Scorpion Shards

4. The Shadow Of The Distraction

The splintering of stone.

A deafening rumble as a mountainside pounced upon an unsuspecting neighborhood below. Five homes were destroyed by the massive boulders, and Dillon Cole, his wrecking-hunger now fed, gripped Deanna Chang and collapsed in her arms.

In the dim light they sat on the mountainside, hearing the shouts from below as neighbors came out to help one another. Through it all, Deanna held Dillon tightly.

“Please let no one be hurt,” Dillon whispered desper­ately.

Deanna had watched in horror as the row of homes on this hill above Lake Tahoe was obliterated. She watched in horror . . . but not in fear. Even now, as she held Dillon, she wasn’t frightened. Her fears, which had been building for hours, vanished the moment Dillon satisfied his wrecking-hunger—and it had been that way every time.

In the four days since they had run from the hospital in San Francisco, Deanna had stood by as Dillon sent a driv­erless semi down a ravine; sunk an empty barge on the Sacramento River; and shorted-out a switching station, plunging the entire community of Placerville into dark­ness. She knew she should have felt terror and revulsion at each of these catastrophes, yet, against all reason, a sud­den peace always filled her in the aftermath. All that de­struction didn’t feel real to her in those moments after—it seemed little more than a painted canvas before her.

But Dillon was real, and she always turned her new­found calm to him, comforting him and his conscience, which had a strong case for feeling guilty. She thought she was beginning to understand that strange calm: she was in the shadow of Dillon’s destruction now—and that was far less terrifying than being in its path—for if those horrible things were happening to someone else, it meant that they weren’t happening to her.

What remained in that swollen calm was a single ques­tion in Deanna’s mind.

How?

How does he accomplish these things?

She looked to the night sky—to the supernova that still shone in the heavens, as if it could answer her.

“Is it winking at you?” asked Dillon, turning to look at it as well. “Is it telling you all the secrets of the universe?”

Deanna shook her head. “It’s just telling me to go east.”

Dillon nodded. “I know.”

It was true. From the moment its light appeared in the sky, she and Dillon were falling east; carried by an irresist­ible current, like driftwood pulled toward a raging water­fall. Suddenly Deanna’s aching wrist and aching body didn’t matter. Her family didn’t matter—they seemed like people from a different lifetime and, aside from a sin­gle postcard to tell them she was all right, they had been shuffled far back in Deanna’s mind. All that mattered was moving east with Dillon—and all because of that star.

Maybe the others know more, thought Deanna. Oh, yes, she knew about The Others—they both did. Although they spoke of them only once, they knew that it was The Oth­ers who were drawing them east. It was Dillon who didn’t want to discuss them—as if this knowledge of The Others was too important a thing to say out loud.

Deanna could swear she could sometimes hear their voices in the rustling of leaves—see their faces in dreams she couldn’t quite remember. She thought to tell Dillon, but thought better of it.

Far below, at the bottom of the hillside, an ambulance could be heard arriving at the scene of the rock slide.

“No one was supposed to get hurt. . . .” said Dillon, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

Deanna pushed the sound of the ambulance out of her mind. Instead she focused on Dillon—how he needed her and how she needed him to keep her fears away. How strong they were together.

A trickle of pebbles fell past them on the dark hillside, settling in the aftermath of Dillon’s rock slide.

“I don’t understand how you did it,” she asked him. “All you did was throw a stone . . .”

“It wasn’t just a stone,” he told her. “It was the right stone.”

But it was still beyond Deanna to understand just what he meant by that. He had thrown a stone, and that stone had begun an inconceivable chain of events—his stone hit another, which then rolled against a larger boulder, and in a few moments the whole mountainside beneath them was falling away before their eyes. It would have been wonderful, if it wasn’t so horrible.

“Do you hate me, Deanna?” Dillon asked. “Do you hate me for the things that I do?”

Did she hate him? She probably ought to hate him, but how could she when he was the only one who didn’t run from her? How could she hate him when he treasured every ounce of comfort she gave him? The more he needed her, the more she loved him—she couldn’t help it. Whatever you do, I’ll forgive you, Dillon, she said to herself, be­cause I know the goodness inside you—even if no one else can see.

But to him, she only said, “No, I don’t hate you.”

When Dillon heard her words, he relaxed—as if her feelings for him were all that mattered—as if Deanna was his only lifeline to the world.

Now that the wrecking-hunger had been fed, he looked stronger in the dim nova light. He looked noble, and when he stood from her arms he somehow seemed larger than life. Now it was her turn to take comfort in him.

“Let’s go,” Dillon said. “I know a way to get money.”

She glanced toward the immense lake, where Tahoe’s casinos glittered just over the Nevada border.

“Casino gambling?” she asked.

“We don’t need a casino,” he answered. “All we need is a bar.” He reached out his hand and smiled. He was his old, tender self again. “Come on. I’ll show you something incredible . . . I’ll show you something magical!”

She reached out and gently took his hand, and he es­corted her off the ruined mountainside.

A gust of wind blew through the door of the roadside bar as they stepped in, sending a flurry of cocktail napkins to the sawdust-covered floor.

With the wrecking-hunger deeply satisfied, Dillon felt himself in control of his thoughts and actions. Deanna had seen him at his worst tonight, and now she would see him at his best. He would show her something special.

Dillon was tall, but his boyish features and the style of his conspicuous red hair made it clear he was underage. Still, no one seemed to care, and he had no intention of ordering drinks.

Most of the talk around the bar was about the rock slide.

