He gave a final push, swung his leg up, and hooked his ankle around it, pulling himself onto the twisted platform.
Then he saw Michael and Tory. The catwalk had swung a full twenty feet away from the dam, and the corridor where they both stood opened onto empty air. They were trapped.
“I won’t leave without you!” Drew shouted.
“Don’t be a moron!” Michael screamed back. “Get the hell out of here!”
“But . . .”
“Just shut up and go!”
“I’m sorry,” he wailed, wishing there were something he could do. “I’m sorry . . .” He took one last look at them before reluctantly scrambling up the catwalk. With his left arm dangling by his side, he pulled his way along until he reached what was left of the dam’s rim. No one was foolish enough to be up there anymore. The guardrail was gone, and the disintegrating road was full of fissures spreading wider and wider.
Drew leapt over one fissure after another until he reached solid ground, and then threw himself against an outcrop of boulders, clinging to the quaking canyon face for dear life, as the entire dam began to give way behind him.
In those last few moments, Michael and Tory clung to one another as concrete bolides the size of Cadillacs dropped past them, whistling against an updraft that surged up the face of the dam. The mouth of the tunnel fell away.
“Watch out!” Michael pulled Tory back as the doorway crumbled. Then, from behind, a blast of pulverized concrete dust shot past, like steam through a pipe. It shot into the updraft, and was carried away like smoke. Updraft? thought Tory. There were only seconds left now. That’s Michael’s updraft! Tory realized. That wind is his will fighting the dam! But how powerful was it? How powerful could he make it in the seconds they had left? Not strong enough to stop the mountainous concrete chunks, but maybe—
She grabbed him, making him look at her. “What’s the wind, Michael?” she demanded. Michael shook his head, not understanding.
“What does it feel like? In your gut—in your head. How does it feel inside?”
“Fear,” shouted Michael. “Terror . . . .”
“Then be frightened, Michael! Be more frightened than you’ve ever been in your life. And be it now!”
Michael turned to see the dust flowing into the updraft, and finally it clicked.
He grabbed Tory, clutching her with white knuckles, then he screamed a blood-curdling shriek of absolute fear—and instantly the whistling of the updraft raised in pitch as its strength increased.
The floor gave way beneath them as Michael held Tory, screaming his terror into her ear, and she screamed back into his. Neither of them had the gift of flight—but if Michael’s updraft could make them fly as well as that boat on Pacific Coast Highway, perhaps that would be enough. They clung to that thought as they leapt from the dying dam into the wind.
A mile downstream, Dillon and four hundred of his followers watched it happen. Chunk after chunk of concrete exploded away, until the entire upper face slid like a sand castle, into the powerhouse below. The powerhouse exploded. An instant later, the lower shell of the dam tumbled, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust shooting heavenward. Another explosion from the buried powerhouse, and then silence.
Behind Dillon, the chosen ones grew silent.
Through the dust, they saw what appeared to be a dark, V-shaped wall of still water—but the air was not clear enough to be sure just yet.
But Dillon was sure.
His power had grown beyond all limits, because holding back the waters of Lake Mead took so little effort, it felt like a mere reflex.
A power like that did not belong here.
Behind him, the four hundred squinted to see through the dust cloud, none of them knowing that they were already dead. Dillon had separated his followers precisely. These were the ones who had been visited by Okoya. These were the soulless. The shells of life, with nothing living inside.
They did not belong here, either.
The Shiprock Slayer had begun the task of removing the soulless—Dillon realized that now. And he also realized that he was the only one who could complete it. Now he focused all his effort on the wall of water. He knew what he had to do, but it wasn’t easy to fight the order his very presence brought. He hurled his thoughts ahead of him, turning them chaotic and disjointed. He battered the water-wall with his mind, struggling to give entropy a foothold once more, so that this lake would fall out of his control, and spill free.
At last he felt his barrier fall, like the tearing of a membrane. Suddenly, the ground rumbled once more, and through the dust cloud burst a white, churning wave five hundred feet high, surging down the canyon toward them.
As the water approached, Dillon had to remind himself that he was not killing the people around him. Okoya had already done that. But for the thousands that would die downstream, Dillon had to accept responsibility.
For so long Dillon had struggled to find redemption—fixing all those who were broken so that he might forgive himself for the destruction he had once caused. But it had never been for them. He had done it for himself; to finally feel worthy. It was a selfish need, masquerading as selflessness.
No more.
For there was only one way to save the world now, and it meant that Dillon Cole had to die in disgrace and never be redeemed.
Let me be despised by the world, he silently prayed. Let my name be spoken with nothing but hatred. Let this act be so horrible, that it shatters the pattern of destruction I’ve helped to create, and sets the world hack on its proper track. A world where not a single soul worships me.
The wedge of churning foam pounded forward, a quarter mile and closing. Behind Dillon, the dead-alive followers waited for Dillon to stop it.
But instead, Dillon raised up his hands to receive it.
Lourdes did not see it, but she knew something had gone wrong. She knew because of the strange pillar of dust shooting toward the sky like a mushroom cloud. She knew because of the roar of rushing water, and she knew because of Okoya’s scream of fury from somewhere within the circle of buses, a hundred yards from where she and Winston lay doubled-over in the sand.
Apparently Okoya had not gotten what he wanted, which meant Dillon had chosen to destroy himself, rather than the world. He had chosen not to be Okoya’s ruling-puppet.
Lourdes sat up. The revulsion she felt as she had stumbled away from camp had resolved into a pain in her gut, and a sense of unreconciled need—a craving for what only Okoya could supply.
Winston sat in the dust, his hand over his eyes, weeping. All his supposed wisdom, and he couldn’t see this coming. Oh, he had grown, all right. He had grown arrogant and self-absorbed—they all had.
“How could this have happened?” cried Winston. “How could we have done this to ourselves?”
Lourdes tried to find some sympathy. She tried to find a feeling to comfort both of them, but all she found inside was the angry pit of her stomach; and so she left Winston, not caring about his tears. Fighting her hunger, she strode back toward the circle of buses.
The place was deserted. All had gone to follow Dillon. Everyone, that is, except Okoya. Okoya was stretched out against the face of a bus—his arms and legs tied in four different directions with heavy nylon tent cords. He’d pulled and tugged at his bonds, but the job had been well done—he was not getting free. It almost amused Lourdes to see this master of minds rendered impotent by mere nylon ropes.
Lourdes approached, keeping her stride steady, counting each step as she drew closer until she stopped, only a few feet away.