Tremor (16 page)

It was then he saw something coming toward him. He'd watched a lot of Tablet shows lately, and he was especially fond of retro classics—it was his thing.
Freaks and Geeks
,
Family Guy
,
30 Rock
—anything off-kilter and funny from fifty-year-old television provided him with some sort of unexpected comfort he'd needed. Very recently he'd stumbled onto a documentary about a Sasquatch, a half man half ape of the woods that stood about ten feet tall.

As he rose up and saw the outline of a beast coming toward him in the nearly pitch-black of the night, Hawk raised the sawed-off shotgun and pulled the trigger. The blast threw him backward, and he tumbled down the gentle slope of the forest, hoping his aim had been true and not straight up into the trees as he feared.

He heard a scream, then the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

Hawk didn't move, choosing instead to play dead and hope that whatever was out there would leave him to rot with the fallen leaves. That was when his sound ring popped to life and a familiar voice entered his head.

“Hawk?” Clooger asked.

Hawk silently reached for his ear, pressed, whispered.

“Get out here, buddy! I'm in some trouble!”

“Hawk,” Clooger said again. “You're a terrible shot. But you still got me.”

Hawk was too happy about the fact that he was no longer alone in the forest to care that he'd shot Clooger in the face with a sawed-off shotgun. He stood and ran up the hill in the direction of the large shadow of a man sitting on the ground. When he got there, he threw his arms around Clooger and laughed.

“Oh, man, that was—wow—that was crazy!”

“Hawk?”

“I thought you were a Sasquatch!” Hawk laughed at his own ridiculous imagination. “Oh, my God, that was insane. Insane!”

Clooger stood up and took Hawk by the arm, hauling him up the mountain toward the HumGee. The shotgun blast had echoed through the trees, and Clooger had to get them hidden in case anyone showed up. When he had them both safely under the camouflage of the tarp and inside the HumGee, he cranked on a light and looked at Hawk.

“I think I got you in the forehead,” Hawk said. “And right there.”

Hawk pointed to Clooger's cheek, which had a nasty bruise forming around a red dot. There were two other such marks on Clooger's forehead, one of which was bleeding.

“Really sorry about that,” Hawk said. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

“This is why I don't take naps. Faith goes totally AWOL, and you shoot me.”

“Yeah, I can see why you'd think twice about the whole sleep thing. It's risky. For sure.”

Clooger rolled his eyes, pressed his sound ring.

“Faith, if you can hear me, check in.”

No reply.

“What now?” Hawk asked.

Clooger leaned back on the seat, took a deep breath, and touched the abrasions on his forehead.

“Now we wait.”

 

“I need to ask you something,” Wade said. He and Faith had landed on the catwalk of an old water tower a few miles away from the prison, where they sat staring out into the empty space below. Second pulses felt the cold less than a normal person, but it was still a little chilly. Winter was coming; the nights were getting colder. He turned in Faith's direction, but she wouldn't look back. He loved the way her long hair fluttered in the light breeze and reached out and touched it. He wished things could be different.

“Are you alone out here?” Wade asked.

Faith hesitated, but only for a split second.

“You already asked me that, remember?”

“I remember.”

He let the words hang in the air and watched Faith's feet dangle back and forth beneath them.

“I wouldn't blame you if you'd lied to me before, and you actually did bring someone with you,” Wade said. He was still searching for a reason to believe, because landing firmly in Clara's camp put a bitter taste in his mouth, as if he'd just bitten into an unpeeled orange. “I mean, it's the middle of nowhere. You'd have to be head over heels for some guy to come all the way out here by yourself. It's dangerous.”

Faith knew Clooger and Hawk wouldn't stand a chance against Wade if she told him the truth. They might not make it through the night alive. She turned to Wade, touched his hand gently.

“I came out here for Dylan, but now I'm not so sure.”

Something about the way she said these words did more than just put Wade on alert. A red froth of jealously boiled up through his head. She was bald-faced lying to him, and not just about Hawk and Clooger. She was using her charm and beauty to deceive him even further. She was a so-so actor, especially when it came to matters of the heart.

“I need to tell you something,” Wade said. He'd made his decision. There was no way he was letting Faith do this to him. She'd had her chance, and there were plenty of other fish in the sea. Pretty soon the work would be done, and he could get as many girls as he wanted. He was Wade Quinn. He'd never had any trouble scoring. “Things are going to start happening soon,” he said.

“What kind of things?” Faith asked. She moved in a little closer, squeezed Wade's hand a little tighter.

“Keep an eye on Gretchen,” Wade said, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe it. “What she does tomorrow will matter.”

“What do you mean? Is she leaving?”

A long pause, and then Wade was looking her in the eye. “We all are.”

Faith wanted to ask if they'd be taking Dylan with them, but she worried it would set off Wade.

“I've never told anyone this before, and I sure as hell shouldn't be telling you,” Wade said. He hemmed and hawed, as if a great internal struggle was under way. “She hates you, Faith. Gretchen really, really hates you. If for some reason you end up face-to-face with her, I want you to at least get in one good shot before it's over.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You're a single pulse. Is what it is. If you get into a situation with Gretchen or any other second pulse, you're pretty much a rag doll. There's no firepower you can wield that makes any difference, except one.”

Wade gave Faith one more look, in which he tried to see all the way into her soul. Was there any chance she loved him? Any chance at all he wasn't playing the fool?

No. No chance.

It's true,
Wade thought.
She's taking you for a ride, bro.

“You know how Dylan has a weakness for rocks and stones, stuff like that?”

Faith hated how the Quinns knew Dylan's weakness, but they knew. There was no getting around it.

“Yeah, I know. It can break through his second pulse.”

