Exodus 2022 (46 page)

“Pan left,” Beck yelled. “Toward the mountains.”

Ring moved the light steadily east, to where the alley broadened into the larger prairie. Beck followed with the binoculars and whistled in astonishment.

It wasn’t just the channel leading to the cliffs that was full of creatures, but the lands behind it as well. As if the plain were a great reservoir filling to capacity.

Beck guessed that virtually every wild creature from a hundred miles around had gathered—or was gathering—on the plain below.

He turned toward the Jump.

Dead dark in that direction. Utter blackness save for when sporadic bursts of lightning revealed the outline of the precipice and the giant boulder perched near the edge.

Beck remembered the thought captures they’d seen in the War Room—images from Joe Stanton’s subconscious that showed the terrestrial gate fully formed at sunrise. He looked at his phone: 3:35 a.m.

Ring had said sunrise would be at 5:41, which meant that the sky would begin to lighten around four. Which meant they didn’t have much time.

He pounded on the Bell’s windshield with the heel of his hand. “Turn the light off!” he yelled. “We need to get moving.”

Beck ran to Collins’s truck and opened the door. Collins was bleary-eyed but sitting up. He’d heard the yelling and seen the spotlight.

“Moving out,” said Beck. “Pull closer to the other helicopter. Most of the gear’s over there.”

Collins said “Yes, sir,” and Beck continued on, toward the L4, guided by the electric glow from its cockpit.

The ground was muddy where they’d trampled the soil, and Beck slipped a little on the wet Earth.

He pictured the mile-wide thoroughfare on the prairie below, the waist-high grasses obliterated by the unprecedented movement of life. He pictured people walking the land in the days to come, searching the ground for clues, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

Beck heard Collins fire up the truck behind him.

Thunder reverberated on the horizon, threatening, but distant, like an angry conversation faintly overheard. Rain fell around him. Wind shook the sage and rattled the helicopters.

Beck shivered. Stopped walking. Turned and stared into the darkness toward the plain.

He’d seen the animals. Seen the vast river of life with his own eyes. But he still couldn’t believe it.

A lifelong hunter, he’d observed an abundance of wild creatures over the years and possessed a deep understanding of animal behavior—or so he’d always believed.

What was happening here was completely counter to everything he knew, and the facts of the situation made him tremble.

The laws of nature—at least as humans understood them—were here and now being bent. Broken. The animals on the prairie were hearing something, perceiving something, responding to something that humans knew nothing about.

Fearsome power was in play. Moving. Flowing. A mind and will unknowable.

Beck shivered because what was happening was beyond his comprehension. His control.

But then the Thing in his head lunged forward again, gleeful and alive and emphatic.

I can control the events on the plain
.
The leader is the key.

Beck’s eyes moved, this way and that, seeking to penetrate the darkness. Somewhere near at hand the leader was resting. Watching. Waiting. Waiting for the moment when the laws of space-time, just for an instant, would slip.

The moment was almost upon them.

The Thing in Beck’s head throbbed and thrummed with joy.

We will capture her
.
Hold her. Subdue and control her.

Ring had said the leader was likely a predator. Cunning. Stealthy.

Beck smiled.
Yes. And I am a predator also.

He reached the L4 and opened the door. “Let’s move. We’ve got work to do.”

ON BECK’S ORDERS,
Kehler and Dodd crawled under the tarp sheltering Joe and Ella, and Kehler dragged Joe outside, into the wind and rain.

Ella stirred, twisted in the dirt, and tried to reach for Joe. The sedative Wilden had injected her with was wearing off.

She fought to sit up, but Dodd was there, headlamp blazing directly in her eyes, blinding her. He jabbed her in the thigh with another dose of the drug, and she collapsed back in the dirt.

He smiled—looking at her limp and defenseless—then leaned forward and stroked her hair. His breathing grew heavy.

“Dodd, for Christ’s sake, let’s move.” It was Kehler, waiting outside the shelter.

Dodd backed out of the tight space and helped Kehler yank Joe to his feet.

