Eve of Destruction (16 page)

“Where's Ben?” Kate asked.

“He's holding the bar in the door so Rainsford can't get out.”

Kate just nodded. It looked like it was taking some effort to speak at all.

“Bad?”

“Yeah, not great. It must be getting dark outside. That's when it's the worst, right before dark.”

“I wonder why.”

“Couldn't tell you. Maybe pain and darkness like each other.”

I had been right about the bad omen, the calm before the storm, because right when Kate said those words, everything started to fall apart.

It started with Amy, who unexpectedly returned to the main monitor. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she'd been running or gotten embarrassed.

“Will, she knows! You have to get out now! She knows
everything
!”

“Slow down, Amy—what happened?”

“There's no time, Will! She knows and she's going.”

“Going where?”

“I did what you asked. I unlatched the way down. I even opened the door and left it that way. But she
knows
, Will. She's leaving right now. And she's mad. Like,
really
mad. At you.”

“Can you stop her? Slow her down? Anything?”

“I can't even get out of here! I'm locked in the basement. You have to get out now, Will. Get everybody out. You have to save me.”

Amy started crying. She was really scared, like a beast was lurking outside the bomb shelter door, trying to get in.

“Hold tight, I'll get there as fast as I can. I promise!”

There was a voice from the basement—was it Mrs. Goring? I thought it was, but I couldn't say for sure with my rotten hearing. Had to be, because Amy gave me a look before she killed the signal that said something important:

She's not gone after all. I'll keep her here as long as I can. Go! Go! Go!

This was at least a glimmer of hope.
Thank you, Amy!
was my first thought as I focused my energy on the S5 monitor. Looming up in the back of my mind was time. It was always about time, it seemed, not enough or way too much in the case of Rainsford. It was about a six- or seven-minute walk to the pond, but Mrs. Goring was in the basement and she had to make sure everything was locked down tight so no one got out. That could take, what, five minutes extra? I had a max of twelve minutes to get everyone out, which meant Avery and Marisa had to be on the other side of the underground lake within five at the most.

“Marisa! Answer me, it's important!” I yelled. Kate stirred from where she leaned hard against a wall.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Hang on—Avery? Marisa! You need to leave,
now
. The doorway out is open but not for long. We don't have much time!”

“Coming!” yelled Kate. She was getting out of the missile silo whether anyone else made it or not. “I'll grab Alex and we'll meet you at the exit. And Marisa and Avery? If you can hear me, and I know you can, get your asses in gear! It's time to move or get left behind! And don't show up without the vials. I mean it!”

I appreciated the extra boost of enthusiasm from Kate as Marisa's flustered face appeared in the monitor.

“We're coming! We talked it through, and we're coming!”

“Do you have the vials?” I asked. I had no illusions about Mrs. Goring helping us, but if we could just get out and escape into the woods before she found us, it wouldn't matter. We could take the vials home and do the work ourselves.

“Swim fast! Run faster!” I yelled. “There's seriously like
no
time. You gotta move.”

Marisa didn't even take the time to answer me, she was just gone. And then Avery appeared in the screen. She had a wisp of a smile on her face, which I hadn't seen all day. She seemed almost happy.

“We'll make it. Don't go leaving without us.”

I told her I wouldn't think of it, and then I double-checked to make sure the red zone door was open. I was about to leave the observation room when a thought raced to the front of my mind.

What about the seven candidates in Fort Eden? Are we just going to leave them behind? What about Amy?

I wasn't responsible for all of them, but I did feel responsible for Amy. She had talked about going first, which could mean really, really soon. If Mrs. Goring got Amy drugged or under some kind of deep hypnosis or whatever, I'd never forgive myself. And the other six candidates were trapped, too. How fast could I get the cops up here? It would take a few hours, at best. It wouldn't be fast enough.

I saw two dripping-wet figures come into the tunnel on the S4 monitor—Marisa and Avery were out—and they were running. That was my cue to get to the exit.

