The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (32 page)

Marc crossed the barn. “Hey.” He whispered and didn’t know why. “Hey.”

Schwippe’s chest moved. He was alive.

“Hey.” Marc examined the rope; it was too high for him to reach. He’d have to get up on the hayloft and untie it from there.

A storm of feathers and black eyes rushed through the open door. Like some twisted, nightmare version of a Disney cartoon, the birds roosted around the beam holding the roof and stabbed at it with their beaks.

Marc took the hint. He was ready when the rope frayed and snapped. He lowered Eddie Schwippe to the bloody hay as carefully as he could.

Schwippe’s lips moved, cuts and cracks seeping as he tried to speak. Marc couldn’t make it out.

The birds tore out of the barn again. Marc squinted when bright light illuminated their wings as they crowded through half-open doors.

Headlights.

He stood up, balled his fists, and put himself between Eddie Schwippe and the barn doors.

Marc Teslowski was no friend to Sovereigns. But he’d be no kind of man at all if he let any more harm come to the poor fool lying on the ground at his feet.

Marc Teslowski – Twelve

Car doors opened and shut. Ray Greene’s son Arby and the kid with the flag tattoo on his hand—Drake—came through the door.

Drake carried a shotgun.

Arby’s surprise was plain on his face. “Mister Teslowski. Dang, sir. Didn’t expect to find you here.”

The suspicion on Drake’s face was just as clear. “What happened to the Sovereign?”

Marc ran some plays through his head, real quick.

“Somebody roughed him up pretty good,” he said. He tried to smile, but it felt sloppy and cold on his face.

“Hell, yeah,” Drake said. “But last I saw it, it was tied up.”

“Birds cut him loose.”

“Birds?” It seemed to Marc that Arby wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Yeah. That’s what made me come over here. All the birds, circling over the barn.”

Drake and Arby looked at each other. Drake squinted at Marc.

“How’d you get in here, anyway?”

Marc shrugged. “Birds, like I said.”

“Those dead ones?” Drake gestured generally behind him with the shotgun. “What birds?”

Arby scratched the side of his head. “I don’t see no more birds, Mister Teslowski. Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but you probably shouldn’t have been out here, sir.”

“No shit,” Marc said lightly. “Damn things nearly pecked my eyes out.”

Drake was getting angry. “Goddamn it. What birds?”

Marc heard the rush of wings through the roof. The light from the headlights flickered and was eclipsed.

“Those birds.”

They poured into the barn and swarmed around Arby and Drake, who stumbled and floundered, swiping the air and trying to protect their faces and their eyes.

This time, the flock didn’t keep quiet. Their cries were deafening.

Time to go.

Marc picked up Eddie Schwippe and made for the door. The birds parted for him; they formed a wall of talons and beaks and obscuring wings as he passed the flailing speciesists.

Drake and Arby hadn’t bothered to turn off the ignition or lock the doors. Marc got the back passenger door opened and worried Schwippe onto the back seat.

He heard a shotgun blast, followed by a short scream that was almost lost in the screeching of the flock. He flinched hard, automatically, before he realized he hadn’t been hit.

He ran around to the driver’s side of the car. He reached for the car door latch and just felt the cold metal on his fingertips when Drake slammed into him.

They hit the ground rolling. Drake’s bare arms were slick with bird shit and blood. It made it hard to get a grip on him.

At least he didn’t have the gun.

Drake’s flag-draped hands wrapped around Marc’s neck. The kid’s face was pocked and cut and bloody. One of his eyebrows was loose, and the top of his right ear was mostly missing.

Strong hands. Marc felt the edges of his vision getting dim.

But both
his
hands were free. He used them to pound on Drake’s sides, but that didn’t give the kid enough grief to let go.

Marc got smarter. He grabbed that bloody ear and twisted as hard as he could.

That did it. Drake howled and loosened his grip.

“Off of me!” Marc pushed him hard and rolled away. Panting, he got to his feet.

The birds, a black, undulating ball of noise and rage, found Drake.

Marc scrambled into the car. His throat hurt like hell. He found and disengaged the brake and dropped his foot on the gas pedal. The back end of the car fishtailed in the dirt for a couple seconds before the tires found some traction.