“Did you hear?” The regulars were saying to one an­other, “Five homes got flattened. Summer homes mostly, so no one was in ’em . . . except of course for the Barnes’s place where a boulder the size of a Buick tried to come down the chimney like friggin’ Santy Claus.”

“Sadie Barnes got a concussion,” told one old-timer, with wide eyes as if he were telling a ghost story. “Jack Names, well, he might lose a leg. Still too early to tell.”

Dillon grimaced and tried not to think about it. He caught himself glancing at Deanna’s bruised wrist, silently tallying all the injuries he had caused and cursing himself for it.

In the many quiet hours alone with Deanna, he had told her every last thing he had done since the wrecking-hunger had come two years ago. He had told her how it started—not so much a hunger, but an itch; a tiny little urge to break things, which grew with each thing he broke. He had told her how his parents eventually died of “broken minds,” before Dillon understood what his touch did to people, and how he had wandered for a whole year alone. Deanna took great pains to listen and not judge. Dillon had no words to tell her how special she was.

He led Deanna to the back of the bar, where an old, worn pool table sat in an alcove. Two guys were finishing a game of eight-ball. They were cowboy types—early twenties, talking about fortunes won and lost in the Tahoe casinos that day. One of them was bursting with energy, because his wallet was bursting with cash. He would be Dillon’s target.

“Watch this,” Dillon whispered to Deanna. Dillon had only played pool once, years ago. Even then he had found it about as challenging as sorting mail into six different slots. He approached the cowboy with the stuffed wallet.

“I’ll play you a game,” offered Dillon, sounding naive and inexperienced. “I’ll play you for five dollars.” Dillon slapped five dollars down on the edge of the table. Cow­boy and his friend laughed.

“Sure, buddy,” Cowboy said, treating Dillon like a child who had just asked for a quarter for a video game. “You break.”

Cowboy racked up the balls, and Dillon broke, while Deanna watched from a peeling red vinyl chair.

The game took five minutes. It was less than magical; Dillon lost miserably. He glanced at Deanna, who was be­ginning to look nervous.

“One more game!” insisted Dillon. “Double or nothing.”

Cowboy agreed, and easily beat Dillon a second time. The smile slipped from Dillon’s face now. Deanna came up to him and whispered, “Don’t be dumb—we’re al­most out of money.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said loudly enough for the others to hear. “I feel lucky, okay?”

Deanna rolled her eyes and stepped away, leaning against the wall.

Cowboy won the third match and was all full of him­self. Dillon, on the other hand, looked pathetic and des­perate. He took out his wallet and angrily slapped it down in front of the Cowboy.

“All of it,” said Dillon. “I’ll play you for all that’s in my wallet for all that’s in yours.”

Cowboy grinned out of the corner of his mouth.

“Dillon, let’s get out of here,” said Deanna. “It’s not worth it.”

“I don’t leave a loser,” said Dillon.

Cowboy smiled even wider. The picture here was clear; a young kid trying to impress his girlfriend—willing to go to ridiculous extremes to avoid being completely hu­miliated. And that was exactly how Cowboy intended on leaving him; completely humiliated, not to mention broke.

Cowboy put his wallet next to Dillon’s and racked up the balls. “You break,” he said.

Dillon took a deep breath and made sure Deanna was watching. Then he took his cue to the cue ball, and stared intently at the wedge of colored balls before him. Dillon stared until he stopped seeing balls, and instead saw an­gles, vectors and forces of impact. He examined the lines of motion and rebounds—each one bearing a complex mathematical equation that his mind solved instantane­ously. And then, once he saw every pattern of possibilities on that pool table, Dillon struck the cue ball . . . sending two solid-colored balls into two different pockets.

His second shot sunk two more balls, his third shot sent his remaining three balls home, and his fourth shot sent the eight ball rebounding off three sides before disappearing into a corner pocket.

Four shots. Like sorting mail.

Cowboy just stared at the table, which was still full of his own seven striped balls. “Beginner’s luck,” said Dillon. He took his and Cowboy’s wallets from the edge of the table, leaving Cowboy completely humiliated, not to mention broke. From behind the bar, the bartender laughed.

Cowboy was furious. He threw his cue down and grabbed Dillon. “Just who do you think you—"

But he never finished. The moment he grabbed Dillon, his pupils dilated, his jaw dropped and his face paled. In an instant Cowboy’s thoughts had become so scrambled, he couldn’t even speak. Dillon slipped free from his grip.

“Good game,” said Dillon.

“Duh ...” said Cowboy.

Dillon and Deanna left him there, his senses just begin­ning to come back. They breezed out the door, dragging a flurry of cocktail napkins in their wake.

“I don’t see things the way other people see things,” Dillon told Deanna that night as they dined like kings in their hotel room above Lake Tahoe. “You want to know how I started the rock slide, and how I won that pool game. I don’t know how—all I can tell you is how I see the world—and it’s different than other people do.”

Deanna just looked at him quizzically, so Dillon tried to explain. “Other people, they just see ‘things’—but I see patterns—cause and effect. I can see whole chains of events that other people can’t see. It’s like the way a good chess player can plan ten moves in advance? Well, when I play chess, I can see the entire game the moment the first move is made, not just all my moves—but every possible move—all at the same time. It’s the same thing with pool; all I had to do was look at the positioning of the balls, and I knew exactly how to hit them to make the balls go into the pock­ets.”

Deanna nodded. “Sort of the way a computer can solve a really hard math equation in half a second.”

“Yeah, sort of like that. It was harder for me to make myself lose than it was to win.”

