Genesis (23 page)

Rhiannon rooted through her backpack and pulled out the two emergency flare sticks.

“Give them to me,” Emily said, taking the two red cardboard tubes. She ran her fingers over them, inspecting each as best she could in the dim light. Hopefully they had not gotten wet to the point they would be useless. There was no way to be 100 percent sure; she was just going to have to hope they would work when the time came. She didn’t think the flares alone would be big enough or bright enough to distract the swarm. It was going to take something much bigger than that.

Goddamn it, she was missing something. She searched her memory . . . something she had seen back on the road, just before they had spotted the building.

“That’s it,” she said, suddenly remembering.

“What are you going to do?” Rhiannon asked, her voice nervous now.

“I want you to stay here with Thor—”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“—and close the door behind me when I leave. When the swarm leaves, I want you to run to the truck”—Emily pressed the truck keys into Rhiannon’s hands and closed the girl’s fingers around them—“then I want you to take it, and, if it’s safe to do so, I want you to wait five minutes for me. Don’t turn on the lights until you have to go, okay? If I’m not back in five minutes, I want you to drive away from here. Wait until it’s light, and then I want you to head back to Point Loma, okay?”

“But what are you going to do?”

“When you get back to Point Loma,” Emily continued, she didn’t want to say “if you get back,” but she knew the chances of the girl making it all the way back to California were slim at best, “then I want you to tell Valentine that I killed the guard when you were visiting me and that I kidnapped you, okay? You tell them anything you have to to stay alive. Keep your head down and stay out of trouble, but when Mac comes back, I want you to tell him everything, do you understand?”

Even in the dim light of the office, Emily could see the fear in the girl’s eyes.

“Emily! What are you going to do?” Rhiannon said.

“Do you understand?” Emily insisted, and, when Rhiannon nodded, Emily continued, “Five minutes. You wait five minutes, that’s all.”

And with that, Emily headed for the back exit.

“Jesus! What the fuck am I thinking?” Emily whispered to herself as she eased the rear exit of the building open just enough to be able to squeeze out into the night.

A halo of white light danced like the aurora borealis above the roof of the building. Pressing herself against the door, Emily prayed to whatever god might still be willing to listen to her that the swarm would not spot her; although, thankfully, they seemed preoccupied with assaulting the front of the building. She edged herself as tightly against the outer wall as possible and slinked as quietly as she could toward the western corner of the building.

The otherworldly glow of the swarm made shadows jump and leap across the parking lot, a constant distraction in Emily’s peripheral vision. For what she had planned, she was going to have to reverse her route back up toward the hill and the jam of trucks they had passed on the way here. In her mind, she tried to replay the terrain they had crossed when they had first arrived—not that it really mattered, because first she was going to have to cut back diagonally away from the building and head deeper into the desert if she wanted to guarantee that she would not be spotted. She needed the darkness, but no matter which route she took there was going to be a stretch of ground where she would be vulnerable to being sensed by the swarm.

The air was filled with the thrum of wings, like tiny chainsaws. The sound of the swarm resonated and echoed across the desert, fading and growing like a sea of sound. It was actually quite beautiful, Emily thought, terrifying but entrancing.

She sucked in three quick breaths, aimed for the nearest, darkest shadow she could see, and on the third breath, began sprinting away from the building.

“Don’t fall. Don’t fall,” she repeated under her breath as she ran, her eyes fixed on the darkness, but her brain fascinated by the length of her shadow as it extended in and out with each swell of the swarm.

And then she was flying. Her mind registered the impact of her toes on the raised concrete curb surrounding the parking lot a split second before she hit the ground, the wind knocked from her lungs as effectively as if she had received a boot to the stomach. She lay facedown, feeling the silky softness of the alien grass against her hands, the wet splatter of mud across her face as she panted for each painful lungful of breath.

A second passed. Then another second and a third, delineated only by the thumping of her heart and the thrumming of the light bugs. She opened her eyes and could see nothing; she had fallen into the arms of darkness, and it embraced her willingly. Emily allowed herself a few more seconds to regain her breath, then sluggishly rolled over until she was facing back toward the depot.