Marc had to go past the main house to get to the only road off the ranch that he knew. The revelers either hadn’t been alerted or just gathered something wasn’t right when he flew past pushing eighty miles per hour.

The exit of the ranch was blocked by a long wooden gate.

Marc made a sound that was equal parts groan and scream and leaned into the steering wheel. He drove through the gate. The sound of wood and metal grinding and breaking was very loud inside the car. The impact vibrated through him.

He was on the road.

After the sound of the birds, the screaming, and the collision of the gate, the comparative calm of the car’s engine and the wheels on the road made his ears ring.

From the back seat, Eddie Schwippe croaked, “Action…hero…”

Marc laughed, then winced. Fucking kid nearly crushed his larynx back there.

Marc Teslowski – Thirteen

Marc aimed the car for the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies.

What choice did he have? Eddie Schwippe was beat to hell. Marc bet they’d let him through the gates if he showed up with a Sovereign in very damn serious need of medical attention.

He grimaced as he focused hard on the slice of the mountain road in the arc of the headlights. He couldn’t deny that Schwippe might not have been trussed up in Ray Greene’s barn for the last few days if Marc had done something when he and the scarecrow Sovereign first arrived in Missoula.

Marc thought about the albino girl.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch,” he muttered to the prone form lying on the back seat.

Marc was surprised to hear some movement back there, and a soft groan.

“Thanks…”

Marc didn’t need to hear that. Didn’t want to hear that.

“Just go to sleep. Let me drive, for chrissake.”

If Schwippe said something else, the words were drowned out by a loud and rhythmic clanking coming from somewhere under the hood. The engine seized seconds later.

“Fuck!”

Apparently driving a car through a wooden fence at full speed and getting away without any serious damage wasn’t something that happened in real life. Marc brought the car over to the shoulder of the road in a controlled coast. He turned off the headlights.

“Schwippe. I take it back. Wake up.”

Marc turned and saw his passenger sit up slowly, moaning all the way. “We stopped.”

“Yeah. We’re fucked.”

“Where…where were we going?”

Marc’s lip curled. “Donner Institute.” Not how he’d planned it. “Figure you need the help of your own kind.”

Schwippe blinked the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. His whole face bunched slowly; the wince extended down to his shoulders, and the whole move looked like it hurt. He exhaled sharply and took a moment.

“How…” Another moment. “How close are we?”

“Too damn far.” Marc frowned. “And I don’t know if anyone’s after us.”

Schwippe carefully wrapped his thin arms around his battered chest. “Probably…pretty cold out there.”

“Sure. But it’ll stay warm in the car for a while, I guess.”

Schwippe raised his head. “I think…we can’t stay in the car. I think we can make it. To the Institute.” He tried to lick his cracked lips. He cringed and gasped. “I think we have to.”

Marc figured it probably wasn’t safe to just sit on the side of the road in one of Greene’s cars and wait for the crazy rednecks to show up with their guns. But…

“You’re crazy. How’re we gonna get there? You can’t travel.”

“Oh, I’ll travel.” He closed his eyes for a moment; opened them. “Given the alternative…there’s no alternative. Right?” He tried to smile.

“You think you can walk all that way? We’re talking miles.”

“With your help. Besides…it’s closer…as the crow flies.”

Marc shook his head. “You’re punch-drunk. I can’t just set off hiking through the mountains in the middle of the night and find the place. What’re you thinking?”

“What are you thinking? We’ll have help.”

Schwippe looked past Marc, out the windshield. Marc turned around and jumped.

An owl stood on the hood of the car. It blinked patiently and preened.

“Jesus,” Marc said. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. Listen.” He tried to lean forward. It didn’t go so well. He tried to sigh, and it turned into a little grunt. “You did something good, Marc Teslowski. You saved me. You saved a Sovereign.”

Marc looked away from Eddie’s one good, big, black eye. “Wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“My…” A grunt and flinch. “My point. So let’s…push the irony a little more and have my Sovereign ability save us both.”

“So you can make birds do whatever you want?” It was fucking creepy.

“Oh, hell. No. I…communicate with them, sort of.” He shifted his weight. “Just so happens they think I’m a pretty nice guy, I guess. They go along with my suggestions.”

Marc shook his head. “More than that. They died for you.”

