***
I love you. Dillon let her words echo from one side of his mind to the other. He drew strength from it, and, in a matter of moments, he had successfully forced the evening’s unpleasantness out of his mind. These people here—they didn’t matter. They weren’t real the way he and Deanna were real. The wrecking-hunger told him so.
Dillon’s spirits were high as he left town. The night was refreshingly cool, and he felt he could walk all night. He didn’t need sleep anymore. Come to think of it, he didn’t need food. He had already gorged himself on the fall of Blackburn Street, and it would be at least another day before he felt the hunger again.
He wondered what he would have to do next to satisfy the hunger. Surely it would be an even greater challenge—for each challenge was greater than the one before.
In the back of his mind he idly imagined an endless cascade of dominoes all lined up and ready to fall if the right one were pushed. The thought was enough to make him giggle like a child.
PART IV - DEMOLITION DAY
11. Ground Zero
At 4:30 a.m., Mountain time, Lourdes Hidalgo decided it was time to die.
It had been two days since that night in the ice storm. With little money, and even less time to spare, they had searched for a trail—any sign of the missing two. Nothing turned up along I-80, and nothing in Big Springs, but in Torrington, Wyoming, they found a newspaper article that led them to a devastated farm. It reeked of something unnatural.
Once they found the farm, they knew they were on the right track, because the presence of the fifth and sixth shard was as strong as a scent on the wind. What they had feared was now confirmed; those other two had lost control and had set off on a mad rampage to feed the parasites that were strangling their souls. Intuition told them that number five was the dangerous one and that number six probably fed on the aftermath of destruction like a vulture fed on a lion’s kill.
After that, following their trail was like following the ashen trail of a burning fuse. News reports had led them in the ruined neighborhood in Idaho Falls, which seemed ten times worse than what they found at the farm. They were only a day behind as they headed deeper into Idaho, terrified of what they would find next.
They rested in Boise, finding a cheap hotel for the night. It had been a major effort for Lourdes to haul herself out of the van this time, and each footstep felt like it would be her last.
Like everywhere else their journey took them, this hotel was right in the armpit of town, where old decrepit buildings loomed ripe for the wrecking ball.
Lourdes could see one such building from the hotel window, across the expanse of a vacant lot: a concrete warehouse seven stories tall, with slits for windows and a big faded sign painted on the side that said “Dakins Worldwide Storage.” The building’s few entrances were boarded over, and the abandoned property was fenced in. Apparendy Dakins had found better worldwide storage elsewhere.
While the others slept, Lourdes kept vigil and watched that solitary, lonely building, feeling a strange affinity for it as she pondered the short time remaining to her own life. Few buildings on earth could be as unloved as this one.
In the five days since they had banded together, they had witnessed wonders and had watched each other deteriorate. Winston’s dignity was the first casualty, for his body had grown so small he couldn’t see out of the van’s windows when he sat, and he had to eat soft food because all his teeth were receding. Tory, who had been a driving force all along, was slowing down, as her disease turned inward, swelling her joints with painful arthritis . . . and Michael . . . well, rather than allowing his passion to wreak havoc on the soul of every girl he encountered, Michael had turned his mind to a dark lonely place within himself and seldom came out. Brooding and silent, with dark, wan eyes, he looked like he was dying of cancer.
As for Lourdes, there were no mirrors large enough to present her full image. She could feel the weight on her bones growing, building density, like ice on the branches of a tree. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, fighting to force blood through clogged arteries. She could feel her bloated self, ready to burst through the shell that contained her, and knew that it could happen at any moment.
So she stayed awake . . . and at 4:30 a.m. one of the many seams on her blouse tore so violently that the blouse itself literally burst in two.
That’s when Lourdes decided that it was time to call it quits.
Outside, the rain had let up a bit, and Lourdes could see the warehouse more clearly. There were people milling about the building, and it seemed odd to Lourdes that such a lonely place would be the center of anyone else’s attention but hers, so she watched and wondered. In a few moments, things became very clear to her, and she knew exactly what she was going to do.
***
“Michael, Winston, wake up!” Tory shook them both, dragging them out of a deep sleep. “It’s Lourdes! She’s gone!”
Wearily, the three searched the room and the hallway.
Tory looked in the closet. The others looked under the beds—as if Lourdes could possibly fit in any of those places.
That’s when Michael happened to glance out the window. Dawn was beginning to break on the distant horizon, and in the faint half-light he could see a huge shape lumbering through a vacant lot toward an old Dakins warehouse a block away.
“Look,” he said. “There she is!”
***
The front of the old warehouse was teeming with activity, but Lourdes approached from the rear and no one saw her. She smiled as she approached. All this time the four of them had been running, unsure of their destination. It was nice, for once, to have a destination.
