He took his arm away and I sank about a foot before my butt hit the bottom. I raised my head a little and saw a chopper over the river, so low, the water churned beneath it, the wind of the blades creating little whitecaps in the harsh glare of the searchlights. I didn’t see the other one. We were about five feet from the rocky shore. The ground rose sharply toward a densely wooded hillside directly ahead.
“Okay,” Mike breathed. “On my mark. Three, two, one . . . mark!”
I was a couple of seconds behind Mike. I never was good at races. In PE the whistle would blow and everybody would be six feet in front of me before I took the first step. Mike was already out of the water, running doubled over, his knuckles practically touching the ground, before I even reached the shore. I told myself as I started to run that the roar of the helicopter behind me wasn’t getting louder, but of course it was.
Mike had reached the edge of the trees, waving his arms frantically, as if that’s all I needed to run faster.
About halfway between the water and the trees I froze. The second gunship had risen from behind the trees; I was trapped between them. The air began to whip around me as they bore down, and I stood still, pinned like a bug by the blinding searchlights. I could hear Mike screaming my name.
I don’t know how long I stood there, river water pooling under my wet tennis shoes, waiting for the bullet to rip through my brain. All I know is after a lifetime or two Mike made a decision and came to get me, grabbing me by the shoulder and hurling me toward the safety of the trees.
I stumbled once, tearing the knee in my jeans on the rocky ground. Mike yanked me up and half dragged, half pushed me into the crowded underbrush of the wooded hillside.
He pushed me face-first into the ground and put his hand on the small of my back as he whispered in my ear, “Don’t move!”
The choppers circled slowly overhead. Sometimes they sounded right above us; sometimes the blades’ thumping sounded very far away. The searchlights stabbed through the canopy, and they looked like white columns, the kind you see on Southern mansions, as they illuminated the misty air.
The columns of light kept moving farther and farther away, and after a while I couldn’t hear the helicopters’ engines at all. Finally, I couldn’t take it and told Mike I had to pee.
“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Mike said. So I went behind the nearest tree, and when I came back Mike was sitting up. He unwrapped a piece of gum and carefully folded the stick into his mouth. I sat down beside him and examined the tear in my jeans. My knee was bleeding.
“Catch your breath, Al. We got five, maybe ten minutes,” Mike said around his fresh wad of gum. “They’re looking for a place to land.”
“And what happens after they land?”
“They’ll come for us on foot. They’re very determined little suckers.”
“Who are determined little suckers?”
He didn’t answer at first. He picked up a stick and commenced to jabbing it into the rocky ground.
“The Company,” he said.
“OIPEP?”
He nodded. “OIPEP.”
“Why is OIPEP trying to kill us, Mike?”
“I don’t think they’re trying to kill you, Al. It’s me they want.”
That didn’t surprise me. Mike had betrayed the knights and OIPEP, but I still didn’t understand why he had kidnapped me. Did he think I still had Excalibur?
He stood up and brushed the leaves and dirt from his butt. “Look at this! I just bought these,” he said, referring to his Dockers. “Stain-defenders!”
He turned to me. “Sorry for snatching you like that, Al, but I’m in a bad way now and like it or not, you’re the only port in this particular storm.”
“What storm? What are you talking about, Mike?”
“Well, you could say it’s all a big misunderstanding. But it’s more a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right’s doing. You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
He walked past me, deeper into the woods, without looking back.
“It’s your call, kid. Stick with me and you got a fifty-fifty chance of seeing your sixteenth birthday. Hang here and you got a hundred percent chance of having your head snatched straight through your backside.”
I followed him up the slope, and to me it sounded like we were making enough noise to wake the dead. We reached the top of the hill and now I could see the lights of the interstate about a mile to our left. To our right was the Knoxville airport. And, directly below us, the parking lot to an air freight company.
“Right where I left it,” Mike breathed. “Okay, let’s go.”
I crouched in the trees just at the edge of the little lawn that surrounded the parking lot as Mike jogged to a silver 380Z parked at the far corner of the lot. I didn’t know what the heck was going on and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know, but there was no turning back now, and I figured eventually Mike would fill me in on the details.
The Z roared to life and Mike zipped over, waving to me through the open window. I jogged out of the trees and into the lot as Mike slowed to a stop. He floored the gas as soon as my butt touched the seat.
Mike headed into the mountains, taking the Z up to eighty on the straightaways, maybe a little bit slower—but not much—on the curves.
We went through a couple of small towns in the foothills; then, right before the entrance to the national park, Mike turned onto a gravel road that seemed to wind straight up the side of a mountain. The little access road hugged the mountain on one side and a deep ravine dropped off the other. I happened to be seated on the ravine side. I closed my eyes and willed my heart not to leap out of my mouth.
Finally the car rolled to a gravel-crunching stop and I opened my eyes. We were parked in front of a log cabin sitting by itself in a clearing hacked out of the mature trees covering the mountaintop.
“Home sweet home,” Mike sang out and stepped out of the car. “We’re perfectly secure here. Nobody knows about this place, Al. Not even the Company, and the Company knows practically everything.”
