“What the crap is that?” Ian said.
It was something I had seen before.
“It’s genius,” I said. “Ostin is a freaking genius.” Then the sound caught up to us, a loud screech like the painful squeal of a train’s brakes. “It’s rats. Ostin must have released them from the Starxource plant.”
Even in the mini Starxource bowl there were tens of thousands of the hungry, electric animals. The ravenous rats swept across the yard in a powerful, glowing surge, running at the guards, drawn to them by the smell of death and meat.
The Elgen in front were the first to fall, vainly firing their guns into the mass, which was like shooting arrows to stop a river.
The swarm of rats broke against the men like a wave hitting the shore, covering and devouring them, pouring over each other, as the guards were stripped of their flesh.
The guards at the rear ran to escape the onslaught, some successfully, some not.
It took less than three minutes for the guards to evacuate the complex. At least those who could. Those who didn’t make it out were devoured.
The river of glowing fur continued out the breaches in the wall, chasing the guards outside. The sounds of screams and machine guns echoed in the distance.
I lifted my radio. “Ostin, you’re a freaking genius.”
“Roger that,” he said. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I can’t. There’s nothing you don’t know.”
“Well, we emptied the yard for a moment.”
“More than just a moment,” I said.
“It’s a reprieve,” he said. “Not a victory.”
“What do you mean?” I noticed that the glow below us had began to dull. I looked through my binoculars. The rats were falling to their sides, steaming and twitching until the entire ground was a gray, writhing carpet of wet, smoldering fur.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s the rain,” Ostin said. “Water kills them.”
I looked around. “Jack, let’s get the prisoners back out there and collect the Elgen weapons. Let’s get their machine guns on the breaches. They’ll be back.”
“Sooner than you think,” Ian said.
Just then a loud explosion rocked our perch. At first I thought lightning had struck the grounds, because smoke was rising from below us, but when I looked out toward the fence, I saw a large gap wide enough to drive a tank through. Then another blast hit.
“It’s mortar fire,” Ian said. “They’re shelling us.”
Another projectile hit the tower to our east and blew it apart, leaving just a few bricks and mangled rebar. Then a second tower was hit.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Taylor said. “They’re aiming for the towers.”
“Too late!” Ian shouted. “Incoming!”
A mortar round broke through the glass of our tower. I reached out to deflect it just as it blew. The shrapnel scattered away from me, covering the western wall. The explosion rang in my ears as smoke filled the room.
After a moment Taylor coughed, then said, “You saved us.”
I rolled over to my side, trying to catch my breath as the smoke cleared.
“Oh no,” Nichelle said. “Tanner?”
I sat up. Through the smoke I could see Tanner lying on top of a desk against the west wall. His arm was dangling over the side, and I could see blood dripping from his fingers.
“Tanner!” I shouted.
All of us ran to his side. He was mostly covered in the chalky plaster of the wall, except where the red of his blood had seeped through and stained his clothes and the dust crimson. There were holes all over his body. Shrapnel. I looked over at Ian, who looked horror-struck. He lowered his head as he shook it.
Somehow Tanner was still conscious.
I touched his shoulder, one of the few places not soaked with blood. “I’m so sorry.”
Tanner grimaced in pain, then said softly, “You were right, man . . .” His chin quivered, and a thin stream of blood fell down from the corner of his mouth. “I tried. I just couldn’t do it. All those people I killed.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “It was never your fault. Hatch made you do it.”
“Maybe . . . God will see it that way.” He looked into my eyes. Then his gaze froze and his hand went limp.
“No,” I said. “Tanner, I’m sorry.”
Taylor started crying.
“I killed him,” I said.
Nichelle put her hand on my arm. “No, you didn’t. The Elgen did.”
I stood there, the world spinning around me. I had already lost two friends. No matter the outcome, I had already lost. After a minute Ian said, “Come on, Michael. We’ve got to get out of here.”
I just knelt down next to Tanner’s body. “I’m so sorry.”
Taylor put her arm around me. “Please, Michael. Ian’s right. We’ve got to go or we’ll all die.”
I looked back up. Ian and Nichelle were looking at me and there was fear on their faces.
“C’mon,” Taylor said, gently pulling me. “We’ve got to go.”
I forced myself to my feet. We took the stairs back down into the prison, barring the door behind us. At the end of the hallway we could see a group of GPs crowded inside. The lights inside the building were flickering.
I was having trouble concentrating. “Ian, what’s going on?”
“The guards have taken the grounds again. There’re more of them. They just keep coming.”
Just then Tessa’s voice came over the radio. “Michael, they broke through the north gate. We can’t hold them. We’re falling back inside.”
“The second fence is down,” Ian said.
“Everyone into the prison,” I said.
“It’s going to be hand-to-hand combat,” Ian said.
I looked at him. “No, it’s not. They’re going to bury us alive.”
Just then the ground beneath us shook.
“It came from over there,” Ian said. “It’s the tunnel.”
“Zeus!” I lifted my radio. “Zeus? Are you there? Zeus, what happened?”
Nothing.
“Zeus!”