Deanna was amazed. “You must be a genius.”

Dillon shrugged modestly. “Naah, it’s just something I can do. Some people can sing or dance; I can see patterns. A while back, before things got bad, I did this trick with a Rubik’s Cube. My friends would get it all completely mixed up, then hand it to me. They would give me five seconds to look at it and then blindfold me. I would re­member where the colors had been and solve the cube blindfolded.” Dillon began to smile as he thought about it. “There was this one time they took the cube apart and put it back together so it was impossible to solve, but I managed to solve it anyway!”

Deanna looked down and nervously began to scratch at her healing wrist, as something occurred to her. “So then . . . if you can see how things are going to happen—then you meant to hurt those people in the avalanche. You meant to hurt me.”

Dillon cringed and stood up. “Boulders aren’t billiard balls. A mountain’s not a chessboard,” he said. “And it’s not like I can predict the future—I just see patterns of the way things ought to happen—but things don’t always hap­pen the way they’re supposed to. . . .”

Dillon began to pace. “There was a tree further down the mountain,” he said. “The way I saw it, the tree was going to get smashed, and in the end four homes would get hit—the four that were empty. No one would get hurt, and the wrecking-hunger would be fed, right? So I threw the stone that I knew would start the whole avalanche. The pebbles started moving, the rocks started slipping, the boulders began to go, but when that tree got hit it didn’t fall! It deflected the boulder toward that fifth house.”

The more Dillon thought about it, the angrier he got. “I don’t want to hurt people, but people get hurt, okay? That’s just the way it is, and I can’t do anything about it!”

Suddenly he took his fist and punched it as hard as he could against the window. It vibrated with a loud thud.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he mumbled.

Deanna watched him closely as he sat there stewing in his own conflicted emotions. Deanna could hear that frightened voice in her head that sounded so much like her mother, telling her to run away from this crazy boy. But if he were crazy, he was no crazier than Deanna.

She sat next to him and gently touched his hand. It was hot from his anger. Hers was cold, as it always was.

“With all that money you won playing pool,” sug­gested Deanna, “we could fly east.”

“Fly where?” asked Dillon. “When you get on a plane, you need a destination, you can’t just buy a ticket ‘east.’ "

Deanna sighed. It was true: the eastbound gravity that gripped them could deposit them anywhere between Reno and New York.

“Anyway,” said Dillon with a smirk, “you’re afraid of flying . . . because if you’re in a plane, the plane’ll do everything it can to crash.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” said Dillon very seriously. “I believe you. All the things you’re afraid of—all those awful things you imag­ine happening to you—your fear is so strong that it makes them come true. It’s like your fear is a virus or something running through your veins . . . only it’s mutated. Now it’s this thing wrapped around your neck, strangling you.”

Deanna shivered. “Gee, thanks, Dillon,” she said. “You know just what to say to make me feel better.”

“But you should feel better,” insisted Dillon, “because, I can see the pattern—and as long as you’re with me none of those bad things can happen to you. I’ll push you out of the way of a speeding car, even before it comes around the bend. I’ll get you off a train before it derails. I won’t let you get on a plane that will crash. I’ll be like a good luck charm you wear around your neck! I promise.”

Deanna knew there was truth in what Dillon said.

“We’re meant to do great things, Deanna—don’t you feel it?” he said, gripping her hand tightly. “And every day, we’re closer to knowing what those things are!”

“All of us, you mean?” asked Deanna. “Us and the others?” Deanna watched to see how Dillon would react to her bringing up The Others.

Dillon shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “But you and me especially.”

Deanna felt her eyelids getting heavy, and so she leaned back, letting Dillon put his arm around her. He did nothing more—just held her with a wonderful innocence as if they were two small children. He asked no more from her than her presence, and it made her feel safe.

In the silence she listened as Dillon’s breathing slowed, and he fell asleep. She took comfort in the sound of his breathing, and soon matched the pace of her own breath to his. She imagined their hearts beating in time with each other as well, and wished that they could somehow be part of each other. . . .

Then she realized that in some strange and immeasur­able way, they already were.

5. Ghost Of The Rainbow

At a campsite in the woods where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet, Tory Smythe tended to her aching face. She gentiy cleaned her cheeks, chin and fore­head with astringent alcohol, and three types of soaps—a ritual she performed four times a day. It stung as if she had just wiped her face with battery acid, and although all these cleansers promised results, none of them helped. She put on some perfume, which didn’t do much either, then dabbed her scaling face with Clearasil, hoping beyond hope that someday it would work.

“I want to head toward Nebraska,” she shouted to Winston, who was standing by the edge of the water. “Last year I read about this astronomer . . . in Omaha, I think. Anyway, he predicted a star was about to go super­nova—and since that star seems to have something to do with us, maybe he knows something we don’t.”

She turned to see that Winston wasn’t even listening. He was just looking out over the river. “What are you doing, praying again?” “I’m not praying,” said Winston. “I’m taking a whiz.” But Tory knew he was just using that as an excuse. Even this far away, she could tell that he was looking at that weird blue cloth again.

Winston Pell stood by the water’s edge so Tory couldn’t see, fiddling with the torn piece of turquoise-blue satin that he had pulled from a trash can three days before. He felt troubled, unsure of his next move, and for some reason fiddling with that torn piece of cloth made him feel better, as if it were a tiny security blanket. He had one of those when he was little. It was just a quilt, but when he wrapped it around himself, he felt safe and se­cure. Now, as he stood by the edge of the water, he did say a little prayer; he wished for things to be like they once were, before his Ma got paralyzed . . . before his Dad died . . . He wished for the days when an old blanket was the only protection he needed. Please, God, make it like it was, he prayed, as he often did. Make everything go back . . .

