A hundred miles downriver, alarms blared in the casinos of Laughlin, but all the roads to higher ground were so jammed that no one was moving, unless they were moving on foot. Even farther downstream, in Lake Havasu, the new home of the famous London Bridge, there was no relief from the panic. All around the lake, people packed what little memories they could, abandoning the rest, barely able to believe that the world’s greatest dam was only minutes from giving way. It seemed London Bridge would be falling down after all.
***
Deep in the bowels of the dam, Drew Camden kept his panic controlled, constantly telling himself that there would be light around the next bend—that they were one junction away from an escape. They would make it out of here, and somehow, he would get back to his new old life.
Boom boom boom . . . Boom boom boom . . .
The triple beat echoed around them like a dark waltz, growing louder by the minute. Tiny pebbles of concrete fell like sleet in the dark.
“How much time do we have?” Drew asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Tory. “This thing isn’t exactly the wall of the Neptune Pool. It could be a minute, it could be an hour—there’s no way to tell.”
Michael stopped suddenly. The others bumped into him in the dark.
“What is it, Michael? Did you find something?” Tory asked.
“I think . . .” said Michael. “I just think it’s time we got ourselves ready . . . " He took a deep breath and let it out. “Ready to die, I mean.”
“Been there, done that!” said Drew, quickly cutting him off. “No burning need to do it again.” Then he heard Michael fiddling with something, and reached out to see what it was. Michael was leafing through his wallet.
“Um, I don’t think we’re gonna buy our way out of here, Michael,” said Drew.
“Do you two have any ID?” Michael asked.
The shaking around them grew stronger, and the significance of the question hit home. They would need identification, if they didn’t make it out—so that whoever found them would know where to send their bodies.
The percussive waltz grew louder, filling with discord and sibilance.
“Maybe . . .” said Tory, with a quiver in her voice. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t. I wouldn’t want my mother to know I ended up like this.”
“No,” said Michael. “They have to send us home—or else Dillon won’t know how to find us.”
It was something Drew hadn’t considered: Dillon bringing them back. With all that he had seen, Drew didn’t even know what death was anymore. Was it an end? Was it a beginning? Or was it just an inconvenience?
“My name’s engraved on my bracelet,” said Tory.
“Put it in a pocket,” suggested Michael. “A zippered one, if you have it.”
“I don’t have anything,” said Drew, and Michael handed him something laminated.
“It’s my library card. It’ll be good enough to get you home.”
Drew slipped the card into his pocket. “Yeah, but I’m not gonna need it, ’cause we’re getting out of here. C’mon, let’s move out!”
“The Cowardly Lion finds courage,” Tory said.
“Things change,” Drew answered. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”
***
Dillon Cole always had a plan, but as he marched with his thousand followers, he had nothing—no plan; nor a single idea of what he should do.
Shiprock.
The thought of that massacre still nagged uncomfortably in his mind. The details of it—the missing old man, and the deputy who had continued where he had left off—such a horrible thing . . . and yet Dillon knew there was a message in it for him, like a flare in the desert that was meant for his eyes only. Something so important. Dillon had seen the massacre as the beginning of the end, but if Okoya had thrown his perspective so far askew all this time, perhaps Dillon was seeing it all wrong. In a world turning upside down, perhaps a massacre is not what it seems. He followed the path of that thought to its logical end, and finally saw the light of the flare.
As Dillon reached the rim of Black Canyon, the thousand followers spread out, craning their necks to see the incredible depth of the gorge, and the majesty of Hoover Dam rising almost a mile away.
There was a switchback trail that led down into the canyon—but before leading them down, he turned, shouting to the crowd, “Some of you will come down with me. The rest will stay up here.”
Shouts of disappointment surrounded him.
He could feel the ground beneath his feet rumbling with the shaking of the dam, as it tore itself apart from the inside out. There was not much time for choosing the members of this expedition, but he had to take the time to do it. Putting his hand out, he began to touch their heads.