There was a burst of static, then, “I’m here. I couldn’t hold them anymore so I blew the outer tunnel. I’m coming up.”
I breathed out in relief. “Meet us in the east corridor. Ostin, Jack, everyone, meet in the east corridor. Now!” A horrid little voice said to me, We’ll die together in the east corridor.
The prison’s east corridor was crowded and full of panic. The few GPs who had survived were terrified or unconscious. Most were injured, some dying. Abigail was walking around the cafeteria caring for the wounded, comforting as many as she could. She had run a wire between a dozen injured men and was holding the end of it, taking away their pain. She was trembling and pale.
“Abi!” Taylor shouted. “Come with us!”
Just then there was an explosion and the door at the end of the south corridor blew across the hall. Almost immediately dozens of guards started running in.
“They’re inside,” Taylor said.
At that moment something inside me cracked, and rage as hot as lightning pulsed through my body. I felt insane. My Tourette’s went crazy and I started twitching uncontrollably.
The guards immediately set their guns and began firing at us, at me, the glowing target, but I was so electric that nothing could hit me. Nothing could hit any of us. Then I shouted, “Stop shooting at us!” I reached out at them and pulsed with all my anger.
The shockwave I emitted rattled the walls and broke against them like an explosion, evaporating everything that had stood in the path.
“Michael!” Taylor gasped.
I looked down at my hand. It was flashing between flesh and electricity. At moments I could see through it. I was pure electricity.
“What’s happening to you?” Taylor asked.
My body was now glowing brighter than a lightbulb. “I don’t know. But don’t touch me.”
/> “Michael,” Ian said. “They just took the south and north wings. We need to evacuate.”
“To where?” Taylor said. “There’s no place else to go.”
I looked around. There was only one place left, the radio room next to where the radio mast was mounted.
“Outside,” I said. “Where’s the rest of the clan?” I lifted my radio. “Everyone hurry!”
Just then Ostin and McKenna ran up, followed by Tessa and Zeus, who was covered in dirt. Then Jack came. He was covered with dirt, and his shirt was torn and bloody where a bullet had grazed him.
“Everyone outside,” I said. “To the radio building.”
Fortunately, the walk to the radio building and tower was covered by a fiberglass canopy, which provided shelter for Zeus.
“What are we going to do out here?” Taylor asked.
“I just need to think,” I said. “Away from the chaos.”
“We shouldn’t be by this mast,” Ostin said. “If lightning strikes, it could kill us.”
“As opposed to the Elgen?” Jack said.
“Lightning never strikes the same place twice,” Taylor said. “I already saw the tower get hit.”
“That’s a myth,” Ostin said. “The Empire State Building was once hit forty-eight times in less than a half hour.”
“Michael, what’s going on with you?” Jack asked. “You’re, like . . . electric.”
“I know.” I looked up at the tower. “Ostin, are you serious about this tower getting struck by lightning?”
“As a heart attack, man. We need to move.”
“I’d rather be electrocuted than shot,” Ian said.
“Give me odds,” I said. “What are the odds this will be struck again?”
“Too good,” Ostin said. “That thing’s five hundred meters. We’ve got to get away from here.”
“Give me odds.”
“I can’t,” Ostin said. “There are too many variables.”
“For once in your life just guess!”
“Eighty-two point four percent!” he shouted in frustration.
“Good enough,” I said. “Zeus!”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you blew the tunnel, did you blow the whole thing?”
“No. Just the end so they couldn’t get in.”
“How many can fit in there?”
He looked at me quizzically. “I don’t know. Maybe fifty. Why?”
“That’s where you’re taking everyone.” I opened the west door of the radio building and started walking toward the base of the tower.
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“Michael, what are you doing?” Taylor said, coming after me.
I turned and looked at her. I wanted to kiss her, but I knew I couldn’t do it without hurting her. I was way too electric. “Just make sure everyone’s down in the tunnel by the time I reach the top.”
“The top of what?” She looked at the tower, then back at me, panic in her eyes. “The tower?”
“I love you. Remember that. I’ll always love you.” I turned back and walked toward the center of the tower, where a ladder climbed the latticework to the top.
“You promised you would never leave me!” she shouted after me.
“I know,” I said. “If it was my choice, I wouldn’t. But it’s not anymore.”
“Michael, what are you doing?” Ostin said, coming out of the building. “Get away from the tower.”
“I know what I need to do. I just need more electricity.”
He looked at the sky, then back at me. “Michael, that’s a billion volts. It will probably kill you.”
“We’re already dead, man.”
Taylor shouted frantically, “Jack, stop him! Please!”
Jack ran to me. “Michael, don’t do this.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. I won’t let you.”
“You don’t have a choice either. You can’t stop me.”
“Yes, I can.” He grabbed me by the arm. Just touching me shocked him. His arm shook, but he didn’t let go.
I looked at him calmly. “You need to let go, Jack.”
“You’re not climbing that thing, man. Look how bright you are. You’re like a beacon. The Elgen will shoot you off before you reach the top.”
“No, they can’t touch me. It’s our only chance. Now let go.”