Maybe his old life hadn’t been the best in the world, but it was better than it had become in these past few years and much better than what he had to face these past few days. On that first night, suddenly roaring with crick­ets, he knew his legs were moving him west, away from home, but it was like sleepwalking. Only after dawn broke did he begin to comprehend that he was running away with this hideous, crater-faced girl.

At first they traveled west: on foot and in the beds of pickup trucks, “borrowing” clothes from clotheslines along the way, and food from unharvested fields. Once they hit the Mississippi River, they followed it north. Win­ston could feel himself being drawn upriver, the way salmon were drawn against a powerful current.

Winston knew they were moving toward Others like themselves—it was something he had sensed from the be­ginning—but where would they find them and how long would it take?

And where to go now?

As he stood at the edge of western Kentucky’s woods, he looked out across the swirling waters where the Ohio and the Mississippi met—a delta that divided three differ­ent states. Where to go from here? Kentucky, Illinois or Missouri. Decisions were getting harder and harder for Winston these days. The very thought of having to make one made him want to put his thumb deep in his mouth and suck on it to make all his problems go away. He’d been getting that thumb-sucking urge a lot lately—like he used to the first time he was little. But he reminded him­self that he was fifteen and forced the urge away. Instead he focused his attention on that piece of turquoise cloth in his other hand, studying the soothing richness of its color. There was something important about that color—he was certain of it.

In a few minutes he returned to their campsite and slipped into his sleeping bag, which was just an old comforter he had found in a Memphis Dumpster.

“Did you hear what I said about Omaha?” Tory asked. “About that astronomer? He’s supposed to be a kook, but then maybe only a kook will talk to us.”

Winston rolled over, away from her. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever.”

Tory sighed. “It would help,” she said, “if you did some of the thinking around here.

Winston slid deeper into his sleeping bag. “Thinkin’ just makes me angry. I got no use for it anymore.”

“You know,” said Tory, “you’re not an easy person to run away with.”

Winston rolled over to face her. “Just because we ran away at the same time, in the same direction, doesn’t mean I ran away with you.” But even as he said it, Win­ston knew he was wrong. They were stuck with each other—and even if they were to go their separate ways, he knew they’d end up bumping right back into each other—pulled together like two magnets.

Winston began to think of his family. The faces of his mother and brother were getting harder to remember.

“My Mama’s probably turnin’ the county upside down lookin’ for me.”

“I thought you called her and told her you were all right.”

“I did,” said Winston. “But she had more questions than I could answer, so I hung right up.”

Tory sighed and slipped deeper into her makeshift sleeping bag. “You’re lucky you got a mama who cares enough to ask questions. My mama’s gone.”

“She’s dead?”

“No, just gone,” said Tory. “Up and left last year. I got stuck with my aunt.”

“I m sorry.”

“Just as well. My mama and I never got along anyway. She used to say ‘Tory, your bulb is so dim, you’ll never amount to anything.’ Truth is, I get straight A’s in school. But that didn’t matter. I coulda been a national scholar, she still would have figured me dumber than a doorpost. Anyway, when I started getting this skin problem, my mother just gave up. She said it was my fault all her boy­friends ran away—and I hoped she was right; I would have been ugly just to spite her. When she got drunk she would tell me things like how because of my face, I’d spend my whole life alone and unhappy.”

“Like her?”

“Like her.”

“Sounds like she got on the inside what you got on the outside,” said Winston. “I’d rather be you than her.”

“I’d rather be neither of us,” said Tory. “I’d rather be a prom queen from the right family instead of a . . . a gar­goyle.”

“You ain’t no gargoyle,” said Winston. “Gargoyles got big red eyes and ugly teeth, and skin like snakes.”

“I am so a gargoyle. I smell like one—my skin peels like one. One of these days my face’ll probably start turn­ing green too.” Winston looked at her battle-scarred face, and she looked away, not wanting him to look at it any­more.

“You Baptists got a prayer for ugly people?” she asked.

“We got a prayer for everything,” said Winston. But try as he might, he couldn’t think of a prayer for the ugly.

Two hundred miles away, Indianapolis was pelted by heavy rain—but the rain that was falling inside Michael “Lips” Lipranski’s soul seemed even worse than the rain outside. The storm raging inside him was full of acid rain, and it burned, filling him with the familiar feeling he could never make go away. He couldn’t talk about that, could he? There are some things you don’t talk about, he thought, as he lay uncomfortably in the van, which was parked in a back alley. There are some things that are just too secret, too personal, so you just never talk about them. Ever.

The trip from Montauk had been torture. The drenched roads all seemed the same—back roads mostly, because they knew they’d be harder to find if they trav­eled the back roads. Right now, Michael couldn’t bear the thought of another road.

Beside him, Lourdes babbled on about a dream she had the night before, about a gray rainbow—whatever that meant. She was cramped and uncomfortable—none of the van’s seats were wide enough for her. When she finally realized that Michael wasn’t listening, she turned to him and asked, “How do you feel?”

“You know how I feel,” said Michael, adjusting his un­comfortably tight pants. “I feel like I always feel.”

“You know, you’re not the only guy to feel horny all the time,” Lourdes said.

Michael shifted uneasily. “Yes I am,” he answered. “I’m the only one who feels it this bad. The only one in the world.”

