Shattered Sky (41 page)

But then his feet stopped as quickly as they had begun moving, and he stood at attention with the water lapping at his ankles, and there he stayed. The sun beat down on his bald head for more than a half an hour that way. He felt the sunburn on his forehead, nose and shoulders. He felt it would burn him through, but still he could not move. And then came a different kind of radiance; a type of magnetism tugging at his being. He knew, even before she moved into his line of sight, that she was the one who had seized control of his body and the thousands of other bodies lining the beach, as far as the eye could see. She strode before him, ankle deep in the surf surveying the crowd. Not as if looking for someone, but rather taking it in as a whole.
Like a general
, he thought.
A general appraising his troops.

She was a young woman, attractive and formidable in
both stature and presence. She caught his gaze for an instant and in that instant he could feel her heartbeat. It was his own heartbeat. He could feel the pace of her breath; it was his own. And he knew this powerful girl could end his life; shut down his heart with a single errant thought. But in an instant her eyes moved on, and he knew he was nothing to her—not even worth the thought it would take to kill him. He didn't know which was worse—the pain of his will usurped, or the pain of his insignificance.

Ten minutes more and he was released. The entire beach was released. People fell to their knees, crying, whimpering, but still alive. She had brought them to the edge of the surf and had stopped them, then released them. For what reason he didn't know.

Could she have been one of the
—but he cut the thought short. No. That freakish gaggle of teens all died when Hoover Dam fell. But now he wasn't so certain, for he could still feel a hint of the girl's presence like static in the air.

He went to find his wife, so they could tend to each other's sunburns, and they did not speak of it. Not even that afternoon when they chanced to see a cruise ship heading across the Atlantic, and felt the girl's pervasive aura fade as the ship fell off the horizon.

T
HE EMPTY FIELDS FIVE MILES NORTH OF
D
ALLAS
/F
ORT
Worth airport had browned and died more than a month ago. Although the weather was clear, the temperature stayed a brisk thirty-five. At one o'clock in the afternoon, a red Durango turned off a sparsely traveled two-lane road, churning up dust. Then it stopped at no place in particular, letting out its five occupants. Three of them walked farther out into the field, the dead brush beneath them turning green and growing denser beneath their feet. Wild mustard bloomed yellow around sudden pockets of bluebonnet and red cosmos.

Drew and Okoya stood beside each other back at the Durango watching the greening of the field—and although Drew swore he'd never allow himself to be left alone with Okoya again, neither did he want to be out in the field with Dillon, Winston, and Michael. Getting here had been an undertaking in and of itself. While the storm over southeastern Texas had ended, so many roads were washed out between Houston and Dallas, that a four-hour drive had stretched into eight.

Up above, a United jet screamed its way heavenward against the pull of gravity. When Drew looked back from the ascending jet, the field before him was almost entirely green.

Dillon was quite aware of the field renewing around him. He also knew there would be no disguising it from anyone who cared to notice, so he didn't worry himself with it. Like
smash-and-grab robbers, they would accomplish this deed by brute force, rather than subtle scheming. There was no time for anything else.

Dillon looked around, realizing that he was a pace ahead of Winston and Michael. As had been the case so many times before, they were following him.

Winston realized this as well, and knew he could have taken the lead. A part of him wanted to, but there was something very natural about being a wing to Dillon's center. Winston had long since learned that whatever came naturally to the shards was not to be fought.

Michael, on the other hand did not care who took the lead. He had no time for such thoughts, because his task had already begun. He knew what he had to do, and kept telling himself that he was up for it, bolstering his confidence, and thereby bringing clarity to the skies. Compared to Winston and Dillon he felt like a novice, for their skills were so exact and precise; fine brush strokes to Michael's sloppy finger-painting. Every few moments a doubt would invade his confidence, reminding him that what they were about to attempt was like seeking a single grain of sand in a hundred miles of beach. Such negative thinking was a formidable enemy for him now, because everything depended on his ability to manipulate his own emotions on cue, like an actor.

