Tremor (15 page)

Clooger knew Faith well enough to wonder if she had bigger plans than she was saying. He ran through the options in his head: she wanted to sneak in and see Dylan, she thought she could get in close and figure something out on her own, she hoped to find Clara alone and fight her to the death. All bad ideas capable of blowing their cover and getting them killed.

“Promise me you won't do anything stupid,” Clooger said.

“I won't do anything stupid. I promise.”

She deemed her behavior risky, not brainless, and therefore didn't categorize her answer as a lie, strictly speaking.

“If I call, you answer,” Clooger ordered.

“Deal,” Faith agreed, something she knew she couldn't possibly adhere to if a call came in while she was locked in a conversation with Wade.

Clooger stood up and yawned, long and loud as if he was overdue for a bear-sized hibernation. Faith smiled—
Thank you, I needed this
—and turned to go. A few seconds later Clooger was sprawled out across the long, wide seat of the HumGee, staring at the ceiling. The far back end of the rig was where Faith would sleep, and Hawk was up front. Clooger closed his eyes, just to rest them for a moment, until Hawk leaned over the front seat and held out his Tablet.

“Wanna play Asteroids?”

Hawk had thought the training event earlier in the day had been a lot like the classic video arcade game.

“Is that what you've been ‘working' on?” Clooger asked without opening his eyes.

“Yeah, well, can't work all the time. Fries the circuits.”

“Uh-huh.”

Hawk could tell he was on his own with Asteroids. He'd been feeling the pressure of everything, the isolation of the woods, and video games at least took his mind off his worries, which were numerous. He'd calculated the amount of power it had taken to lift all those train cars and move them so precisely. It was a lot. If Andre and the Quinns were planning something really terrible, he wasn't sure Faith and Dylan would be enough firepower to stop them. He worried about his parents and, more accurately, his own fragile psyche. He had come to realize that all Intels were subject to the strong possibility of going insane. It might happen when he was fifteen, it might not happen until he was forty; but it was going to happen. It was an unpleasant thought, like death and disease, and it was shared by Andre and Clara. They both knew, too. It was only a matter of time with Intels.

He went back to his game, listening to the sound of Clooger's snoring. The big guy was louder when he was on his back, and the inside of the HumGee was like a cave where a big sound only got bigger.

“If a bear snores in the woods and no one is there to hear it, is there really any sound?” Hawk asked himself, willing his mind to tune out the racket.

The trouble with emulators that ran retro games on Tablets was that they weren't native. They covered the Tablet operating system like the skin on an orange, sealing it off until the game was shut down. Of course Hawk knew this, but stress in the field could have a debilitating effect on even the smartest people in the world. He didn't care or didn't think of it or didn't think it mattered for ten or fifteen minutes.

Which was why he didn't see the alert happening in the operating system under the Asteroids game. A pulse had been detected; someone was flying in close.

By the time Hawk closed the game, Wade had already landed and Clooger was still snoring.

Chapter 11
Sasquatch

Dylan had his first important piece of information, and he felt it was now worth the risk to try to make contact with his team. He was alone, locked in his cell, sitting on the floor. He'd hunched over, as if sleeping, and held his finger and thumb to his ear. He hoped someone in the woods would hear him whisper and whatever surveillance the prison had would not.

His head bowed as low as it would go, arms folded across his knees, Dylan spoke.

“Gretchen's second-pulse weakness,” he said, then stopped at the sound of distant footsteps coming toward him. “It's water—her weakness is water.”

He had deduced this remarkably important piece of information from the scene that had played out in the field outside, and he felt convinced he was right. As the steps grew near, Hawk's voice filled his head.

“How do you know? Hey, buddy, you there?”

Hawk didn't get a reply and assumed correctly that Dylan was in mixed company. He tried Faith: “Faith, are you hearing this?”

Faith had also heard Dylan's voice deep inside her head, but she was standing in the woods with Wade Quinn. There was no way she could answer, but a tingle of excitement ran up her spine at the idea of knowing how to breach Gretchen's second pulse. She smiled unexpectedly, thinking about pulling Gretchen into a tank of water and watching her melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. Wade smiled back and quickened his pace toward her in the dark. Regardless of whether she had betrayed him, he couldn't have been happier to see her smiling at his return to the woods.

Hawk, on the other hand, wasn't too cheerful about what he was seeing in the HumGee. Clooger was in a deep sleep. Hawk thought about waking him but knew it would take some work. When Clooger slept, he
really
slept. The news about Gretchen was important, but it wasn't time sensitive, not really. He could let the gentle giant grab a little rest while the getting was good.

Hawk looked at his GPS positioning system and found Faith—the sound rings were wired up, even if her Tablet GPS was off-limits.

She's pretty far down the mountain.

