Interrupt (17 page)

If anyone will survive, it’s Roell,
he thought.
He’s young. Strong.

His other option was to sift through the solar activity for a pattern. He might be able to predict the next interrupt. Forecasts could be the best way to help Roell. If they reestablished communications… if Drayer’s people came for them…

Marcus didn’t dare plan any further, because he knew in his heart that if the phenomenon didn’t stop, he was unlikely to see his child again.

Drayer had followed him to the door.

“We should be safe in here,” Marcus said. “This room is heavily shielded.”

“You think it’s coming back,” she said.

Marcus avoided her gaze, unwilling to waste time convincing her. He moved to the nearest rack and began stacking the smallest components. This room would be especially crowded if they found Steve or the others, but they needed to carry inside food, water, lights, a bucket
for a toilet, and as many phones as they could grab in case service was restored.

“What happened to us the last time?” Drayer asked. “Do you remember?” Her voice was hard again—accusing—but when Marcus looked up, her eyes were afraid.

“No,” he said.

She stared at him. Then she nodded. “I’ll look for my phone. Car keys. How long do we have before it happens again?”

“I don’t know. Not yet.”

Drayer left and Marcus brooded as he worked alone, struggling to tamp down his relentless guilt.

I’ll find you,
he promised his son.

LOS ANGELES

E
mily stood transfixed as P.J. reached up and tapped on the window with his bloody crowbar. The tinted glass was all that separated them, but P.J. wasn’t looking at her. He watched the tip of his weapon, his blue eyes smoldering.

Four men stood behind him. Each one held his head down, chin to chest, eyes up. It was a predatory look, dangerous and strange, and yet their faces were utterly calm.

Emily’s heart beat so hard she was shaking. From the outside, she knew, the heavy tint reduced the windows to mirrors. Their own reflections must have been more visible to them than her silhouette.

Screeeeeee.
His crowbar traced across the glass, testing it. Then he drew his arm back to strike.

“Wait!” Emily cried.

P.J.’s gaze snapped to her, and he paused. Did he recognize her?
Could
he recognize her?

The feral intelligence in his eyes was unlike anything she’d seen in him. This wasn’t her nephew. Emily didn’t understand how that was possible, but someone else was walking inside his body.

Laura’s house was four miles away. The boy Emily loved wouldn’t have been able to hike four miles, much less cover that distance in an hour.

Why had he come here?

He’d never visited her workplace. Even if he had, he probably couldn’t have followed the directions by himself.

What if Laura sent him to me?
she thought, grasping at the hope that her sister was alive. But in truth, she was even more afraid for Laura if Laura had been confronted with this new boy.

P.J. was breathing oddly. Everyone in the group breathed the same way, not in unison, which would have been even more disturbing, but each man inhaled with a flare of nostrils, then exhaled in a gust from his mouth. Slow breath in, quick air out. It reminded her of something.

There wasn’t time to study them. P.J. scraped his crowbar up the window again. Emily jumped as the metal crossed her face, then stopped with her body half-turned to run.

They didn’t care about her.

Sick with adrenaline, every muscle twitching, Emily stayed at the window as P.J. touched his crowbar over five points like a constellation.
What in God’s name is he doing?
she thought.
Is he—

He was singing.

Another man raised his voice in harmony, piping one note in response. A second man matched him. Then a third. Each of them bobbed his head with strict timing like different parts of one choir. P.J. was the conductor, directing them with his crowbar and his lilting voice.

“Nnnnn mh,” P.J. sang with a
tap
on the glass.

The man beside him answered, “Hhn.”

“Nnnnn mh,” P.J. sang,
tap tap
again on the glass.

“Hn,” the next man sang.

Emily realized he was touching his own reflection and indicating his friends.
They’re identifying each other.

It was an astonishing notion. Her fright blended with superstitious awe. These men were strangers to each other—that was her best guess—and yet they’d changed like P.J., which had made them comrades. Who were they?

Then the sky shuddered.

P.J.’s group slumped onto the lawn, his crowbar rattling against the window as they fell. Outside, faintly, Emily heard a great squall of terror. Thousands of people were screaming, disoriented and hurt. The sound prickled her arms with gooseflesh.

She rushed to the glass. P.J. and his men were dazed, barely moving, although three different people ran into the street. Others kept shouting where she couldn’t see them.

What if P.J.’s group was more sensitive to the effect than everyone else?

