But this event was not my idea, was it? Dillon realized. Wasn’t it Okoya who suggested that I could be the glue that bonded the world? But if Okoya’s only interest in the human spirit was its nutritional value, why would he support Dillon’s efforts? How could preserving humanity serve Okoya’s agenda? The answer was that it wouldn’t.
“I don’t feel so good,” said Lourdes, stumbling off her chair to the ground, to join Winston who was already on his knees, clutching at his eyes, as if he would gouge them out.
A group of Happy Campers stumbled up. Seeing Winston and Lourdes in agony on the ground, one of them asked, “Is everything okay?” The man gripped his own stomach in pain. In fact, quite a few of the Happy Campers around them were doubling over.
And then Dillon finally made one more connection. “Shiprock,” he said. Winston looked up at him from the ground. “It’s where you and Tory met Okoya, isn’t it?”
“It was two weeks before anything happened there . . .”
But Dillon now suspected that wasn’t true; that a massacre had occurred long before any blood was actually spilled.
“Nothing has changed, Dillon,” Okoya said slowly. “You will still have the world at your fingertips, believe me.”
But was that what Dillon wanted? he wondered. It was a thrilling thought, to reign with supernatural power . . . but such a thing would mean a complete shift in the fundamental structure of the world. Power would no longer be divided among equals around the globe, because now there was a vast inequality, unlike anything the modern world had known. Five elite beings. They would not just be playing gods—in every way that mattered, they would be gods . . .
... and because of it, the very structure of civilization would crumble.
“It’s too late to do anything but move forward,” Okoya demanded. “There’s nothing more to think about.”
Dillon thought to the globe he had so painstakingly sketched patterns across. “There will be an event,” he had told the others, “something so inexplicable, that the world cannot look away.” In turn, that event would ignite an even larger, more devastating event—like a detonator’s charge ignites a warhead.
Until now Dillon could see almost every pattern around him, except his own. But now his own was finally revealed—through Okoya—and the house of cards he had built all his efforts on, collapsed, revealing the bleak pattern it masked.
Holding back the waters was not a way to ward off that igniting event—it was the igniting event.
And Dillon was the detonator.
“I don’t know what you are,” Dillon told Okoya, “but I won’t let you use us anymore.”
If Okoya was concerned, he didn’t show it. “You’ll do what needs to be done, Dillon. Because a few miles away, there’s a dam that’s about to crumble by your hand. It’s too late to stop that now. The way I see it, you only have two choices—allow the dam to burst, and kill hundreds of thousands of people downriver . . . or you can hold back the waters and save all those lives.” Okoya cracked his superior smile. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Dillon knew he was snared in Okoya’s trap, but he was not about to let Okoya claim victory. There were moans all around them now, and Dillon turned around to see almost all the followers doubling over in pain, their bodies reflexively mimicking Lourdes as she lay on the ground, every ounce of her body reviling her cannibalistic feasts.
Dillon knelt to Winston, whose eyes were filled with a grief and revulsion that skewered his spirit more painfully than any blade.
“What do we do, Dillon?” Winston begged. “What do we do now?”
“You have to get Lourdes out of here,” he said, glancing back at the crumbling followers.
“I can’t,” said Winston shaking his head, barely able to move himself. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
“But you will,” Dillon demanded. And somehow, the force of his will was enough to get Winston to his feet. He helped Lourdes up, and the two of them stumbled away, into the desert.
In a few moments, the followers’ groans began to lessen, and they began to lift themselves off the ground as Lourdes moved out of range.
Dillon looked at Okoya once more, hardening his resolve. Suddenly this spirit-predator didn’t seem quite so sure of himself.
Okoya bolted past Dillon. There was a sound in the air like a sonic boom, followed by a rush of wind, and the light around them changed. In an instant the reason for the sound and light was clear, for, ten yards away, a hole had been punctured in space, and beyond it, was a plain of crimson sand.
Okoya had punched a hole out of this universe, into the Unworld—and he was racing toward the hole.
Dillon dove for Okoya, grabbing his legs and bringing him down.
“Help me!” Dillon called, and instantly there were a dozen followers with him, wrestling Okoya to the ground, just a few feet from the gaping hole in the world. Okoya fought to escape, but in spite of his ability to rape souls and manipulate situations, he was a slave to the physical limitations of the body he wore, as easily restrained as any human.
“You have no power beyond what you steal, do you?” Dillon said. “You’ve turned us against one another, you’ve used our powers toward your own ends. It stops here.”
Okoya struggled against his captors, but it was useless. With Okoya subdued, Dillon’s attention turned to that hole in the world. There were followers around him, gaping in wonder, accepting it as yet another mystery of the strange, youthful gods who guided them. But Dillon’s awe was of an entirely different nature . . . because through that hole in the world was a distant mountain. And there was a palace carved into the stone of that mountain. Dillon knew that somewhere in that palace, resting on the dusty remains of a dead king, sat Deanna’s body—only a few miles away . . . through that hole.
Then Dillon realized that Okoya was watching him from beneath the tackle of assailants . . . and smiling. So Dillon tore his attention away from the mountain palace.
“Make sure he can’t get away,” said Dillon.
“How?” someone asked.
“I don’t know. Chain him to a boulder, for all I care.” And then Dillon strode off to gather his band of a thousand followers for the march to Black Canyon.
He looked back only once, to see the hole in the world close with a twinkling of light, locking Deanna a universe away once more.
21. Black Canyon
People didn’t know why it was happening, but everyone certainly knew what was happening. As cracks in the face of the dam divided and multiplied, engineers abandoned the power plant, terrified as they rode up the violently shaking elevators to solid ground. Tourists had long since run off, any boats left on Lake Mead were rapidly powering to shore, and from high above the dam, a swarm of news helicopters added to the mayhem.
A hundred miles downriver, alarms blared in the casinos of Laughlin, but all the roads to higher ground were so jammed that no one was moving, unless they were moving on foot. Even farther downstream, in Lake Havasu, the new home of the famous London Bridge, there was no relief from the panic. All around the lake, people packed what little memories they could, abandoning the rest, barely able to believe that the world’s greatest dam was only minutes from giving way. It seemed London Bridge would be falling down after all.
Deep in the bowels of the dam, Drew Camden kept his panic controlled, constantly telling himself that there would be light around the next bend—that they were one junction away from an escape. They would make it out of here, and somehow, he would get back to his new old life.