Exodus 2022 (45 page)

The snowcapped Gallatin Mountains had been replaced by a mountain of clouds. An impossibly tall, broad mass that seemed to morph and mutate second to second. The sky at the epicenter of the tempest was black, bloated, and now, flecked with lightning—fine traceries of electric illumination that stood out against the volatile mass like cracks in a wall.

Beck panned the plain once more, then turned, slowly, 360 degrees. Took it all in. The sagebrush tossing in the wind. The slope rising to the ridge. The makeshift camp. The gear piles. The tarp covering Joe and Ella. The helicopters—windshields wet with rain—shimmying in the gusts.

He saw everything.

Everything, except an animal.

The Nexus Animal
is close
, Ring had said.
Within five hundred meters of Joe Stanton.

Beck turned again, 360 degrees.

Nothing.

No wolf or bear or cougar. No deer or elk or buffalo. Nothing.

There were plenty of places to hide, of course. The creature
could
be close at hand. Hiding behind brush. A boulder. Concealed in a fold in the land.

In this weather, in the failing light, it was impossible to tell.

Ring had said it was close.

And, with a chill, Beck realized that the thing in his head agreed.

He could feel the thing, rapt with anticipation. Eagerness.

Beck looked forlornly toward the cliff edge. The Buffalo Jump. There was more light in that direction—to the west, away from the storm. But there was no sign of a gate.

Not yet.

Beck was getting soaked, and getting nowhere. He made his way back to the B3 and was about to climb inside when he saw lights descending from the ridge. Headlights.

He stared through the rain. Shielded his eyes. Waited. It was a truck. A big, beefy 4WD pickup winding its way down through the scrub.

Collins.

Beck thought about waiting outside to talk to him. Then thought better of it. He climbed back in the helicopter and shut the door.

Collins pulled level with the B3 and stayed in his truck. Talked to Beck via cell phone. Told him about the tranquilizer guns and the cage in the back of the truck. Left out the part about killing two store employees.

The storm intensified, settling over the plain like open war. Gusts blasted the helicopter, shunting it side-to-side. Turbulence on the ground. Rain hammered the roof. Lightning cut the darkness. Thunder crashed overhead.

Beck pushed the pilot’s seat back as far as it would go and watched Ring work. The scientist was wearing headphones, so there was no sound, but Beck got the gist of what he was studying: images of the terrestrial gate. Blips on the “radar” screen. Streams of data concerning the Nexus Animal. And news feeds.

Beck read one of the subtitles as it crawled across the bottom of Ring’s tablet PC:

Scientists rush to find cause of vanishing sea life. Penguin rookeries emptied overnight. Sea lion beaches desolate. Fish stocks decimated in matter of hours.

Beck could see the U.S. president on another part of the screen, talking to reporters at a news conference. Other world leaders were holding similar press conferences in their countries. Beck watched news clips from fishing vessels and whale watching boats.

From the multiple feeds rolling across Ring’s screens, it seemed the marine Exodus was all anyone was talking about.

Beck glanced at his phone and saw messages. Lots of messages. Urgent messages from Erebus vice presidents and board members trying to get in touch with him to talk about his father and sister, the tragic helicopter crash, and the state of the corporation.

Beck put his phone away.

Leaning back, he shut his eyes and tried to ignore the screaming wind, the vibrations of the helicopter, and Wilden’s raspy snoring.

The thing in his head was quiet, for the moment, and fatigue was settling in, at last. Defying Heintzel’s stimulants.

Beck sat still. Tried to empty his mind. After a time he fell into an uneasy sleep.

Joe Stanton lay on the ground, curled against Ella’s back, and stared out at the storm through the small opening in the tarp.

Rain pummeled the shelter and wind tore at the doorway as if it were a predator trying to claw its way inside. It seemed to Joe that the wind changed direction every few seconds. One moment it was blasting down from the ridge, flattening the tarp on its rush to the plain. The next it was roaring uphill, causing the structure to billow like a sail. On the upward gusts, a little mist was pushed inside.