“I'm only telling you this so you can use it to get away if it comes up, nothing more. If things get crazy with Gretchen, throw water in her face and run like hell. It's your only chance.”

This was verification. Dylan had said it, now Wade. Gretchen's second-pulse weakness was water. It was all she could do not to pick up the very water tower they sat on, carry it over the prison, and unleash a torrent of liquid to flood Gretchen's dead body into the field outside.

“Thank you for telling me that,” Faith said, regaining her composure.

“No problem,” Wade said. “Gretchen could use a bump or two once in a while, not that you're going to have the chance. You see her and you're alone, just run, fly, do whatever you can to get away. Speaking of which, I better get back. They'll be wondering where I went.”

Faith was relieved. She wouldn't have to stay at the water tower and make out with someone she didn't want anything to do with—up in the sky had been enough. Whatever the team needed and all that, no problem. She had done it gladly, but there had to be some limits.

As they flew near the prison, their hands parted and Wade drifted away.

“One more thing,” Wade called back. The last part of the trap to set, then it was just a matter of whether Faith would take the bait. “Gretchen is going to the Western State. That's where her task lies, and it's hers alone. She won't be with anyone else.”

He also knew how headstrong Faith was, so he said something more as he turned to go. “This isn't your fight. Go on home, and maybe when this is all over with, I'll come find you.”

Faith nodded and smiled and dived for the ground.

Not my fight? That's where you're wrong, Wade Quinn.

 

After hearing the sound of footsteps coming toward him, Dylan looked up and found Andre standing at the bars, carrying a wooden stool. He put the stool on the floor with a clang and sat down, staring at Dylan. A moment of silence passed between them in which Dylan thought maybe he had been caught. What would this man do, his own father, if he knew his son had deceived him?

“Getting any sleep?” Andre asked.

Why is he here?
Dylan wondered.
Alone, unprotected?

“Just resting my eyes,” Dylan said as he stood. He felt a deep thud of pain in his rib cage. “Training around here is intense.”

Andre shook his head.

“Did you really think going after Wade would help our situation? I thought you were smarter than that.”

“They were throwing rocks at me. I thought it was the least I could do.”

A brief but meaningful smile played at the edges of Andre's mouth.

“You were already on his bad side. Showing him up didn't help your cause. They shouldn't have gone after you so aggressively, but I had to see what you could take. You impressed me until you tried to kill my son. Brawn is fine. Brains are better.”

Dylan didn't have an answer, so he let the accusation hang in the air. “How long are you going to keep me locked up in here?”

Andre shuffled his feet back and forth, stared at the concrete floor. “I appreciate you coming here. Seeing you has been . . .
unforeseen
, as you might imagine. I want to tell you something.”

“So tell me,” Dylan said. He was listening to Faith and Hawk, trying to figure out what was going on as they pressed into the sound rings, while pretending there were no voices in his head. It was challenging, to say the least.

“The world is about to change. I mean
really
change.”

Dylan didn't want to sound too curious, but this sounded big.

“In what way?”

Andre couldn't help smiling more broadly as he thought about what was coming.

“The States are not taking the approach Hotspur Chance envisioned. Tomorrow begins a process of change, one I hope you'll appreciate. It's been a long time coming.”

Andre stood and picked up the stool as if he was going to leave. Something told Dylan he might not have many more chances to talk with him privately. Dylan's mind drifted to Hawk, whom he had come to love like a little brother.

“What about Intels?”

“Intels?”

Andre hadn't come down to the cell block to talk about that.

“Why'd Hotspur develop Intels? I've got a friend who's one. If I ever see him again, I'd like to tell him why he is the way he is.”

Andre thought for a moment, weighed the risk, and determined that there was none.

“The Intel project was created purely for processing power, nothing more. Technically speaking, they were and still are human computers. They have a part of Hotspur in them, a sliver of his DNA.”

“So they're clones?” Dylan asked, hoping he was dead wrong.

“No, not clones. Recipients of some approximation of Hotspur's intellect. The first ones were more closely connected. He could control them more readily, put them on complex tasks without having to spend years explaining things to them. Anything left over, I mean, any offsprings beyond the originals, are considerably removed from the hosts, as it were. They're smart, but they're not off the charts, if that's what you're asking.”

“Are you an Intel?”

“Why, yes, I am. In fact, I was the first.”

Dylan took a moment to respond as he listened to the data coming in.
Faith is doing what? Has she gone crazy?

“Some of them don't do so well when they get to be about your age. Wires get crossed, as it were. Others see no effects at all. It's random, I suppose. The older ones, like me, well . . . let's just say it can get complicated.”

Andre's eyes dimmed and his lips became a thin, straight line. Of course he knew what could happen to an Intel's mind. He knew all too well.

“Your friend, he's farther down the line,” Andre said. “He'll be fine, just like Clara. Tell him not to worry when you see him again.”

Dylan felt the sincerity in Andre's tone. He also got the feeling that the subject of Intels was something difficult for his dad to talk about.

Andre started walking away, thinking about how he sometimes awoke in the warden's chamber as if from a dream. At times minutes had passed, or whole hours. It was happening to him, too. Like Hawk's parents, Andre was slowly shutting down.

He called back to Dylan the line he often repeated over and over in his head like a funeral song.

“No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it in the first place.”
Dylan sat on the cold stone floor of the cell and genuinely began to wonder if his father was going crazy.

Another thought entered his mind, one he hadn't allowed any room for in hours and hours because it was a thought that wasn't going to do him any good either way. It was the kind of thought that could trip him up if he wasn't careful, a thing good soldiers weren't supposed to stew on. He was doing what he was told, following instructions in a plan he didn't fully understand. But now as he felt the walls closing in and time compressing, he let this thought wash over him like a suffocating wave on the sea.

Maybe coming here wasn't such a good idea after all.