Exodus 2022 (49 page)

The
boom
faded into a steady, sustained rumble that merged with the sound of tens of thousands of animals suddenly moving— running—all at once.

Beck’s eyes snapped open, the sun flashed above the distant mountains, and a single blade of golden light sliced through the mist and shot across the prairie, toward the cliffs—the Buffalo Jump.

One moment the vast assemblage was waiting patiently, in the thrall of music only they could hear. The next, everyone—everything—was moving.

Collins and Ring were on their feet, facing east. Beck and Joe Stanton stared the same direction, at the sea of animals; at the great congregation of creatures, moving now, in unison. Running, but not panicked.

Kehler lay moaning on the stone, ignored by all, his right arm charred and smoking, wrist to shoulder, his gun an unrecognizable blob of bubbling, molten metal and plastic resin.

Animals flowed around the boulder—around the truck—like rushing water, a surging stream of bison and bear, elk and fox, deer, porcupine, antelope and a dozen other species large and small. Birds and bats there were as well, endless columns of wings silhouetted against the sunrise, hurrying, east to west.

A lithe young mountain lion sprang from the river of creatures, onto the boulder, glanced disinterestedly at the men, and bounded down the far side. Collins scooped an automatic rifle from an open gear bag, and then all of the men—even Joe—turned to see where the animals were going.

They turned, and gaped, dumbfounded.

A delicate archway, hundreds of feet tall, spanned the mile-wide alley leading to the Buffalo Jump. Or rather, what
had been
the Buffalo Jump.

Where before there had been a cliff followed by a drop of eight-hundred-feet, there now was level ground.

No longer were they looking down, into the Madison River Valley, but into a new land.

And what a land it was.

Wide, verdant prairie they saw, with grasses waving and bending to the winds of an alien world. Farther out: forest, and foothills leading to stupendously tall peaks, jagged and impenetrable.

The blade of sunlight from behind the Gallatin Range pierced the shimmering arch—light from one world entering another—and fell on faraway spires—towers of granite thousands of feet tall—and flashing waterfalls.

The view rendered them speechless. Made Collins drop his weapon limply to his side, and Ring forget his computers. And the scene near at hand was just as surprising as the land beyond.

Studying the arch more closely, they saw that the ground did not flow continuously from one world into the next. Directly beneath the towering arch there was a narrow gap in the soil, perhaps two feet across. A break between worlds. A hard black border line. A narrow chasm that even the smallest animals could jump.

And jump it they were—thousands every second. Millions of animals leaving Earth and flooding into the rich and fecund world beyond.

Looking at the arch, at the gap, they had the sense that they were seeing two long-separated continents momentarily, impossibly, rejoined. As if Africa and South America had, just for an instant, melded back into one stupendous, Pangaean land mass.

Or,
almost
melded. Except for the gap. The chasm between worlds.

Into this chasm fell a shimmering, translucent, impossibly delicate veil of water.

Along the entire length of the arch, the water fell, continuously, endlessly. Where it went after it entered the chasm, or whether it was really water, none of the observers could tell.

Lifting their eyes once more beyond the gap, peering through the shimmering, lens-like veil into the new land, they saw the animals spreading out, running with reckless, joyous abandon.

And Joe had a revelation. It wasn’t heaven they were looking at. The new land was achingly beautiful, yes, but also wild and harsh and unforgiving. Life there, as on Earth, would be both kind and violent. Benevolent and cruel. Savage and sweet and abundant and deadly.

Not heaven, yet a place where wild creatures could live as they were meant to live. Where there was room to move. Food, water, and air free of poison. A place where they might thrive, unmolested by a mad species bent, it seemed, on extinguishing all of nature’s gifts.

Lying there, Joe perceived something else: The joining of worlds would be fleeting. Over in an eye blink. The gears in some vast and unknowable cosmic machine had turned now just so, aligning at the appointed location in space-time. But it wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last.

For one glorious instant, doors rarely opened stood wide. Across the Earth, barricades had fallen, revealing a sister world familiar and yet a million billion miles distant. A place one sometimes sensed out of the corner of one’s eye, yet never could reach.

