Ghost of the Gods - 02 (27 page)

The highway was lined with trees and rolling hills on either side. They were driving toward a coal-fired power plant running at full capacity, spewing huge pillars of smoke and stream that reached the clouds. So recklessly stupid, thought Sarah. No one seemed to get it. Did they want to provoke another plague?

Mark banged his fist into the dashboard.

“Fuck!” he shouted. “I need some of that off the charts problem-solving ability right fucking now!”

Sarah glanced at him to make sure he was not losing it completely. His expression was dark. He was extremely angry. So angry he’d failed to notice the power plant. She could feel his emotions getting the better of him in a destructive way. They both knew that Noah could be racing toward them at this very moment or worse, racing toward the commune. Why were they having so much trouble finding this one? She hoped Noah was having the same problems. They knew the commune was in New Jersey but could not narrow down the location to anything smaller than half the state, the northern half! The tidal pulls from this singularity seemed to be randomly moving all over the map. The intensity of the pull had increased to a mild physical sensation, which was the only clue they were moving in the right direction. As they drew closer, the movement seemed to expand to cover a widening area. She and Mark were also getting flashes of remote visions from non-hybrids who were near the singularity. The flashes were a little too close to her experiences of living through kill-zones. There was one flash in particular that was very troubling. She was not sure, but it was either déjà vu or she had seen this place before. The visual snapshot was from inside a boarded up restaurant and included a partial view of a window through which she could see the tops of buildings across the street. The window had a red logo on it, but not enough was visible to read a name. All she could see was part of a red circle.

Sarah felt her stomach knot up as she drove around a bend. Directly ahead of them was one of the bridges she’d tried and failed to cross over two years ago when fleeing New Jersey. When that massive kill-zone had struck, everyone she’d loved had died. Her lover Kenny was gone, though she’d never found his body. Her mother and father had died. She had buried them with her own hands in their backyard. This bridge across the Delaware Water Gap had been quarantined by the military along with all of New Jersey. Now the bridge was empty and carried the scars of a battle fought long ago. Her fingers tightened on the wheel as emotions roiled in her blood. She told herself to breathe in and breathe out slowly. The sound of the tires changed as she reached the bridge. It felt unreal to be here. So many memories were surfacing. Breathe in, breathe out.

This stretch of Interstate Route 80 in New Jersey was clear of debris. They were running straight east directly toward New York City and the Manhattan Protectorate. The number of travelers on the highway was increasing. Sarah felt a wild swing in the tidal pull from the singularity. It was now coming from about 130 degrees off their direction of travel to the south of them.

“Mark!” said Sarah.

“I felt it.”

Sarah lifted off the gas. The Humvee coasted to a stop on the shoulder. A tractor trailer, which had been behind them, blew past with its horn blaring.

“Are we going in the right direction?” asked Sarah. “That pull came from behind us. How could we have passed it?”

“I don’t know. This has to be some kind of defense mechanism, decoys, reflections, maybe? I’m not sure.”

As he spoke, the tidal pull moved at an impossible speed. It now felt like the singularity was ahead of them at about 70 degrees to the north. Sarah engaged the parking brake. She had no idea what to do.

“I’ve got it,” shouted Mark. “Sit tight, don’t move the Humvee. I think I know what to do.”

“Not moving an inch.”

As they sat on the shoulder, Sarah felt the singularity moving again. This time when it paused, it left like it was almost due south. Sarah watched for twenty minutes as Mark used his tablet to drop pins on a map of New Jersey each time the singularity moved. Each pin was dropped at the approximate compass bearing from their position where the singularity paused. The pins formed a rough arc that covered about 200 degrees.

“I think I have enough data points,” he said.

He drew a line on the map from their location through the center of the arc. The line crossed over Morristown, South Orange, Newark, and then hit the Hudson River.

“The commune is somewhere near this line,” said Mark. “We drive until we pass it, then circle back in a spiral until we hit a vortex.”

“You hope,” said Sarah.

“What else have we got?”

