Run (30 page)

"You sure know how to show a girl a night on the town."

She felt rather than sensed the smile on John’s face.  "Nothing but the best," he said.

Fran’s eyes closed again, and when she opened them they were halfway up the mountain, John quietly picking his way up and guiding Fran as he did so. 

"This is worse than before," she said, and closed her eyes again.

She didn’t see John look at her, his brow wrinkled in confusion.  And if she had, she would not have cared.  She was too tired to care, too tired to even remain aware as she trudged in a daze on the trail that led up into darkness.

***

It was a meeting quite unlike Malachi had ever seen.  Indeed, to his knowledge,
no one
had ever seen a meeting like this before.  It was a standard procedure of an Alert, but Malachi knew that a full Alert had never before been necessary.

The high school gymnasium was crowded.  People stood on bleachers, on the floor, every square inch of surface was occupied, with more people crowded outside.  Of course, it would have to be full.  All of Loston was in attendance.  Yet for all that, there were no sounds.  No one shuffled back and forth from foot to foot.  No one asked to be excused.  No one said
anything
at all.  They all focused intently on the man at the podium at the end of the hall.

He stepped to the microphone and began speaking.  None of the usual tapping of the microphone; no "Testing, 1-2-3"; not even a tiny joke. 

Malachi had never seen the fat little man who now began to speak, but he knew from Controller protocol that it would be the mayor who gave instructions in this situation.  It didn’t really matter, of course, a two-year-old could have administered the directives and the townsfolk would have had no choice but to obey.  Still, having the mayor do it lent a small semblance of normal life to the proceedings, and Malachi knew how important it was to the Controllers that everything seem real.

Jenna and Deirdre stood beside him, crushed against the people around them, all of whom took no heed of the visitors in their midst.  Indeed, Malachi knew that he could probably stand on someone’s shoulders and urinate onto the crowd without any reaction.  They were utterly focused on the mayor, and would not break that focus even if the entire world crumbled suddenly around them.

The mayor’s voice, dry as a desert tumbleweed, sounded through the PA system.  "We will first conduct a house to house search.  All will return to their homes and look for the woman.  As soon as you find her, detain her at all costs.  The man will become violent.  If possible, kill him before engaging the woman.  If they are not in any of your homes, we will begin a search of Loston and its environs in the following manner...."

Someone flicked on an overhead projector and a map of the city flashed to life behind the mayor.  Malachi marveled at how evenly planned out the town was.  All the streets ran in perfect lines.  All the blocks stood as perfect squares.  Fields existed in perfect ratios to one another, in a mathematically-balanced composition. 

Of course, there was no other way the place could have been designed, Malachi thought.  Though later areas had been built with more flair and imagination, the designers that had first planned Loston were not noted for imagination.  Not those soulless monstrosities.

The mayor used a laser pointer to highlight the areas he assigned as he continued.  "All those residing on Cherry Tree Lane and South Avenue will search from the North River to the Foothills.  All those residing...."

Malachi shut out the mayor’s voice, looking at the map, seeking the most likely place.  He knew that, like those that had built Loston, John would not be terribly imaginative in his flight.  He would go to the most logical hiding place to make his plans with the woman.

Malachi’s eyes danced as he studied the map of the Loston area. 

And then he smiled. 

He knew where they were.

***

John helped Fran up the last part of the hill.  She was dead on her feet, and John didn’t feel much better than that himself.  He had gone as long as four days without sleep during his tour, but he knew that after two days, people started losing control.  In three days, most people hallucinated, and after four a kind of madness overwhelmed them.

It had only been twenty-four hours since his last rest, but adrenaline and the fighting he had been engaged in had taxed him physically and emotionally.  He needed sleep as much as Fran did.

He walked to the Resurrection mineshaft, the destination he’d had in mind since they started running.  It was locked, as he’d expected, a thick wood plank covering the door and secured with a heavy Master lock.

"We’re going in there?" asked Fran, looking about her with eyes that barely remained open.  Her voice was thick with fatigue.