The men stared, unable to turn away.

All except for Stanton. For he could feel an energy behind him now. The terrestrial leader, approaching from the east.

SUMMONING ALL OF HIS
remaining strength, Joe Stanton rolled over on the stone, and saw something as remarkable as the gate.

Advancing steadily amid the running beasts, perhaps a hundred yards from the boulder and closing fast: a pillar of blue fire.

Roughly circular, the girth of a redwood tree, the column of flame came on, and Joe could see shapes moving inside, behind a cascading, slowly rotating curtain of shimmering heat.

Peering deeper into the strange vessel, straining to see, he perceived a familiar form.

Ella?

His heart hammered in his chest, and the truth unfurled in his mind.

Ella is the leader.

Ella.

His thoughts spun back two days, to the Pike Place Market stairs, when Mia had appeared in his mind and asked to trade places. It wasn’t—he understood now—to show him her world, though that was a gift beyond measure. It was to connect with her other half, with Ella, the terrestrial leader—though Ella, at the time, knew nothing of her role or the task ahead.

He thought about the massacre Ella had survived years earlier, at the mall, and remembered her words:

It was like the gunman didn’t see me. Like I was invisible—though I was right in front of him.

He wondered if grace had been protecting her that day. If her place in the great dance unfolding around them now had even then been set.

Whether the mechanism of her ascendance was something written in her DNA—something that had always been there, waiting, or a thing wholly different, Joe could not guess, but Ella was before him now, moving quickly toward the stone.

He heard the others turn and gasp. All except Beck, who seemed already to know who and what the Leader was. He simply stared, an arrogant, mocking expression on his face. 

Ring whispered something to Collins, who dropped the automatic rifle, grabbed one of the tranquilizer guns, aimed at Ella, and fired. The dart flared as it hit the spinning curtain of fire and dropped to the earth as ash.

The pillar was twenty-five yards away now, and Joe could make out the identity of Ella’s companions: A man—the hiker Beck had killed—and a huge grizzly bear.

Outside the pillar, close on either flank, walked two enormous bison. Like giant guards or sentinels. Impervious to the flame they seemed, for they brushed now and then against it. Blue tongues of fire flicked and danced across their shaggy coats.

Collins grabbed the other tranquilizer gun from the ground aimed carefully, and fired again. Same result: the dart vaporized as soon as it touched the wall of flame.

Ring started to say something—give different instructions—but Collins didn’t seem to be listening. He scooped up an M4 carbine and fired a burst—a hundred rounds—into the shroud of molten blue. No effect.

Ignoring Ring’s screams, Collins flicked the barrel to the right and shot one of the bison.

The gun roared, the great animal bellowed and crumpled into the dirt, collapsing awkwardly on its forelegs. Then, pandemonium.

What had been a steady, stately migration turned instantly into a rout. A mad, thundering stampede for the gate. Most of the creatures that had gathered the night before—filling the alley for miles back—had already passed into the new realm. But not all.

Beasts large and small now leapt or sprinted or galloped forward in an instantaneous surge of panic, and the plain suddenly resembled a violent, stormy sea. Beasts collided with one another, fell, and flew headlong for the gate, grunting and roaring, howling and shrieking.

Ring screamed at Collins over the cacophony. “Don’t shoot! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Don’t—”

He stopped midsentence—eyes fixed on the pillar.

The column of flame had ceased turning, and the people inside were staring at the dying buffalo, lying inert, like a small hillock, a few feet away. Blood gushed in miniature geysers from holes across its thick brown coat, and its eyes dulled.

The flame enveloping the walkers winked off and now Ella was stepping to the fallen animal, kneeling alongside of it.

“Shoot!” Ring screamed. “Shoot!”

Collins lunged for the M4, but Ring batted it away. “No. With the dart rifle! Hurry!”

“Shoot what?” Collins cried, dropping to his knees and lifting the nearest tranquilizer gun to his shoulder.

“The girl! The leader. The girl is the—“

The column of flame reignited around the girl and her companions just as Collins fired. As before, the dart dematerialized as it hit the shimmering wall.

