by Jon McGoran
EIGHTY-ONE
Running through the woods in absolute darkness with the sound of my pursuer behind me was like something out of a nightmare. I was disoriented and terrified. I had no idea where I was or where I was going, no idea if I was about to slam into a tree or come face-to-face with that evil grin.
The adrenaline had me running flat out. Luckily I was tired and flat out was slow enough that when I saw a cloud of tiny specks of light glinting in front of me, I skidded to a stop just in time, my face inches from the fence’s razor-sharp barbs.
Panic welled up inside me. Now I was trapped. I still had my baton, and I thought about trying to get behind my pursuer, to shock him before he could shock me. But I didn’t like my chances. Then I realized the fence wasn’t just a barrier, it was also a landmark, something to guide me so I wasn’t running in circles.
I heard footsteps and heavy breathing in the brush behind me, so doubling back toward the holes in the fence wasn’t an option. The only way I could go was forward. But at least now I knew where forward was.
The clouds parted briefly, and in the moonlight, I could see once more the barbs glinting on my left. Then the light was gone and I was moving again through darkness. I had to slow down, but as I did, I could hear the footsteps, the breathing, growing louder behind me.
I was inching along when I bumped into something solid. A tree, growing right next to the fence.
It was the maple tree I’d used to cross over earlier. I squinted intently through the links, just making out the trunk of the evergreen on the other side.
Jamming the baton through my belt, I shimmied up the tree. I reached around in the darkness until I found the first branch, then lifted myself into the tangle of tree limbs above. Part of me wanted to just hide, but the longer the others were waiting for me at Pinecone Rock, the more likely someone else would find them.
I felt around with my hands and feet until I found the thick sturdy branch that extended over the razor wire. Grabbing the smaller branches for support, I stood and inched my way out.
When I was almost halfway across, the branch I was standing on let out a loud splintering sound. At the same time, the clouds parted and the moonlight shone on me like a spotlight on a tightrope-walker.
It also lit up my pursuer, staring up at me.
With the added light, I could move more quickly, but so could he. He was already swinging up into the tree, clambering toward me with surprising speed, considering his injury.
I had made it past the razor wire when the branch shook and cracked loudly. I turned back to see my pursuer taking his foot off it. He had tried to come after me, but he knew it wouldn’t hold both of us. As I moved toward the evergreen bough, he extended his foot. He was waiting until I stepped off, then he would come at me.
I hesitated, then went ahead and moved onto the evergreen limb. As soon as I heard that maple limb creaking, I turned. He smiled, coming toward me, almost at the fence.
I crouched down and wrapped my hands as tightly as I could around the branch he was balancing on, and I jumped.
The maple branch lurched violently, but I held my grip and he kept his balance, his arms waving spastically in the air. Then the lurching subsided.
I don’t know if he had figured out what I was trying to pull, but I’m pretty sure he could tell it hadn’t worked.
For a second, he looked at me with that evil smile. Then the branch snapped completely.
He grabbed for it and we both held on, even as the branch hit the top of the fence with a jolt. He was just inside the fence, and I was a couple of feet outside it. We teetered there for a moment. He must have outweighed me by a hundred pounds, but I had much more of the branch on my side. It was a lever, and I had the leverage.
He was confused at first, but not alarmed, as I slowly sank and he slowly rose. Then the entire branch abruptly slid in my direction, pulling him straight toward the fence. I dropped to the dirt. He tried to let go, too, but not in time. His arms plunged into the razor wire and his body slammed against the barbs. He struggled, gasping and grunting, thrashing around, his boots dangling two feet off the ground.
His hands were trying to grab on to something—anything—to relieve the pressure and ease the pain. His boots scraped at the fence, trying to find a foothold. The barbs on the fence were tearing at his knees and elbows.
In the moonlight, I could see red dripping down the fence.
I stood on the ground, frozen, relieved and repulsed and wondering what to do next. He was working his arms free of the razor wire. Looking at me through the fence, through the pain, his mouth spread in a bloody grin.
“We’re going to kill you all,” he said. “You know that, right? And when you’re dead, we’ll stock up with more mixies, and we’ll kill them, too.”
I stared at him in horror, and he laughed.
I knew I had to get moving, but I also knew before long he’d pull free and come after me. Then I saw something on his belt, glinting in the moonlight. Right next to where his baton would have been.
Handcuffs.
His jacket had bunched up, so the closer I got, the less he could see of me. I reached my fingers between the barbs and grabbed the cuffs out of their holder, pulling them through the fence. “What are you doing?” he said, sounding suddenly unsure.
Crouching down, I poked one of the cuffs back through the fence and clamped it around his ankle.
As soon as he heard the click, he started thrashing around, kicking his feet, pulling my hand against the fence. The barbs cut into my skin and I almost let go of the other end of the cuffs, but I held on. He was much stronger than me, but he had no leverage. I pulled the chain toward me and clamped the cuff onto the fence, locking him in place.
He started screaming at me, horrible names, horrible things he would do to me. I grabbed the handcuff chain and jerked it hard, jamming him against the barbs of the fence. His curses died out, replaced with a pathetic groan.
