“What are you doing here?” Mary asked.
The whole room was waking up, kids asking what was going on. Zadie, the helper who’d been yelling, said, “I think something’s wrong, Mary.”
Two more kids pushed through the front door. They smelled of something that wasn’t pee.
A boy ran in, shrieking. He had a livid burn all over the back of his hand.
“What’s going on?”
“Help us, help us!” a boy cried, and now it was all chaos, more kids streaming in the door. Mary recognized the smell now, the smell of smoke.
She pushed none too gently past the new arrivals. Outside, she coughed as she drew a lungful of smoke.
Smoke was everywhere, swirling, hanging ghostly in the air, and an orange glow reflected from the shattered glass of town hall.
Off to the west a tongue of fire suddenly shot into the sky and was swallowed by its own smoke.
No one else was in the plaza. No one but one girl.
Mary rubbed the sleep from her eyes, stared at her. Not possible, not possible, not real, some leftover fragment of dream.
But the girl was still there, face in shadow, a glint of chrome steel glinting from her braces.
“Have you seen him?” the girl asked.
Mary felt something die inside her, dread and horror like the impact of an explosion in her mind.
“Have you seen the demon?” Brittney asked.
Mary couldn’t answer. She could only stare as Brittney’s arm began to elongate, to change shape.
Brittney winked. Cold, dead blue eyes.
Mary ran into the day care. She slammed the door behind her and leaned back against it.
TWENTY-SIX
13 HOURS, 43 MINUTES
THE SMOKE ALTERED the familiar streetscape for Sam. He was turned around, unsure for a moment of where he was or which direction was which. He stopped, heard footsteps running behind him, and spun around, hands up, palms out.
But the footsteps headed away.
Sam cursed in frustration. The town was burning down and the smoke made it all but impossible to find the enemy.
He had to do this now, during the heat of battle, before Astrid intervened and forced him once again to sit helpless, waiting for her to invent some system they’d never be able to put in place.
This was the night. This was the time to do what he should have done a month before: finish off Zil and his insanity.
But he would have to find them first.
He forced himself to think. What was Zil up to, aside from the obvious? Why would he decide to burn the town down? It seemed bold for Zil. It seemed insane: Zil lived there, too.
But Sam’s thoughts were fractured by the recurring image in his mind of Drake. Out there somewhere. Drake who had somehow come back from the dead.
Of course they’d never seen his body, had they?
“Focus,” Sam ordered himself. The problem right now was that the town was burning down. Edilio would be doing whatever he could to save those who needed saving. Sam’s job was to stop the terror now.
But where was Zil?
And was he with Drake?
Could the timing all be coincidence? No. Sam didn’t believe in coincidence.
Again, a movement glimpsed through a veil of smoke. Again Sam raced toward it. This time the figure did not disappear.
“Don’t…,” a young voice cried out, and then choked and hacked. A boy who looked to be maybe six years old.
“Get out of here,” Sam snapped. “Go to the beach.”
He ran on, faltered, turned to his right. Where was Drake? No, Zil. Where was Zil? Zil was real.
And all at once he was at the beach wall. He practically tripped over it. He had sent the six-year-old off in the wrong direction. Too late to do anything about that. The kid wasn’t the only lost one tonight.
Where were Dekka and Brianna and Taylor? Where were Edilio’s soldiers?
What was going on?
Sam saw a group of kids rushing along the sand in the direction of the marina. And for a moment he almost thought he saw Caine. He was hallucinating. Imagining things.
“Freaks out!”
Sam heard it clearly. It seemed very close. Maybe a trick of acoustics.
He tried to penetrate the dark and the smoke but he saw nothing now, not even the hallucinated Caine.
BLAM!
A shotgun blast. He saw the bright flash.
He ran. His feet hit something soft but heavy. He flew and landed facedown. Mouth gritty with sand he climbed to his feet. A body, someone in the sand.
No time for that.
It was time to see who was who and what was what. Sam raised his hands high and a ball of cold brilliant light formed in the air.
In the eerie half-light Sam saw a dozen of Zil’s thugs, half armed.
A mob was running away from them.
Another group, smaller, and looking oddly like doddering old people, kicked through the surf toward the distant marina.
Zil and his crew knew immediately who was responsible for the revelatory light. It could only be…
“Sam!”
“It’s Sam!”
“Run!”
“Shoot him! Shoot him!”
Three shotgun blasts in rapid succession. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Sam fired back. Pencils of blistering green light scoured the sand. A cry of pain.
“Don’t run away!”
“Cowards!”
BLAM! BLAM!
Someone firing methodically now, working the shotgun pump.
Sam felt a sharp sting in the meat of his shoulder. He hit the dirt, knocking the wind from his lungs.
People running past. He rolled onto his back, hands at the ready.
BLAM!
The pellets hit the sand near enough for Sam to hear the impact.
He rolled away, over and over.
BLAM! BLAM!
Then a click. A curse. More feet running, pummeling the sand.
He leaped up, aimed and fired. The killing green light drew a scream of pain or fear, but the retreating figure didn’t stop.