Ring put his hand on Collins’s arm and they watched—through the flame—as the woman set her hands on the bison’s head. Fifteen seconds passed. Thirty. The creature’s chest heaved. Its head swung from the ground in a massive arc and then it was rolling and rising—bellowing—to its feet.

And now the pillar of flame was moving again, leaving the massive bison alive and standing, and coming closer to the stone.

The edge of the flickering pillar brushed the side of the 4x4, melting the metal, blowing out the glass and incinerating the vehicle’s insides as it passed.

And now the fire was rising—the woman, the hiker, and the bear climbing to the top of the boulder inside of its protective, ever-shifting walls.

Ring and Collins fell back to the far side of the massive stone, stumbling over Kehler as they moved.

Ring screamed over the roar of the stampede. “We’ll have one more chance! Be ready with the dart.”

Collins looked confused. “I thought the leader would be an animal.”

“What the fuck do you think humans are?”

Collins said nothing.

“She’s coming for Stanton. The flame will go off again—momentarily. That’s our chance.”

Collins readied the gun, and now they could feel the heat of the approaching flame.

Joe lay still, watching, as Ella and the others reached the top of the great stone. Beck stood near to the advancing fire, but appeared impervious to the heat.

Ella looked around, peering at Joe and Beck, Ring and Collins, through a veil of constantly changing blue.

Collins had the tranquilizer gun to his shoulder, his face coated in a sheen of sweat.

The gear bags nearest the flame sizzled and flared.

And suddenly the pillar of fire was gone. Extinguished completely. Instantaneously.

Collins aimed for Ella’s neck and squeezed the trigger.

Too late.

The bear exploded from its place alongside Ella as if fired from a cannon, and smashed, roaring, into Collins and Ring with the force of a speeding car. Together the three of them flew from the great stone and landed in the midst of the stampede. Collins and Ring died beneath the hooves of a thousand fleeing beasts, as the great bear, without a backward glance, ambled on toward the gate.

Joe lay dying on the stone, pulse weak, heart stuttering. His breath coming now in short, ragged gasps.

He opened his eyes to find Ella kneeling beside him, smiling, bright tears streaming down her cheeks. She caressed his face with warm, gentle hands and, leaning closer, kissed his lips slowly, softly.

The feeling was so blissful Joe wondered if he was dreaming. Having another hallucination. Certainly, what he was seeing didn’t make sense.

Ella, the leader?

Ella had been heavily drugged. The hiker, murdered. And yet, here they were.

My own neurochemicals easing me pleasantly toward death
, the less spiritual side of him reasoned now.

Except…it wasn’t
all
bliss and joy. The tears on Ella’s face and the pain behind her smile made that clear. Something was terribly wrong. Something his cloudy brain couldn’t process.

He tried to puzzle it out but then Ella and the hiker were helping him to his feet, guiding him down the far side of the boulder.

He was aware of Beck following them. Aware, even though he wasn’t looking at the man. He could feel him, somehow, dark and foul, spinning an aura of pain and malaise as he moved. The aura seemed to push against Ella, the two of them sparring as they walked.

Toward the arch; the veil, they hurried, stopping where the cliff had been, next to the surreal curtain of …
light? Water?
Joe looked up—watched the luminous, translucent material falling, flowing, a continuous, endless sheet, fine and delicate as spun glass—but could discern little of its true nature.

Around them, the remaining animals were dashing and springing through the veil. And Joe saw that the creatures, all of them, gave Beck a wide berth—swinging far to the right or left.

Beck approached to within twenty feet of Ella and her companions and stopped, a grin on his face, a knowing look in his eyes.

Joe realized, as he stood there, holding Ella’s hand, that he felt better—much better—than he had in days. He glanced back at the boulder, startled to realize that he had walked to the veil unassisted. Looking at his hands he saw that they were no longer shaking. His thoughts were clearing, as well.

He turned to find Ella watching him, and this time he reached for her, pulled her close, kissed her, drank in the warmth of her body, the delicious taste of her lips, the familiar feel of her skin against his.