Meridian (18 page)

T
RAVELING
by Fade left me drained. I don’t know how long I lasted after Marina fell asleep, but it wasn’t long. A second ago, Dad was working on the engine, but now the hood’s down and we’re idling. I guess he’s testing the repairs.

At least Marina’s not awake to know I broke my promise to watch over her. She’s still out, like everyone else in the truck.

I just can’t seem to get things in the right order. Girl sleeps over in my room—not Marina. Wake up with Marina—not in my room. We’d better survive this so I get the chance to get it right.

“We’ll make it home,” I whisper to her. “Whatever it takes, we’re getting out of here.”

It doesn’t look like she’s having a nightmare. When I slip my arm out from under her head so I can sit up, Marina doesn’t move at all.

Is the other one sleeping, too? Or is she aware when Marina’s not?

I reach for one of her hands and pull the edge of her glove away to check her skin. No lines, no dots, so where’s it hiding?

I look out the backseat window, but there’s no sign of Rueful and his bunch, either. They can’t have left unless someone turned out the lights; maybe they’re checking the buildings.

Dad’s on the far side of our clearing with Honoria and Mr. Pace, shouting. Honoria shouts back, making wide gestures with her arm. Best guess: He wants to go home; she says no. Mr. Pace will have to break the tie, and they’ll probably have to restrain whoever loses.

About-face and homeward bound works for me—not that they’d ask.

There’s a flash of movement through the other side window, coming from a broken-down structure. At first I take it for a reflection of light on the glass left in the pane, or paint—like the numbers there, reading
24/7
—but it shimmers.

There’s no reason for Schuyler or Rueful to be incognito, so who—

No . . .

Did they trap one of those things in here with us?

Wake up,
I tell myself, and check my hands, but there are none of the lines I see when I dream. I glance out the window again, and cock my head. Maybe at a different angle . . .

Another shimmer, and Trey screams bloody murder from the front seat, body seizing.

We are so dead.

“Marina, get up.” I poke her shoulder. “We have to move.”

Annie flies out of sleep and shakes Trey as hard as she can. His screams settle into “They’re here. They’re here,” repeated without stopping.

“Please tell me ‘they’ isn’t who I think it is,” Marina says, looking from side to side in the windowless cargo area. She scrambles for the back flap.

Trey’s eyes pop open, but he keeps going. “They’re here. They’re here.”

“Stop saying that!” Annie shouts. “Trey, wake up and stop saying that!” She tries to slap him awake. When that doesn’t work, she puts her hands over his mouth.

“They’re behind us,” Marina says. “Check the side view.”

I dive over the seat to get to the window.

“Do not tell me—” she starts.

“We’re surrounded!” I shout back.

“I said don’t tell me that!”

“In that case, we’re fine. Go back to sleep.”

“Shut up, Tobin.”

What’s beyond the glass warps the view like chemicals running down the pane. Shimmers appear in every tree past the lights, filling the branches and flowing down the trunks—mirages that have somehow clawed their way out of our nightmares. More fill the gaps between, tromping through the Dark where the trees give way to buildings.

Shock troops.

They’re close to the lights, and pressing closer, despite howling in pain.

“Where’d Whisper go? Where’s Dog?” Annie asks, leaning toward the window. “They’re gone. Our Fade are gone.”

She twists to look through the windshield, over the roof. She has to take her hands away from Trey’s mouth, and he’s still repeating those same two words.

“They can’t be gone,” Marina says, but I watch defeat take her face. I know the expression she gets when she’s talking to one of them, and that’s not it. She can’t find Rueful, either. “But he promised,” she whispers.

I knew we couldn’t trust them.

“How did the wild ones get past our Fade?” Annie asks. “They were guarding the perimeter on the outside.”

“What makes you think they’re still there?”

She sinks into the seat as the truth finally gets through to her. They gave us up; we’re on our own.

“Cherish says they have to stay quiet because of the wild ones, but they’re there,” Marina tells us stubbornly. “Rue and the others wouldn’t have crossed the boundary without a plan.”

“What plan?” I point to the trees above our lights, though she can’t see them from the back. They’re sprouting crystal leaves as wild nanites encase everything they touch, turning the terrain sharp and alien. “They have the high ground. We’re in the kill-box.”

Marina pulls the release for the tailgate under the truck’s flap, but where can we go? We can’t outrun them, especially with Trey in the shape he’s in. We can’t carry him, and no way is Annie going to leave him after what it took to get here.

Surrounded
isn’t bad enough. We’re buried.

My nightmares really were premonitions.

“The lamps are still holding,” Annie says, but she’s only thinking short term.

