A Grave Tree (35 page)

Unfortunately, the water level had dropped, which meant that the raft sat too low in the water for any of them to scramble up onto the diversion.

“What do we do now?” Caleb asked.

“Can you push us over to the platform?” Sylvain suggested. “We could use the cable to climb up.”

“The current’s too strong,” Caleb said. “It’s pressing us against the diversion. And I can’t throw the magnet that far.”

Mark pressed his fingernails hard into his palms. Caleb was holding them in place against the wall by pushing on the last rebar stump. But some of the men with spears had made their way out onto the diversion on the far side of the opening, trying to get a better angle with their weapons. And if their attackers attracted the attention of the men standing guard behind the turbine building, they’d be surrounded.

“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better figure it out fast. We can’t go on much longer here,” Sylvain muttered. Abbey was silent, her face scrunched up in concentration.

Caleb looked around desperately, as if believing someone would suddenly throw them a rope. He turned to Mark. “Mark, can you push the raft?”

Mark considered. Where had the energy come from before, when he’d pushed the men at the river? Had he even done that? Mark clawed desperately through every crevice of his brain. He thought about his mother’s drawings. They had provided important clues before.

Leaves, a grave, a tree, and a minus pirate. Leaves in a grave and a tree minus a pirate. A grave, a tree, and a pirate. It made no sense. All Mark could see was a tree surrounded by pirate graves, where everyone was saying arghh.

Pirates said “Arghh.”

Minus Arghh. Minus R. Grave Tee.

Grave Tee.

“Grave Tee,” Mark said to Abbey. “Grave Tee is important.”

Abbey eyeballed him through narrowed eyes, her face rigid with strain. “I can’t help right now,” she said. “You two need to figure something out.”

“My mother’s drawings,” Mark insisted. “She drew Grave Tee. A Grave Tree, with a pirate to minus the R. With Leaves.”

This caught Abbey’s attention. She closed her eyes. “I would almost think she meant gravity. Grave Tee. Gravity. But her drawings are usually literal,” she said. “Like they refer to an actual thing.”

“Gravity’s a thing,” Caleb said. “Isn’t it?”

“Our abilities are linked to gravity,” Sylvain called from across the raft, a sheen of sweat on his face. “And our spaceships in the future—or at least the future as it was before it got ruined—ran on zero point gravity, using electromagnetic radiation.”

“Zero point gravity?” Abbey repeated. Her eyes flickered with something, and she looked at the magnet in its case in Mark’s hand, and then at the yellow bag Mark still carried. “Let me see the gun that was in my mother’s purse,” she said.

Mark offered it to her. She turned it over in her hands several times.

“Have you fired this before?” she said, finally.

“Yes,” Caleb said. “But it’s useless. Nothing happened on the EM setting, and there was just a tiny little explosion on the AM setting. There are no bullets in it, and it doesn’t seem to be a laser.”

Abbey flicked the gun to the EM setting and handed it back to Mark. “Mark, go to the edge of the raft closest to the platform. Fire the gun at the raft on the EM setting,” she said. “Then immediately take the magnet out of its case, switch the gun to AM, and fire it at the magnet. Then try to throw your energy and push us through the water. Caleb, you push off the post at the same time.”

The raft suddenly plunged deeper into the water and gave a dreadful lurch, causing Mark to yelp and Abbey to scream. A dark form sailed over Mark’s head, and the panther landed gracefully on the top of the diversion. It turned back to regard them with glittery eyes before slinking off in the dark toward the relative safety of the platform.

Mark eyed the gun like a tarantula. What if he shot a hole in the raft and it sank? But he could think of nothing to do than other than comply. He pressed his teeth together, moved carefully to the edge of the raft, and fired. Nothing happened when he fired at the raft (and thankfully no hole appeared). He pulled the magnet out and felt the jerk of it pulling back to the piece of rebar that Caleb held. But he switched the gun’s setting and fired it at the magnet as Abbey had instructed, and then he tried to gather the energy (and his wits) and push the air around the raft.

The raft suddenly lurched forward a few feet as if on a wave (of air or water—Mark couldn’t tell), and got caught more firmly in the current leading to the building. It spun around lazily, then started to pick up speed, cruising toward the building. Mark nearly passed out with relief as the space between them and the platform narrowed.