He rummaged around inside a duffel bag they'd gotten from a mega sporting-goods store back in Valencia. He'd been interested in the fishing gear at that store, especially the expensive fly-fishing stuff, but it was all virtually useless where they were going. What they'd needed at the time, or at least
he
had needed, was protection. So they'd filled the duffel bag with an array of hunting knives, boxes of shells, and two shotguns.

The sawed-off shotgun was Clooger's weapon of choice because, as he had explained, it threw a very wide net. A normal shotgun blasted a cloud of buckshot that widened as it went. Sawing off the end of the gun made the blast zone even bigger.

“You might not kill what you're shooting,” he'd explained. “But if you're at close range, you'll probably hit whatever you're aiming at. And that will give you enough time to get the hell out of whatever mess you've gotten yourself into without killing someone in the process.”

Clooger had sawed off the ends of the guns and given Hawk about ten minutes of shooting lessons inside the store, where they'd aimed directly into the open expanse of the golf section. Hawk's first shot had knocked him clean off his feet and left his shoulder throbbing. Most of the buckshot had hit the ceiling, falling like hail into the store. It had also been loud enough to make Hawk's ears ring for an hour afterward. Clooger hadn't put an end to the lesson until Hawk heard the sound of tiny metal balls pinging off five irons, drivers, and putters. His aim wasn't much to write home about, but at least he was firing at eye level.

“It's earsplitting, so don't fire unless you have to.”

“That won't be a problem,” Hawk had said. They'd grabbed a bunch of hunting knives and called it good on weaponry.

Hawk filled his pockets with shotgun shells, loaded the barrel, and slammed it shut with a clang. He took two of the hunting knives, which were held in leather sheaths he could attach to his belt, one on each side. One more look over the seat at Clooger, who had, expectedly, slept through all the activity.

Hawk exited the HumGee and put on both buck knives, one on each side of his waist, and held the sawed-off shotgun in his right hand. He'd recently been streaming old Rambo movies on his Tablet and gotten just a little bit obsessed with the idea of going out into the wild and shooting at stuff. Maybe it was some pent-up aggression. He'd been feeling uptight about not having a second pulse, a first pulse, a girlfriend, a big brother, or parents who could actually pay attention to what he was saying. More and more he was bothered by the fact that he was not only the smallest guy in the room, he was also the weakest. Couldn't the universe have fated him to have a pulse instead of brains to burn? He often fell asleep thinking of all the mayhem he would cause if he could pick up cars and buses and slam them into each other.

“Armed and dangerous,” he said, thinking primarily of the wolves he was sure were watching him from the shadows beyond the tree line. He held his Tablet, which was in its palm size, in his free hand and began walking, following Faith's GPS marker on the screen.

As he made his way through the trees, a thought crossed his mind: if he was to use the shotgun to protect himself, it might be heard a long way off, maybe as far away as the prison. And if that happened, well, who knew? Maybe they'd think it was one of the outsiders, just a random hunter trying to feed his family. But more likely he'd be giving away the fact that someone was up in the forest looking down at the prison.

He picked up his pace. If he could get to wherever Faith was, she could protect him from almost anything. It was slightly demoralizing, no doubt about it. Wasn't it the guy who was supposed to protect the girl?
Well,
he concluded,
the world is upside down. Who knows what's normal anymore?

When he reached the halfway point—the place where the GPS marker for Clooger was just as far away as the one for Faith, he thought it was the right time to let Faith know he was coming out there to find her. He pressed his sound ring and used his small voice, just to make sure Clooger stayed asleep.

“Hey, Faith? It's me. It's Hawk. Look, I know you were angling for some alone time or whatever, but Clooger's snoring the doors off, and I really wanted to talk to you about this Gretchen thing. I'm heading your way. Looks like, ummm . . . looks like about five more minutes. Stay put.”

Faith couldn't tell Hawk to turn around and go back to the HumGee because Wade was standing right in front of her. The only way Hawk would hear what she was saying was if she pressed her sound ring. And she sure couldn't have Hawk suddenly appear, walking down the side of a mountain totally unprotected. Wade might kill him on sight.

“I'm glad you came back,” Wade said. He knew she'd deceived him, knew she was possibly trouble. But he couldn't help it. His heart wasn't listening to his head. “I wasn't sure you would.”

Faith put her hands in her back pockets nervously.

“Well, I did. What's new with you?”

Wade laughed and shook his head. “Oh, the usual. You know, picking up train cars, stuff like that.”

Faith figured she had two minutes tops before Hawk would be close enough to be seen or heard. That was assuming he wasn't running.

“I haven't flown in days,” Faith said. “You know, don't want to be detected or anything. I miss it.”

Wade moved in closer and felt his pulse quicken. “I have a transponder. They know it's me out here. As far as they're concerned, I'm just doing some recon. No big deal.”

He put an arm on her waist, wrapped it all the way around, and pulled her close. He was taller than Dylan, so his hand rested not on her hip, but against her ribs. For some reason this sent an electric charge through Faith as her body responded to his touch.