These Fade hit the lamplight and fall back, like the ones who attacked the Arclight and ran into our Red-Wall blinders, but it’s not a full retreat. More come, pushing the front lines forward as the rest bank up behind them, using them for a shield. The ones above move down the trees, as close as they can get from overhead. Soon, one’s going to risk dropping through the glare.

Marina can listen to whatever’s left of that thing in her head and keep believing that the Fade care about everyone and everything, and maybe the ones she came from do, but not these. This is a suicide march.

The ones at the fore will burn, but eventually they’ll overwhelm the lamps with the swarm. Those in the rear will pass the boundary without ever touching the light.

“We have to get out of here,” Annie says.

“If your boyfriend’s got any ideas, tell him I’m more than happy to follow his lead,” I say to Marina.

“I’m trying,” she says. “He won’t answer.”

“If they seal us in, it won’t matter if the nanobot’s out there or not,” I say, stretching out the window. “Dad!”

He and the others are still in the open. Arguing—maybe about the shadow crawlers bailing on us. I don’t know; I can’t hear them from here. Dad raises his head.

“Get inside!” I shout.

“Honoria!” Marina calls. She’s leaned over the backseat. “They’ve found us!”

So many Fade have filed in that the Dark is nothing but shimmers running into one another. I can’t make out specific shapes or individual bodies.

Dad and Mr. Pace race back toward the truck with the brightest lights they can carry, leaving the others where they stand and shrinking the safe zone as they flee. Honoria doesn’t move yet, guarding their retreat.

Annie starts to clear the front seat, but that means uncovering Trey’s mouth again. He still hasn’t stopped babbling.

“They’re here. They’re here.”

“Duck,” I tell her finally, and hit him as hard as I can. His jaw pops, but it doesn’t make a difference.

“What now?” Annie shrieks.

She keeps talking, but those are the last words I hear. There’s a blast of noise so loud and jarring, it’s unidentifiable. It shoots through my brain, shattering my thoughts and blurring my vision—I’m hearing this in my head, not my ears. Every nerve zings with the sensation of being turned to mush.

Shadow crawlers hate noise, why would they send—

“The horn!” Marina shouts. “Start the truck and hit the horn!”

Annie throws herself back behind the wheel and turns the key. Rays of new, brighter light shoot into the Dark from the bulbs bolted to the truck’s roof, and the gathering Fade reel backward, screeching. One continuous tone comes from the steering wheel under Annie’s body, where she’s pushed against it.

Trey stops screaming, his connection to the wild-Fade severed on the spot.

“Nice call,” I tell Marina.

“Thank Cherish. It was her idea.”

Then how’d I hear her say it?

Actually, I don’t want to know.

The wild-Fade are rattled enough that they lose control of their camouflage, and we get our first real look at them beyond the perimeter.

“Sludge monsters,” Trey mumbles.

These Fade look nothing like Schuyler or Rueful. They don’t look human. They don’t wear clothes. The hosts exist below an oil-slick coat of nanites. They rear up, flailing in the sound waves with clumps of black falling off their skin. Their joints are in odd places, bent at angles arms and legs can’t match. Some of them aren’t human.

A gunshot goes off behind us.

Dad and Mr. Pace both carry rifles, each requiring two hands to get off a shot, but Honoria’s pistol only needs one. She sends a shot straight up, clearing the area above before she joins the rush for the truck. The next shot guards Dad’s flank. She puts a bullet through one of the creatures, so the nanites burst off in all directions from the vibrations and hit the host animal below, leaving it dead on the ground. It brings one of the lamps down with it. The wild-Fade redirect their assault, turning as one massive entity to race for the gap.

“Get in the truck!” Annie yells, opening the driver’s door. “They’re still coming!”

I take Marina’s hand to pull her over the seat and make room in the back for Mr. Pace and Dad as they haul themselves up through the tailgate and shut it behind them. Honoria heads for the driver’s seat.

“Hang on to something,” she orders, shoving Annie out of the way and gunning the engine.

Marina and I straighten ourselves in the backseat, where Annie landed. In the cargo area, Dad and Mr. Pace have their rifles through the flap, trying to knock the Fade off our tail.

“This isn’t working,” Dad says. “We’ll run out of ammo before we make any headway. We need to take out their front line.”

“Ever shoot skeet?” Mr. Pace grabs one of the reserve gas cans and slings it outside. One precision shot, and it explodes. The gas rains down as a hundred tiny fires, igniting every Fade it hits. The more nanites, the faster they burn. Behind us, the path is nothing but melting piles of fallen monsters.

We should have lit more fires.

O
UR
escape from the campsite makes the rest of our ride a peaceful overland tour by comparison. Without the open corridor created by Rue’s hive, we have no path to follow.

“How long before they catch up again?” Anne-Marie asks.

“I’m hoping for never,” I say. Between the fires and the noise, maybe we’re not worth the trouble. Col. Lutrell and Mr. Pace keep firing at intervals, just to make sure.

