In previous experiments, the links had failed, sometimes with disastrous results. But given the improved electronics that his team was installing, and the unusually powerful energy the source was giving off, Raleigh believed that this time he would finally be able to complete a journey that he’d begun as a boy inspired by his grandfather.
He pressed a button and activated a row of surveillance monitors. In night-vision green, they showed the ruined hangars as well as the area around the airbase. The superior lenses on the hidden cameras allowed him to magnify images impressively. He watched the dog handler and the German shepherd patrolling the fence.
He switched his attention to the viewing area down the road, where the crowd was out of control, charging toward the fence. He hadn’t counted on having human test subjects. The fact that there were hundreds of them provided an even greater benefit.
But what really mattered, he knew, were the test subjects he’d brought with him. The reaction of the men on his team would deter- mine whether or not the project could be reliably continued. They didn’t know that by setting up the experiment, they were crucial parts of it.
39
A shoe struck Brent’s forehead. For a moment, his vision turned gray.
“Keep the cameras rolling!” he shouted into his lapel mike as people trampled over him. He worried that the director in the station’s control room would stop the broadcast if he thought that Brent was being seriously injured on camera, so he did his best to sound in control.
From Brent’s perspective on the gravel, everything was a blur of pant legs and dresses. The truth was, he felt smothered. Another shoe struck him, this time on the side of his neck. He wheezed and rolled, trying to get away from the mob. The gravel tore at him. His shoulder banged against the underside of the motor home. Desperate, he squirmed beneath the vehicle as far as he could manage. From this vantage point, he saw shoes, boots, and pant legs rushing past. The side of his neck throbbed.
Any closer to my throat and I might have been killed, he thought. Suddenly the crowd was gone, and he crawled from under the truck.
“I’m okay! I’m okay!” he shouted into the microphone.
God, I hope the helicopter’s getting a shot of this, he thought. The left sleeve of his suit coat was torn open. Blood trickled from his forehead.
Hearing shouts and screams from the crowd, he was about to climb to the top of the motor home and continue broadcasting, but abruptly he saw Anita and Luther Hamilton lying on the gravel. The camera was on its side, its red light still on.
He ran to Anita and heard her groan. “Are you okay? Can you stand?” he asked urgently. “I need to get you away from this crowd!”
He put one of her arms around his neck and raised her. She wavered.
“Come on, I’ll take you where it’s safe.”
The producer and his crew scrambled from the truck. Brent gave Anita to them and hurried over to Luther Hamilton, who coughed and struggled to crawl. Brent helped him stand and guided him to- ward the back of the truck.
“We need an ambulance!”
“That’s for sure.” The producer pointed.
Brent turned and gaped at a half-dozen people lying on the gravel.
At the back of the parking lot, people charged against each other, pushing toward the darkness beyond the fence.
“I see them!”
“They’re beautiful!”
“Out of my way!”
“Can’t breathe!”
Brent picked up Anita’s camera and gave it to the producer. “Do you remember how to use one of these?”
“You bet. I even keep paying my union dues.”
“Then follow me to the top of the Winnebago.”
Brent grabbed the toppled ladder and propped it against the truck. The tremor in his right hand alarmed him. Feeling faint, he struggled up. At the top, he noted that the station’s helicopter had activated its landing lights, illuminating the crowd.
Hoarse from the blow to the side of his throat, he spoke into his lapel mike, describing what he saw. “The people at the back are forcing everyone ahead. Those in the middle are being crushed. The ones in front are being squeezed against the barbed-wire fence.”
Brent heard wood cracking.
“I think the fence is about to…”
Several posts snapped. The fence collapsed. The people in front dropped with it, screaming as they fell onto the barbed wire. The rest of the crowd surged over their backs, charging into the field.
In the distance, the lights continued to shimmer.
“I hear a sound,” Brent said into his microphone. “Luther Hamilton mentioned that sometimes a sound accompanies the lights. I wonder if that’s happening now. No, I’m wrong. The sound has nothing to do with the lights. It’s-”
40
Standing next to a car at the side of the dark road, Page gaped toward the observation area, where the crowd was out of control. If he’d been alone, he’d have run to help the police, although he couldn’t imagine how even ten times as many officers would be able to handle what he was witnessing.
Right now, Tori was all he cared about.
“You were right to stay away from the crowd,” he said.
He turned.
She wasn’t next to him.
He frowned toward the shadowy road, then stepped toward the space between the parked cars, but he still didn’t see her.
“Tori?”
He hurried back to her Saturn. She wasn’t inside. He studied the darkness on the far side of the row of parked cars. No sign of her.
“Tori!”
Page doubted that she’d have gone toward the crowd, which had become a single mass that was trampling over the barbed-wire fence, crushing people, and disappearing into the night.
But if she hadn’t gone in that direction, there was only one other possibility.
Thunder rumbled.
Page swung toward the murky grassland and ran toward it. Tori had been right when she’d guessed that the observation area was an arbitrary spot from which to try to see the lights. They could be detected from other points along the road, and tonight, to his surprise, he’d had no trouble spotting them. When Tori had pointed excitedly toward the dark horizon, he’d seen them immediately.
I must have learned to see them, he thought. The way I learned to see the cuttlefish.
Or am I just fooling myself?
In the distance, the colors bobbed and drifted. Not only did Page see them much more quickly than on the previous night, but he also saw them more clearly. It was as if a haze had been removed from his eyes. Radiant, they swirled, far away and yet close. His skin seemed to ripple.
“Tori!”
Thunder rumbled louder, the storm approaching rapidly.
Page made his way toward the fence. Thanks to his pilot training, he knew that the best way to see at night was to try to detect objects from the periphery of his vision. Staring straight ahead at something in the darkness achieved less results than if he worked to detect it from the corners of his eyes because the eye cells designed for night vision, known as rods, were located on the eye’s perimeter.
He looked obliquely past the barbed wire. To his right, he heard shouts from the viewing area. Over there, wraith-like shadows moved farther into the grassland, attracted to the lights. He also heard groans.
“Damn it, I told you to stop shoving me!” someone yelled.
Lightning flashed, revealing silhouettes in a struggle. A man punched another man in the stomach. When the second man doubled over, the first man knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the head. Other people grappled in similar frenzied fights, so many that Page knew he couldn’t stop them.
Then darkness swooped back, seeming deeper than before because Page’s night vision was compromised. Unable to wait for his eyes to adjust, he gripped a post and climbed it, using the barbed wire as a ladder, jumping to the ground on the other side. His holstered hand- gun dug into him.