Joe was too frail to fight, but he yelled to Beck as the men escorted him to the truck, his words coming in pained, wheezy gasps. “Beck. Listen to me. I’ll do anything you want. A hundred percent cooperation. Just let Ella go. Let her go.”

Beck went on loading gear.

Dodd shoved Joe into the backseat and strapped him in. Patted him on the leg. “Don’t worry, Father,” he whispered. “I’m staying here. I’ll take care of your girl.”

Joe lunged at him—or tried to—but Dodd slammed the door in his face, laughing.

They loaded the truck with weapons and supplies—to complement the gear Collins had acquired—then piled into the vehicle: Collins at the wheel and Beck in the front passenger seat; Joe in the middle of the back bench, with Kehler on one side and Ring on the other. Ring had his ever-present computer gear in bags at his feet. Kehler had a wad of cotton gauze taped to the bottom of his nose, the gauze orange with dried blood.

Donaldson and Wicks remained in the L4 and Dodd stayed behind as well—per Beck’s instructions to guard the camp.

Collins flicked on the high beams and aimed for an opening in the scrub. For a way down, to the plain.

Rain pounded against the windshield, and the wipers thumped back and forth. The truck bounced over the rough ground and the engine groaned as Collins shifted into low.

Joe leaned forward, straining against his shoulder harness. “Beck. Please. For God’s sake—”

Without turning, Beck said, “Shut your mouth, Father, or we’ll duct-tape it shut.”

Joe fell silent. Sat back. Sick. Weak. Miserable. He tried to think.

The warm feeling of connection he’d experienced earlier—while lying under the tarp and holding Ella—had been shattered. The emotions circulating in his mind now consisted of fear, terror, and rage.

He tried to calm himself, think rationally.

The air in the SUV was humid and stale and smelled of sweat. Nerves. Tension. The men were tired, running on adrenaline and caffeine and God knew what else.

The big 4x4 descended from the sage-covered bench, toward the prairie.

The ground was soft in places and the truck sank in the mud, tires spinning, the body of the vehicle shimmying side to side, so that Collins had to correct the trajectory every few seconds as they angled down the face of the bench.

They cleared some tall brush and now the headlights shone on the prairie, and on the sea of animals waiting there. The men gasped. Stared. Even Ring gawked at the scene before them, his computers forgotten.

Beck cracked his window, letting in the cool night air and the sounds and smells of thousands upon thousands of living things.

The truck was almost to flat ground now and the animals loomed like a wall. Shining jewel eyes turned toward the truck. Huge shaggy heads. A myriad of inscrutable faces.

The animals arrayed on the phalanx of the fantastic congregation watched the truck’s approach, silently. Impassively. Bodies glistening with rain.

The truck thumped and groaned to within fifty feet of the “wall” and all at once the dark line of animals parted, creating a path. A road through the multitude.

The men stared in wonder. Listened to the animals snorting and grunting, chuffing and moaning. Hooves and paws patted the earth as the creatures pulled back. Stepped aside. But there was no sign of panic or aggression.

It almost seemed that the truck’s arrival had been expected.

ELLA LAY ON HER SIDE.
Eyes closed. Face slack. Respiration steady.

The drug Wilden had injected—and that Dodd had readministered— was a narcotic analgesic designed to maintain unconsciousness for at least six hours. She’d feel groggy and incoherent for another three hours after that—assuming she lived that long.

She lay curled in the dirt as if Joe were still holding her. Kissing the back of her neck. She lay still. Limbs leaden. Useless. An explosion would not have roused her. She wasn’t dreaming, either. Her sleep was too deep. Her brain activity too subdued.

An anesthesia team observing the situation would have agreed: The chance of Ella dreaming was low—maybe one in a hundred. The chance of waking anytime soon: Zero. Impossible.

A gust of wind momentarily flattened the tarp, then re-inflated it, filling it like a lung.

The same gust came again.

And again.

A light flickered on in the deepest recesses of Ella’s mind then. A thin, frail, ghostly light. A tiny sputtering candle in a vast darkness.

Now—deep in Ella’s brain—there was a breath of sound to accompany the flame. A whisper. A delicate rill of words at once strange and familiar and reassuring.

