Ash and Darkness (Translucent #3) (16 page)

Chapter 19

As we passed
her water extractor in the driveway, Sarah tripped over one of the pipes. She screamed and kicked it. “Stupid . . . useless . . . piece of . . .
shit!
”

I let her work out her frustration and dragged the bike into the street, checked the child trailer. All secure.

I laid our supplies along the bottom—lantern, wire cutters from the garage, a knife . . . couldn’t think what else we’d need.

The cold air wicked moisture off my skin, drying me out even further. I had to catch my breath after the effort.

The dark road stretched out of view, curving into the gloom. It would be downhill from here to Foothill Road, and from there—I mulled it over—Highway 154 would be a shorter distance, but there was no way I was making it over the two-thousand-foot mountain pass.

Only Lance Armstrong could do that. And he had used performance-enhancing drugs.

It would have to be 101 to Highway 1, cutting through Lompoc.

Sixty
miles.

How would I ever make it? And lugging Sarah?

At least it was cool. I wouldn’t sweat away too much of my body fluid. 

Sarah limped over and lowered herself, wincing, into the child trailer, folding her knees against her chest to fit. I helped her get comfortable.

“Why me?” she moaned.

I leaned against the trailer, lungs heaving. “I know, I thought it would be me.” We hadn’t even left the curb, and I was already exhausted. “You said that thing was trying to eat your soul, but it had to digest you first. Part of me thinks it didn’t have nearly as much trouble eating mine.”

I swung my leg over the seat and stood up on the pedal. The bike didn’t budge. I rested my full weight on it. Nothing.

Oh, come on
.

I bounced up and down on my heel. At last, the pedal began to sink. We inched forward. I shifted my weight to the other pedal, but my trembling limbs gave out and I flopped into the seat, panting. The bike coasted to a halt and began rolling backward.

No! I planted my heel on the ground, stopping us. Then I tried again, standing on the pedals and pushing with all my might.

“Should I get out and push?” said Sarah.

“Yeah, would you?” I gasped through gritted teeth.

Slowly, painstakingly, we worked our way up to a crawl. Dear God, this was hard. At this rate, we’d reach Vandenberg in about a year.

But once the
bike got going, it took much less energy to keep it going. Momentum worked in our favor. And on the downhills, we flat out booked it. Wind whistled in my ear. We flew through dark intersections, barreled around switchbacks, soared past blacked out houses.

I refused to hit the brakes.

I actually felt better now that we were on the bike and no longer moping around. We had a plan. We were doing something.

Bike sixty miles to Vandenberg, find the tank where they were collecting dark matter on Earth and climb down into it. Put on our own dark matter, and four hours later, we’d wake up on Earth.

The thought gave me a surge of energy, and I pedaled harder. Sarah would go to a hospital, and I would go straight to Emory’s house and confess. No hesitation this time.

First I’d get water.

“How you doing back there?” I called.

“Mmmm,” came Sarah’s weak voice.

“We’ve gone about a mile, don’t you think?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I twisted the handlebars, and we veered onto Foothill Road, where lumpy oak limbs swung at me like fists. Fewer houses this far up. It was around here where I’d hit Ashley.

My eyes darted from shadow to shadow, but the blackness among their trunks only deepened. Above me, the starry heavens gave way to a pitch black tunnel of gnarled branches. Couldn’t even make out the street lines.

I scanned the darkness on high alert, riding blind.

And then I saw it in my periphery. Just a flash.

A hundred feet ahead, a figure stood in the middle of the road, silhouetted against the night. I blinked, and it was gone. My heart gave a nervous leap.

“Sarah, hand me the lantern.” I thrust my arm back, and its plastic base thwacked my palm. Riding with one hand, I felt for the switch, noting the time as I did so. One p.m.

Afternoon, and still no sunrise.

Click.
A bubble of light expanded around the bike, blinding me. The yellow reflective strip slithered out of the inky darkness, along with hulking clawlike deformities that materialized into bushes. The pavement glittered. Beyond the sphere, I saw nothing.

I scanned the road, hardly breathing.
Where is it?