Her momentum took her through the chicken wire fence that surrounded the property as if it were paper, and she pushed on through the police line, tearing the ribbon as if it were a finish line. She leaned against the boarded-over door, and her sheer weight forced the door inward, leading her into a dark cavernous space where her labored breathing echoed from distant concrete walls. To the right was a flight of stairs and, without pausing for further thought, she began to heave herself step by step toward the upper floors of the desolate building.
***
Activity was growing at the front of the warehouse as the three kids followed Lourdes in through the back door.
Once inside they paused to listen and heard the heavy footsteps of Lourdes straining on stairs high above.
“What she gonna do? Climb out on the roof and jump?” said Winston, trying to catch his breath.
The very thought made Michael turn and bound up the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him.
Tory took a moment to look down at her hands. Her knuckles were swollen and they cracked when she bent them. It made her so angry that she squeezed them into a fist, but that only hurt more. She turned to Winston, who was still catching his breath. “Did you ever think you’d be chasing someone through a warehouse at the crack of dawn?” she asked.
“No,” said Winston, in a voice that was higher pitched than the day before. “But then I never thought I’d be five years old again either.”
It was as they turned to go upstairs that Tory glanced at the great cavern around her. The tiny slits of windows were mostly boarded over, and in the dim half-light, she could see a series of pillars stretching down the empty warehouse, holding up the floors above. There were bulges near the top of a good dozen of those pillars; bulges like tumors growing out of the concrete. And each of those bulges had a tiny, blinking red light.
Tory grabbed Winston’s arm, and yanked him around. “Winston, tell me you don’t see what I see. ...” This time when they looked, not only were the tumors visible on the concrete, but so were the wires. They draped from the dark tumors, snaked across the floor, and all came together in a bundle that made a determined path out the front door.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the tumors were explosives.
***
Mi
chael reached the seventh and final floor of the warehouse, before the others had even begun to climb.
“Lourdes?”
She stood at the far end of the vast empty loft. She wobbled a bit and finally collapsed under her own enormous weight. As she hit the ground, the concrete echoed with a boom like the slamming of a heavy vault door, and the dust burst out from beneath her like her very soul dispersing. She didn’t move.
Michael, afraid to say anything, for fear that she wouldn’t answer, approached with caution, and to his great relief saw that she was still alive.
“You okay?” asked Michael.
“Go away.” Lourdes made a mighty effort to turn her head, so Michael could not see her tears. In all the time he had known her, Michael had never seen Lourdes cry like this. She had stoically borne all her hardship with a stiff— if somewhat fat—upper lip, but not now.
Michael sat beside her and wiped the tears away.
“I feel like a beached whale,” she said.
“Well,” said Michael, “the Pacific Ocean’s only three hundred miles away. . . .”
Lourdes laughed in spite of herself.
“When I die,” she said, “I’m gonna sit on God until he yells uncle.” They both laughed again, then a silence fell between them.
“Why did he do this to us, Michael?”
Michael shrugged and thought for a moment. “He didn’t do it to us, he just didn’t stop it.”
“That’s just as bad,” said Lourdes.
Michael lifted her heavy head and began to gently stroke her hair. “Maybe he’s a clutch player,” said Michael. “And he’s just waiting for the right time to make a move.”
Winston and Tory finally made it to the top floor.
“We gotta get outta here now!” shouted Winston as he ran with Tory from the stairs. “This building’s condemned and it’s coming down today. They’ve already rigged the explosives.”
“I know,” said Lourdes.
That caught everyone off guard.
Lourdes gritted her teeth and closed her eyes to keep herself from crying. “Maybe the three of you have some time left, but not me. If I have to die today, then I want to go out with a bang, not a whimper.”
“We won’t let you do this,” said Tory. “Can’t you feel how close The Others are . . . If we just hold on a little longer ...”
“I don’t feel anything anymore,” said Lourdes. “All I feel is fat, and I’m tired of feeling it.”
Outside there were shouts from the demolition crew.
“That’s it!” shouted Winston, the preschooler on the verge of a tantrum. “I don’t care how lousy you feel! Get yo’ butt down those stairs!” His voice slipped deeper into his Alabama drawl, which always grew stronger when he got angry.
“I can’t,” said Lourdes. “I can’t move anymore. At all.”
They all looked at her there, straining to breathe as she lay on the ground. Winston panicked and rammed into her with what little weight he had. “C’mon, help me!” They all took to pushing against Lourdes, but she wouldn’t budge.
“Grab her arms,” suggested Tory. They grabbed her arms and legs to pull her, but nothing helped.
“Just go!” shouted Lourdes, through her thick throat. “It’s better if you just go!”
They let go of her arms and legs, and just stood there, unable to help her . . . and in that moment of silence Michael made a decision.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said, and he sat down next to her.
Winston stared at him incredulously. “You’re just gonna sit here and let yourself get blown to smithereens?”
“Face it,” said Michael. “None of us has much time left. A day or two at the most...”
Tory, grimacing in pain, looked at her swollen knuckles, then at her swollen knees. “Michael’s right. We haven’t had control over anything for the longest time . . . maybe here’s something we can control. . .”