He came around to my side of the car and stood there, like he was expecting me to get out. I didn’t.
“Get out of the car, Al,” he said.
“I’m not getting out of the car, Mike,” I said, “until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I think I told you. You’ve been extracted.”
“Why?”
He smiled. “Get out and I’ll tell you.”
I thought about it. The leaves were gray in the dark, and the cold wind made a rattling sound as it moved through them.
The lights were on inside the cabin, and the light looked inviting and warm.
“Why can’t you tell me now, Mike?”
“Well, basically because of the car.”
“The car?”
“It’s brand-new.” He pulled the gun from his belt and pointed it at my forehead.
“Out. Now.”
I got out. Mike took a couple of steps back and gestured toward the cabin with the Glock.
“After you, Al. March.”
As I trudged up the hill toward the bright, warm lights, the hair on the back of my neck stuck up and I realized then what a terrible mistake I had made getting out of the car. It’s brand-new, Mike had said. Why did that matter? Because he didn’t want to mess it up when he shot me.
From behind me he said, “Okay, that’s good.” We were about ten feet from the front porch. I stopped. He stopped. I shivered in the cold air.
“Don’t turn around, Al,” Mike said softly. “It’s better if you don’t turn around. Maybe you should kneel.”
To my left was the ravine, the deep gash in the side of the mountain. To the right the ground dropped off into a dense thicket of wild blackberry bushes and scrub pine.
“You know what the Company calls this, Al?”
“An extraction?”
“Right. But extraction comes in many varieties. This one we call an ‘extreme extraction.’ ??
?
“Can I at least know why you’re going to extremely extract me?”
“For the world, Al. The welfare of humankind.”
I heard him slide the bullet into the chamber. The wind sighed in the trees. I could see my own breath.
“I should tell you that I hate doing this, Al—you know, how I always liked you and respected you and all that, but that just isn’t true. To be frank, you’ve always annoyed the heck out of me.”
10
I waited for the bullet, but the bullet never came. Instead a gigantic white horse burst from the trees to my right, bearing a figure dressed entirely in black, down to the ski mask over its head, bending low over the horse’s back as it came straight toward me. I heard Mike cry out, the sharp pop-pop of his gun, and then the rider was between Mike and me, and an arm swooped down and yanked me off my feet. Barely off my feet, because this rider was a lot shorter and thinner than I was, so my toes dragged the ground as the horse made straight for the ravine. I grabbed on to the back of the saddle and heaved myself up behind the black-clad rider as the horse swung around and headed back for the cover of the forest.
Mike had gone to one knee, holding the Glock with both hands as he fired, and a bullet tore through the back of my shirt as it fluttered behind me.
Then we were in the woods, plunging into the pines and oaks and maples, through thick undergrowth and hanging vines, and if we were following a path or trail, I couldn’t see it—but I didn’t see much because half the time my eyes were closed. When I did open them, I could see the rump of the white horse and the ground sloping down as we thundered toward the foot of the mountain, a descent that seemed to get steeper as we went. Any second I was sure the stallion would lose its balance and both of us would fly into a somersault, flipping end over end before a tree stopped us.
We zigzagged between the trees and scrub growth, occasionally becoming airborne as the horse leaped across ravines and deep gouges in the ground where tributaries of the Little Pigeon River ran.
Then we burst into a wide clearing maybe halfway down the mountain, a flat, treeless area, and the rider brought the horse to a snorting stop. I didn’t dismount as much as slowly slide off the saddle onto the ground.
The rider fell to the ground beside me, and we lay there, contemplating the night sky. The rider moaned, one hand pressing against the dark fabric of the turtleneck sweater.
“I’m hit.”
I rolled to my side. I recognized that voice.
She reached up with her free hand and pulled off the ski mask.
“Ashley?”
She tried to smile, but it was more of grimace. “Hello, Alfred.” “I guess you’re not a transfer student from California.”
“No.”
“I knew it! Seniors don’t eat lunch with sophomores.
You’re OIPEP, aren’t you?”
She nodded, her eyes watering from the pain, I guess.
“Where are you hurt?” I asked.
She pulled up the sweater, exposing her rib cage. Mike’s bullet had torn through the left side. She was bleeding pretty bad.
“Chopper’s on its way,” she gasped. Then she started to cough, and I saw blood shimmering in the starlight on the corner of her mouth.
“Got the lung,” she whispered. “Alfred, strapped to my left leg . . .”
Her eyes rolled in her head. I reached down and pulled up her pants leg and saw a long knife in a black leather sheath strapped there.
Then I understood. I knelt beside her and yanked the knife from its sheath. My hands were shaking. I pressed the edge of the blade against my left palm. I hated knives, but I didn’t see how I had a choice. Maybe the OIPEP chopper had a medic on board, but Ashley might not make it if we waited for them. She was bleeding to death.
I pressed harder and a thin line of blood welled up around the blade. I threw the knife into the grass and pressed my bleeding hand over the bullet hole. Ashley gasped. Her eyes came open.
“Alfred . . .” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.”