“Maybe not.”

“Yeah, sure. And maybe you’re not really fat—you just wear the wrong clothes.”

Michael regarded the ceiling of the van above him, lis­tening to the clattering of the rain.

“I got a brother,” said Lourdes, “who always had girls on the brain, too.”

Michael let out a bitter laugh. If girls on the brain were his problem, then there were thousands of them in there, all with jackhammers.

“Whenever he got the girl crazies,” continued Lourdes, “he’d go off into the bathroom. When he came out a few minutes later, he didn’t feel that way no more. He thought we didn’t know what he was up to, but we did. We just didn’t say.”

Michael cleared his throat. He just kept looking up at the spots in the roof-lining.

“I do that, too,” said Michael. “I do it a lot.” Hearing the words come out of his mouth made tears come to his eyes—but Lourdes didn’t laugh at him. She just listened.

“My brother—I’ll bet he thought he was the only person in the world to do that. I’ll bet he hated himself for it.”

Michael felt his whole body react to his tears. His throat closed up, his feet felt even colder, his fingers felt weak. Above him, the clattering sound of the rain grew stronger.

“Sometimes . . .” said Michael. “Sometimes I think . . . what if all my dead relatives are watching me? What if their ghosts can see the things I do?”

“Dead people don’t care,” said Lourdes. “Because if they really do hang around after they die, I’ll bet they’ve seen so many secret things, nothing bothers them any­more.”

“You think so?”

“At the very worst, they think it’s funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny!”

“That’s because you’re not dead.”

Above the rain began to ease up. Some things you can’t talk about, thought Michael. He never thought it would be so easy to talk about those things with Lourdes.

“We should go soon,” said Lourdes, who, for obvious reasons, preferred to travel by night rather than by day. “Maybe when the rain stops we’ll see the rainbow.”

Michael rolled his eyes. She always brought up the thing about the rainbow.

“It’s night,” reminded Michael. “Whoever heard of a rainbow at night?”

“Maybe night’s the only time you can find a gray rain­bow.”

“Maybe there’s no such thing as a gray rainbow, and that dream you’re having doesn’t mean a thing.”

Lourdes shook her head. “Dreams always mean some­thing,” she said. “Especially dreams you have more than once.”

Michael cracked the window and took a deep breath. He could smell the end of the storm, the same way he could smell when it began. He could always smell the weather. An autumn storm always began with the smell of damp concrete and ended with the aroma of yellow leaves trampled along the sidewalk. A winter blizzard began clean, like the air itself had been polished to perfection, and ended with a faint aroma of ash.

As Michael sat there, breathing in the end of the storm, he had to admit that talking to Lourdes had made him feel a little bit better.

“Lourdes,” said Michael, “tell me something about you now. Tell me something about yourself you swore you’d never tell a living soul. It’s only fair.”

Lourdes shifted and the seat creaked, threatening to give way. Michael waited.

“I don’t have secrets,” she said in her deepest, most thickly padded voice.

Michael waited.

Lourdes sighed, and Michael leaned closer to listen.

“My parents . . . they love me very much,” said Lourdes. “I know this because I heard them talking one night. They said that they loved me so much, they wished that I would die, so I would be put out of my misery.” Lourdes spoke matter-of-factly, refusing to shed a single tear. “The truth is, I never felt misery until I heard them say that.”

Outside the air began to take on a new flavor—a rich, earthy smell that Michael recognized as fog rolling in, matching the cloudy, numb feeling in his brain.

“Lourdes,” said Michael, “I don’t care what anyone says. I think you’re beautiful.”

Michael and Lourdes arrived in St. Louis the next morning, their van riding the crest of the storm. The black rain clouds followed behind them like a wave rolling in from the distant Atlantic Ocean, baffling the weathermen who always looked west for weather.

Michael, starved, stopped at the first cheap-looking fast-food place he found, but all they sold were fried brain sandwiches. When Michael returned to the car, with his questionable sandwich, and a drink for Lourdes, he looked behind him to see a sheet of rain moving across the surface of the Mississippi River, until it finally reached them, letting loose over St. Louis. Michael hopped into the van and managed not to get drenched.

He handed Lourdes her diet Coke. “What do you know about St. Louis?” she asked.

“I know I’d rather be just about anywhere else in the world,” he said, looking miserably down at the brain-burger in his hand.

“Besides that, what do you know?”

Michael shrugged. “The Cardinals,” he said. “That’s about it . . .” And then he stopped dead—and started to breathe rapidly. Michael turned to Lourdes and grabbed her heavy arm, trying to speak but unable to catch his breath.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Lourdes . . . there’s one more thing I know about St. Louis . . . something that never occurred to me until now!”

“So, tell me.”

“I think maybe you should look for yourself.”

Lourdes followed Michael’s gaze to the south. Lourdes wiped the fog from the windshield, and her eyes traced the path of the riverbank, until she saw it, too. It was about a mile away, curving hundreds of feet into the sky—thousands of tons of gray steel, shaped and curved into the magnificent arch that graced the city of St. Louis. The sleek steel wonder stretched deep into the clouds, and back down to earth again, and the very sight of it gave Michael and Lourdes the eerie shivers—because more than anything else, the arch looked like a ghostly gray rainbow.

Tory and Winston had already been at the arch for twenty minutes. They had stood with die-hard tourists in a line that wound through the underground museum, waiting to board the tiny car that would take them to the peak of the arch.