John nodded.  "There’s about ten miles of tunnels down here: it’s one of the largest mines in the country.  It’ll be hard to find us in here.  Impossible to pin us down.  And," he said, picking up a rock from nearby the entrance, "I know this place." 

He pulled at the rock and it split apart.  Fran gasped, clearly astonished at his apparent ability to split solid granite with a mere tug.  "It’s not real," he said with a grin.  He withdrew a key and used it to unlock the door, throwing it open.  The tunnel that led into the bowels of the mountain gaped before them, like the open throat of a pitcher plant, waiting for its unwary insect victims to venture inside.

"How well do you know this place?" whispered Fran.

"Pretty well."

"We won’t get lost?"

"No."  He was silent a moment, then said, "My dad worked here."

He motioned her inside, then followed himself, swinging the door shut behind them.  The external padlock meant he couldn’t lock the access door from the inside, but to a casual observer it would appear the mine was closed down as usual.  Not that casual observers were likely, he knew.  From what he could see, all of Loston was after them now, and anyone making their way up to the mine wouldn’t have any casual business at all.  Only the serious business of finding - and apparently killing - him and Fran.

Or perhaps only him.  He remembered the incredible care with which Mertyl had placed Fran during the run-in they had.  He had no clue why Fran merited such better treatment, any more than he had a clue as to what was going on tonight.  Further, he knew that he was not in possession of the facts necessary to clear up those mysteries, so he put away thoughts of what was going on for the moment.  A few minutes more and he would feel safe enough to bend his mind to the task of figuring out what was happening.  Until then, however, the questions must remain unanswered.

With the door shut, they stood in complete darkness.  Fran had let out a little cry as the mineshaft entrance swung shut behind her.  John couldn’t blame her.  For all that everyone on earth lived half their lives in the night, very few had ever experienced the absolute darkness of a closed mineshaft.  In four days of such darkness, the eyes could cease to function.  You could go legally blind.

Miner lore was replete with stories of men coming out after being lost in the darkness only a week and never being able to see again.  Other, more disquieting stories - stories told to every beginning miner, because they were true - told of those who remained for several weeks in the dark.

After as little as a week, you
could
go blind.  But after thirty days, you
would
be insane.

John didn’t plan on spending thirty days in Resurrection.  But the stories rang in his head as he groped for Fran’s hand.  She held onto him tightly, and the warmth of her palm spread from his hand through the rest of his body, giving him strength that he did not possess alone.

"Come on," he said, and began feeling his way through the dark.

CONTROL HQ - RUSHM

AD 3999/AE 1999

Jason stood behind Adam and watched the monitors.  He held Sheila close to him, clinging to her for support.  He knew that many of the other Controllers viewed his decision to marry as nothing more than rank foolishness.  Eventually one or the other of them would begin the inevitable spiral into madness that all of them grappled with sooner or later, and that destructive plunge would be all the harder for the person left behind. 

But in spite of that, he was glad that he had married her.  She was dear to him, too dear to live without, and at times like this it felt good to have someone nearby to truly lean on.  This was one of those times, when support was needed, for the world seemed to be spinning out of control beneath them, loosed from its moorings by the actions of Malachi and his insane followers.

All the monitors showed the same thing: the citizens of Loston, literally tearing their homes apart in the search for John and Fran, but what they
didn’t
show was any sign of the two.

Jason glanced at Adam.  The older man scowled.  A look at Sheila revealed her face set similarly.  Both of them knew what Jason did; both of them knew that Fran was the most important person in the world.

She was the mother of the world, and only if she survived could the rest of humankind.

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

5:50 AM TUESDAY

***ALERT MODE***

Fran squinted, trying to peer through the darkness as she slowly walked forward, led by John’s sure hand.  It was impossible, however.  The blackness was not only complete, it was so thick that she felt it as a blanket of deepest black velvet.  It clung to her, covered her, enveloped her in an impermeable layer of night that could be neither pushed away nor pierced.  This was darkness as she had never known it before, perhaps not even in her mother’s womb.

