edge of the pavement. And Avalon, clear-eyed and aware, was sitting up and looking around.
“He’s gone. He didn’t make it!” she said.
Griffin quickly looked around and saw she was right. The world beyond the border was a smooth sea of swaying green grass, brilliant arctic blue lakes and ponds and beautiful blowing flowers and trees. Far off, Griffin could see snow-capped mountains. The air was fresh and clear, with not a hint of smoke from the previous world. And Giant Griffin, who might have been the Devil himself, was gone.
Griffin stood and hugged Avalon, looking down at the ATV on the ground. One of its rear wheels had been sliced cleanly in half.
Wrapped in Ava’s arms, Griffin felt good. Not just because his daughter was alive. He felt physically good. Rejuvenated. The pain and itch in his arm was gone. His shoulders felt fine. All the beatings he had suffered—from the largest ache to the smallest bruise was gone. He hadn’t felt this good in years.
He tore his shirt down at the neck and looked at the place where his shoulder had been bleeding. There wasn’t even a mark. No scar, no puncture. He’d been completely healed...
By this world
, he thought, looking out at what looked like paradise.
He wondered if he’d been able to get Charley back, would the man have been revived? Then he wondered about Savage Griffin. If
he
had been able to get back, would the man’s arm have been healed? His missing hand regrown? Would he have been sane?
And what about Skull-Eyes? Would he have shrunk, and developed human feet? Lost his prehensile tail? Would he have been healed, body and soul?
As Griffin looked out at the new world, he believed that would have been the case. Knew. While the name Refuge had never been more fitting, this new place could be called Redemption. Not just because it fixed the body, but it also mended the soul. The crimes of his past, the trauma of battle, the loss of his wife and Sheriff Rule… He felt at peace with it all.
Reborn.
He squeezed Avalon and turned his glance up the road into town. Into Refuge. Home. “Up for a walk?”
She smiled, bouncing on her feet. “The way I’m feeling, I think I could run.”
As they started back toward town, Griffin put his arm around her and said, “So who is this Sam Jacobs, what did he do and do I need to punch him in the face if we ever get home?”
Halfway to town
, a car came creeping down the hill. Cash was behind the wheel. He stopped the car when he got level with them, the window already down. “Need a lift?”
“Cash!” Griffin said. “How’s the…?” He tapped his shoulder, mimicking where Cash had been shot.
“Not even a scratch,” Cash said. “Kyle said the gunshot just disappeared. Since the shift, we’ve all been feeling pretty good. Seems like this world has healed everybody of everything that was wrong with ’em. I heard where you’d gone. Came to see if you made it back.”
Griffin and Avalon got in the car, and Cash turned them back toward the town. Griffin filled him in on what had happened as they drove. But just before they reached the Sheriff’s station, three figures walked out into the road from the church.
Frost, Dodge and Jennifer Turkette waved them down. Cash slowed the car to a stop. Griffin got out of the passenger seat and Avalon climbed out of the back.
Griffin ran up to Frost, and seeing him, she ran to him as well. When they embraced, everything was suddenly right. He leaned down and kissed her.
“You’re okay,” he said.
“Me? I was worried about you.” Avalon walked over to them. “You got her,” Frost said.
“Safe and sound,” Avalon said. “Apparently, sounder than ever.”
“What happened here?” Griffin asked.
Frost told him, as they all walked toward the Sheriff’s station. When she finished, she explained how they had gotten out of the bunker.
“It took some time, but we found the lights, and eventually, the locks. But we found something else too.”
Griffin looked at her, one eyebrow raised as if to say,
don’t hold back on us now
.
“We found the security camera feeds for the tunnel to the mansion. We saw Ellison and Barnes hightailing it away from the bunker at one end of the tunnel, but at the other end, she was with someone else.”
“What do you mean?” Griffin asked.
“I mean, at one end of the tunnel he was an old man in a wheelchair. At the other end of the tunnel, after the shift, he was...new. Remade. Same face, same clothes, but thirty years younger, and with a full head of hair. No wheelchair in sight. He was running beside Barnes, who had no more limp.”