Dillon stopped about two hundred yards away from the car. “This is as good a place as any.”

“So what do we do now?” Winston asked. “How do we begin this?”

“It has to start with Michael,” Dillon said.

“No pressure.” Michael closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “How far away do you want it to start?”

“I don't know,” said Dillon. “Fifty miles? Can you do that?”

“Let's find out.” He took off his jacket and held his hands out wide as if to receive an embrace, but kept his eyes closed. In the cold, it was easy for him to feel the fine hairs on his arms and legs rise, tightening into gooseflesh. He concentrated on the feeling, bringing his attention to his extremities. Then he began to generate turbulence. He thought of bad times and brutal fights from his past; arguments at home; acts of violence directed at him, and acts he directed out at the world. Some were memories, others fabrications, but they had the desired effect. He could feel his fingertips and toes begin to tremble with anxiety, and slowly, slowly he let the anxiety sweep inward.

Two hundred yards away, Drew and Okoya stood beside Drew's car, watching and waiting. Drew couldn't feel the slightest change in the breeze. All he felt was . . . unsettled. “Nothing's happening.”

“It would seem that way,” Okoya agreed.

After fifteen minutes, Drew saw Michael put his hands down, too tired to hold them up anymore. Now he just stood there, with Winston and Dillon pacing behind him through an ever-increasing tangle of brush. At twenty minutes Drew was close to panic. “It's not working,” he said. “He's not ready, it's too soon!”

“It's
his
anxiety you're feeling, not your own,” Okoya reminded him. “Which means it
is
working. Why don't you turn on the radio.”

Desperate for any diversion, Drew powered up the Durango, and turned on the radio.

“Now find a local news station.”

Drew searched the AM band until finding one. The big news of the hour was a weather advisory. A wind storm. Gale force gusts had already swept west through Dallas, east through Fort Worth, and appeared to be zeroing in on the airport in between. Callers from the north and south reported
winds as well, again moving in converging directions. The winds and accompanying dust storm had shredded signs, torn down traffic lights, and brought the twin metropolitan areas to a standstill. Drew turned to see Okoya smile.

“Michael doesn't know his own strength.”

Now when Drew looked toward the horizon, he could see it had taken on a strange amber shade in all directions.

Meanwhile, out in the field, Michael concentrated. He didn't look to the horizon, he didn't open his eyes. He focused on his anticipation and turmoil, letting his heart rate increase, feeling his heartbeat in his fingertips, then his wrists, then his elbows. Tension bubbled within him. He had no idea how far away the wind was, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Michael,” Dillon said. “Get ready to brace yourself.” Dillon's voice cracked as he spoke.

Then Michael opened his eyes, and saw his creation. A tumbling wall of dust, hundreds of feet high. A brown tidal wave bearing down on them from all directions. Michael closed his eyes again, his anxiety closing in on his heart.

Back at the Durango, Okoya laughed with glee at the sight, and Drew could only stand with one hand on the open door of the car, staring at this mountain rolling toward them, engulfing the earth.

A jet, perhaps the last one with departure clearance, fought its way heavenward on a trajectory taking it directly toward the dust storm. It looked as though it might clear it, but then the plane disappeared into the cloud's roiling head. Drew didn't know what became of it, because now there was a roar in the air, and the ground began to shake like an earthquake.

Suddenly Drew realized they were out in the middle of nowhere. There was no structure they could run to. No place they could go.

In the distance a farmhouse vanished beneath the dust. A string of telephone poles disappeared one by one, measuring the distance. It was five poles away.

Drew practically threw Okoya into the car, and threw himself in after him. When he turned to reach for the door, the leading edge of the dust storm was upon them. He pulled the door closed just as it hit.

Two hundred yards away, Winston saw the Durango disappear and he panicked. “Slow it down!” he screamed at Michael. “It's coming too fast!”