It flew right at me. With a snakelike hiss, the humanoid shadow swooped out of the blackness, and I glimpsed the vague hint of a mouth full of teeth in its lumpy head, like shark teeth embedded in gray Jell-O, before its blurry body plunged through mine and my feet slid off the pedals and the handlebars wrenched to the side and the bike jerked out from underneath me.

Behind me, Sarah screamed.

I hit the asphalt and tumbled into a painful roll, bruising my arms and shoulders. The trailer clattered behind me, dumping Sarah onto the ground.

I hastily probed my bruises—nothing broken, but
ouch!
—and scrambled over to her groaning form. The lantern had shattered, leaving only flickers of starlight above the treetops.

But even without seeing her, I knew she was hurt. Her breathing was all wrong—choking and desperate like she couldn’t get enough air, hyperventilating.

“Sarah, what’s wrong?” I found her hand and squeezed it. “Is anything broken?” Panic nipped at my fingertips. What could have happened to her? She hadn’t hit the ground that hard. I’d had the worse spill.

Explosive tremors racked her body, and she gasped suddenly, as if surfacing from being underwater. “It . . . it took a piece . . . it took . . .”

“Sarah?” I touched her cheeks, felt hot tears. “It took what?”

“It took—” She choked on her words, and her spine arched violently, she thrashed in the throes of agony, teeth gnashing together. “A piece . . . of
me,
” spittle flew from her lips, “of my soul.”

Chapter 20

The monster had
taken a bite out of her soul.

Needles prickled down my back. I jerked my head up to see where it had gone, overtaken by the wild impulse to follow it and take back what it had stolen.

The night caved in around me. The creature slithered out there, circling us in the darkness. My eyes darted, but resolved nothing.

It’s coming back for more.

“We have to keep going,” I stammered, dragging Sarah to her feet. My knees wobbled, threatening to buckle under her weight. “We have to keep moving. It’s still here.”

Her teeth chattered in my ear. “S-s-so . . . c-c-c-c-cold.”

I heaved her into the trailer, nearly falling in myself. Why hadn’t I thought to bring a blanket?

She shivered, arms tucked helplessly against her chest.

“Here—” I pulled off my hoodie, stripping down to my tank top, and tucked it around her. The night bit into my own bare skin, drawing goosebumps and a shiver of my own. Biking would keep me warm, hopefully.

I retrieved the lantern, which still functioned as a clock, and handed it to Sarah, who latched onto it like a toddler holding a teddy bear. She was still shivering.

I mounted the saddle and kicked down on the pedals. Air scraped at my dry throat, stabbing into lungs that felt like cracked lakebeds. My heart beat louder, pumping sludge through my veins. Gradually, the bike picked up speed again.

As I rode, something terrible tightened around my chest.

A piece of her was just . . .
gone
.

I’d let this happen to her. This crazy bike ride . . . all my idea. My fault. I rode harder. I had to get her out of here.

Something warm and wet tickled my finger, tugging my gaze off the road. A tiny, glowing strand of something blue and silky wriggled on my knuckle, tangled around my finger like a glow-in-the-dark spiderweb. Probably some chemical leaking from the lantern battery.

I wiped it off on my shorts.

On the 101 onramp, I switched to low gear and lugged us up the rise and onto the freeway.

Under an alien sky, six abandoned lanes slithered up the coast as far as the eye could see. Not a car in sight. Towering eucalyptus whooshed by on my left, and between the gaps, cliffs dropped precipitously to the Pacific Ocean, which stretched to the horizon like a mirrored sheet of glass. Not a ripple stirred the reflection of the night sky.

No waves, no tides, no weather. Like everything else on this planet—
dead
.

Nothing out there but ash and decay . . . and the ghost trying to eat our souls. All the while, that knot of stars loomed overhead—the black hole, glaring at me through a rip in space like a hideous eye.

I glanced behind us. A thousand feet back, almost out of view, its tiny humanoid form closing the distance with inhuman speed—no, my imagination. It wasn’t following us.

We were getting out of here.

“It’s going to be okay, Sarah . . . it’s going to be okay.”

It wasn’t going to be okay.

A frozen wind nipped my fingers, stung my ears, numbed my throbbing joints. My butt ached from the hard seat as I lifted and pumped thighs made of lead. Fatigue seeped into my muscles until they burned and trembled.