“You will come. And you . . . and you . . . and you.”
The followers pressed forward, each one hoping to be chosen. He saw Carol Jessup—the woman who had been one of the first to follow him. “Please, Dillon,” she begged. “After all we’ve done to help you, please take us.”
Dillon looked into her eyes, then the eyes of her daughter and husband. “I’m sorry, Carol,” he said. Then he touched her husband’s head. “You will come down with me, but your wife and daughter have to stay.” He could see the sting of betrayal in the woman’s eyes. Her husband hesitated. “I said, leave them and come with me. Now!” The man obeyed, kissing his wife and daughter, who cried at the prospect of being called, but not chosen.
He continued through the mob, looking into their eyes, making his choices that, to them, seemed random and capricious. Out of the thousand, he chose almost four hundred to march with him down the switchback trail into the depths of the canyon.
***
Tory, Michael, and Drew knew they only had minutes left—if that—for the echoing booms had evolved into the throaty roars of shattering stone, as the dam began to fail.
Dull thuds echoed from above, as the falling pellets of concrete sleet became hail, impacting on their backs.
Tory saw a shadow of a golf ball-sized chunk of concrete drop past her.
Wait a second. . . . A shadow?
“We’re getting closer!” Michael shouted. “Keep moving—there’s light up ahead!”
They scrambled under the hail of falling debris, pulling themselves into a corridor no more than two feet wide. In a dim gray-on-gray, they could finally see the cratered walls. The ground was littered with heavy chunks and up ahead they saw spears of light.
“I think this is the way I came in!” shouted Drew over the thundering around them. “Come on!”
They moved more quickly now that they could see, ignoring the rusted iron rebar jutting from the walls, tearing at their clothes. Finally they turned a corner, and saw what was perhaps the most wonderful sight of their lives—an open doorway flooded with light. They picked up their pace, their exhaustion quelled by the adrenaline rush of their salvation.
Drew had not intended what happened next.
He was in the lead, just a pace in front of Michael and Tory, and so was the first to emerge onto the catwalk that hugged the face of the dam—and then something struck him from above. He cried out in pain as it clipped his shoulder, breaking his left collarbone. Drew saw it only for an instant: the massive bronze form of an angel, its sharp, pointed wings aimed down instead of up, like the arms of a diver. The falling statue tore the catwalk away from the fractured face of the dam, and then plummeted through the power plant four hundred feet below, at the foot of the dam.
The catwalk swung out wildly, like a crane, with Drew still on it. He felt his body slide off, and reflexively he reached up a hand, grabbing on to the rail. With his collarbone broken, his left arm was useless, so all he could do was cling with his right hand to the railing, while his feet dangled above oblivion.
“Drew, hold on!” he heard Michael shout from the doorway in the dam. “Don’t let go!”
Drew’s fear swelled, about to overtake him, and he knew the
moment it did, he was gone . . . . So he clenched his teeth, strangled his fear, and began to pump his legs back and forth as if he were on a swing, like a human pendulum.
“Go on, Drew, you can do it!”
He swung, he swung again, and once more. He kicked up a foot; it brushed the edge of the catwalk. “Damn.”
He gave a final push, swung his leg up, and hooked his ankle around it, pulling himself onto the twisted platform.
Then he saw Michael and Tory. The catwalk had swung a full twenty feet away from the dam, and the corridor where they both stood opened onto empty air. They were trapped.
“I won’t leave without you!” Drew shouted.
“Don’t be a moron!” Michael screamed back. “Get the hell out of here!”
“But . . .”
“Just shut up and go!”
“I’m sorry,” he wailed, wishing there were something he could do. “I’m sorry . . .” He took one last look at them before reluctantly scrambling up the catwalk. With his left arm dangling by his side, he pulled his way along until he reached what was left of the dam’s rim. No one was foolish enough to be up there anymore. The guardrail was gone, and the disintegrating road was full of fissures spreading wider and wider.