“I won’t do it, buddy. I can’t lose you. You’re all I have left. You’re my friend.” His eyes welled up with tears. “You’re my best friend.”
I looked Jack in the eyes. “You once said you’d take a bullet for me. You need to let me do the same. That’s what I’m doing.” Limiting myself as much as possible, I pulsed. I was so electric that my mildest was enough to throw Jack back, unconscious. I pointed to Zeus. “I’m counting on you, Zeus. Get everyone you can into the tunnel.”
I turned back, grabbed on to the ladder, and began climbing.
“What is that?” Hatch shouted, staring through his binoculars from the Faraday. “What’s that climbing the radio mast? That light?”
One of the officers lifted his own binoculars. “It’s not a light. It’s a person.” He turned to Hatch. “I think it’s Vey.”
“Why would he climb the tower?”
“He must be trying to escape.”
“To what?” Hatch said. “He’s either an idiot or a coward. Shoot him down. I want every gun on him. I want the tower brought down if you have to, just bring him down. I want Vey’s body. I want my feast. I will have my feast.”
I hadn’t considered whether or not I had the strength to make the climb, only that I needed to do it. My clothes were drenched and I was winded just a few hundred feet up, maybe just 10 percent of the way to the top. Usually when you climb a ladder, you’re on an incline, leaning inward. A vertical climb is much more difficult, as you are moving straight up. It feels as if you’re being pulled backward.
Within fifteen minutes my friends, who were still huddled around the base of the tower, looked like miniatures—like the plastic army men I used to play with when I was a child.
As I climbed higher, I could feel the change in the atmosphere. The air seemed more electric—more charged—and my body tingled with the added power. My clothes began to burn.
It wasn’t hard to tell when the Elgen army had spotted me. I could see the fire from gun barrels pointed at me, popping like thousands of camera flashes at an NBA play-off. The bullets began whizzing by me like angry wasps. Then bigger things, projectiles, began flying toward me. I didn’t mind that they were shooting at me. I hoped they would. It meant they weren’t shooting at my friends, and I was so electric that I easily repelled everything the Elgen sent my way. At this point I think I could have repelled an airplane.
My biggest concern was that they might take out the tower. When I was halfway up, one of the shells exploded next to the tower about fifty feet below me, and the entire tower shook. My feet slipped, and for a moment I hung seven hundred feet up by just my hands. Had I not magnetized, I probably would have fallen. I wondered if they would cut the guy wires. I wondered if they would be willing to bring this whole tower down just to get to me. Of course they would.
It took me more than a half hour to reach the top of the mast. Twenty feet before the top was a horizontal beam that hung out about thirty feet in each direction.
At the very top of the mast a red light flashed. I put my hand on the plastic shell of the light, pulsed, and blew it out, not that it helped my situation any, as I was now glowing brighter than the light, but the thing annoyed me.
Lightning flashed in a cloud a few miles off, and the accompanying thunder was louder than I had ever heard it before.
I leaned heavily against the tower’s rungs, breathless and dripping with sweat and rain. I was mildly afraid of heights—most people are, I guess, but I was really high up and hanging on to thin wet bars by very little. People have BASE jumped from lower heights.
That’s when
I realized that, in the unlikely event that I somehow survived a lightning strike, I would never be able to hold on to the tower, and I would fall to my death. As I looked up at the churning, groaning sky, I hooked my arm over the highest rung, then undid my belt. Not only did my mother always buy belts bigger than I needed, since I was still growing, but I had lost weight over the last few months, so the extra length of the belt wrapped halfway around my waist. Taylor had once threatened to cut it in half. I had at least ten inches to work with.
I ran my belt over the rung, then buckled it back on so it would hold me, the same way the utility guys fixing power lines did back in Idaho. I noticed things like that. As a child, I was always looking for someone else who might be electric too.
That high up I could see the entire island. I could see all the way to one of the other islands. If I was Ian, I probably could have seen Fiji. There were more Elgen than I imagined. Thousands and thousands. Even as the prison fell, more were coming from boats, more were marching to finish us off. I now understood that we had never really had a chance.
Dozens of Elgen boats surrounded the entire island. I wondered where the Risky Business was. I wondered if they’d made it through. I wouldn’t put it past Hatch to just kill J.D. and keep the million-dollar bounty he’d put on Welch. Maybe I should have just electrocuted J.D. back on the boat.
I looked straight down below me. My friends were gone. All of them. I felt relieved and sad at the same time. I was truly alone.
It was at that moment that I realized that I would never see any of them again. My eyes welled up, and my tears mingled with the driving rain that stung my face. Peculiar thoughts crossed my mind. Was I enough? Had I been the man I should have been? I wished that I hadn’t caused my mother all the pain I did. I hoped she wouldn’t miss me too much. I wondered what would happen to her.
Just then a bullet struck an iron rung below me. It rang like a bell, awakening me from my thoughts. I thought it was strange that it didn’t concern me. I suppose accepting your death is liberating that way. All I thought was, That was a good shot, dude. You almost got me.
I’ve heard it said that your life flashes before you before you die. I don’t know if that’s true, I don’t know whether this counts or not, but memories suddenly began flooding into my mind.