Sarah could not take her eyes off that map. The line went straight through Morristown. Was her uneasiness just the awful memories of walking through Morristown after the first big kill-zone? She’d been a rookie on the Morristown force when the plague had hit while she was out on patrol with her partner. Her life had been perfect, then in a single moment it was destroyed. Now the entire area had become the very definition of the Outlands. It was wide open and dangerous and…

Sarah sighed. It all clicked into place.

“I know where the singularity is,” she said. “It’s Morristown. You know that flash I had of people inside a boarded-up restaurant? I just recognized those rooftops seen through the window. That restaurant is just off the Morristown Square.”

“Let’s go,” said Mark. “You’re amazing.”

Sarah was deeply disturbed by the idea of going back to Morristown. It took a great deal of willpower to push down on the accelerator. Maybe they should try for a different commune.

“Are you okay?” asked Mark.

“Fine!”

Thirty minutes later Sarah passed the highway exit for Dover; next to it was a sign with a red quarantine warning. No one here had bothered to clean up much after the plague. Maybe those who stayed liked the biohazard warning signs. The highway interchange to Morristown was just a few more exits. Her anxiety had not stopped growing since she’d realized the singularity was in Morristown. She felt a tingling inside her, as if tiny things were crawling around within the cavities of her body. She heard what sounded like a whisper. Just wind noise, she told herself. The whisper grew a little louder as if a disembodied voice was trying to murmur into her left ear. The words were garbled, but the voice was unmistakably and all too familiar. This could not be happening again. Not now! She was not having a breakdown. She’d struggled with these sinister voices years ago. After she’d recovered she’d never heard them again. Her doctor had told her it was little more than an overactive imagination, a kind of verbal daydream. He’d reassured her that a great many people hear brief, phantom voices and require no psychiatric treatment at all. It was common in cases of physical trauma such as hers. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She caught an intelligible fragment as if eavesdropping.

Will sheeee be here soooonnn?

The whispers dredged up all the old memories with them. Sarah relived the dream premonitions she’d had before the first plague hit New Jersey. The dreams had begun long after the voices had stopped. Months went by in seconds as she recalled it all in perfect, terrible detail within her nanotech brain. She re-experienced her fears of whatever had been mentally pursuing her from deep below her feet in underground rivers. Years later, she now suspected it had been COBIC bacteria invading her mind from its breeding grounds in the subterranean waters.

“Sarah,” said Mark.

“What… oh…”

Sarah lifted off the gas and cut the wheel. She’d automatically taken the interchange, but now a few miles later had been driving right past the exit for Morristown. Minutes later, shortly after leaving the highway, the singularity seemed to grow into sharp focus. They were apparently close enough that there was no longer any phantom movement, and with that Sarah got her first taste of the real strength of this singularity. She felt as if caught in rapids that were feeding into a whirlpool and it was far too late to turn back. They were now being drawn inescapably into its heart.

“Feel that,” said Mark.
“
This singularity’s far more powerful than Chicago, Montreal, and Portland all added together!”

“Maybe the guides are maturing and growing stronger.”

“Could be.”

Sarah heard a different answer whispered into her ear.

Weeee were always strong enough to kill themmm…

It took all her willpower not to screech to a halt in the middle of the road and scream for it to get out of her head. How could she tell Mark about the voices without him worrying she was having a breakdown? After a few silent miles she began to relax her guard a little. The evil hallucination, premonition, or whatever it was remained quiet.

They were traveling on an empty two-lane road lined with trees and front yards. Mark seemed confident he’d done enough of his triangulation tricks to have a good bearing now that the singularities location remained constant. Everywhere Sarah looked she saw decaying cars and other artifacts from her lost home. The road surface as well as the yards all had drifts of autumn leaves mixed with snow. The unnatural groundcover only added to Sarah’s agitation. At this time of year the leaves should have been deeply buried under a thick mattress of white. On the roads the leaves were cemented in place by ice and slurries of the reddish brown clay. Muddy frozen tire tracks in the leaf-clogged roads were testament to people living or prowling nearby. Suddenly they drove through what had to be the outer vortex. Sarah gasped. She hit the brakes, stopping in the middle of street. She looked over at Mark and knew he was seeing the n-web projected in front of his eyes by an assist.