The swarm looked gaseous, like a living white cloud of light pulsating around the silhouette of the building. It was breathtakingly beautiful, like the northern lights rendered into flesh and given wings. If she had been a God-fearing woman, it would have been easy to believe these were angels . . . but she had seen what they really were, had ridden with them across the darkened plain, sensed their desire, felt their hunger. She knew their intentions. These were no angels.

She
had
to get moving.

“Shit!” Emily hissed as her hand flew to the pocket where she had stashed the two flares. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She could only feel the outline of one of them. She pushed her hand into the pocket and confirmed the worst: one of the flares must have fallen out when she took her spill. She rolled onto her side and began blindly feeling around for the missing flare. Could she could risk turning on her flashlight briefly? Absolutely not, she decided instantly. That brief flash of light would be like a sonar ping to the swarm, and they would be on her in a moment. She would just have to keep trying to find it with the light they cast.

Minutes later, she resigned herself to the futility of wasting any more time looking. The flare was lost, but she still had the one. It was just going to have to suffice. She pushed herself to her feet, reoriented herself to where she thought her destination would be, and took a step.

She felt something beneath her foot give.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?” She knelt down and moved her hand to beneath her foot and felt the outline of the missing flare. Her boot had pushed it deep into a pool of muddy water, and, even as she wrapped her fingers around the cylinder, she already knew it was pointless; the hard cardboard wrapper was soaked through already, and her fingers pushed through into the interior of its rotten guts. She flung the remains away into the night, trying to resist the urge to scream her frustration. There was nothing to be done about it now. She was just going to have to make do with what she had. Besides, the chances of success were small, she knew that already. But if her plan did not succeed, she was going to try and make a big enough distraction that at least Rhiannon and Thor would be able to escape. It would give them a chance at survival, even if it was only a minimal one at best.

Emily headed deeper into the darkness, walking as quickly as she felt safe to. She began counting off in her head—one one thousand, two one thousand—a trick Mac had taught her to gauge her distance. When she thought she had reached a half-kilometer distance from the depot, she stopped and reoriented herself, using the light of the swarm to judge her position.

“My God!” she said, looking back the way she had come. The ground had risen a hundred meters or so, and now she was looking down on the depot and the swarm. It was like looking at a lake of silver light collected around the front of the building. The pool embraced the depot’s front and sides and was gradually creeping over the roof, slowly swallowing it whole, like some amorphous snake.

Time was running out. At some point, the swarm was going to find a way into the building, and then it was only a matter of minutes before it discovered Rhiannon and Thor holed up inside.

She had to beat feet right now.

Reorienting herself toward the freeway, Emily started off at a brisk jog. Moving this quickly was a calculated risk that had to be taken. The sky was as black as the ground around her. The memory of the moon, distilled to nothing more than a smudge, glowed dimly overhead, the thick layer of cloud denying even its measly assistance to her. She kept going, putting one foot in front of the other. She was almost to the point of thinking that somehow she had managed to miss the freeway—
How the fuck do you miss a
freeway
?
her inner voice chided—when she felt the hard surface of the I-40 beneath her boots.

Exhaling a sigh of relief, she turned to the west and started up the freeway. She had no idea where she was in relation to where she wanted to be, but, as if the gods in all their capriciousness were finally willing to cut her some slack, even if it were only to prolong her agony, the clouds thinned sufficiently to allow a sliver of moonlight to bathe the ground. And in that light she saw the shadowed outline of twisted wreckage that had once been a tractor-trailer about five meters ahead of where she stood. The moonlight lasted a few seconds longer before being swallowed up by the cloud again, but it was long enough for Emily to see that she was almost on top of the crush of vehicles at the head of the line of rusting trucks that had led her to this place.

In the daylight it had been relatively simple to pick her way through the field of debris strewn across the freeway, but under the cover of night she was soon kicking and stumbling over pieces of metal and broken truck parts, slowing her search down considerably. By the time she had almost tripped and fallen headlong for the third time, her mind was made up: there was no way she was going to be able to find the truck she needed in such complete darkness. She was just going to have to risk turning on her flashlight.

