“So what?” he grated, bunching his fists. His brain was yammering, Get out, get out, get out! Despite what he saw in the rock—something that should’ve reassured him they might still have a chance—Bode was more frightened now than he’d ever been in his life. His back prickled. If you spent enough time worming on your belly through black echoes, you got a sense when there was something coming for you out of the dark, and he could feel the scorpions swarming down the tunnel. Those things would rush through the archway in a broad black river, and he would drown in a writhing sea of pincers and stingers. They would slither into his mouth, swarm down his throat, eat him from the inside out, scrape his eyeballs from their sockets. Got to get out, got to get out. “What does that matter?”
“Glass isn’t an organized solid. Light doesn’t show itself until it reflects or bounces off something. That’s why you see yourself in a mirror but not necessarily in clear glass. But look at us.” When she moved her hand from side to side, its mirror image echoed but blurred and elongated into shimmering, smeary trails. “This isn’t really reflecting. It’s as if the reflection’s being … slowed down?”
So what? His nails were slicing crescent divots from his palms. Tell me something I can use! Bode had to really work at not grabbing Emma by the shoulders and shaking her until her eyeballs jittered. “Yeah? How does that help us?”
“It’s like it … traps the light.” Casey’s hand was still pressed to his glimmering double. “As if it’s coming back to us out of tar or something.”
“Emma,” Eric said, “what if this is the same kind of energy sink that’s in the Peculiars? Wasn’t that designed as a barrier, a way of containing energy? Look at the smears. Remember what Lizzie said? Her dad said the glass makes the thought-magic slow down.”
“What does that mean?” Bode could see now that when he turned his head, his reflection lagged behind, the margins blurring into streamers. “Is that good?”
“No. It means there’s something beyond this, inside, the way the Peculiars trapped energy. Anything that can trap energy can trap us.” Emma actually backed up a step. “I’m not touching this. We can’t go through here. There’s got to be another way.”
“You know there isn’t. Emma, please, Rima’s on the other side. I feel it.” Casey’s face glistened and more tears streamed down his cheeks. “We have to help her!”
“Well, whatever you’re going to do, do it now,” Bode said. The scorpions’ squalls were much closer, no longer only echoes but a shrill of sound as focused and insistent as a drill coring through the bone of his skull. “I’ll settle for anyplace those things aren’t.”
“We got to go for it, Emma,” Eric said.
“Eric,” she said, “it’s an energy sink. That means it can steal from me, from us. You want to wake up dead inside solid rock?”
“Do you have any better ideas?” Eric said. “You have to get us through, Emma. It’s the only thing left.”
Well, Bode thought, not quite. Emma looked pretty spooked. Even if she could do it, Bode still thought it would take her much more time than they had left. But he had the gun. He had the can of gas, and their second jar besides. He had everything he needed, no more and no less.
In that moment, the shape of his future became clear. Shit, the writing really was on the damn wall now, wasn’t it?
“Get them through, Emma. You find Rima and that little girl, and then you guys clear out,” Bode said—and wheeled back the way they’d come.
“Bode!” Eric and Emma shouted. Bode saw Emma try to spurt after him, but Eric snagged her arms and held on tight. “Eric, no! Bode!” Emma cried. “Bode, stop!”
He did, but only at the bend and just for an instant. “Don’t drop them, Emma. Don’t let yourself get stuck. Get them out and get them clear, you hear?”
Then he rounded the corner and sprinted down the tunnel as the heavy pillowcase banged his thigh, as remorseless as a countdown.
BODE
Into the Black
1
HE LOOKED OVER his shoulder only once, enough to satisfy himself that they weren’t following, and then he dug in, dashing down the tunnel, closing the gap. Ahead, he could hear the tidal wave of the scorpions as they came in a susurrous hiss, like the ebb and suck of waves dragging over the rubble of shattered seashells. When he thought he’d gone far enough, he swiftly untied the sack, took out both the jar and the can, and set them side by side on the rock.
Jar or can? There would be no second chance, so he had to guess right the first time. He settled on the jar; the can was thinner, and unless the glass simply melted, the shards ought to have enough punch behind them to slice through aluminum. Pulling the Glock from the small of his back, he squatted and butted the muzzle against the glass. A bullet alone wouldn’t get the job done; that only worked in movie-magic and books and television. What he needed was the muzzle flash.
Sweaty fingers gripping the Glock, he waited through a long second and then another. Maybe ten seconds left, or maybe less, but a long time to wait alone, a lot of life to try to cram into too short a span: focusing on every breath, the hum of his blood, that steady thump of his heart; paying attention to the set of his body—this body—while knowing that each sensation was possibly the last he would ever feel.
Then, in that third second, a voice he knew and had been afraid was gone forever floated through his mind: Proud of you, son.
The relief he felt was so huge he could feel his throat ball and his eyes burn with the sudden prick of tears. “Thank you, Sarge.” He swallowed against watery salt. “I thought you would stay with Casey.”
In a moment. Right now, you need me.
“I needed you before. You could’ve warned me. You had to know what would happen once I got into the barn.”
I’m a soldier, son, and a ghost—not a mind reader.
“That’s not all you are, Sarge. I feel it. That’s right, isn’t it? You l-left me for C-Casey …” Faltering, he forced his trembling lips to cooperate. “But you must have some damn good reason. Please, Sarge, help them. Help Emma. You will, won’t you?”
If I can. I am as I have been written.
“I don’t know what means.” But he thought he might. What if his life, everything he’d experienced, was in preparation for this moment? If this was why he’d been written: to help the others, give them a chance? And where will I be if—when—I wake up? If Lizzie was right, he would open his eyes, and there would be jungle and heat and bullets whizzing, the black echoes waiting, and Chad, grousing about no smokes and lousy food. Perhaps he would have no memory of this, or the others, at all. A wash of sadness filled his chest because, of all the things he wanted to forget, these people weren’t among them. Theirs was a friendship and bond forged in battle, and he was afraid for them. He was afraid for the kid, Casey, most of all.