“Keep going about a mile then make a right,” said Mark.

“Do you still want to go straight up to the door?”

“What choice do we have? Time’s running out. Besides, don’t we have an unofficial introduction from Adam?”

“That would be Adam the dead liar?” said Sarah.

Mark smiled grimly. They continued driving. Sarah knew from memory capsules that Mark was still refining the triangulation map in his head. They were now close enough that if Noah beat them to the commune, they would see and feel the explosion. Following Mark’s instruction, she turned down a tree-lined road in what had been an expensive neighborhood. As they reached the top of a hill, Sarah saw an historical estate and knew in her gut that was it. She could feel Mark had spotted the same place. There was no need to say a word.

The estate had a huge, three-story revolutionary era mansion build from red brick and several smaller red brick outbuildings. A red brick wall with white capstone encircled the acres of ground. What looked like a modern professional observatory had been added in a style that blended with the original architecture. The place looked like a museum.

As they reached the wall surrounding the grounds, Sarah could see the estate was far more fortified than the other communes. Some of the security appeared recently added. A twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence ringed the property 20 feet inside of the red brick wall. The fence was topped with razor wire and floodlights. Every few yards a video camera pointed down at the street. Sarah pulled to a stop at the gate. A
vehicle barricade was blocking the entrance.
Several very large Dobermans appeared at the gate. Ralph clambered up front between the driver and passenger seats.
Two cameras were pointed straight at them from the gate. On either side of the Humvee, two more cameras looked down on them. Sarah felt dizzy this close to the
singularity
. It was overwhelming her and calling to her in waves. The undulating strength only added to her disorientation.

“Now what?” asked Sarah.

“Let’s see who’s home. Try the callbox.”

Sarah rolled down her window and pressed the only button on the callbox. Five minutes passed with no reply. Sarah pressed the button again. Time seemed to run slowly for her as if in a recurring dream. No reply.

“We’re being ignored,” said Mark.

He reached into the small backpack that contained the relic and took it out with his bare hands. Sarah thought she could feel it slightly damping the emotions radiating from him.

“Let’s see if we can get their attention this way,” said Mark.

He got out of the Humvee and walked up as close to the cameras as possible. The Dobermans were barking and pawing at the gate. Ralph climbed into Mark’s seat and clearly wanted to attack those dogs. Mark held out his hand with the relic toward the cameras.

“We were at the Montreal commune,” he yelled. “Adam sent us. We’ve come to warn you about the betrayer who owns this device. We need your help and you need ours.”

The gate remained shut with Mark standing before it as the minutes dragged on. Her dizziness was persisting along with a small pain that was now growing in the center of her forehead. Sarah knew she was being watched. Mark started to walk back to the Humvee, then turned and addressed the cameras once more.

“We’ll wait nearby for three days. I know you can find us.”

Mark opened the door, coaxed Ralph back into the rear seat, and then climbed in. He was radiating frustration. He put the relic back into its dark space inside the backpack.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll find a place close by. Maybe we’ll get lucky and catch someone coming or going from the estate.”

“I’m happy to get some distance from this singularity,” said Sarah. “I hope you know what you’re doing with that invitation.”

Sarah felt almost normal again. The dizziness had faded along with the headache. They had driven down all the streets that offered a view of the estate. Two of the streets they’d explored ran along a hillside and provided perfect vantage points. Yet Mark did not like those streets because of the time it would take to intercept anyone coming or going from the estate. Most of the property for blocks surrounding the estate had been gutted by fire and appeared uninhabitable. The trees were mostly dead in that area. The houses had crumbled. Something terrible had happened there. Sarah believed it was riots. In the past two and a half years she had seen far too many examples of that kind of mass insanity. She felt a glimmer of a distant presence that might have been the betrayer. If he was coming, he had to be on his way toward them by now. In Montreal they’d been told by Adam to complete their journey. She’d assumed he’d meant finding more communes and evolving. Sarah now wondered if her near-death experience was the journey she was supposed to complete. The betrayer was a true grim reaper. Was he destined to help her complete that journey by killing her? Thankfully, the whispers remained silent and did not answer her thoughts.