Scorpion Shards (22 page)

“Lourdes, this is no time to be fooling around!” said Winston.

“Shh!” said Tory, sharply.

Lourdes kept her eye contact with the boy. She raised one arm; so did he. She raised the other arm; so did he. Only this wasn't a game, and he wasn't simply mimicking her, his actions were too perfect, too exact.

“She's controlling him like a marionette!” said Michael, staring in wide-eyed disbelief. “She's controlling every movement of his body!” Each motion Lourdes made was exactly duplicated. She wiggled her fingers; so did he. She rolled her neck; so did he. Was it just the boy's muscles, or did it go beyond that? Could she control his heartbeat? His breathing? His very metabolism? Until yesterday, she couldn't control her own grotesque physiology, but now the physiology of others seemed within her grasp!

Lourdes looked at the boy, and the boy's ruined eyes began to close. He nodded off to sleep.

Lourdes turned to the others. “Did you see that?” she said, just as surprised as the rest of them. “I think I did that!”

They all just stared at the sleeping boy in wonder, realizing that the title of “Squirrel-girl” for Lourdes didn't quite hit the mark.

“Those creatures turned our strengths into weaknesses!” said Tory. It was becoming clearer to each of them now. Michael's ability to affect nature had been used to wreak havoc in the very nature of people around him; Tory's cleansing
touch had been turned into a touch of disease; Lourdes's ability to control the metabolism of others had been used to draw the flesh out of their cells and add it to Lourdes's.

Tory turned to Winston. “We can figure out what your strength is now!”

“I already figured,” said Winston uneasily. He looked around, then asked Michael to bring down a potted plant from a shelf Winston couldn't reach. Winston put the plant down on a coffee table, took a deep breath, then grasped the stem in his hand and concentrated. Right before everyone's eyes, the plant grew until it had doubled in size and flowers bloomed. Winston smiled. It was the first time any of them had seen him really smile.

“Looks like we got a flower-child,” said Michael, with a grin. “What are you gonna do, beat Dillon with a corsage?”

Winston shrugged. “Ain't
my
problem if
you
can't see the possibilities.”

“You'll find a good use for it,” said Deanna. “Don't worry.”

And indeed it seemed that Deanna was not worried. By anything. Her fearlessness was a powerful strength. It gave them focus; it gave them clarity. She told them how Dillon had changed in the end, making it horribly clear where all their beasts had gone—and it seemed likely that Deanna's beast had found him as well.

“He's stronger than all of us,” said Tory. “If he can survive with all six of them inside him.”

“You said you knew where he was going?” asked Michael.

Deanna nodded, and picked up sleeping Carter, refusing to leave him alone in this awful town, and they all headed back to the car.

“There's still time to stop him, but it will take all of us to do it,” said Deanna.

“Stop him . . . from what?” asked Lourdes.

“Don't you know what he wants to do?” she asked, looking at each of them. Only Deanna had the courage to say the words aloud.

“He's going to shatter the world, the same way he shattered this town . . . and once it starts, we won't be able to stop it.”

J
AGGED SPIRES OF DEAD WOOD STRETCHED THROUGH THE
morning mist. Thousands upon thousands of trees had once blanketed the steep hills, stretching toward a distant mountain . . . .

 . . . But now every last tree was dead.

Wind, rain, and rot had eaten away their branches, leaving vast acres of wooden monoliths standing in a mulch of peat and heavy gray ash. This forest had died long before Dillon Cole got to it, and the cause of death was still there on the horizon, breathing steam like a fire god asleep.

The sheer power of it,
thought Dillon as he drove from life into the miles of death that surrounded the northern face of Mount St. Helens.

The smell of decay within this realm of desolation blended with the rich, dark smell of volcanic ash, creating an aroma that was at once both clean and vile, like the awful smell of a sulfur spring.