They lifted off the ground, not like two ghosts, but two rockets, shooting a hundred feet up into the sky. Faith felt the power of Wade's forearms, the incredible force of his strength, and couldn't help wrapping her arms around him. He turned abruptly sideways and blasted through the sky. The farther they went, the fewer lights there were below, until there was nothing but darkness, a sea of empty space without stars or life.

“That should do it,” he said.

“That should do what?” asked Faith. She was lying on her back in the air, staring up into his face. He was on top of her, weightless as he looked into her eyes.

“They can't track me this far out,” Wade said. “Once in a while I tell the night watch guys to let me go.”

His eyes followed the curve of her face down to her lips. He touched the side of her cheek, wanting to tilt her face toward his.

Hawk was in Faith's ear—
Where are you going? Faith? Hello?

“Why are we up here?” asked Faith, tuning out the voice in her head.

Wade looked into her blue-green eyes, felt her softening.

“So no one can find us. We can be alone up here, just you and me and the stars and the moon.”

Faith rolled slightly to the side, as if they were on a bed together, floating through time and space. She pulled in close.

“It's so high up. And a little cold, don't you think?”

God, how he wanted her, more than anything in his entire, overstructured life. For years he'd been told what to do for every hour of every day. The prison had only made things worse. He was being smothered alive by Gretchen and Clara and Andre.

“Wouldn't it be something if we just flew away and never came back?” Wade asked, moving back on top of her and pulling her gently through the air, farther away from the prison. “Wherever it takes us, just go and see where it leads. The two of us.”

“Wade, I—”

He kissed her, their cold lips touching in the chill air. He felt the warmth of her breath and wrapped his arms tighter around her. He remembered then what a fool he'd been at Old Park Hill. How soft her lips were against his own, how she'd felt in his arms. Wade wished he could hold this moment forever, drift into eternity holding Faith aloft in his arms.

“That, my friend, was an alarmingly good kiss,” Faith said, breathless when he pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Tell me something?”

“Anything.”

“Why do you want to leave so badly? What's going on that makes you hate it so much you'd leave everything behind without a second thought?”

“For starters my mom is the control freak to end all control freaks. And my sister is impossible. She has to be right about everything, she has to win one hundred percent of the time.”

“Yeah, but I mean, what are they planning? You must not agree with it or you'd want to stay, right?”

Wade was starting to feel a devious chill of emotion in the air. He knew the difference between girls who were enamored of him for real and those who were faking it for their own gain. He'd seen plenty of both over the years.

“Why does anyone want to leave the family they grow up in?” Wade asked. “You don't agree with their ideas. They drive you crazy with all their bullshit. It's a lot of reasons.”

Faith smiled winsomely, but there was something in the look that felt to Wade that she was, maybe, putting on an act. It was hard to say.

“My parents wanted me to join their cause and become a drifter. But it wasn't my fight, you know? They weren't my plans, for
my
future. Same thing for you?”

“Why do you keep asking me the same question in a different way?” Wade asked.

“What do you mean?” Faith asked. “I'm interested in why you want to leave. I'm trying to understand.”

Wade kissed her again, and this time he could tell she was having a harder time keeping up the ruse. She wasn't coaxing him closer, showing him that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Either he'd turned her off with his defensive attitude, or she'd been trying to trick him into giving away their plans from the start.

When he pulled back, Faith wiped her bottom lip with the back of her hand. “You okay?”

Wade let Faith go, pushing a few feet away into the night, and for a strange and unexpected instant Faith wished he would keep holding on to her. There was, at least in the unseen places of her heart, a space that felt vulnerable and liked the protection of another person. It wasn't Wade—or was it? It was the fact of another human being, the warmth of another body in a world so cold.

 

While Faith was navigating a tricky situation with Wade high overhead, the stupidity of Hawk's decision magnified in his brain. It grew from the size of a pea to a watermelon that threatened to burst his head open. He was an Intel, one of the brightest people on Earth, and he had done a wildly stupid thing. For a moment he didn't move at all. He simply stood in the woods and listened to the sounds of the night, hoping not to hear growling of one kind or another. He knew about cougars and had done the calculations. There were at least a dozen in these woods, give or take, and they were quiet as mice. If one of them was stalking Hawk, he wouldn't know it until it was way, way too late.

Hawk weighed his options, which included climbing a tree, screaming Clooger's name into his sound ring, or begging Faith to come back. He chose none of these options. Later, when he had real time to consider what had happened, he would unpack the decision in his mind, take it apart, try to examine it for clues to his decision-making process. He would come to understand that sometimes even an Intel succumbs to the mortal fear of being clawed to death by a giant cat.

Hawk pointed the sawed-off shotgun up the mountain and started running.

It wasn't until he was almost all the way back to the HumGee that he realized how incredibly out of breath he was. He'd never been an athlete of any kind, and the cold air burned his lungs as he gulped breath after icy breath. He stopped, bent over with his elbows on his knees, and tried to regain his composure.