The logic made perfect sense. If you were supposed to meet someone in St. Louis, but didn’t know where, there were certain places one ought to try: airports, bus stations, train stations, landmarks—and they knew St. Louis had to be the place. They could sense something here that they felt nowhere else they had been—the westward cur­rent suddenly seemed caught in a swirling eddy.

They had been to all the other places, and now they searched the city’s best-known landmark—their last hope—before continuing west. To Omaha, if Tory got her way.

Once at the top of the arch, the view was spectacular, for the very tip of the arch pierced the dense, low-hanging storm clouds. It was like a view from heaven.

Tory wore her scarf over most of her face like an Ara­bian veil. “I’ve never been this high,” she said. “I guess this is what it must look like from a plane.” The clouds beneath the observation window were slow-moving bil­lows; huge cotton snails sliding over one another.

The car brought them back down to the underground museum, and still there was no sign of anyone on the look­out for them. It was worse than the old needle in a hay­stack. At least then you knew it was a needle you were looking for.

“There’s nothing here,” Tory finally had to admit. Then Tory and Winston heard a voice deep in the crowd.

“This is a waste of time,” the voice said. Tory and Win­ston quickly turned and saw a boy through the crowds. He had a thin, scraggly body and thin straggly hair. He seemed flushed and sweaty. Next to him stood a girl so immense there was no way she’d fit in the tiny car that rode to the top of the arch.

But it was the scraggly boy that caught Winston’s atten­tion—not his face, but his eyes. Even from a distance, Winston could see the color of his eyes.

“I know him!” said Winston. “Don’t I know him?”

Winston and Tory pushed through the crowd, and as they did, the sounds around them seemed to become dis­tant. The people milling about and waiting in line seemed like mere shadows of people. The guard mouthed the words “Move along,” but his voice sounded as if it were coming from miles away. The only sights clear and in focus were the fat girl and scraggly boy, who were now staring at them with the same troubled wonder.

Winston approached the scraggly boy, pulling his torn satin cloth out of his pocket. One glance at the cloth, and then at the boy’s eyes proved to Winston what he already knew. The cloth was the exact same color as the scraggly boy’s eyes. Impossibly deep—impossibly blue! This was the connection!

Michael grabbed the cloth and looked at Winston, sud­denly overwhelmed with emotion. Michael felt the urge to say It’s good to see you again, even though he knew he had never met this small black kid before.

Tory approached, staring at Lourdes, and rather than being repulsed, she felt somehow comforted by her large presence. It made Tory want to peel back her scarf, to re­veal her own awful face, suddenly not ashamed of it in front of the present company.

“My God!” said Lourdes, as Tory revealed her face, and Lourdes smiled with a look of wonder instead of dis­gust. Still holding onto Michael, Lourdes reached out to touch Tory, who still had a hand on Winston’s shoulder; Winston had put his small palm up against Michael’s large one, closing a circuit of the four of them . . . and the instant the circuit was closed, something happened.

Their skin felt on fire, their bones felt like ice. They could not move.

Then an image exploded through their minds with such power and intensity, it seemed to burn the world around them away. It was a vision before sight, a tale before words. It was a memory—for it was so terrifyingly familiar to all of them it could only be a memory—not of something seen or heard but of something felt:

Bright Light! Sharp Pain! One screaming voice becoming six screaming voices. Six! There are six of us!

As the vision filled them, the clouds above began to boil and separate, as a powerful wind blew through the ghostly steel rainbow and the wet earth was finally drenched by blinding rays of sun.

6. The Unraveling

At that same moment, about four hundred miles away, Dillon Cole doubled over in a pain even more intense than the wrecking-hunger. He burst into a men’s room in the small bus depot in Big Springs, Nebraska, stumbled into a stall, and collapsed to the tile floor. At first he thought this must have been God striking him down for the sheer magnitude of his sins—but then as the world around him seemed to burn away, he knew it was some­thing else. The vision—the memory then burst upon his mind. It was both glorious and awful at once, and so in­tense that he thought it would kill him.

Awful

Awful

Awful

Blinding fire

Tearing

Shattering

Unbearable pain

Shard of light

Piercing

Screaming through the void

Then silence . . .

And a beat.

And silence . . .

A heartbeat.

And warmth

And comfort

And the soft safety

Of flesh and blood. . .

It was the vision of a cataclysmic death . . . followed by life. His own life. Something died . . . and he was born . . . but not just him. Others. The Others.

The convulsions that racked his body subsided as the vision faded, and he felt the grip of reality once more. He picked himself up and staggered back into the waiting area.

“Deanna?” He found her still doubled over on a bench. Her head was in her hands and she was quietly crying. She had shared this earth-shattering vision as well.

“You okay?” asked Dillon, still shaking from the expe­rience.

“What was it?” Deanna got her tears under control. “I was so scared . . . what’s happening to us?”

“The Others are together,” said Dillon, just realizing it himself. The fact struck him in the face, leaving him stunned—and unsure of how to feel about it.

It was all beginning to make sense to him now. There were six of them in the vision, all screaming discordant notes.

They were all here, together, for fifteen years. Maybe thousands of miles apart by human standards, but from the perspective of an immense universe, they were right beside one another . . . and moving closer. The thought of it began to make Dillon get angry, and he didn’t know why . . . and then he realized why. It was the wrecking-hunger, suddenly brought to a full boil, as if the vision triggered it to attack.

“I think we somehow know each other—even though we’ve never met,” said Deanna. “There are six of us, aren’t there?”

“Four of them,” said Dillon. “And two of us.”

Dillon could see Deanna struggling to understand—but she couldn’t grasp the entire truth yet. She couldn’t see the pattern the way he did.

