Paige looked at me carefully as she turned to leave. I wondered if she could sense what I planned to do.
“We still have three men in the trees,” said Billy. “And a pair of young boys. You’re running out of time here.”
It was easy to see who the boys’ parents were, especially the mother, who kept looking over her shoulder toward the door.
“And your sniper is right,” Billy added. “With that awful smoke, the crowd ain’t gonna wait much longer. There are starving babies out there. Pregnant mothers.”
“But I already promised to—”
“Too little, too late. As soon as they see food, it’ll be pandemonium.”
“It’s pandemonium everywhere now,” Jimmy croaked. “We fought a group of assholes who wanted to take Keri and Chelsea away. Marie died trying to save her daughter.”
Keri was such a distant memory it was like I had known her in a different life. And anyway, she was probably happy to be a sex slave if it meant she could eat.
By then we’d almost reached the common area. Billy was on high alert, his gun drawn. Seth and Jimmy kept looking at each other in an awkward way, as if neither believed the other was really there. The woman who wasn’t the mother was small and beautiful and strangely familiar. I felt a sense of destiny, as if every person present had been summoned for a purpose.
While my mind spun and my ears rang, someone cried out behind us. I whirled around and saw a couple of young boys running in our direction, their faces frightened and relieved and hopeful. But Seth and Natalie looked horrified and lurched forward to intercept the boys’ approach. Behind them marched three more men.
“I told you to wait in the trees,” Billy said.
“They wouldn’t wait,” growled one of the new men.
Two of these guys were carrying military rifles and looked ready for anything, but the other seemed more like a college professor. His eyes were wild and uncertain. Afraid.
Seth pushed the boys toward their mother and said this to Jimmy:
“I don’t understand what’s going on. How in the hell are you here?”
“I live ten miles away,” answered Jimmy. “You live in Oklahoma. What the hell are you doing here?”
Seth nodded at Thomas.
“We came with him. It’s a long story.”
“I assume you brought the money you owe me?”
“Not exactly. We came after the pulse.”
“Bullshit,” said Jimmy.
“Thomas has a running car. An old Mustang. The day of the pulse, he drove to Tulsa and brought us back.”
Billy didn’t seem to believe this.
“You have access to a working vehicle, and you walked all this way with Blaise?”
“There wasn’t enough fuel,” Thomas said. “There wasn’t enough room. And the car would have attracted too much attention.”
The entire scene felt unreal. Not only did Seth and Jimmy know each other, not only did Seth owe Jimmy a king’s ransom, but he lived hours away… by car. The odds of them accidentally crossing paths would have been astronomical in the old world, but after the EMP it should have been impossible. The only way to explain this meeting was that it was no accident.
But who could have arranged it?
“This is all his doing,” said Larry, pointing at Thomas.
During yesterday’s journey, as the sun beat on his bald head, as the ringing in his ears intensified, Larry devised a brilliant plan. He would, upon arrival at the warehouse, reveal to everyone how this awful world had been created by Thomas. Had been wrought by him. And maybe on its face the notion sounded absurd. But Larry was convinced, when people saw Skylar Stover, they would be compelled to believe. Her appearance would legitimize his claim, especially if she publicly agreed with him.
The ironic thing was, until now, Larry himself had not been convinced. Until now his primary goal had been to strike blindly at Thomas. But this exchange between Seth and the wounded man raised the possibility that Skylar was right, that the pulse and everything after might be a dream, a story designed by the hand of an invisible writer, an external Thomas. How else to explain this unstable scene?
“Don’t you get it?” Larry said to Seth and the wounded man. “All of this is a story Thomas wrote and now we’re trapped in it. How else would you two have crossed paths?”
“Larry,” Skylar said. “I was lying to myself when I said that. I didn’t want to accept reality because I was afraid to die.”
“But you were right,” Larry said. “This whole scene proves it. And so does this awful ringing in my ears.”
“My ears are ringing, too,” said one of the men. “It’s like a bell trying to beat itself out of my brain.”
“This is what I’m talking about!” shouted Larry. “Thomas writes movies for Hollywood. His new screenplay is about a pulse, and this is that story come to life.”
He moved his arms upward in an exaggerated way to emphasize the magnitude of his claim.
“Larry,” said Thomas, as if to a child. “If you and Aiden both hear the same ringing sound, maybe it’s something to do with the pulse. Like a physical problem in the brain.”
“I hear it, too,” Natalie blurted. “I’ve been hearing it since the first day.”
And that’s when Larry remembered reading, months or years ago, an article about the discovery and mapping of magnetic particles in human brains. Possibly they were genetic remnants of some long-lost navigation system, similar to that of birds. Could the pulse have damaged these particles? Reoriented them? Reversed their polarity?
The problem was this explanation did not line up with the story he wanted to believe. Larry had always considered himself a victim. Ever since he was a little boy, ever since those awful nights in the shadows, when his father’s hand had reached—
And that’s when he felt it, the cognitive split, as if his sanity were a branch broken in two. His mind went blank as he reached for Skylar. His arm found its way around her neck. He pushed his pistol against her temple.
Skylar screamed and thrashed. The boys screamed. Natalie grabbed her sons and ran into the darkness of warehouse shelving.
“Larry,” Thomas said. “Aiden and Natalie hear it, too. It’s not your fault. It’s the pulse. It’s done something to you. Put the down the gun.”
Before Larry could answer, he heard an odd sound on his right. Something like a laugh or a cough or a cry. He turned his head in the direction of the noise and saw Aiden, eyes open wide, smiling like someone who’d also lost his bearings.
He was cradling a military rifle. A machine gun. He raised it perceptibly.
He fired.
The rifle kicked in my arms. The sound of it was enormous, echoing around the DC for what seemed like forever. Billy and his tough-looking friend went sprawling. Both of them hit the concrete floor and smeared blood like a couple of sponges.
Outside, the sound of the crowd swelled in response to the gunshots. If I didn’t head for the roof now, I never would.
“Put down your weapons!” I yelled. “Every one of you, put your guns on the ground or I will open fire.”
Larry looked at me defiantly.
“I’m taking Thomas and Skylar outside,” he said. “I want to show those people why they’re here. I want Thomas to pay for doing this to us.”
I could have shot him. With my automatic weapon, I could have shot them all in seconds. But Larry’s charade, I realized, might delay the crowd long enough for me to reach the roof. And I’m not going to lie: It intrigued me to consider all this a film scene, the climactic conclusion of my extraordinary life. I was a special man meant for special things, even if no one else had ever acknowledged as much.