Drew leapt over one fissure after another until he reached solid ground, and then threw himself against an outcrop of boulders, clinging to the quaking canyon face for dear life, as the entire dam began to give way behind him.
***
In those last few moments, Michael and Tory clung to one another as concrete bolides the size of Cadillacs dropped past them, whistling against an updraft that surged up the face of the dam. The mouth of the tunnel fell away.
“Watch out!” Michael pulled Tory back as the doorway crumbled. Then, from behind, a blast of pulverized concrete dust shot past, like steam through a pipe. It shot into the updraft, and was carried away like smoke. Updraft? thought Tory. There were only seconds left now. That’s Michael’s updraft! Tory realized. That wind is his will fighting the dam! But how powerful was it? How powerful could he make it in the seconds they had left? Not strong enough to stop the mountainous concrete chunks, but maybe—
She grabbed him, making him look at her. “What’s the wind, Michael?” she demanded. Michael shook his head, not understanding.
“What does it feel like? In your gut—in your head. How does it feel inside?”
“Fear,” shouted Michael. “Terror . . . .”
“Then be frightened, Michael! Be more frightened than you’ve ever been in your life. And be it now!”
Michael turned to see the dust flowing into the updraft, and finally it clicked.
He grabbed Tory, clutching her with white knuckles, then he screamed a blood-curdling shriek of absolute fear—and instantly the whistling of the updraft raised in pitch as its strength increased.
The floor gave way beneath them as Michael held Tory, screaming his terror into her ear, and she screamed back into his. Neither of them had the gift of flight—but if Michael’s updraft could make them fly as well as that boat on Pacific Coast Highway, perhaps that would be enough. They clung to that thought as they leapt from the dying dam into the wind.
***
A mile downstream, Dillon and four hundred of his followers watched it happen. Chunk after chunk of concrete exploded away, until the entire upper face slid like a sand castle, into the powerhouse below. The powerhouse exploded. An instant later, the lower shell of the dam tumbled, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust shooting heavenward. Another explosion from the buried powerhouse, and then silence.
Behind Dillon, the chosen ones grew silent.
Through the dust, they saw what appeared to be a dark, V-shaped wall of still water—but the air was not clear enough to be sure just yet.
But Dillon was sure.
His power had grown beyond all limits, because holding back the waters of Lake Mead took so little effort, it felt like a mere reflex.
A power like that did not belong here.
Behind him, the four hundred squinted to see through the dust cloud, none of them knowing that they were already dead. Dillon had separated his followers precisely. These were the ones who had been visited by Okoya. These were the soulless. The shells of life, with nothing living inside.
They did not belong here, either.
The Shiprock Slayer had begun the task of removing the soulless—Dillon realized that now. And he also realized that he was the only one who could complete it. Now he focused all his effort on the wall of water. He knew what he had to do, but it wasn’t easy to fight the order his very presence brought. He hurled his thoughts ahead of him, turning them chaotic and disjointed. He battered the water-wall with his mind, struggling to give entropy a foothold once more, so that this lake would fall out of his control, and spill free.
At last he felt his barrier fall, like the tearing of a membrane. Suddenly, the ground rumbled once more, and through the dust cloud burst a white, churning wave five hundred feet high, surging down the canyon toward them.
As the water approached, Dillon had to remind himself that he was not killing the people around him. Okoya had already done that. But for the thousands that would die downstream, Dillon had to accept responsibility.
For so long Dillon had struggled to find redemption—fixing all those who were broken so that he might forgive himself for the destruction he had once caused. But it had never been for them. He had done it for himself; to finally feel worthy. It was a selfish need, masquerading as selflessness.
No more.
For there was only one way to save the world now, and it meant that Dillon Cole had to die in disgrace and never be redeemed.