“We need to find them,” insisted Deanna. “We have to join them. ...”

“We don’t have to do anything.”

“Yes we do! We have to meet The Others and find out who we really are!”

“I know who I am! I’m Dillon Cole, and that’s all I need to know!”

“What’s wrong with you?” she shouted. “Isn’t that why we’ve been moving east? To find them?”

Dillon knew she was right. The thought of finding The Others had been like a carrot dangling before them. But now that carrot was quickly growing rotten in Dillon’s mind. What would joining the others prove? What would it do beyond making Dillon just one of six? Yes, the wrecking-hunger was awful—but it was something famil­iar. Joining The Others, however, was a great dark un­known.

They’re going to hurt you, the wrecking-hunger whispered to him. They’ll ruin everything. They’ll take Deanna away. He didn’t know what to believe anymore.

The hunger was clawing at him now, tearing up his gut, as it had done so many times before . . . and from outside came the drone of a bus and black smoke pouring through the open door.

“Oh no!” cried Deanna in a panic. They both raced to the door in time to see their bus—which had only stopped in Big Springs for a few minutes—drive off. Along with that bus went what few things they had: a bag with maps, a change of clothes, and most important, Dillon’s wallet.

Fine, thought Dillon. Let the bus go. Who cares, anyway? Dillon stormed out the door and headed in the other direction. The hunger kept swelling inside of him, and he knew he would have to feed it soon.

“Where are you going?” shouted Deanna.

“Looks like I’m going to Hell,” he said, then turned from her and stormed away.

Dillon Cole’s pilgrimage to Hell began moments later, in a schoolyard across the street, where a tall kid, maybe a year older than he, was playing basketball alone.

Dillon was consumed by the wrecking-hunger now—and his mind was set on seek and destroy. He didn’t know how or what he would destroy—but this guy on the bas­ketball court was directly in his path and was therefore a target.

The target bounced his ball without much skill, trying to weave it through his legs. When he saw Dillon coming, he stopped his dribbling antics, and the two of them began to shoot around.

The guy introduced himself as Dwight Astor, and, as they took shots, Dillon tried to hide the wrecking-hunger like a vampire hiding his fangs.

“How about a game of one-on-one?” asked Dillon.

“Okay, winners out,” said Dwight. And the game began.

Dwight played fairly well, and although Dillon knew he could beat him—for Dillon never lost any game he played—Dillon didn’t try. He let Dwight drive around him for layups. He guarded poorly, making sure there were never any fouls—no body contact.

. . . And while they played, Dillon did something he had never done before: he studied the patterns of his human subject.

Until now, Dillon had kept away from people, never making eye contact, thinking only of ways to avoid them.

He was always much more comfortable with the simple, predictable patterns of crashing cars, shattering glass, stones and billiard balls. But today Dillon dared to peer into the workings of a human being, and he discovered something remarkable:

Human beings have patterns too. Patterns of action and be­havior that can trace their histories and futures.

Dillon bristled with excitement as he watched Dwight move around the court—and in about ten seconds of bas­ketball, Dillon was able to predict every move Dwight would make on the court—but Dillon could do better than that! He could look beyond the court, right into every aspect of Dwight’s life.

It amazed Dillon just how much he was able to figure out; facts impossible for the most observant of people to uncover came to Dillon with the slightest effort.

The hesitation that made Dwight miss his shots told Dillon how long and how often his parents had punished him as a child. The way Dwight’s eyes darted back and forth told Dillon of friendships lost and trusts broken. The thrill in Dwight’s eyes each time he drove toward the bas­ket told Dillon exactly how high his ambitions were and how successful he was going to be in life. Every move, every word, every breath betrayed a secret about Dwight’s days and nights, hopes and dreams, fears and failures.

Dillon had heard it said that every second we live bears the pattern of our entire life, the way a single cell bears the DNA pattern of our whole body. Now Dillon knew it to be true, because what might have taken years for a psychi­atrist to uncover, Dillon instinctively knew in just a few minutes on a basketball court.

The blueprint of Dwight Astor’s life!

And to think that all along Dillon had this talent—this power to peer into the human clockwork. It was the single most thrilling moment of Dillon’s life.

Dwight missed a shot, and the ball went bouncing out of bounds.

“Your ball,” said Dwight. Dillon took the ball and began dribbling it around the court, thinking about the many things he discovered by watching his opponent:

Dwight Astor. He was a B-plus student. His parents fought. He had at least two brothers and at least one sis­ter. His father was a recovering alcoholic. This was Dwight’s past and present, but Dillon could also see the pattern of his future, as if the basketball were a crystal ball. If nothing changed, Dwight would go to college, would major in business, or maybe economics, and would go on to run a small company. It was all there—Dillon saw the complex tapestry of Dwight’s past, present and future as if he were simply reading a road map—and in that future, Dillon could see shades of wealth, success and some level of happiness.

Dillon now had control of the ball. At last he worked his way around Dwight as if he were standing still. Then Dillon went for the lay up and released the ball onto the rim, where it hung, perfecdy balanced—not on the back of the rim, but on the front of the rim. The ball just sat there, not going into the basket, and not falling out.

“Wow!” said Dwight. “How’d you do that? That’s im­possible.”

As Dwight innocently stared at the balanced ball, Dil­lon Cole moved in for the kill.

“Listen to me, Dwight.” Dwight turned and was caught in Dillon’s gaze. “Your father says he doesn’t drink anymore, but he does. He keeps his bottles of booze hidden somewhere in the house. If you look hard enough, you can find them.”