Ella’s breathing changed and the light in her brain strengthened. Flared. Her limbs felt dead, still, but her mind was humming.

It was impossible. Shouldn’t be happening. But it was.

Thoughts unfurled. Flowed, like the power in a darkened house coming back on. Her hands moved. Her feet. She stretched. Opened her eyes. Looked out at the plain. Watched the lightning dance across a distant ridge. Felt the wind and moist air on her cheek.

The whisper in her mind intensified, and Ella
felt
, more than heard, the sound.

The words flowing inside the whisper were incomprehensible but achingly beautiful. Full and poignant, joyful and playful, funny and melancholy, all at the same time. Too beautiful for human speech, this language; far beyond human speech, yet freighted with relevant meaning and importance.

Ella lay still. Fragments of the whisper clarified in her brain, like phrases of verse recalled from earliest childhood, as if, somehow, she’d learned the language long ago. Ages ago. Forgotten most of it but retained a little in her subconscious—a sound here and there, a syllable or two.

She listened to the voice, drawing sustenance from it. And suddenly the meaning was there, clear and bright.

You are needed
, the voice was saying.
The time has come.

Ella listened.

Are you awake? The time has come.

She lay still. Thinking. Considering her task. Her responsibility.

And then she accepted the task. Put it on, like a soldier donning armor, new and shining and unfamiliar.

The whisper flowed on, around her, through her, and she felt vitality returning to her core, spreading to her legs and arms, hands and feet, fingers and toes.

Her emotions were surging now, too, but she let them go, though they frightened her. Terrified her, in fact.

DODD STOOD IN THE RAIN
in the middle of the makeshift camp and watched the GMC’s taillights bounce their way steadily downhill. The rumble of the truck faded beneath the rain and wind after a minute or so, but every now and again a gust would bring a murmur of engine noise to Dodd’s ears—the whine of the truck’s drivetrain groaning over rough ground, toiling downhill in low gear.

Dodd watched the lights until they were perhaps a half mile away—until he was sure Beck wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

He looked around the camp.

The pilots had retreated to the L4, eager, they’d said, to get some more shut-eye. The L4’s cockpit was dark.

He’d seen something in Donaldson’s face that told him the man knew what he had in mind for the girl, but what did that matter?

He turned toward the other helicopter—the B3. Wilden was still in the backseat—belted in and virtually comatose. Even when he awoke from his drug-induced stupor, he’d probably stay put. Sleep off his hangover.

Dodd turned toward the tarp sheltering Ella and smiled. Rolled his head in slow circles—as if warming up for an exercise--and flexed his limbs. Stretched.

This is going to be fun.

He walked to the tarp and squatted down at the entrance. Edged his way inside, out of the rain.

He put his hand on Ella’s leg. Felt the warmth of her body through the denim. Already his breathing was heavy, his heart thumping with anticipation.

He flipped on his headlamp and slid forward, until he was hovering over her.

She was magnificent. Perfect. Even with the blue-green bruise on her cheek—where Kehler had smacked her. Even with the dirt and grime and sweat.

She was amazing. Stunning.

Dodd leaned closer. Touched her hair. Stroked her cheek.

This is going to be fantastic.

Her eyes were closed. Her breathing slow and intermittent.

Of course her eyes are closed,
thought Dodd.
She’s drugged out of her mind. Won’t feel a thing. Won’t remember a thing.

He chuckled and reached for her jacket. Rolled her onto her back and climbed on top of her. He tugged her zipper down and put his hands on her breasts. He was moaning now, practically gasping.

He turned the headlamp off, set it on the ground, and kissed her. Threaded his hand inside her jacket, inside her shirt, until he found warm, soft skin. With his other hand he reached for her jeans. Found the top button.

“Oh,” he moaned.

He was inches from Ella’s face when lightning again flashed behind him.

He froze.

Her eyes were open.

Open.

Staring right at him.

Impossible. A trick of the light. Must’ve imagined it.

There were two quick sounds behind Dodd then: a soft footfall, and a muffled grunt.

He twisted like a snake. Whipped his body around so that he was facing the entrance to the tarp.