I could bring them inside,
she thought.

None of DNAllied’s windows were designed to open. Emily glanced at a fire extinguisher recessed in the wall. The fire extinguisher should be heavy enough to break the glass, but they might need the building longer than she wanted to believe. Bashing out the window would be foolish.

One of the men struggled to his feet, the guy in the Lakers jersey. He had sandy hair and close-set eyes—and there was blood on his shirt. Could she trust him?

Emily pounded her fist on the glass. “You have to get inside!” she yelled. “Can you hear me!? Get inside!”

He looked up, but his eyes were foggy.

“There’s a door around the building to your left!” Emily yelled. “I’m coming! I’ll help!”

She ran down the corridor, then dodged through an office space packed with cubicles. There was a fire exit around the corner—

“Emily!” Ray said. He dropped the desk chair in his arms and lumbered into her path.

She gaped at the exit. He’d constructed a barricade with three desks and a hunk of cubicle paneling, blocking off the glass wall.

“The light stopped!” she said. “We can go outside.”

“No one’s going outside.”

“We have to move this stuff!”

“Emily.” Ray grabbed her arm, red-faced and sweaty. He was past his prime, but he outweighed her by eighty pounds even if most of it was fat. He was also two inches taller.

“Everyone’s okay!” she said.

His hand squeezed tighter. “Quiet.”

“Ow. Ray—”

“Be quiet.”

Someone else had entered the building. Emily heard a man’s voice. His words were firm and quick. What was he saying?

She and Ray stared at each other as new tension leapt between them. Then he turned toward the voice, dragging Emily with him. She didn’t yell or fight. She didn’t want to make any sound that would alert the intruder.

Ray’s fingers were painful on her arm, and he smelled like fear—but as they approached the break room, the intruder’s voice was disrupted by a roar of static.

Emily laughed, an uneven sound of excitement. The voice they’d heard was the radio. It said: “Guard stations wherever possible with police and firefighter units. I repeat, all military per—”

More static.

“—and emergency—”

Static.

She pulled her arm from Ray’s grip. “My nephew is out there!” she said.

“The Army will find us. You heard him.”

“Ray, other people are all right! We’re not the only ones and you can’t lock me inside!” she yelled, coiling herself into a karate stance.

Twenty minutes ago, they’d embraced each other. Now a quiet part of Emily wept at the unfairness of what they’d become. Was this who they really were? Barely more than animals?

Outside, a horn was blaring. More distantly, they heard a deep crashing noise as if a building had collapsed. How close were the fires? The idea of being caught in an inferno made her shout again. “We can’t stay here!” she yelled.

“If the Army—”

The static from the radio became an ear-splitting squawk as both of them stumbled, suddenly woozy. Ray fell to his knees.

It’s back,
Emily thought. For a second, the building hadn’t protected them from the return of the effect. She saw her chance.

She sprinted from the break room before Ray regained his feet.

In the street, the air spun with storm winds. The world outside was a kaleidoscope of shadows, dust, and one flash of unobstructed daylight.

Emily didn’t pause at the fire exit. Ray would catch her if she stopped. Besides, no one stood waiting at the glass. If they’d come to that door, she was too late, so she ran for the corridor where she’d seen P.J.

He was gone. So were his companions.

Emily raised her hand to the window. She scrubbed angrily at the wet streaks on her face. She would have given anything to be with Laura or Chase. Her parents. Anyone. Were they alive?

She looked at the city through curtains of ash and smoke. Hidden in the gloom, she noticed the sun had begun to sink toward the west horizon. It was early evening, and the realization gave her new hope.

Maybe the effect would end when the sun went down.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

T
here was another interrupt,
Marcus thought as consciousness returned, but he was more preoccupied by the insistent drive of his muscles and spine.

He was making love to a dark-haired woman. She lay on her back on the blue carpet, spreading her knees wide for him. His cheek pressed against hers. His nose was tantalized by the pleasant musk of her hair and her welcoming body.

At first he wasn’t sure if it was a dream. His hips thrust between the open fork of her thighs as she moaned and rocked her pelvis up to meet him. She climaxed. Daylight shone through the window as she held him and shuddered. They were in the same office. None of the mess had been cleaned, although the overturned desk had been shoved against the door as if to protect them from anyone in the hall.

The woman was Rebecca Drayer.

“Yuh, you,” Marcus stammered in confusion, then fear. His head cleared like he’d been electrocuted.