Joe didn’t mind. He and Ella weren’t getting really wet, and he found the cool mist invigorating. So far, the stakes and guy-lines were doing their job, and the shelter was keeping them covered and—relatively—protected.

Thunder crashed directly overhead and Joe pulled Ella closer to his chest. Watched the lightning illuminate the prairie like the noonday sun.

The situation he and Ella faced was beyond dire, but the storm was not adding to his misery. If anything, he found it reassuring. Joe Stanton loved storms. He’d even sought them out—hiking into wilderness beaches on the Olympic coast to watch big Pacific weather systems smash their way ashore.

Listening to the storm, and Ella’s rhythmic breathing, feeling the warmth of her body against his own, he gazed out at the tiny splinter of wild universe he could see through the opening in the tent, and his mind felt clearer than it had in days.

He thought first about escape, and if he had felt like his normal self—or anything close—he would’ve attempted it at once. He was not handcuffed. Not chained or shackled. At normal strength he would’ve lifted Ella into his arms and carried her through the darkness, through the storm, to safety.

But he was not at normal strength. Nothing like it. And the adrenaline-fueled brawl with Dodd and Kehler had driven him to the brink of death.

His systems were failing, at last. His body disintegrating. He wondered, lying there, if the calm clarity he felt now was due to his proximity to the end. He’d read somewhere that drowning victims—after fighting for their lives—experienced an almost Zen-like state of alertness and peace as they drifted toward death. Was that what he was experiencing now? He didn’t know.

He guessed that Ring was somewhere close by, probably in one of the helicopters, monitoring his thoughts, strip-mining his subconscious for more messages from the terrestrial leader. Mia’s counterpart.

Joe wondered who the counterpart could be and why Mia had linked the two of them in the first place.

He thought about it.

Found no answers.

His breathing slowed and his contemplation grew so deep that he almost forgot about the storm raging around him.

Time passed, and he lay there. Alert. Watchful. Quiet.

The sky to the west, over the Buffalo Jump, went fully dark—the blackness broken only by occasional angry bursts of lightning.

Joe stared through the darkness. Through the wind and rain and flashing light.

And then he felt it—the connection he’d briefly experienced in the War Room. A connection in his conscious mind.

The link was faint—like a whisper—but real. A reassuring voice in the darkness.

The whisper moved around him. Over him. Under him. Soothing his mind and broken body like a delicious summer breeze. There were words hidden in the whisper. Faint. Beautiful. He understood none of them. Not a syllable.

Who are you?
Joe asked.

No reply. Not for a long time. And then the answer was there, fully formed, in his mind.

The other half. Mia’s counterpart.

Where are you?
Joe asked.

Seconds passed. Then,
Near at hand.

What are you going to do?

No reply.

Joe closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. Tried to shove his questions and fears and worries aside in hopes of hearing an answer.

Nothing.

No response.

And then it came. A reply surprising in its gentleness, innocence, and candor.

I don’t know.

Joe marveled at the answer.

The creature doesn’t know what it’s going to do.

The creature is here. Close at hand. Ready. And yet…it doesn’t know what’s going to happen. It’s waiting, along with the rest of us.

The hair on the back of Joe’s neck prickled as he recalled what Dieturlund had said about Mia.

Mia is brilliant. One of a kind. But there’s more to her than even she comprehends.

And Joe thought maybe he understood.

Something is working through this creature.

Grace.

The inexplicable.

The infinite.

Grace. In play.
Unfolding on its own timetable. On its own terms.

And yet
, Joe thought,
I’m still connected.

For a reason he could not fathom he’d been given a window seat.

He wondered why this was so. Decided the fact of it was enough.

He had a place. And he’d watch for as long as he was able.

He lay there, holding Ella. Aware. Awake. Ready.

IT WAS THE MIDDLE
of the night when Beck’s cell phone buzzed. He was asleep in the B3’s pilot seat and didn’t hear it.

Ring lifted the phone off the center console and shook Beck’s shoulder. “It’s Donaldson. Other helicopter,” he said.