Griffin stopped walking. “That’s...impossible.”
Cash stepped up and tapped his chest. “Is it? I had a hole clean through me, remember?”
“I think,” Frost said, “that whatever healed us, healed him too. Of whatever was killing him.”
The Sheriff station door opened. Radar exited with Lisa not far behind.
“Josh,” Griffin said, and something in his voice made the boy stop in his tracks.
Emotion swept through the young man. “My Dad?”
Griffin never knew how to deliver this kind of news, but he knew beating around the bush never helped. “Gave his life saving Ava. Wanted you to know he did it sober.”
Radar sniffed, wiped his nose and gave a nod.
Griffin reached back into Cash’s car and pulled out Charley’s shotgun. “This belonged to your father. It’s yours now.”
Griffin tossed the shotgun to Radar, who caught it, looked it over once and slung the weapon onto his back.
“Your father was proud of you, Josh,” Griffin said. “He died wanting to make you proud, too.”
Radar gave a nod. “He did.” Lisa arrived, embraced the boy and led him away.
“So did we make it?” Griffin asked. “Is this...Heaven?” He looked to Dodge for an answer, but the pastor just looked bewildered, staring out toward the edge of town.
Frost shrugged.
Dodge cleared his throat. “The one thing we know for sure is that this place isn’t home. But...” He looked at Griffin. “Maybe it could be.”
Griffin looked at the man and knew what he was thinking. “Let’s wait and see if anything here tries to kill us first.”
Epilogue
“It’s done.”
Cash stepped out of his car on the driver’s side, and Winslow got out of the passenger’s side. They were returning from the pylon north of town. Carol approached from the group of people waiting on the sidewalk in front of the station and hugged Winslow.
Cash’s sister, Laurie, and Kyle went to Cash. Laurie gave her brother a crushing hug.
The men stepped up onto the curb in front of the station, where the small group waited. Frost and Griffin with Avalon. Dodge and Turkette. Joshua and Lisa. A few of the other town residents like the bartender, Walter, and widowed Mary Soucey-Bartlett.
They had been in the healing world for a week, and no danger had presented itself. They had searched the town, the mansion and the bunker for any sign of Ellison or Barnes, but the two were nowhere to be found. Griffin had led recon patrols out into the new world, looking for dangers and threats. All they had found was more natural beauty.
The evenings were filled with round-table discussion, and they had finally decided their course of action. Each day, Cash and Winslow had poured over all the information they could get from the computers in the bunker. They figured out how to disable one of the pylons, and if necessary, reactivate it later.
The only question was whether the next shift would rip the town apart, killing everyone. Would the imbalance of the pylons somehow send them home? No one was expecting that possibility. Instead, they’d decided to call the healing world home. The land was clear and fertile—they’d found fruit trees and naturally occurring vegetables. There were animals roaming the plains. Deer and elk and bison.
Most importantly, nothing had come into the beleaguered town.
The decision made, Cash and Winslow had gone north of town and deactivated the pylon. Now they had come back, the conquering heroes.
The small group stood on the curb near the building, looking up at the church across the parking lot, down the street.
Frost, now wearing civilian clothes (but a gold badge on her belt reminding people of her rank), leaned under Griffin’s arm. “How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”
“Don’t know,” Griffin said. “The longest we stayed in one place was a week and half.”
Avalon leaned into him on his other side, and he put his arm around her, too.
“Maybe it just won’t ever ring,” she said.
Griffin hoped she was right. They all stood there a few minutes, as if they expected it to ring any second, but he knew it wouldn’t. Cash and Laurie were the first to turn to go back inside the building.
He heard Avalon snort out a derisive breath, as if chastising herself for thinking it might happen now.
Frost turned to look up at him and said, “Let’s go back insi—”
Bong
.
They all stopped and looked back up at the church in silence, breath held.
Bong
.
Now they would know. Death, home or stranded.
Bong
.
Dodge began to mutter a prayer.
Griffin squeezed his girls tightly.
Bong, Bong, Bong.
###