Sam got up more slowly this time. Sand was in his shirt, his mouth, his ears. In his eyes. Smoke and sand and his eyes were streaming. He saw nothing but blurs.
Now the light was working against him, making him an easy target. He waved and the tiny sun blinked out. The beach was dark again, though a faint hint of gray pearled the sky over the ocean.
He spit, trying to get the sand out of his mouth. Rubbed his eyes gently, trying to dislodge the grit.
Someone behind him!
The pain was like fire. A lash that cut through his shirt and tore his flesh.
Sam spun from the impact.
A dark shape.
A razor-sharp whistling sound and Sam, too stunned to move, felt the lash on his shoulder.
“Hey there, Sammy. Long time, huh?”
“No,” Sam gasped.
“Oh, yes,” the voice snarled. The voice Sam knew. The voice he dreaded. The voice that had laughed and crowed as he lay on the polished floor of the power plant, screaming in agony.
Sam blinked, struggled to open one eye, to see what could not possibly be real. He raised his hands and fired blind.
The whistling, whooshing sound. Sam ducked instinctively and the blow went harmlessly by.
“The demon!” a girl’s voice cried.
But it came from behind Sam because he had turned and run.
He ran. Ran blindly down the sand.
Ran and fell and jumped up to run again.
He didn’t stop until he hit the concrete beach wall, smashing his calves. He landed facedown on the ground and lay there, panting.
Quinn had turned the boats to shore, dreading what he would find when they reached land.
The fire had spread and now seemed to cover half the town, although there were no new explosions. The smoke had reached them out at sea. Quinn’s eyes stung. His heart was in his throat.
Not another
massacre, not another atrocity. Enough! He just wanted to fish.
The rowers were silenced by the awful spectacle of their homes burning.
They reached the first of the piers and saw a group of kids staggering onto it, no doubt panicked kids running away, thinking the marina would be safe.
Quinn called out to them.
No answer.
His boat touched the bumper that sloshed in the water. His moves were automatic from long practice. He tossed a rope loop over the piling and pulled his boat closer. Oars were shipped. Big Goof jumped onto the pier and secured the second line.
The staggering gaggle of kids on shore ignored them and kept moving. They moved strangely. Like frail old people.
Something strange about them…
And familiar.
The dawn was still an hour away. The only light was from the fire. The false stars were blotted by the pall of smoke.
Quinn jumped onto the pier.
“Hey there! Hey!” he yelled. Quinn was responsible for the boats. The marina was his.
The kids kept moving, like they were deaf. They headed down a parallel pier toward the two boats that were kept fueled for rescues: a bass boat and an inflatable Zodiac.
“Hey!” Quinn yelled.
The foremost of the kids turned to face him. They were separated by fifty feet of water, but even in the faint fire glow Quinn recognized the shape of shoulders and head.
And he recognized the voice.
“Penny,” Caine said. “Keep our friend Quinn busy.”
From the water a monster erupted in a tremendous geyser.
Quinn bellowed in terror.
The monster rose, taller and taller. It had a head like a tortured, deformed elephant. Two black, dead eyes. Curved teeth. The jaw gaped open to reveal a long, pointed tongue.
It roared then, a sound like a hundred massive cellos played with garbage cans for bows. Hollow. Tortured.
Quinn fell back. He fell from the pier. His back hit the edge of his boat. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs and he fell head-down into the water.
Panicked, he breathed. Salt water filled his throat. He gagged and coughed and strained with all his might not to breathe again.
Quinn knew the water. He’d been a good surfer and a very good swimmer. This was not his first experience of being upside down and turned around underwater.
He grabbed onto his fear and kicked hard to bring himself around. The surface, the barrier between water and air, death and life, was ten feet up. One foot kicked dirt. The water was not deep here.
He began to rise.
But the monster was reaching beneath the pier. Insanely long arms, with impossible clawlike hands.
The arms reached for him and he backpedaled away. Panicky, kicking, pushing at the water, lungs burning.
Too slow. One gigantic hand closed around him.
The fingers went through.
No pain.
No contact or sensation at all.
The second claw swiped through the water. It would disembowel him.
But it passed through him.
Illusion!
With the last of his strength Quinn reached the surface. He gagged on air and vomited seawater from his stomach. The monster was gone.
Big Goof hauled him like dead weight into the boat. Quinn lay on the bottom of the boat, uncomfortable atop the oars.
“You okay?”
Quinn couldn’t answer. If he tried he knew he would retch again. His voice was not yet back. He still felt as if he were breathing through a straw. But he was alive.
And now it all fell into place. That monster. The sound it made. He knew them.
Cloverfield.
It was the monster from the movie. The exact monster, the exact sound.
He sat up and coughed.
Then he stood up in the rocking boat and saw Caine and his crew climbing aboard the two motorboats.
Caine caught sight of him and sent him a wintry, ironic smile. There was a strange girl with him. She, too, stared at him, but she did not smile. Instead, she bared crooked teeth at him in a grimace that was far more threat than smile.
An engine started, throaty and rough. Then a second.
Quinn stayed where he was. No chance he could take on Caine. Caine could kill him with a gesture.
The two motorboats chugged slowly, cautiously, away from the pier.