Beck opened his eyes and looked blank-faced at Ring. Then sat up straight in his seat. The cabin felt stale and reeked of body odor. Wilden was snoring louder than ever.

Through the pilot-side window, Beck could see Collins’s truck parked a few feet away. The truck was dark. Just sitting there.

A hundred feet or so beyond the truck, he could make out the outline of the Bell L4, a faint glow emanating from the cockpit.

He heard the rain dashing in wind-borne bursts against the glass. Felt the gusts pulling the helicopter this way and that, trying to get it to move. Though not like earlier. The storm had diminished. At least a little. The digital clock at the top of the console read 3:13 a.m.

Beck looked at the phone in Ring’s hand, took it, lifted it to his ear, and said, “Beck.”

“Sorry to wake you, sir,” said Donaldson.

“What is it?”

“Sir. This helicopter is equipped with thermal-imaging gear.”

“So?”

“So we just turned it on. For the hell of it. Aimed the thermal cameras at the plain.”

“And?”

“Sir. You have to see this.”

Beck stared out the window at the L4. “You want me to walk over there?”

He heard the other pilot mumble something to Donaldson in the background.

Donaldson said, “There’s a short-arc xenon on the B3. Try the narrow beam.”

Beck frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Sorry, sir,” said Donaldson. “It’s a spotlight mounted under the front of the aircraft. Joystick in the middle of the dash. Turn the light on and aim it at the plain.”

Beck pushed the “on” button. The light came on slowly, then built in intensity. He could see it through the glass floor of the cockpit, pointing straight down.

The beam grew blindingly bright, casting harsh shadows on the plants and stones around the B3. 

Beck teased the joystick back, overdid it, and suddenly the light was slicing laser-like through the darkness, a hundred feet above the prairie. Beck watched the rain fall through the beam and gently nudged it down, down.

He stared at the circle of light and trembled.

There were things moving on the plain, shapes drifting past—as if he’d aimed the light at a debris-choked river.

Beck leaned forward and squinted through the windshield. Tried to get a better look. But the view was obscured by glare and condensation. He wiped the glass with the sleeve of his jacket. No good.

“Move the spot around when I tell you,” he said to Ring. He grabbed the binoculars, opened the door, and climbed outside.

The wind was blowing steadily—though not as hard as earlier—and the air felt fresh and invigorating. Lightning flashed away to the west, over the Madison River, but the bursts were sporadic now, the thunder low and muffled—out of sync with the light.

Beck stared at the western sky, watched the lightning, and wondered if the storm had really moved on, or was merely regrouping. Gathering strength for another assault.

He stepped to the front of the helicopter, knelt next to the spotlight, and lifted the binoculars to his eyes, following the beam down, to where it hit the plain. He gasped. 

There were animals everywhere. Creatures of every size and shape and description. Predators and prey, clustered together, moving slowly, inexorably toward the precipice—the Buffalo Jump. He could see hundreds of pairs of eyes reflected in the glow from the spot. Red. Blue. Translucent yellow. Glinting in the darkness. He could see breath rising in steamy clouds, the clouds disintegrating in the wind.

Beck’s body quivered, head to toe, and the Thing in his head leapt forward so abruptly he thought his skull might explode. The thing shivered with exuberance.

“Move the light around!” Beck yelled, wondering, as he said it, if it was him or the Thing that most wanted to see what was on the plain.

Ring panned the light slowly to the right and Beck followed with the binoculars, marveling at the impossibly heavy concentration of life below. Bison—enormous creatures with shaggy heads and horns. Antelope. Deer. Bucks with racks large and small. Does. Fawns. Wild horses. Coyotes. Wolves. Mountain lions. Bears. He could
hear
the animals now, too, snorting and grunting, stamping and braying, and he could smell them. When the wind turned and flowed uphill, the scent filled his nostrils. Rich. Redolent. Earthy.

Ring tilted the spotlight down a couple of degrees. Same scene: animals large and small, lithe and lumbering. An assemblage of organisms akin to what they’d witnessed in the sea. Beck saw an enormous buffalo shaking water from its fur, gyrating like a dog, the droplets flashing like diamonds.