The Soul Collectors

83

Darby ran.

The wind was cold and raw and kept shaking the tree branches and limbs high above her head. Most of the terrain was flat, nothing more than freshly shed leaves, and she kept running straight, figuring, at some point, she'd hit either a road or a clearing.

She covered a lot of ground and had a lot of speed despite the fact she was barefoot. Then her thoughts became consumed by traps — trapdoors and bear traps hidden underneath all these leaves, things with steel jaws and clawed metal teeth ready to tear flesh and snap bone — and she traded pace for caution. The Archons would have planned for something like this. Get a foot stuck in a trap, and she'd be dragged back under the earth and set up on one of those operating tables for an amputation, maybe even an emergency lobotomy.

Were they already out here looking for her? By now they had discovered the bodies. They knew she had the keys. They were searching every hall, every room, every hidden area. The staircase. She imagined one of them poking his head out of the hatch, looking around and seeing her footprints in the damp earth. Saw him climbing out and releasing the ghouls, sending them off into the woods like dogs to follow her scent, and she knew she couldn't slow her pace and ran faster.

The woods never ended; like something from a nightmare, they stretched on and on.

She ran until she was rubber-legged. She paused and leaned forward, gripping a tree as she sucked in air, her hair wet and matted against her face. Her skin felt hot and wet but her mouth was bone-dry and she couldn't get any moisture into it.

She pressed on, jogging this time. She had almost given up hope, thinking she would die out here of dehydration, her flesh picked apart by crows and animals, when she saw a path straight ahead and bolted for it.

Not a path but a dirt road that broke into different directions, some leading into new sections of trees. She looked up at the sky and searched for the Big Dipper. There. The Pole Star was located directly off the Dipper's top and she turned slightly to her left. Now she was facing north, the way the road led. She took it, noticing how the air had turned cooler.

She smelled the salt in the air before she heard the ocean.

The road wound its way around a cliff. Looking over the edge, she saw water lit up by the moonlight, the spent waves creaming against the rocks, and then they disappeared, lost in a blizzard.

She jerked backwards, blinking. No snow. She could see perfectly well. A hallucination. What had caused that? She hadn't drunk their water. What? Her heart was thumping erratically and when she touched her face it felt as dry as her tongue. Dehydration? Or had that bucket of water she used been laced with something?

Looking off to her left, she could see endless water. To her far right, more water lapping against cliffs and a half-standing lighthouse sitting on a small island. The area directly above the lighthouse was a field of broken boulders. No choice but to go down.

She had made it halfway when she saw some stairs cut into the rock. She took them down, relieved to see she didn't have to swim to reach the lighthouse. But she had to wade through water cold enough to turn bone to ice, and it rose all the way up her legs before she reached the next set of stairs. She stumbled up them drunkenly, her head pounding by the time she reached the top.

The door was locked. She went to try a key and found she was no longer carrying the key ring. She had no memory of having dropped or lost it.

It took four blows of her shoulder to knock it open.

A winding metal staircase, the wind howling above her. She found a storage room in the back, the wooden shelves stripped bare.

Shivering, she took the stairs, her breath pluming and then disappearing in the cold air.

Halfway up she found another room with an upended cot and an old AM radio covered in rust. Warmer in here than outside. She shut the door, heard the wind whistle through the gaps and cracks, and turned over the cot. She lay down on her back and stared up at the black ceiling, thinking.

Where was she? Had to be somewhere on the East Coast, okay, but where? Some sort of island? She hadn't seen any homes or cars. Nothing but woods and the ocean and this lighthouse.

Despair pressed against the walls of her heart and she closed her eyes and ignored it. Think of a plan. Wait for sunlight. Pray for a bright day and then head out of here. There has to be something here. Those people had brought her water, and Sarah Casey had brought her food. There had to be a grocery store somewhere near by. Darby switched back to Sarah Casey and wondered about the girl and her father, praying that they were still alive — still had the will to live. Jack Casey had had it crushed out of him, but his daughter — would she still cling to it if something happened to her father? What would she do if her father died? The question hung in Darby's mind as she drifted off to sleep. She dreamed that Coop had rescued her. He came with an army of helicopters that soared above the lighthouse, men rappelling down ropes and carrying guns.

Coop sat on the edge of her cot and nudged her awake.

'I came back for you,' he said. 'I found you.'

He took her in his arms and kissed her cheek and hair and held her as she let it all out, dry sobs at first, then the rest of it, the worst part, and she wailed into his neck and screamed into his chest, wanting to purge it from her heart.

When she pulled herself away, she saw Jack Casey's face pulverized and blood running from his nose and ears. His eyes.

'Luck always runs out,' he said. 'You have to come back home now.'

*

Darby sat up in the dark and saw light creeping underneath the door. Heard footsteps.

'Miss McCormick? Miss McCormick, you in here?'

She crept to the edge of the door and opened it slightly, looking down the winding staircase. In the bright sunlight saw a man dressed head to toe in black peering through the target site of an HK sub-machine gun. His partner was standing right behind him, SWAT in bright white letters on his back.

How had they found — the GPS transmitter in her arm. Sergey or the feds monitoring the signal had found it and sent people here.

She had to scrape the words from her dry throat.

'Don't shoot,' she said, her voice a whispery rasp. She came out of the doorway with her hands raised. 'Don't shoot.'

The one in the back turned to her, then dropped his gun and said, 'Jesus.'