Then Dillon whispered into Dwight’s ear, clearly and slowly.

“Your father would never notice,” said Dillon, “if you drank some of it.”

The words Dillon spoke were like bullets that pierced deep into Dwight’s brain. There was no blood, but the damage was the same—and the only one who could see the damage was Dillon. After all, he had done something anyone could have done . . . he had tossed Dwight a sim­ple suggestion . . . but like the stone Dillon had tossed down the mountain in Tahoe, this was exactly the right suggestion to begin an avalanche in Dwight Astor’s life. Dillon could already see the road map of Dwight’s future changing. Dillon’s simple suggestion had paved Dwight a brand new future filled with addiction. Alcohol first, and then other things. Dwight would drop out of high school. He would run far away from home. He would make the wrong friends, make the wrong choices. He would die young and alone.

Dillon had destroyed him.

There were no crashes, no carnage, no evidence. And yet the wrecking-hunger was gone—it had been more sat­isfied than ever before; it dawned on Dillon that destroy­ing a hillside, or crashing cars and breaking glass were nothing compared to destroying a human mind. . . . And it had been so easy to do. Finding the weakness in Dwight’s pattern was like finding the loose thread of a sweater. All Dillon had to do was to pull on the thread to make the entire fabric unravel..

Now, with the wrecking-hunger quieted, he could only beam with satisfaction, his wonder overcoming any self-loathing he might have felt.

That vague sense of destiny that had begun with the supernova, was focused by what happened today. For too long, Dillon had fled from his catastrophes, racked with guilt—begging for forgiveness. But he was stronger than that now. Much stronger.

“I . . . I have to go now,” said Dwight. “Good game.” Bewildered, Dwight turned and left, forgetting his ball.

Dillon could sense a pattern now unfolding in his own life. A destiny. A purpose—and although he wasn’t quite certain what that purpose was, he knew it would soon make itself clear. He could hardly contain the excitement that came with this new reason-to-be. Its very power filled him with something he thought might be joy.

I could choose this destiny, thought Dillon.... Or I could fight it; I could let the wrecking-hunger make me strong . . . or I could let it kill me.

The way Dillon felt right now, the decision was as easy as it had been to whisper in Dwight Astor’s ear.

As he watched Dwight shuffle off, Dillon made a pact with himself. No more fighting the hunger. He would feed it, he would live it, he would be the hunger . . . and if his destination was Hell, then he would learn to accept that. But he would not be alone. There would be others he’d be taking with him. Many, many others.

Inside the depot, Deanna tried to find out when the next bus came through town, but the fear of being alone overcame her, and she had to get out.

Dillon had never acted this way toward her before. He had always been thoughtful and treated her kindly. She didn’t know what this change meant, but they had prom­ised to protect each other, and she would protect him, no matter what he said or did. She drew some comfort from the strength of her own resolve.

She found Dillon playing basketball across the street, alone.

“We need to get going,” said Deanna, watching him cautiously, waiting to see how he would react.

“Yes, we do,” he answered. “But we’re not going east anymore . . . we’re going west.”

Deanna studied him, thinking that it might be a joke— but then she realized that Dillon did not joke that way. “But . . . but The Others—"

“We don’t need The Others.” His voice was calm, his body relaxed. Deanna could tell that he had fed the wrecking-hunger, but she saw no evidence of it . . . and something was different this time. He wasn’t racked by guilt. He wasn’t cursing himself. She wanted to question him, to take a step away and think about all this, before his infectious peace-of-mind drowned her panic com­pletely.

That’s when Dillon grabbed her and did something he had never done before. He kissed her. The kiss felt so per­fect, so natural, that she would have agreed with anything he said. She didn’t know whether to feel angry because of it, or to feel relieved.

“Listen to me, Deanna,” he told her. “Forget The Others; they’re nothing compared to us—you and I are the strongest, the most powerful!”

It was true—Deanna had sensed that much in the vi­sion. How loud they were—how bright they were com­pared to The Others as they screamed in the darkness. Her fears and Dillon’s hunger for destruction were cer­tainly far more powerful than anything the other four had to deal with.

Until now she had thought the strange gravity that had been drawing all of them together was impossible to resist. But if Dillon could resist it, then she could, too. They were the strong ones. This time she leaned forward to kiss him.

“Where will we go now?” she whispered.

Dillon struggled with his answer. “Deanna, I think I was meant to do some really big things . . . I have to find out what those things are, and I can’t be afraid to do them . . . but I’m afraid to do them alone.”

Her mind told her that this was wrong, but her heart was too close to Dillon’s now. Traveling to The Others might solve her troubles, but she was terrified of making that journey alone. And the thought of losing Dillon was unbearable.

“These things that you have to do,” asked Deanna, “are they terrible things?”

Dillon bit his lip. She knew he wouldn’t lie to her. “They might be,” he said.

Deanna nodded, knowing she would have given him the same answer, no matter what he said. “Then I’ll go with you . . . so you don’t have to face those things alone.”

As she said the words, she felt something changing around her like a great river suddenly shifting course. Per­haps this is what Dillon felt when he saw a pattern change, and she wondered how large this shift must have been if she could feel it too.

It was too huge a thing to think about, so she decided not to. She ignored it, pretending it didn’t matter, and after a moment, it all felt okay. In a few minutes they were hitchhiking west on the interstate.

Meanwhile, in a house not too far away, Dwight Astor poured himself a glass of scotch, downed it, and then poured himself another.