There came the sound of running feet. A rush of kids, some armed. Quinn recognized Lance, then Hank. Finally Zil, hanging back, letting the other two get out in front.
They reached the end of the pier. Hank stopped, aimed, and fired.
The shot hit the Zodiac. The air blew out in a sudden exhale. The boat’s motor chugged beneath the water as the stern collapsed and sank.
Quinn climbed halfway up onto the pier to see. His jaw dropped.
Caine, wet and furious, rose and levitated above the sinking Zodiac.
He yanked Hank and his gun up into the air. Hank soared, twisting, crying out in terror, helpless. Up and up and up, and all the while Caine floated as his companions foundered.
A hundred feet in the air, Hank came to a stop. And then, down he came. But not falling. Too fast to be a fall. Too fast for it to be mere gravity.
Caine hurled Hank down from the graying sky. Like a meteor. Impossibly fast, a blur.
Hank hit the water. A huge spout went up, like someone had fired off a depth charge.
Quinn knew the waters of the marina. It was no more than eight feet deep where Hank hit. The bottom was sand and shell.
There was not the slightest chance that Hank would come bobbing back up to the surface.
Caine floated as Zil looked on in helpless horror.
“Now that,” Caine shouted, “was a mistake, Zil.”
Zil and his crew turned tail and ran. Caine laughed and lowered himself into the second boat. Five of his people were still in the water, calling out and waving and then cursing and raging as the motorboat roared away.
TWENTY-SEVEN
13 HOURS, 32 MINUTES
“GET UP,” PEACE whispered. She shook Sanjit’s shoulder.
Sanjit had long been accustomed to being awakened at odd hours. That part of being the oldest kid in the Brattle-Chance family had long since lost its charm.
“Is it Bowie?” he said.
Peace shook her head. “No. I think the world is burning.”
Sanjit raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That seems kind of extreme, Peace.”
“Just come.”
Sanjit groaned and rolled out of bed. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost morning.”
“The key word being ‘almost,’” Sanjit complained. “You know what’s a better time to get up? Actual morning. Much better than ‘almost’ morning.”
But he followed her down the hall to the room she shared with Bowie and Pixie. The house had twenty-two bedrooms, but only Sanjit and Virtue had chosen to sleep by themselves.
Pixie was asleep. Bowie tossed and turned, still under attack from the fever that would not go away.
“The window,” Peace whispered.
Sanjit went to the window. It was almost floor-to-ceiling, a stunning view during the day. He stood there gazing toward the far-distant town of Perdido Beach.
“Go get Choo,” he said after a moment.
She came back with a poisonously cranky Virtue, rubbing sleep from his eyes and muttering.
“Look,” Sanjit said.
Virtue stared, just as Sanjit had done. “It’s a fire.”
“You think?” Sanjit shook his head, awestruck. “The whole town must be on fire.”
Red and orange flames were a bright dot on the horizon. In the gray predawn light he saw a massive pillar of black smoke. The scale seemed ridiculous. The bright fire was a dot, but the smoke seemed to be miles high, shaped like a twisted funnel.
“So that’s where I’m supposed to fly the helicopter?” Sanjit said.
Virtue left and returned a few
moments later. He was carrying a small telescope. It wasn’t very powerful. They’d used it at times to try to see details in the town or on the wooded shore closest to the island. It had never shown much. It showed no more now, but even slightly magnified the fire looked terrifying.
Sanjit looked at Bowie, who was whimpering in his sleep.
“I’m getting a very bad feeling,” Virtue said.
“It’s not like the fire can spread here,” Sanjit said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.
Virtue didn’t say anything. He just stared. And it dawned on Sanjit that his brother and friend was seeing more than just the fire.
“What is it, Choo?”
Virtue sighed, a heavy sound that edged toward a sob. “You never ask me about where I came from.”
Sanjit was surprised by the turn in the conversation. “Africa. I know you come from Africa.”
“Africa’s a continent, not a country,” Virtue said with a faint echo of his normal pedantry. “Congo. That’s where I’m from.”
“Okay.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”
Sanjit shrugged. “Lions and giraffes and all?”
Virtue didn’t even bother to sneer. “There’s been war there for, like, ever. People killing one another. Raping. Torturing. Stuff you don’t even want to know about, brother.”
“Yeah?”
“I wasn’t in an orphanage when Jennifer and Todd adopted me. I was four years old. In a refugee camp. All I remember is being hungry all the time. And no one taking care of me.”
“Where were your real mom and dad?”
Virtue didn’t answer for a long time, and some instinct warned Sanjit not to push him.
Finally, Virtue said, “They came and started burning down our village. I don’t know why. I was just a little kid. I just know my mother—my birth mom—told me to run and hide in the bush.”
“Okay.”
“She told me not to come out. Or look. She said, ‘Hide. And close your eyes tight. And cover your ears.’”
“But you didn’t.”
“No,” Virtue whispered.
“What did you see?”
“I…” Virtue took a deep, shuddering breath. In a strained, unnatural voice he said, “You know what? I can’t tell you. I can’t use words for it. I don’t want the words to come out of my mouth.”