“Will, over here!” yelled Connor. He and Kate and Alex were running up the red zone tunnel. One of them had a flashlight, and it sent a dancing beam of light in my direction.

“I'll get Ben,” I said, and ran for the blue zone, where I found Ben sitting on the ground, holding his back with one hand and the metal pipe with the other.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I'm good, but he's pissed,” Ben said. He stood partway up and started hobbling toward me on his sprained ankles. “I think he'll keep unlocking the door and banging on it until it falls off its hinges.”

“You're probably right. Just one more good reason to get out now.”

“For real? The door's open?”

“Yeah, I did it. Let's go.”

Ben threw an arm around my shoulder and I helped him walk back toward the entryway. When we got there Kate, Connor, and Alex were milling around, nervous energy having overtaken them. Seeing Ben, Connor went into commando mode again.

“We got an injured guy on our team, let's get him out first. I can go right behind, catch his weight if he starts to fall.”

“Fine by me,” said Kate. “I think I'll wait a second, make sure my girls get out first.”

Ben was all too happy to start up the ladder before Kate even stopped talking, but he wasn't fast enough to beat Alex to the first rung. He was flying up that ladder before Ben could take his first step. Once he got going, Ben hopped from rung to rung, making slow progress, and Connor pulled up behind him.

“What's the plan at the top?” Connor asked. “Do we just go right out or wait?”

“I think we scatter and run for the cars. Just get out and run; we'll do the same.”

Connor nodded down at me like he was raring to go, but he was nervous. He kept looking up into the tunnel like it was spinning around in circles.

“Feeling dizzy?” Kate asked.

“Nope, I'm good.”

Connor began the slow ascent to the top and Kate nudged me on the shoulder.

“Don't go in there until he's out. You don't want to end up under a falling football player.”

Kate could be cold, but she had a good point. Beneath a free-falling Connor Bloom was not a place I wanted to find myself.

“If we do get cured, he's so going into the army,” I joked. “He's already trained.”

“Yeah, he'd be a natural.”

Nine minutes had passed, and I didn't want to tell Kate we were down to almost no time by my calculations. It was altogether possible that Mrs. Goring was already standing outside waiting for us with a shotgun as it was.

I heard a noise in the distance, down the red zone tunnel, and I couldn't help myself. I started running in Marisa's direction.

“Go ahead,” I said to Kate over my shoulder. “You might as well. We're going to make it.”

Kate looked in both directions and seemed to weigh her options.

“No thanks. I want to see those vials for myself. Plus Connor's not to the top yet.”

I could see the resolve in Kate's expression when I looked back once more. She'd come this far to get rid of a constant, blinding migraine. She wasn't about to take any chances.

There was no reason for me to run toward Marisa. I just wanted to. I wanted her to see how much I missed her, how much I loved her. How proud I was of her getting Avery to come along. I rounded the corner at the S1 station and kept on going.

“Marisa? Avery?” I shouted. “Come on, fast as you can!”

They blasted through the red zone door, soaking wet and shivering despite the run. Marisa saw my silhouette and knew it was me. When our bodies connected we hadn't slowed down quite as much as we should have, and I think it nearly knocked the wind out of her. I wrapped my arms around her shaking body and felt the clammy cold of her bare neck on my lips.

“Are you getting me out of here, wonder boy?” she whispered, close and shivering in my ear. It was pure magic. I didn't even answer, I just took her hand, made sure Avery was with us, and started running toward the exit.

I kept looking back, making sure Avery was there. She was slower than I would have liked, moving more at a jog, and finally I slowed to a walk.

“Can you go any faster?” Marisa asked, and Avery did pick up her pace, but not enough. I felt sure we were already out of time and Mrs. Goring would lock us in all over again. When we finally reached Kate she already had one foot on the first rung, nervously looking back and forth between us and the way out.

“They're already outside!” she shouted. “It's open up there, I can see it.”