Honoria hits a rock, pitching us up on one side. A ditch brings us low on the other as we drive through bushes and run over terrain that hasn’t been touched by humans in decades. I hope Col. Lutrell knew what he was doing when he was working on the truck, or we’ll stall out again.

“Annie, are you okay?” Trey asks. “And who hit me?”

He rubs his jaw.

“I’m fine,” Anne-Marie says, doubled over with her head near her lap—until something lands on the roof, denting it in. “
Was
fine,” she amends, head shooting up. “I
was
fine. What is that?”

“Please tell me that’s Rueful changing his mind about coming with us,” Tobin says.

“I don’t think so.” The indentions from this thing’s feet are too broad and the wrong shape to be anything remotely humanoid. It’s too big and too heavy. Two more land beside it.

“They’re coming through the roof!” Anne-Marie cries.

Worse. They’re taking the roof out of the equation.

Dark dots appear on the truck’s covering, branching black along the grain. The cover disintegrates behind them, stripping our enclosure away. We’ll be completely exposed.

Our elders shout orders from all directions.

“Get down” from Col. Lutrell.

“Annie, watch your head” from Mr. Pace, as a piece of the truck’s canvas spirals down, covered in black. But the wind rips it out of reach, almost like nature is helping us fight the foe who bested her.

Honoria yells in bursts between the sounds of the road and our own startled yelps each time the truck hits a dip or bump.

“Silver case under your feet.”

“What?” I ask.

“There’s a silver case under the seat—open it.”

I reach under the seat and find a bag with soft sides and a zipper. Inside is a refrigerated container filled with red-tipped darts.

“What are they?” Tobin asks, reaching for one. Five small dart guns are lashed to the side with elastic cords.

“It’s the cure,” I say. No one has to explain it to me; I can tell from the feel of its weight in my hands. These darts are filled with the serum that started me on my way from Cherish into Marina. And I don’t know why I now choose to call it “cure” when I called it “poison” before. “It’ll kill them.”

“Point and shoot.” Honoria points up before blasting the horn again.

The idea was simpler when we were still in the Arclight and all my potential targets were miles away in a place I thought I’d never see in person. The reality isn’t so neat. Not when it’s my hand on the trigger. Every human-turned-Fade ever treated has died from this stuff. If I fire, I’m ending a life.

A shot goes off beside me. Tobin’s already taken a gun from the case and used it. One of the things above us roars, falling from the truck. I don’t have the stomach to watch what happens next, knowing the creature will end up naked and abandoned like the Fade-animal Honoria killed.

Anne-Marie fires a dart with a squeak, and flinches at the slight recoil.

“Did I hit one?” she asks. The thud of a second body from the truck says yes, she did.

The last one’s still there, its clawed feet clenching the cover’s skeletal frame. It’s not moving.

“Marina,” Tobin prompts. “Shoot it.”

I don’t remember loading a dart into the gun in my hands. Or taking a gun. I don’t . . .

“How do I know I’m not making it worse?” I ask.

One dose wasn’t enough to bring
me
all the way across the line. These things are huge. A single dart might leave the host in some kind of tortured limbo.

“Are you sure it’s enough?” I ask Honoria.

“Yes.”

“Real yes, or you-tell-me-what-I-want-to-hear-so-I’ll-do-it yes?”

A clawed hand the size of a bear’s paw swipes between us, caught in the canopy’s skeleton. The creature snarls.

I raise both hands over my head, close my eyes, and fire. The creature drops off the roof.

Shaking, I let the gun fall back into the case with the others.

“Are you okay?” Tobin asks.

I don’t know the answer to that question.

Rue,
I call as loud and hard as a thought can be.
We need you, Rue. Cherish needs you . . . I need you.

Ours are coming,
Cherish says.
But theirs are listening.

The wind blows through the truck, streaking my hair across my face. I brace for an attack from another creature, but instead comes the sound of cracking timber and the squeal of our tires straining as Honoria spins the truck to avoid a falling tree. Another comes down on its heels, then more, in a domino-fall all around us. The wild-Fade have changed tactics, using the terrain as a weapon rather than relying on the strength and speed of physical hosts that can be shot or outrun.

“We’re dead,” Tobin says. The engine’s still running, but there’s nowhere to go. They’ve put us in a cage.

Rue will come. He has to. He promised.

Right now, we’ve got our lights, but they won’t last forever. The rifles are only good as long as the ammo holds out. Either we find another way, or I get to watch the closest thing to a human family I have be taken by the hive.

I don’t think they can bring me in, not since the cure, but I don’t know what they’ll do when they figure that out. Maybe they’ll kill me, maybe not. Maybe I’ll be the last human left alive in the world.

Wouldn’t that be something?