“Wild ride these past few weeks, huh?”
“Yeah, a regular spin cycle,” Drew said. “I wouldn’t recommend it for pregnant women, or people with back trouble.”
Michael grinned, and then quickly, before he had the chance to change his mind, he leaned forward and gave Drew a kiss.
It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel wrong, it just felt strange. But at the moment it also felt necessary. “Hold on to that one,” Michael told him quietly, “because it’s the only one you’re going to get from me.”
“I can deal with that.”
Then from somewhere across the chamber, they heard Tory. “If you two are done fighting, you may want to check this out. I found a vent we could probably squeeze through, if I can get the grate open.”
“Can I help?” asked Drew. He confidently slid past Michael, toward the sound of Tory’s voice.
With hands held out before him, Michael crossed the chamber, to work the gate with Drew and Tory, and soon all three of them were way too focused to hear the faint triplet of sounds slowly building as it echoed back and forth in the concrete around them.
With the dam set on autodestruct, Dillon hurried back to the campsite. As he neared it, he could see rows of police and state troopers lining the road a few hundred yards away. They kept a safe distance, as did the news helicopters circling above—for they had already learned that anyone who went in, came out a devout follower, or did not come out at all. Dillon knew that the best law enforcement could do, was to hold back the influx of curiosity-seekers . . . but that would soon be impossible, because, by the time this day was over, they would be seeking more than just their curiosity— they would be seeking the face of God. But what they would find would be a divinity of five. Dillon could sense the eyes of the nation aligning in a single direction, focusing on this spot in the desert where Dillon’s extraordinary event was already beginning to unfold.
When he approached the circle of buses, he heard cheers from within. The followers had gathered around Okoya, who stood atop a boulder. Dillon couldn’t hear what Okoya said, but whatever it was, it stirred up the followers. And although their excitement charged the dry desert air, Dillon found himself troubled—not because of their enthusiasm, but because it was focused on Okoya, and not him. Dillon had to fight his way through the dense crowd, until they saw who it was and began to part for him. It seemed to Dillon that there were twice as many people here today as there were yesterday.
Okoya stepped down from his high spot. “Is it done?”
Dillon nodded. “The road is jammed with cars. We’re going to have to walk—and we don’t have much time.”
“I’ll get them going.” Okoya turned to leave, but Dillon grabbed him.
“I wanted to make an announcement: to prepare everyone for what’s about to happen—what they’re going to see.”
“I’ve done that already,” said Okoya.
Dillon felt a wave of anger rise in him. “Who gave you permission to do that? It should be me announcing the descent into Black Canyon.”
“You were supposed to be back at dawn,” Okoya said impatiently. “You’ve already wasted enough time; don’t waste any more.” Okoya pulled out of Dillon’s grasp, and went to gather the crowd.
As Dillon headed for the canopy where the other Shards had slept, he began to wonder why Okoya was the one to step forward. The way each of the Shards had been jockeying for position, Dillon would have assumed any one of them would leap at the chance to usurp some measure of power.
But Michael and Tory were nowhere to be found, while Winston and Lourdes appeared far too content at the center of their own petty universes to be bothered with actually doing anything. He found the two of them sitting beneath the canopy. Lourdes was lost in a deep emotional involvement with breakfast, while Winston faced away from her, practically vanishing behind the morning paper. Sitting on velvet chairs, on sandy tapestries pilfered from Hearst Castle, they were a surreal disconnect, like a Magritte painting; both comically and tragically absurd.
“Where are Michael and Tory?” Dillon asked.
Lourdes squeezed the juice from her grapefruit into her mouth before answering, “I haven’t seen them all morning.”
“They took off,” said Winston. “Okoya seems to think they left with their own little splinter group.”
“What?”
“People do get tired of taking orders,” Winston said, barely veiling his own threat of desertion.
“You should try some of Okoya’s hash browns,” said Lourdes.
Dillon’s head was swimming now, his mind fighting to grasp how things could have slipped so far. How could Tory and Michael abandon them?
The rich aroma of steaming, butter-fried potatoes played in his nostrils, and as he looked at the bowl of hash browns, it hit him that they smelled a bit too good, hitting his olfactory with such intensity, Dillon found his own hunger becoming acute. Indeed, it seemed all of their appetites had elevated beyond the commonplace, to things far more enticing. Dillon leaned closer, picking up the bowl in his hands, focusing his thoughts on the potatoes before him. Although they looked like hash browns, its pattern was like something else entirely. In fact, to Dillon, those little shoestrings seemed to be squirming and writhing—weaving in and out of one another. . . Like worms, he thought—but with a life-pattern far more complex. A life-pattern that was . . . that was . . .
The moment he realized what he was looking at, Dillon yelped as if his hands had been seared, and he hurled the bowl away. It shattered on a boulder, splattering red liquid light that dripped to the ground, disappearing into the sand.
Winston put down his newspaper.
Whatever the spell had been, it was now broken, for now Lourdes’s fork didn’t hold hash browns. Instead the tines dripped with vermillion light. It oozed from the corners of her mouth like blood. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and watched as it soaked into her skin, vanishing. She looked to Winston, and then to Dillon, already beginning to turn a pale shade of green. “If that wasn’t hash browns,” she asked, “exactly what have I been eating?”
“Not just you,” said Dillon, turning to Winston. Winston looked down at the newspaper that had seemed so innocuous a moment ago. There were no words on the page—no pictures, just rows of random letters and symbols that his brain had translated into meaning. Even now he was still drawing something from the page as he gazed at it—a faint stream of red light passing from the page to his eyes, like a long draft of a cold drink. Finally Winston shuddered, breaking free— and the moment he did, the paper itself began to dissolve away, bubbling into that same liquid light.
Okoya arrived a moment too late to preserve his illusions. “What a waste,” he said. “I worked hard to prepare these things for you.”
“Okoya,” said Winston, with a fearful quiver Dillon had never heard in Winston’s voice before, “what have we been . . . consuming?”
“The souls of your followers, of course,” Okoya answered serenely.
Dillon stared at Okoya, but he wasn’t seeing him. Instead Dillon saw patterns of thought and action rearranging themselves in his own head. Everything Dillon had done, from the moment he had been dragged from the Columbia River three weeks before, until now, had been based on the single, unwavering belief that his efforts would hold together a world that was about to fall apart. What he had planned today was founded on that belief. He had been certain that holding back the waters of Lake Mead, would propel him into the spotlight—a position of power that would allow him to seize enough control to keep the world from slipping into chaos.