Schwippe blinked hard. “Yes. They did.” His laugh was thin and short. “Who knew? Up until tonight, I have to admit,” he coughed, “I thought my Sovereign so-called ability was pretty weak.”

His expression hardened. “Not anymore.”

Marc didn’t have anything to say about that. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes until Marc decided they should get going if they were really going to do this. There was another problem, though.

“Even if your pal out there can guide us,” he said, “and I don’t break an ankle on the way…it’s too cold. I can let you wear my jacket, but…”

“I was thinking about that. I have a hunch. I bet if you look in the trunk, there’ll be a blanket or something. It’ll be better than nothing.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Those lunatics have a militia in the mountains of Montana. They probably have…stockpiles of freeze-dried food…” Schwippe did his cough and flinch thing again. "…in the basement. They’ll have an emergency kit in the trunk. I think.”

Marc popped the trunk, got out, and looked. Schwippe was right.

Byron Teslowski – Six

Byron jerked awake. Wisps of his last dream dissipated in seconds and left him feeling confused and, for no reason he could figure out, a little sad.

Someone was knocking—no, someone was pounding—on his apartment door. He sat up in the bed.

“Hold on!” He slipped out of bed. “Coming…” He checked the clock; it was twenty after six in the morning.

Byron opened the door. “Jon? What’s up? I thought…”

Jon Schulmann looked like he’d been sick. “Need you now.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing good.”

Schulmann waited in the doorway while Byron quickly dressed.

“You’re not going to tell me what? Is it my dad again?”

“I sure hope not.”

Byron locked up. Schulmann was already walking down the hall. Byron trotted to catch up with him.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Dude!”

“You want to hear it from Croy.” He shook his head. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Byron just met this guy day before yesterday, and he thought he was kind of a jerk, but this morning he seemed different. Worse.

They left the building, and Schulmann led the way to a golf cart. Byron was surprised to see Haze leaning against it.

They hadn’t said a word to each other since Wednesday. She didn’t exactly jump up and give him a hug. “You hear about it?”

Schulmann broke in before Byron could respond. “Please get away from the cart. He’ll be briefed by Mr. Croy.”

Fuck that.

“No, Haze. Jon won’t tell me. What the hell’s going on?”

Haze gave Schulmann a dirty look, then said to Byron, “They killed one of us.”

“Aw, what? Who? When?”

Schulmann got behind the wheel of the electric cart. “Get in, Byron. This is SCET business.”

Byron sat down in the cart but kept one trainer on the pavement. He looked at Haze. “How’d you hear?”

“Couple of guys I met, they work the infirmary night shift. Saw her brought in. Everybody on graveyard knows by now. It’s all they’re talking about in the cafeteria.”

Schulmann said, “We’re going, Byron.”

Byron pointed his thumb at the back bench of the cart. “You want to come?”

“Yep.” Haze climbed aboard. Schulmann rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut.

~

Croy, Dr. Mazmanian, and Ed Kelso were ready for them inside the barracks. Croy wore field fatigues. Kelso wore a nightshirt big enough to serve as the mainsail of a clipper ship, reminding Byron that the giant was the only person who actually slept here.

Byron wasn’t all that happy to see Derek Fontino there as well. He’d managed to avoid the DOD liaison all day yesterday, and no doubt the guy still wanted to meet with him. But this morning Fontino barely registered his presence.

If Fontino was unwelcome, the presence of the fifth man was flat-out surprising. It was William Donner’s actual personal biographer, the newspaper guy, Ewing Kass. In comparison to Fontino’s crisp suit, Kass looked like he’d slept in his white dress shirt and chinos, or like he hadn’t slept at all. Still, for him to be there…he was almost Donner’s proxy.

Doc Mazmanian raised an eyebrow when he saw Haze.

“Ah…we were thinking this was going to be a little more just for SCET and Institute staff, Haze. Sorry…you can take the cart back if you want.”

“And you can waste time trying to get me on it, Vic,” she looked pointedly at Schulmann, “or you can get on with it. I want to know what happened last night.”

Schulmann rolled his eyes again. Mazmanian glanced at Croy, who hadn’t moved and didn’t respond to the drama. No surprise there. Mazmanian smiled slightly.