Emily took a deep breath, pointed the flashlight uphill, and flicked it on. She played the beam of light over the nearest truck carcass; it rang no bells in her memory whatsoever, so she moved the light to her left and saw that she was about three trucks up from the jumble of twisted metal that had brought this convoy to a stop . . . and her heart seized.

A tributary of white light had broken away from the main body of the swarm and was now snaking its way diagonally toward her. It would be here in minutes.

It took all her willpower to turn her back on the approaching threat, but if she had any hope of surviving this situation, she was going to have to move her ass right now. It was pointless turning off the flashlight; the damage was already done. She played the beam off the side of the ruined trucks, searching for the wreck she was looking for as she jogged up the line.

No . . . No . . . No . . .

Then, there it was, the beam of her flashlight glinting off the side of its brushed aluminum tanker, the name “Bryant Gasoline” barely
visible along its side. She ran to the tanker, glancing briefly back
over her shoulder. Through the space between the trucks in front
of her she could see the glow of the approaching swarm marching
toward her like ghosts through the night. She had to hurry.

Of course there was more than enough of a chance that her plan was already doomed; the tanker could be empty, or the gasoline she hoped was inside could have long turned to sludge, or the flare might be useless.

But there was only one way to find out.

“Come on, come on. Where is it?”

Emily searched along the side of the truck and finally found the bank of three valves the driver would have connected the hose to when making deliveries to gas stations. Each valve had a metal handle pointing upward, the plastic grips brown and crumbling from exposure to the elements.

Looking back toward the depot, it was plain to see she had a couple of minutes at best before the swarm reached her.

I have to move fast
.

Emily stepped to the side of the valves, away from where she guessed the gasoline, if there were any, would flow. She slipped the flashlight under her right armpit, clenching it tightly, then with both her hands free took hold of the middle handle and pulled downward. The handle was stiff, but she repositioned herself slightly in front of it and allowed her body weight to help in the effort. She felt the handle give, stepped back to the side, and pulled the handle toward the ground. Before the handle was horizontal, a thick stream of liquid gushed out of the valve and began to pool on the road, flowing down the incline of the road back toward the depot and the oncoming lights of the swarm. The unmistakable smell of gasoline reached Emily’s nostrils almost immediately. If she had had more time she would have done a little jig; instead, she reached over the spurting stream of gasoline and pulled the second lever, but this one would not budge at all, so she quickly shifted her hands to the third, and, with a couple of short tugs, had that valve wide open too. Now a veritable lake of gasoline had begun to form on the ground around the tanker.

Emily felt her mind fuzz over for a second as she breathed too deeply from the vapors. Staggering, she fell lightly against the side of the truck.

She felt wetness against her leg. Pointing the flashlight down at her feet she saw both her boots and her jeans were now soaked in gasoline.
Shit!
She was going to have to be extra careful when she lit the flare.

The lake of gas flowed across both lanes and quickly spread beneath the tanker.

A flash of light zipping past her head made Emily realize she was out of time; the first of the swarm had arrived. It was now or never.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the flare. Looking behind her, she spotted a mass of swirling lights only a couple of trucks away. Several of the swarm had broken away from the mass, flying out in front like scouts. One dived directly at her, barely missing her head, startling her enough that she dropped the flashlight to the ground. Before she could stoop and grab it again another of the light bugs made a beeline for her, forcing her to duck under the truck, putting the body of the tanker between her and the advancing creatures. She splashed her way through the pool of gasoline to the other side of the truck.

Another of the creatures flew under—the others seemed more interested in her flashlight—and headed straight for her, but its wing must have clipped one of the rig’s metal struts, because it made an odd whirring noise and spiraled away to her right, bouncing off the ground until it was nothing but a rapidly dimming light in the darkness.

She scrambled out from under the tanker and began to run for the edge of the freeway, her hand grasping the flare as if it was all that stood between her and the devil himself. There was no way she was going to be able to perform the next part while she was moving. She forced herself to stop, the instinct to run overwhelming, and risked a look back at the tanker, which was about ten meters or so away from her now. The glowing creatures swirled around her flashlight, but some must have spotted her in the eerie glow of their light and were rising over the top of the tanker. Emily popped the plastic endcap off the flare, exposing the striker surface, and held her breath as she struck the flare across the igniter.