“I can't!” he screamed back. “I'm trying, I—”

It hit them from all directions at once, banging them into one another, lifting them off their feet and tumbling them through the shredding brush.

Michael felt his flesh abrading away and regenerating. He could have died a hundred times in those first few seconds, before self-preservation kicked in. He bore down, held his breath and found, in the middle of it all, a seed of peace in which he now centered his awareness. Almost instantaneously the wind pushed outward, leaving a gap in the center of the maelstrom; a ten-foot bubble of still air, an eye in his storm in which the three of them now huddled, coughing and trembling.

Dillon was the first to stand and assess the situation. The violent sands that raged around their air pocket kept shifting and changing—but it wasn't random—nothing in Dillon's presence ever was. The dust now swirled in shifting moiré patterns. Spirals within spirals, like galaxies revolving.

Now the burden was on Dillon.

This was by far the most difficult task Dillon had ever been asked to perform. It was not just reconstructing a life out of cinders, but sifting out those ashes from a trillion particles of dust—and although Okoya told them this was
possible, Dillon's own faith was sorely lacking.

To Dillon's right, Michael hunched on all fours, straining to keep the winds churning around the low-pressure eye. To Dillon's left, Winston tried to tell him something, but Dillon couldn't hear a thing over the roar of the wind.

The particles of dust churning in the air were already coalescing into a rougher grit, taking on texture and color. Particles of leaves, bits of bark and feather down. The memory of the dust over Dallas.

Dillon reached a hand out of their protective bubble, feeling the grit sift through his fingers, and he began to concentrate his thoughts on Tory; the way she looked, the sound of her voice, the feel of her cleansing presence—every memory he could find. The patterns of the wind changed as he thought of her; slim dust flares snaked down through the swirling clouds.

And when Dillon pulled back his hand, his palm was ashen gray.

He brushed the dust from his fingers onto a spot he cleared in the brush, then thrust both hands into the maelstrom, and repeated the process, again and again, each time brushing the milligrams of dust from his hands until the dust become a small pile. How much would it take to substantiate her? How much of Michael's body had they needed for Winston to bridge the gaps?” Dillon knelt down to Michael and screamed in his ear. “I think we're going to need water!”

Michael nodded. He didn't open his eyes or change positions, but in a moment the air around them fogged and the brush grew heavy with dew.

Dillon reached his hands into the dust cloud again, thrusting them up to his elbows, while on the ground, the pile of fine ash condensed into tiny particles of bone.

I
N THE
D
URANGO
, D
REW
and Okoya waited the better part of an hour in the swirling winds, isolated, with only static from the radio. Okoya was hardly a comforting presence. He made no conversation, and spent much of the time grooming himself, brushing his hair and admiring his reflection in the vanity mirror, obviously pleased with the effect Dillon's presence had on his tartared teeth and mangy hair. His motions were so feminine, it reminded Drew that he was in fact both genders at once—that their subjective designation of Okoya as a “he” was for convenience. He recalled that Tory and Lourdes had both considered Okoya a woman.

Finally Drew heard the sound of the wind diminish; a long, slow exhale, and the direction of the wind changed, blowing back to the north. Dust flowed across the windshield but the dust began to thin, giving way to something else entirely. A storm of leaves and flower petals of every color now blew across their line of vision, until the wind died, leaving the car draped in a floral blanket. To the north Drew could see the wind storm retreating, trailed by a swarm of leaves and petals. The telephone poles reemerged from the cloud, then the farmhouse and the trees beyond it.

He opened his car to a fresh organic aroma pervading the air. Sap and chlorophyll, magnolia blossom and rose.

Out in the field a small oasis had bloomed. Saplings and shrubs were woven together by ivy and brightly colored trumpet vines. A shock wave of rats, rabbits, and field mice exploded outward, while above every bird from blue jay to crow took to the sky. A menagerie of life drawn back from the dust.

Drew took to the field, stomping through the thick dew-covered brush, kicking up swarms of insects, anxious to see with his own eyes what was now hidden within the heart of the oasis.