Somehow, I continued to pedal past the point of exhaustion, past the point of giving up, past everything, hypnotized by my own rhythmic gasps. Seconds passed . . . then minutes . . . then hours. All I knew was I had to keep going. The coastline inched by, and I sank into a trance, my thoughts blurring together into a muddled goo. Nothing left in there but pain and desperation.

Had to get us there.

I gave everything I had. There would be nothing left after.

After.
The concept made no sense.

There was only now. Only this moment. This mile. This breath.

Only now.

The freeway curved inland, and a freeway sign loomed out of the darkness. I strained to make out the words.

The sign for Highway 1—the turnoff was in two and a half miles, which meant we had about thirty to go.

“Halfway . . . there,” I gasped, the sides of my mouth cracking with dried saliva, too exhausted to rejoice.

Just thirty miles to go.

“Take Gaviota Beach Road.” Sarah’s voice startled me, the first time she’d spoken in hours.

The bike jerked. “What?”

“You’re trying to get to Space Launch Complex 6,” she said, her voice barely audible above the wind. “Take Gaviota Beach Road to Point Conception to Jalama Beach. There’s an access road that leads right up into the complex. It’s shorter and flatter.”

How she knew that, and how she’d mustered the energy to speak coherently, I had no idea. But I was beyond arguing.

“Thanks,” I huffed, crossing the gap in the center divider. We exited the freeway at a crawl, and Gaviota Beach Road steered us back toward the beach. “How you . . . doing back there?”

“Can you kill me?” she said. “I can’t live like this.”

Alarms flashed in my mind. “Don’t say that,” I gasped. “I’m . . . getting you out of here.”

“It’s not going to let us leave.” Her voice came out as a whisper, and I bit back my wheezing so I could hear her. “It’s coming for the rest of me.”

“It’s gone,” I said. “We left it in the dust.”

Her teeth knocked together. “No . . . it left us in the dust.”

Her words sent a shiver down my back. “No more talking, okay? Just try to stay warm.”

I rode on with a new frenzy, stabbing pain flaring in my thighs. We had to beat it there.

I nearly slammed
into the gate as it swooped out of the night. I braked just in time, and the front tire thudded against the steel bars.

On either side, chain link fence topped with loops of razor wire snaked off into the rolling hills. Fixed to the gate, a sign looked like it warned against trespassing, citing missile testing and serious hearing injury. Peering closer, I could just make out
Vandenberg Air Force Base
among the words. The rest was too small to read in the dim light.

I disembarked, and a series of painful electric shocks jolted up my stiff legs. As I caught my breath, my lungs squeaked and made a wet, raspy sound. I’d probably get pneumonia after this.

Sarah watched me as I fished around in the trailer for the wire cutters, the whites of her eyes hovering creepily in the darkness.

“Am I dead?” she whispered.

“You’re going to be fine,” I insisted. Why did I even bother? Even if I did get her back to Earth, she’d never be the same again. I was pretty sure you didn’t recover from losing a piece of your soul. Killing her now would be the most humane thing to do.

I couldn’t do that.

Why was the shadow creature hunting her and ignoring me? Was it just because she’d been here longer, she’d eaten more of the food?

I squeezed her frozen hand and went to work on the fence with the wire cutters. The chain links twanged as they snapped. I kicked in a section with my heel, then maneuvered the bike and trailer through the hole to the other side.

Back on the road.

A few miles farther, we reached another security gate, this one manned by a guard station and much more impressive. The station was empty, windows dark. The twelve-foot steel gate had been retracted, and we rode right through.

Getting closer.

As the pavement glided by, I became aware of several massive structures looming in the distance, barely shifting against the backdrop of stars. I climbed hill after hill, doggedly spinning my feet to get there, but the faster I pedaled, the faster they seemed to recede into the distance.

At last, we crested the final hill, and a valley expanded before me.

And there it was.

The thirty-story structures towered like behemoths over a sprawling facility—a launch tower, a massive building like an upside-down L, a gigantic spacecraft hanger with USAF spelled in huge block letters down the side.

We were here.

Vandenberg Air Force Base, Space Launch Complex 6.