I was just about to leave when I had a thought. I reached through the fence one last time, and plucked the key to the handcuffs from his belt.
EIGHTY-TWO
By the time I got to Pinecone Rock, I was a wreck. I don’t know how long it took me, stumbling through the blackness, jumping at every sound, second-guessing every turn. But when I finally saw Rex through the trees, and then Pell and Ruth and Sly, I almost wept.
Rex was saying, “Anywhere is safer than here. We can lay low in the city or camp out in the zurbs, decide if we want to leave the state, or the country.”
Sly shrugged. “Close enough to a plan for now.”
When I stepped through the bushes, Rex said, “Jimi! Thank God.” He came over and wrapped his arms around me, lifting me off the ground. I looked into his eyes, saw the intensity of feeling there, and I knew I felt the same way. I didn’t know what to think about that, but I also knew now wasn’t the time. “Are you okay?” he said, looking me up and down.
“I’m fine.”
Pell slapped my back. “You had us worried, there, girl.”
Rex let out a brief laugh. “That was you in that truck, right? Driving through the fence. That was brilliant.”
“You saved our lives back there,” Ruth said. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, seriously, kid,” Sly said. “We owe you.” Then he spotted the shock baton shoved through my belt, and he laughed. “Holy crap, you took one of their shock batons? You’re such a badass.”
I looked down, embarrassed, then Sly clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Seriously, though, now it’s time to get the hell out of here.”
“Where’s Del?” I asked. “Did he make it out?”
Rex looked away. “I don’t know.”
Sly shrugged. “Probably. But he’s not here. We shouldn’t be, either.”
“I told him to meet us here,” I said. “He’s supposed to be here.”
Sly snorted. “Well, he didn’t and he’s not.”
I looked at him. “Are you mad at him? What’s that ab
out?”
“A lot of us had doubts about Jasper from the beginning,” Ruth said. “Del wouldn’t listen to any of it. Jasper got him that super-expensive splice, and Del thought he was the best thing ever.” She looked down. “It got so he would, like, intimidate anyone who said anything bad about Jasper. And if anyone asked questions about Haven or who these sponsors were, he would attack them for being ungrateful. Yesterday, he went off on me for like five minutes.”
Sly cocked an eyebrow. “And in the end, he damn near got us all killed.”
A few days earlier, I would have been unable to picture Del as the type to intimidate anyone. But before then, he’d never been in a position where he could. The self-centeredness, though, the stubbornness—he’d been getting more like that even before the splice. I was quiet. There was nothing I could say in his defense.
Then Rex said, “We can’t stay much longer.”
“We can’t just leave him here,” I said.
Sly stepped forward. “He almost got us all killed once. I don’t want to let him do it again. We need to get going.”
“Not me,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve been trying to save him since before I even knew you guys, maybe trying to save him from himself. I can’t give up on him now.”
“We’re running out of time,” Rex said. “We need to go.”
“Then I’m staying.”
Rex ground his jaw for a second, fuming. “Come here,” he said, turning and stomping off into the woods.
“What?”
He stopped and looked back at me. “I need to show you something.”
I followed him up to the crest of the hill.
“I pulled these off a guard back in Haven,” he said, handing me a pair of binoculars. “Take a look. It isn’t pretty.”
What I saw chilled me to the bone. Pitman and the road leading up to it were clogged with traffic. Half a mile of it, at least. Pickup trucks, SUVs, RVs, a hundred of them, all waiting to turn inside the gate to Pitman. For Game Day.
Up in the sky, three or four quadcopters were approaching to land. A handful of blinking lights behind them indicated more on the way.
Rex looked on, his face blank but his eyes brimming with sorrow, as if he tried and tried and tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, to hope they would come through, and every time they let him down.
I wanted to say something to comfort him, to make him feel better about humanity, about me. But I had nothing.
I looked at the line of traffic, trucks with rifle racks and trailers, hard-looking men at the wheel, and women, too.
“This isn’t some small thing,” Rex said. “This is huge. It’s open season on chimeras. Literally. We can’t take the Levline back to the city. We’re moving on foot, and we have to move fast, because they’re going to be coming after us. Including you. Maybe especially you.”
I was moving the binoculars down the line of vehicles, studying the faces of the people who wanted to kill my friends. There were so many of them. So much hate.
“I need to get my friends to safety,” Rex said quietly.
“I understand,” I said, keeping the binoculars up to my eyes, as if somehow they protected me. Even as they made those hunters appear closer, they made the reality of it farther away. “You need to go do that.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, making sure I was paying attention even though I wasn’t looking at him. “That means you, too. You’re one of them.”
“I’m staying here,” I said quietly.
“I can’t let you do that. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m waiting for Del.”
He gently pushed the binoculars down, away from my face. “He wouldn’t wait for you. You know that, don’t you?”
“He’s my friend.”
“He doesn’t deserve to be.”
I put the binoculars back up to my face.