Her breathing steadied and the wet gargling sound lessened, then faded away. She grabbed my wrist.
“I don’t believe this . . .” she murmured.
“But you knew about it,” I said.
She started to say something, but at that moment a black Apache helicopter rose above the trees, blotting out the stars as it climbed. A searchlight stabbed into the clearing.
I scrambled to my feet, running through the options in my head. I could run—I didn’t know if Ashley would be able to stop me, but she had gone through a lot of trouble to extract me, so she would probably try. I could go with her, but so far I hadn’t run into one OIPEP agent who hadn’t lied to me at one time or another—so that might not be in my best interest either. She had saved my life, though, and running randomly through the woods didn’t seem to be a very wise option, especially since Mike was still on the mountain, probably looking for me.
So when the helicopter set down, I scooped her off the ground and ran to it. The pilot, wearing a black helmet with a dark visor, met me there.
“What happened?” he shouted over the roar of the blades above us.
“She was shot, but she’s going to be okay!”
He nodded and we got her inside.
I searched in vain for a safety belt, across the aisle from Ashley, who was sitting up, and her eyes were open as the pilot checked out her injury. He said something to her that I couldn’t hear, and she nodded, waving him toward the front of the helicopter, making a twirling motion with her index finger as if to say, Get us out of here! The wind blasting through the open hold set my teeth to chattering uncontrollably. Then we were airborne.
Ashley smiled at me. All the OIPEP agents I had known had had great orthodontics. I wondered if that was a job requirement. Are people with good teeth more trustworthy?
“Where are you taking me?” I shouted over the wind at her.
“Airport!”
“Why?”
She shouted something back that sounded like calcified, but I figured I heard it wrong and probably what she said was classified.
“Why is Mike Arnold trying to kill me?” I shouted.
She just shook her head, looked at the luminescent dial of her watch, then slapped a headset on. Her eyebrows drew together and her smile faded away as she talked; it looked like she was having an argument. Then she ripped off the headset and stood up, legs spread wide for balance in the rocking hold, turned, and pulled down a black case from the compartment above her head. She dropped the case on the seat, her back toward me, and fumbled with the contents. Maybe, I thought, she was going to put a bandage on her wound.
Ashley swung around to face me, holding something that looked like a cross between a dart gun and a water pistol.
“What’s that?” I shouted.
“I’m sorry, Alfred,” she said. “I have orders.”
And before I could move, she pressed the muzzle of the thing against my upper thigh and pulled the trigger. I felt something sharp plunge into my leg, and the world went black.
PART TWO
The Infernal Hordes
—original message—
To: Aquarius
From: ChiCubsFan
Subject: Sub-Sub-Sec. Op Utopia
See attached report doc. S.S. A.K. now in Company control.
To: ChiCubsFan
From: Aquarius
Subject: Sub-Sub-Sec. Op Utopia
Unfortunate, but not necessarily world-ending.
Proceed posthaste to Nexus Point and execute Phase Three of Op Utopia. All third parties expendable. All Company personnel expendable.
Aquarius
11
Every summer when I was a little kid, my mother threw me into our old Corolla and drove us down to Destin, a beach town in the Florida Panhandle. I loved those trips. We stopped at roadside restaurants to eat, greasy spoons with the vertical coolers that held the pies and cakes,
and little one-story motels two blocks from the beach, like the Seabreeze Motor Court or the Conchshell Conclave.
The Seabreeze was my favorite, mostly because the beds had this vibrator built in: you dropped a quarter into the timer and the bed would vibrate for five minutes. Two quarters got you twelve minutes. As soon as we hit the door, I flopped on one of those beds, feeding it quarters. Mom wouldn’t let me use the vibrating function at night, though. She thought the vibration while I slept would give me vertigo or bad dreams, or maybe both.
I woke with the name Destin on my lips. I could hear the low, deep-throated hum of engines, one of those sounds that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere.
I started to notice other things too, things that came in flashes as I slowly woke up.
Crisp white sheets. The smell of lavender. Gray walls lined with rivets; even the floor was riveted. A round door with a ship’s wheel for a handle. A porthole on the wall opposite the bed, nothing beyond the glass but darkness.
“Destin,” I whispered again in the semidarkness of the little cabin.
Mom in her jean shorts and halter top, sunglasses covering almost her entire face, tiny beads of sweat on her forehead, a paperback novel resting on her stomach, calling to me, Don’t go out too far, Alfred! Don’t go out too far! Because I can’t swim. She knew I wouldn’t go far: there were scary things in the ocean, jellyfish and the sharp spines of dead horseshoe crabs and busted aluminum beer cans and sharks, of course.
Swimming in the ocean is a little crazy when you think about it. The ocean is nature untamed, just like the woods, and who in their right mind would strip to their shorts and go running through the woods?
I remember wearing old bathing trunks with a starfish on the butt, faded from a bright yellow to a kind of dingy white, and a wide white stripe of sunscreen on my nose. I waded knee-deep in the languid surf of the gulf, kicking up little underwater puffs of sand, never worrying where she was, because I was sure she would always watch over me.