At first I couldn't believe it was true. Had Amy really come to our rescue, opening the latch so we could escape from a maze of horrors? The idea surprised me, and I didn't believe Kate until I pulled in next to her and stared up into the shaft. At the top there was a faint circle of light, the light of a day coming to a close outside.

“This is good,” I said.

“No duh,” said Kate, but I was thinking not so much of our escape, but of what we were escaping
into
. It would be easier to slip away at nightfall than it would have been in broad daylight.

“Ready to get out of this hellhole?” Kate asked Marisa, and then to Avery: “You have what we came for?”

Avery and Kate had never been very close, in part because they'd briefly fawned over the same person. Young Rainsford—Davis—had caught Kate's eye, too. I had the feeling as I glanced at Kate just then that she didn't exactly feel sorry for Avery.

Looks like getting the guy wasn't such a good deal after all. Sorry that didn't work out for you.

“I have all seven vials,” Avery said softly.

“Let me see them.”

Avery didn't like being bossed around and narrowed her eyes. She wasn't about to give in to Kate Hollander that easy. In the shadow of a fight over a guy, the two were rivals above all else.

“Where's Davis?” she asked, looking at me then, thinking I was the most likely to know.

It was a hard question to answer, one I knew was coming. She wasn't going to leave the missile silo without him.

“There is no Davis. There never was. And Rainsford is going to betray you.”

“You don't know that,” Avery said, but it wasn't forceful. The spell was breaking in his absence.

Marisa touched Avery's porcelain white hand, holding it delicately.

“He tried to kill me, Avery. Me and Will both.”

Avery began to shake her head slowly as her gaze shifted to the floor. We had to get out before the door slammed shut and locked again, but Avery was crying. She was confused and upset, but we couldn't leave her behind. I was afraid she might run back into the darkness of the tunnels, screaming Rainsford's name, turning her back on us in the end.

Marisa tightened her grip around Avery's hand. They looked like two young children about to wander into a forbidden wood with only each other to depend on. The way they looked at each other, there was something deeper that hadn't been there before, something I couldn't understand.

“Let me take you out of here,” Marisa said.

Avery looked up, red eyed and sallow. “I can't do it. I can't.”

“Then give me the vials and stay here if you want,” said Kate. She'd had about enough of the Avery weepfest to last her a lifetime. “Stay down here, be my guest. But you're giving me those vials one way or the other.”

Kate was taller and stronger than Avery, towering over her like an oak tree.

“We can't make you come with us,” I said. “But we want you to.”

Kate took one step toward Avery, which put her about two inches from punching her in the gut (something I could actually imagine Kate doing in a situation like this). Avery reached into her back pocket and pulled out three vials, but she wouldn't give them to Kate. She handed them to Marisa instead.

“Hold these,” Marisa said, passing them off to me. Feeling their delicate glass casings made me nervous about having charge over them. They were each filled with a black gunk so thick it smeared all of the glass inside. Throughout this exchange Marisa and Avery had not stopped holding hands, but now they did, and Avery dug three more vials out of her other back pocket. These she handed directly to me.

“Yours is in there,” she said, wiping the tears from her face.

My fear in my hands, and everyone else's, too,
I thought.

“Where's the last one?” Kate asked, still not backing down as she glowered over Avery. “Come on, Avery. You have a death wish, fine. But that door isn't going to stay open if Goring finds out. Give me the damn vial!”

Avery dug down into her front pocket and pulled out her vial.

“I hate carrying it around anyway,” she said. “I'm not even sure why I need to. He just said so, and that's what I did. Because I do whatever he says.”

She said the last part without sincerity or sarcasm. It was said flatly by a girl on the verge of falling apart, and this made it impossible to say where her true allegiance fell.

“You take it,” Avery said, giving her vial—the seventh vial—to Marisa. “Don't let it go.”

“I won't,” Marisa promised, and just like that, Kate was climbing up the rungs.