“I can’t let you sacrifice your life for him. He’s not worth it, Jimi.”
“You don’t even know him,” I said. I could hardly see as my eyes clouded with tears.
“Do you?”
I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Come on,” he said softly.
“I’m staying.”
“You’re not.”
“What are you going to do, carry me?”
“If I have to, yes.”
I was just lowering the binoculars to tell him I had made up my mind when something caught my eye, and I lifted them back up.
“What is it?” Rex asked as I swept the side of the road, trying to find it again.
“It’s Del,” I said, confused, wondering why he was down there, hiding in the bushes. He could have come past Pinecone Rock on his way down there.
“Are you sure? What’s he doing down there?”
As I watched, Del emerged from the trees below us, bounding down the side of the road with a stride that was not entirely human. Once he was past the line of cars, he crossed the road and disappeared into the trees along the fence. I caught a last glimpse of him, inside the town of Pitman, running toward the town center.
Suddenly, I knew where he was headed, and what he was going to do. What I didn’t know was whether I could get there in time to stop him.
EIGHTY-THREE
I grabbed Rex’s arm and ran back to where Ruth, Pell, and Sly were gathered. I told them what I’d seen. “You guys go on. It’s not safe for you down there. I’m going to get Del.”
Ruth and Pell and Sly didn’t protest. They knew I’d made up my mind. We shared quick hugs and I headed back up to the top of the hill. But Rex followed me, whispering forcefully that it wasn’t safe for me, either, down there, and that most of the people I was trying to save would kill me without a second thought.
But I thought about the elderly couple and I thought about the kids, about Sammy and his friends. And as wrong as their parents might be, as filled with hate, killing them was wrong, too.
“Get them to safety,” I told him. “And yourself, too.”
He started to protest, but I silenced him with a kiss. Then I turned and plunged down the hillside.
My legs were moving as fast as they could, but gravity was doing most of the work. I was just trying not to lose my balance or slam into a tree.
My plan was to intercept Del, talk to him, get him out of there before he got himself killed. I had hoped more details would come to me on the way down, but the bottom of the hill was coming at me fast, and I didn’t even know how I’d get through the gate.
The baton was still wedged into my belt, slapping against my thigh with every step. It gave me an idea.
As I approached the edge of the woods, I angled toward the last truck in the line. The driver was alone, and his window was open.
I pulled the baton out of my belt and ran straight for him. I was almost there before he looked over and did a double take. By then it was too late.
The baton hit him in the throat, just under the chin. I felt bad assaulting a stranger, but he was there to slaughter my friends, so I didn’t feel bad enough to stop. Just like before, I held the baton in place as I opened the door and dumped him on the road.
By now, people in front of us had seen me. They were yelling and honking their horns.
I put the truck into reverse and backed up about forty yards, then put it back in drive and jammed the accelerator hard. Two old men in the truck in front of me got out and ran, thinking I was going to ram them.
But I jerked the wheel hard to the right and plowed through yet another fence, dragging a twenty-foot section of it behind me. I cut across a couple of lawns and leveled a signpost, which snagged the fencing and tore it free. I was getting good at this.
Half a dozen men were running after me, but I quickly lost them. As I shot through an intersection, I saw flashing police lights a quarter of a mile to my left, still headed back out toward the gate.
To my right the flare was burning in the sky. I knew that’s where Del was headed. I zigzagged through town,
keeping the fire in front of me until I arrived at the entrance, another fence, another locked gate. A cluster of police lights appeared in my rearview, this time coming after me. Fast.
I jammed down the accelerator, punching through one more fence, and bouncing across the dirt lot that surrounded the coal well facility. Pipes, hoses, and ductwork crisscrossed the ground. I tensed myself for an explosion, but somehow managed to not hit any of it.
By the time I got out of the truck, a crowd was gathering in a circle around me. The police were closing fast. I looked up at the tower and paused.
There was Del, climbing the metal scaffold.
A hand grabbed my arm, and I turned to see Mayor Randolph glaring down at me. “You!” he said, his jaw clenched. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Jasper was standing behind him, his face patched together with medical tape, his eyes fluorescing with anger and hatred.
“Let go,” I said, pulling my arm free. “I’m trying to save your town.”
Del reached the top of the tower and a moment later the flame went out. A gasp swept throughout the gathering crowd, then an ominous silence.
“He shut down the pressure relief valve,” said a small man in overalls and a hardhat now standing behind the mayor. “There’s no backflow preventers. In five minutes the entire system will be hyper-pressurized.”
The mayor turned to him. “And?”
“The whole town could go up.”
EIGHTY-FOUR
Searchlights from the police cars sliced through the sky before converging on Del, standing at the top of the tower.
“What the hell is that thing?” asked a voice in the crowd.
“Some kind of mixie tiger,” said another.
I ran to the base of the tower and looked back at the crowd growing behind me. I spotted Cantrell, the H4H cop, staring up at Del with murder in his eyes. I wondered if he was a paying customer. Then I thought about him rounding up chimeras, and I realized he was part of the whole thing. He was in on it.