As he drove into the volcanic wasteland, fear began to writhe in his gut, but he beat it down. The fear had descended on him shortly after Deanna had left him. Terror had suddenly coiled itself around his gut like a serpent, making him feel paranoid and claustrophobic in the cab of the Range Rover as he left the dying town of Burton. He had fought it down until it wasn't so overpowering, but still the fear kept coming back, urging him to drive faster and more recklessly to his final destination.

The hands that now gripped the steering wheel were not
his hands—at least not the hands that he remembered. These were bloated and swollen—covered with red boils. This body was not his either. His growing gut had burst out of his pants in the middle of the night. He was forced to find a truck stop and confiscate larger clothes from a trucker whose life had come to a sudden and unexpected end. Now Dillon had to roll up the pant legs as well—he swore that he was an inch shorter than the day before. Inside he could feel many, many hungers now, coiled within him, competing for his will, all screaming to be fed.

The wrecking-hunger, however, still screamed the loudest, and its final feeding was all that mattered—a feeding so great that when it was done, there would be nothing left to devour.

Back in the Burton Library, he had studied the maps, the charts, the statistics. He had worked calculations that a supercomputer would have shied away from, and he had pulled out an answer, sifting it through a secret sixth sense. The answer he came up with was this: of all the locations in the world from which to set up the ultimate chain reaction, only one rested in North America. The epicenter of destruction was in Washington state, in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. Here, in this secret fulcrum of human existence, Dillon would have to find a human fuse. It would have to be someone with no ties to the outside world and filled with a lonely anger. Someone separate and alone. It would have to be a hermit, whose destiny Dillon could aim with the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper.

Although the calculations that brought him there were complex, the actual plan was simple: Dillon would find his hermit, then find the hermit's weakness and fire him toward a nearby city. In the city, there would be a gathering place—a bar, perhaps—where this man would create a chain of events that would drive everyone there beyond the limit of their
sanity. Those who survived would carry the insanity home with them.

At least one would board a plane.

At least ten of the people on that plane would board other planes, and in this way, the seed of destruction would be planted within the minds of thousands of travelers, moving in hundreds of different directions. In a matter of days, people around the world would suddenly be faced by the exact chain of events that would bring them to their breaking points and drive them mad. Millions of patterns collapsing like a house of cards.

In the end, the destruction of mankind would not come as a great nuclear holocaust. It would not come as a meteor splitting the earth in half. It would come from a simple thought whispered in one lonely man's ear. A single thought, which would breed a rage of chaos that would sweep across the globe in a swift chain reaction.

Dillon remembered seeing a film once about a great steel bridge that had violently collapsed, brought down by mere resonance—the simple vibrations of the air around it. Dillon's thought would surely resonate and bring down something far more mighty than a steel bridge. He was the hammer that would fracture every thought mankind had ever had, making civilization crumble to its very foundations.

Dillon pondered how a single thought—the right thought—had always had such power to create. Simple thoughts pushed in the right direction at the right time.

The idea of the wheel; the thought of the written word—simple ideas that had picked up momentum across the globe, swelled like a tidal wave and created civilization. How fitting that a single thought was all it took to bring it crashing down.

The power of such an act could only be surmounted by the
power released when everything fell—power that would feed the wrecking-hunger like it had never before been fed. Just imagining it made Dillon drool, and he longed for the great process to begin.

For an instant the image of his dead parents flitted through his mind.

Are you proud of me now, Mom and Dad?

He didn't wait for an answer. Instead he floored the accelerator, and the engine's powerful roar drowned out the question before it could resonate in his mind.

S
LAYTON
.

He didn't need a first name.

Most of the time he didn't need a name at all. He'd only drive his rusty pickup down into Cougar every few weeks or so for supplies, paying with ancient, crumpled bills, then he would disappear again down a dirt road that passed from life into death, from green trees into the dead valley in the shadow of the smoking mountain.

He was forty.

His skin was beginning to age, his hair beginning to gray—but inside, his thoughts and ideas, his very perception of the world had never grown beyond age eight or nine.

He was slow.