A moment later a light snapped on.  She blinked at the sudden glare.

"Sorry," said John.  He stood near a switch that was held to the wall by brackets.  It was by a small wooden rack that had been similarly hung.  Thick jackets hung from the rack, and Fran suddenly realized how very cold it was in the mine.  Less than ten meters from the entrance, and the temperature was at least twenty degrees cooler than it was outside.

John handed her a jacket and took one for himself.  "It’s a constant thirty degrees in here, even in winter," he said. 

Above the jackets there rested a shelf on which lay miners’ helmets: red and yellow painted hardhats with lights affixed to the fronts, batteries on the backs and sides.  John plopped one on her head.

"Now you look like just like a fireman," he joked.  Fran tried to laugh but was too tired to even smile.  She just wanted to sleep.  And maybe engage in a little therapeutic thumbsucking.

John flicked on her headlamp, then his own.  The light that speared forth provided illumination but no warmth.  Cold circles of luminescence surrounded them, but Fran felt no comfort, only some relief that the darkness had been cast back.  The relief was mitigated, however, by the fact that beyond the small spheres of brightness provided by the headlamps, the darkness continued to lurk.  It seemed to roil and pitch as a living sea of murky water, waiting only for the lights to wink out before claiming her for its own and burying them in its depths. 

Beside her, John grabbed a thick flashlight from another shelf nearby, hefting its solid weight.  Fran could tell it would be useful if it got really dark.  Or if he needed to club someone.  Another shelf provided a thick coil of rope that John swung over his shoulder.  The rifle he had taken from Gabe’s house the night before - though it seemed to her a million years ago - lay in an at-rest position across his other shoulder.  Fran wondered how many rounds were left.

John returned to her and flicked the wall switch off.  The only light now came from their helmets, and Fran felt John’s hand hold tightly to hers as he began to lead her deeper into the tunnel, straddling tracks which Fran guessed had been used for mine cars in years past.

They proceeded two or three hundred feet, then turned abruptly into a side passage.  She almost stumbled over the tracks as they turned, but righted herself in time.  Her breath fogged in front of her and she shivered again.  She glanced to her left and saw her light refracted from a million shards of glass.

Not glass, she realized.  Ice, a crystalline mat that unevenly coated the dirt walls.

"John," she said, "where are we –"

He cut her off with a finger to his lips.

"This is a bad part of the mine," he whispered.  "Dangerous.  Don’t talk too loud."

Fran nodded, subdued.  She looked up, and could imagine the thousands - no, millions,
billions
- of tons of dirt and rock that hung above them, held at bay by only a few pitiful wooden support columns placed here and there throughout the mines. 

Because she was looking up, she didn’t see the small ice patch that John so carefully walked around.  She stepped into the middle of it and slipped, stumbling again.  She scrambled for balance, arms pinwheeling as she pitched headlong at the wall on her left, toward a set of wooden braces.

John rammed into her, body checking her painfully.  They both flew back several feet, and Fran landed on a rail, bruising her hip.  She literally bit back a cry of pain, digging her teeth into her lower lip so hard she knew she’d have a bloody mouth. 

She needn’t have bothered.  Even before they hit the ground, John’s hand went over her mouth to stop any noise that might have emerged.  When he saw he didn’t need to keep his hand there, he pulled it off, and she thought she saw admiration in his eyes.  His look warmed her as the light from their headlamps had failed to do, though even it did not take away the pain that coursed through her body as she fell.

John leaned closer to her, and Fran became aware that he still lay across her.  The pain in her hip finally disappeared from her consciousness as his face dipped closer to her, and she realized that she wanted him to make love to her. 

"See that wall?" he whispered, his breath hot against her ear as he pointed to the area she had almost careened into.  She nodded.  "It’s about sixty tons of rock that’s been loosened up recently and it’s just waiting to fall.  I don’t know if it would come down just from you touching it, but let’s not take any chances, okay?"