“It worked,” Caleb breathed. “What does that gun shoot?”

Abbey shook her head and didn’t reply. “I’ll explain later,” she mumbled.

A thunderous crack split the air, and a large chunk of the diversion toppled off the wall and plunged into the river below. The surge of water over the diversion resumed. The raft spun again, caught in an eddy of the two currents. No rebar blocked the way in this new opening. If the raft went that way, it would fly right off the edge. More cracks appeared in the diversion. It was like the whole thing was going to crumble.

“The magnet!” Caleb yelled. “Give me the magnet!” Caleb snatched the silver cube out of Mark’s hand, snapped it onto the end of the cable, wound up, and threw. It seemed to almost hover in mid-air, uncertain what direction to go. Then it flew through the night sky, hit the platform’s railing, and stuck with an audible clank.

Caleb pulled them through the current, yarding the cable over his shoulder length after length as more bits of the diversion fell off, taking the men atop it with them. The rush of water pouring over the diversion, punctuated by the men’s screams, pounded in Mark’s head.

They hit the platform wall, and with a boost from Caleb, Abbey scrambled up the cable and onto the platform. Sylvain managed to clamber up after her, again with help from Caleb.

Then Caleb turned to Mark. Despite Caleb’s growth over the past two days, Mark probably outweighed Caleb by several pounds. There was no way Caleb could boost Mark. “I can pull myself up,” Caleb said. “Can you?”

Mark shook his head mutely. Caleb looked back up at the platform and over at the cracked diversion.

“I’m going to go,” he said. “If you hang on to the cable and help a bit, maybe the three of us can pull you up.” A tone of doubt rang through Caleb’s voice, and Mark tried not to panic.

Caleb ascended the cable handily, his muscled arms flexing as he hauled himself up the wall. Mark grabbed the dangling cable and curled both hands around it as tightly as possible. Then he closed his eyes. Warrior Mark would be able to do this, but he wasn’t Warrior Mark yet—although he was much closer than he had ever been.

The diversion exploded in a fissuring of cement and rubble. The water catapulted over the drop. The cable pulled taut in Mark’s hands as the raft started to move toward the edge.

“Jump off the raft!” Caleb yelled. “Now!”

Mark swallowed the well of bile that had risen in his throat and leapt from the raft. He swung like a pendulum, his toes dragging through the dark, diminishing water. It was much like he had imagined a rope swing would feel, except then he hit the hard wall of the platform, sending blinding pain shooting through his elbow and hip. He let out a howl of agony, and he nearly dropped the cable, but clenched his teeth and clung on.

He could feel the fumbling attempts of the others to pull him up as he hit the wall again and again. His brain felt fractured with pain and fear, but inch by inch he rose, until he was able to grasp the lower rail of the platform and roll his body onto the safe, flat cement, where he lay breathing in shallow gasps.

*****

Abbey’s eyes swept the platform as Mark lay recovering. Russell the panther was gone. A small dark shape scurried toward them. A rat? Digby? He almost reached them before veering off and running around the corner. Abbey shook her head. Was she seeing things?

The pressure of holding the raft together had drained her. She was exhausted, but now that the raft was gone, at least her head felt clear again.

In the absence of a wall holding it back, the water in the reservoir had almost vanished, exposing the intakes beneath the platform. They emitted a low, unearthly whine as they clawed for the now unavailable water. If anyone was in the building, they would probably soon come to investigate.

Digby reappeared, scampering over to them and then off again. Was he trying to get them to follow him?

After removing the magnet from the railing and placing it in its case, using the cable and Caleb’s electromagnetic energy—Abbey didn’t even want to think of what that might be doing to his heart—Caleb bunched up the cable and looped it over his shoulder.

Digby returned a third time. “I think Digby wants us to follow him,” Abbey said in a low voice.

“He’s a rat,” Sylvain said. “For all we know, he’s injured and is running around blind.”

Abbey shook her head at Sylvain to shush him. To her surprise, the older man complied, his face falling into a sort of sulk, lines of fatigue marking his eyes.

She prodded Mark with her foot. “Mark, we have to go now.” Mark had been a surprising superhero on the raft, and she prayed he wasn’t going to have a breakdown now. She wanted to lie down on the platform too. They probably all did. But they had to keep going.