Winston turned to her, his eyes filled with terror “No!”
“If I gotta die,” said Tory, “then I want to die with dignity.”
Winston threw up his hands. “I can’t believe this! You said yourself, Tory, The Others are close now—we can find them—we can stop them. . . .”
“We lost, Winston,” said Michael. “We fought hard, but we lost.”
“No!” shouted Winston defiantly. “With our luck, instead of dying proper, our souls’ll get blown up again into a thousand cockroaches or something. No! If I gotta die, I ain’t going out in flaming glory—I’m going the way I was meant to go!”
Winston grew red in the face as he looked at them. He threw himself on the ground kicking and screaming in a full-fledged tantrum, then finally gave up on his companions. “Fine,” he said, tears swelling in his eyes. “We started this together, but if I have to finish it alone, then I will.” Then Winston, all three feet of him, stormed across the dusty floor and disappeared down the stairwell.
When he was gone, Michael turned to Tory. “When we die,” said Michael, “you think those . . . those awful things will die with us?”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Tory.
Lourdes, without the strength to move her lips anymore, could only rasp her breath in and out.
They held hands, now just a circle of three. “I’m glad,” whispered Tory. “I’m glad we all came together. No matter what, I’ll never regret that.”
Outside the rain had stopped, the wind had stopped and the black clouds above waited with guarded anticipation. Far away lightning struck, and every distant rumble echoed within the warehouse, shaking the walls and reminding them of the great thunder that would soon tear out the foundation of their lives. With every rumble, concrete flakes skittered to the ground, like the footfalls of a thousand cockroaches.
***
Winston, with the physiology of a five-year-old, found his days swinging back and forth between complete exhaustion and uncontrollable energy. Had he been exhausted when they asked him to stay, he might have just curled up, thumb in mouth, and fallen asleep before the big blast came—but Winston was feeling very much alive and did not intend to go quietly. Today was a day to live.
As he leapt down the stairs two at a time, he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t abandoned the other three. They, in fact, had abandoned him. They had given up. Now he would be alone. He would chase the tail of the other two shards until he could no longer walk, until he could no longer crawl. When his body had withered itself out of existence, he would die knowing he fought to the end. That was dying with dignity, not being buried beneath ten tons of shattered concrete.
Winston bounded down the stairs to the first level and was surprised to see, just twenty yards away, a worker in a hard-hat, facing away from him. Winston could see he was double-checking the wires, and the realization that there were still a few minutes till the building blew made him reconsider his options.
There was time to save the others! Even if they didn’t want to be saved, he could save them. He would run up to the man in the hard-hat, he would tell him of the others still upstairs, he would ruin their awful plan.
Winston took a few steps closer, about to shout out, when suddenly a second figure that had been eclipsed from Winston’s sight came into view. It was a boy—no older than fifteen, and he was staring straight at the worker. The boy had red hair.
Immediately Winston felt a rush of dizziness that took the wind right out of his lungs. This was wrong. This was very wrong. He ducked behind a pillar and watched.
The worker was frozen, his flashlight at his side, casting a light on the dusty floor. The boy with red hair seemed anxious and sweaty, and very, very intense.
“You’ve be placed the explosives wrong,” suggested the boy to the man in the hard-hat. “You should do something about it.”
The worker just stared at him.. “Okay,” he said dreamily and strolled off into the shadows.
Winston gasped, and the red-haired boy snapped his e
yes to Winston.
The second their eyes met, Winston knew exactly who this was.
He was the fifth shard.
Winston couldn’t break eye contact with the redheaded boy. His gaze riveted Winston to the ground. If there were indeed six shards, then this boy had inherited the largest, most powerful one, and in its shadow had grown the worst parasite. Winston knew he was no match for the force behind those eyes.
The redheaded boy stood stunned by the sight of Winston—but only for a moment. Then he turned and disappeared down a hole in the concrete floor.
Once he was gone, a hundred thoughts flew through Winston’s mind fighting for purchase. Run for your life! No—follow him! No—break the worker out of his trance! But the one thought that overrode them all was the urge to race back upstairs and tell the others!
He bounded up the stairs, racing past the demolition man, who mindlessly whistled a Beatles tune as he moved a pack of explosives from one end of the building to the other.
***
On the seventh floor, Lourdes, Michael and Tory waited in silence. They could hear the sounds of morning in full swing. Car horns, diesel engines. The occasional shouts of the demolition workers as they diligently prepared for the morning’s spectacle.
Then they heard footsteps racing up the stairs and knew by their lightness that it had to be Winston. He had changed his mind. In the end they would be together. As it was meant to be.
Winston burst through the stairwell.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted.
“Winston . . .” said Michael. “We’ve made up our minds. . . .”
“We’re not leaving Lourdes. . . .” said Tory.
“No! You don’t understand!” he grabbed Tory by her plagued arms and looked into her eyes, “Tory, you were right! You’ve been right all along—The Others are here!”
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