Let me be despised by the world, he silently prayed. Let my name be spoken with nothing but hatred. Let this act be so horrible, that it shatters the pattern of destruction I’ve helped to create, and sets the world hack on its proper track. A world where not a single soul worships me.
The wedge of churning foam pounded forward, a quarter mile and closing. Behind Dillon, the dead-alive followers waited for Dillon to stop it.
But instead, Dillon raised up his hands to receive it.
***
Lourdes did not see it, but she knew something had gone wrong. She knew because of the strange pillar of dust shooting toward the sky like a mushroom cloud. She knew because of the roar of rushing water, and she knew because of Okoya’s scream of fury from somewhere within the circle of buses, a hundred yards from where she and Winston lay doubled-over in the sand.
Apparently Okoya had not gotten what he wanted, which meant Dillon had chosen to destroy himself, rather than the world. He had chosen not to be Okoya’s ruling-puppet.
Lourdes sat up. The revulsion she felt as she had stumbled away from camp had resolved into a pain in her gut, and a sense of unreconciled need—a craving for what only Okoya could supply.
Winston sat in the dust, his hand over his eyes, weeping. All his supposed wisdom, and he couldn’t see this coming. Oh, he had grown, all right. He had grown arrogant and self-absorbed—they all had.
“How could this have happened?” cried Winston. “How could we have done this to ourselves?”
Lourdes tried to find some sympathy. She tried to find a feeling to comfort both of them, but all she found inside was the angry pit of her stomach; and so she left Winston, not caring about his tears. Fighting her hunger, she strode back toward the circle of buses.
The place was deserted. All had gone to follow Dillon. Everyone, that is, except Okoya. Okoya was stretched out against the face of a bus—his arms and legs tied in four different directions with heavy nylon tent cords. He’d pulled and tugged at his bonds, but the job had been well done—he was not getting free. It almost amused Lourdes to see this master of minds rendered impotent by mere nylon ropes.
Lourdes approached, keeping her stride steady, counting each step as she drew closer until she stopped, only a few feet away.
“Always a pleasur
e to see you, Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Release me, and—"
“And what?” Lourdes took a step closer. “You’ll crown me Queen for a Day?”
Okoya pulled against his bonds one more time. “Everything that was Dillon’s will now be yours.”
“I don’t need you for that,” said Lourdes. “I know what I’m capable of. If I want the world on a silver platter, I’ll put it there myself.”
“Then why are you here?”
“This is why.” Lourdes squeezed her hands into tight fists, and pushed forth a single nerve impulse. Instantly Okoya began to gasp for air as his heart seized in his chest.
“How does it feel to have our powers turned against you?”
“If you kill this body,” gasped Okoya, “it will free me to jump into another. There are hundreds of people on that road; I could be any one of them, and you’ll never know when I’m coming.”
Lourdes squeezed her fists tighter, but knew Okoya was telling the truth. She released the hold on his heart, and the color returned to Okoya’s face as he pulled in deep, wheezing breaths.
“You don’t know how to kill me,” Okoya sneered, “and it’s a waste of your time to try.”
Maybe so, but as long as he was in that body, he could feel every measure of its pain. Lourdes brought her fist back, and smashed it heavily across his jaw, and then again, and then again, making sure every punishing blow had the full force of her anger. But no matter how many times she struck him, it made her feel no better. In the end, Okoya’s face was bruised and swollen, but his evil spirit would not break.
“I gave you what you wanted,” he said through swollen lips. “You should be grateful.”
She turned and strode off. She did not go back to Winston, nor did she go to see the flood. Instead she headed off in the opposite direction. Okoya had put a hunger in her that could never be satisfied again. She hated Okoya for putting it there, she hated Dillon for having brought them here in the first place, and she hated Michael, for the love he had killed in her.
Her knees felt shaky, her legs weak, but her fury gave her strength to walk away from all of this and not look back.
Thief Of Souls ss-2 Page 24