Not only in the way he thought, but in the way he moved. He had come to accept this as the way of things, and it only bothered him when he was among others, whose thoughts and actions were quicker. For that reason, he didn't care much for people—being around people drained him—made him feel less of a man. So he steered clear of them and made himself the center of his own solitary universe, where things moved at his own speed.

He learned to care for himself at an early age.

He built a shack in the woods, and when the timber company
that owned the land kicked him off, he moved, and built another. And then another. Now, he finally thought he had found a place where no one would bother him—a dead forest gray and bleak that no one wanted. Here they would finally leave him alone.

He drank too much.

A habit he had picked up from his father, years and years ago. When the wind would blow, and the alcohol would swim through his mind, he would swear there were ghosts in the trees, like in stories his ma used to tell. Ghosts and demons were very real to Slayton. And so he was not entirely surprised when the Devil appeared at his door one bleak October evening.

The door creaked open to reveal him standing there. Slayton didn't make a move. He just sat at his table, holding his half-full bottle of whiskey. The other half was already in his head. Slayton knew who it was without him having to say a word.

“You must be Slayton.”

“How do you know my name?”

“They told me about you in town.”

The Devil did not look quite the way Slayton expected. He was fat and young. A redheaded teenager with an awful complexion.

“I've been looking for you,” the Devil said.

“I'll bet you have.”

Slayton invited the Devil in, watching him carefully as he moved. Darkness surrounded him like a black hole. Shadow flowed in his wake, rippling like a dark cape. A living fabric of death.

The Devil closed the door behind himself, and suddenly fear and anger began to overtake Slayton—but he bit it back,
determined to stand toe to toe with the Devil. Slayton reached up, got a glass and poured some whiskey as the visitor sat down at the table. His darkness ebbed and flowed on the table like waves lapping the shore.

“Drink with me?” asked Slayton.

The Devil-boy shook his head, pushing the glass away.

“What's the matter? Not old enough?” And Slayton let out a rough wheezing laugh at the thought of the Devil being underage. That was a good one!

“No time,” said his guest, looking into Slayton's eyes, probing his thoughts. “No time, I'm in a hurry.”

Only then did Slayton notice that this Devil-boy across the table was sweating something awful. He was breathing quickly, and shallowly as if he was out of breath—as if he was panicked, but trying to hide it.

“What's yer angle?” asked Slayton.

“Angle?”

“If ya come to take me, how come y'aint done it? Go on—get it over with. I ain't got no patience for the likes a you!”

The Devil-boy smiled a crooked, leprous smile. “You have no idea how very important you are,” he said. “I wouldn't touch a hair on your head.”

“Then what are ya here fer?”

“Dinner,” said the Devil.

Slayton shook his head, and the world spun in circles one way and then the other. He took another swig of whiskey and left to see what there was to eat in the kitchen.
What was the Devil likely to eat?
he wondered.
Beef jerky? Saltines?
When he stumbled back out of the kitchen, he saw his visitor searching through his munitions locker, which had been locked.

“You get your nose outta there!” shouted Slayton, but the fat Devil-boy didn't move.

“You collect weapons?” asked the Devil-boy.

“What business is it of yours?”

The Devil-boy swung the door wide to reveal Slayton's cache—a regular arsenal of all types of weaponry from rifle to pistol, from Bowie knife to crossbow. All shiny and clean.

“Most of 'em never been fired,” said Slayton. “All loaded, though. You never know when you might need one.”

“It's a fine collection,” said the Devil-boy. Then he turned to the many items on Slayton's shelves. Old family pictures. Knickknacks from here and there. He brushed his finger across the dusty shelf, and his eyes darted back and forth, looking at everything—first everything on the shelf, then everything in the room. His eyes moved so quickly, Slayton couldn't keep up with him. Those awful blue-green eyes—they were invading him, weren't they? They were violating all of his personal things. Slayton could not stand for this, so he grabbed one of the many weapons stacked in his closet—a rifle—and aimed it at the Devil.