Mark rolled over with a groan and rose slowly to his feet.

Digby now waited by the building, standing on his hind legs. Abbey glanced at the walkway that led around the building; it would take them to the ground and potentially to safety, if Caleb’s people weren’t standing guard below. What havoc had the sudden appearance of a panther wrought on them? More importantly, why did Digby want them to go that way? Was there a door into the building on that side? Could she trust a rat? Oddly, she felt some sort of connection with the little beast, like she could communicate with Digby in a way that she had not been able to with Russell.

Save Jake, March 9, 2013.
The words clamored in her head.

Digby hadn’t budged from his post. Abbey headed in the direction of the rat. Once she got within a few feet of him, Digby ran off again, leading her around a corner of the building to an open air duct a few centimeters off the ground. The rat stopped in front of it, then entered and ran a few feet into the darkness. Abbey looked at the duct. It was a little over half a meter by half a meter in size. They could all fit, although it would be pretty tight for Caleb and Mark.

“Are you sure?” she said to the rat.
Yes
, Digby’s whiskers seemed to quiver.

She could feel Caleb, Sylvain, and Mark standing behind her.

“No,” Mark said simply. “No.”

“Maybe we should take our chances with the fur people,” Sylvain said.

“We’re harboring a known fugitive,” Abbey said. “And we can’t leave Jake. If the turbines are no longer running, Sandy might not need Jake anymore, which means her incentive for keeping him alive is low.”

Sylvain sighed. “Mark and I will go around through the door and try to create a distraction. You and Caleb crawl through the air duct. We’d better hope the air duct actually leads where you need it to.”

Caleb nodded. “Is that gun any use? What did it do on the raft?”

Abbey grimaced. Did she really believe the gun had done anything? Mrs. Forrester had drawn leaves. Did that mean “believe”?
Did
she believe? Did she
have
to believe? If she didn’t believe, would this reality and their escape all come crashing down on them?

She exhaled. “Although it’s theoretically unlikely and borderline impossible, I think it shoots special electromagnetic radiation on the EM setting, and antimatter on the AM setting. That’s why we have the magnet. Magnets can hold antimatter in place and potentially allow for the use of the burst of energy that antimatter can produce. Rotating fields of electromagnetism have the potential to reduce mass and therefore the effects of gravity. It was believed it could allow for space travel.”

Caleb furrowed his brow. “So, useful if we want to try to fly or need a burst of energy. Not so useful if we need to shoot someone.”

“I doubt it would allow you to fly,” she said. “But that pretty much sums it up.”

“Right, well, let’s get going then,” Caleb said, bending down and starting to shimmy into the duct. “I hope it’s a gradual descent.”

“This isn’t much of a plan,” Sylvain said.

“Neither was the raft,” Abbey replied. “You said yourself the point of power is in this building. Don’t we need to get there to get home anyway?”

“If we do make it home, the good news for you is that I doubt I’ll ever be asked to babysit the three of you again,” Sylvain muttered, marching off toward the door to the building with Mark scuttling behind him.

Stale, warm air pressed against Abbey’s face as she crawled down the duct, following Caleb’s sneakers. Thankfully, the duct sloped gradually down.

The whining sound that she’d heard coming from the water intakes intensified as they got deeper into the building.

Sylvain turned and regarded Mark darkly (no doubt questioning his draw in partners) as they stood outside the door to the building. It was locked, of course. Mark wondered if Sylvain would suggest looping back to the air duct, but Sylvain launched his foot up and kicked the door hard.

A hollow boom echoed through the air. The door didn’t move, and Sylvain jumped around on one foot, holding the other.

The persistent whine from the intakes had started to grate on Mark’s delicate senses. He had to either get away from it, or get it to stop, or he’d be forced into a breakdown of sorts. He reviewed his options. Go back to the duct. Take his chances with Caleb’s people (and a roving panther). Or get into the building, confront his half-sister (who was very bad and lied a lot), and try to get home. All bad options.

Mark withdrew the gun from his dry bag and turned it to AM. Then he aimed it at the door. He didn’t have the magnet. Caleb did. But maybe he could still use the burst of energy. As soon as he saw the flash of light, he reached out with his mind and hand and pushed on the door. To his surprise, it opened.