Now they’d be on the lookout for him everywhere “the virus” had hit. Foolish, because it was their meddling that would prevent him from fixing the mess.
The dense wood suddenly ended, and he stumbled over a gnarled root, to the muddy edge of the river.
“Down here—this way!” his pursuers shouted.
Dillon leapt from the bank into the raging torrents of the river, swollen by a storm upstream. The cold hit him instantly, sucking the heat from his limbs. His muscles seized into tight knots, but he stretched his arms and legs out so he wouldn’t cramp. He was quickly spirited downstream, pulled away from those chasing him. The opposite bank seemed much more distant than it had from shore, but he willed his arms to move. Yes, his limbs had grown strong from his work. Even in the cold waters, he could force his arms to stroke and legs to kick, long after many would have drowned, until he finally collapsed on the far shore.
His mind hazy, and his body leaden from the cold, he tried to catch his bearings as he knelt on all fours, coughing up lungfuls of river water. He tried to stand, but moved too quickly, and a wave of dizziness brought him back to the ground. He rolled over onto his back, forcing deep breaths, trying to will a steady flow of oxygenated blood back to his head.
He never heard them approaching. He didn’t know they were there until their silhouettes eclipsed the light of the gray sky.
“He’s all right,” said a voice just above him. A female voice.
Dillon gasped through his chattering teeth. The voice was familiar, and in his confusion, he felt sure he knew who it was.
“Tory?” he said. There were others around him now. “Winston? Lourdes? Michael?” He had hardly known the other four shards, and yet for months they had occupied most of his thoughts. Only now did he realize how much he needed them—to talk to, to be with. He thought he saw their faces before him, and it filled him with comfort and gratitude.
He sat up, and as his blurred vision cleared, his heart sank like a boulder in the furious river.
“No,” said the voice. “It’s me, Carol Jessup.”
There were more gathering around him now. He was mistaken—these were not his friends, they were all residents of the town. He knew them all—the Kendalls, the McMillans, the Schwartzes. He had spent time with’ each of them, restoring the life of a loved one. He had entered each of their lives, and returned them back to order.
“We’re glad the police didn’t take you away from us,” said Carol.
Dillon began to feel his gut slowly churn and he knew it wasn’t just the cold.
“Don’t worry,” said her husband, taking his hand. “We’ll protect you.”
“We’ll take care of you,” said one of the others, rubbing Dillon’s sleeve.
“We won’t let them hurt you,” said another, reaching out and touching Dillon’s hair.
This is wrong, Dillon thought. This is terribly, horribly wrong.
“We’ll follow you,” said another voice. “And we’ll help you do your wondrous works.”
“We’ll tend to your needs,” proclaimed another.
“We’ll be your servants.”
“Because we’ve seen your glory.”
“We’ve been blessed.”
“And you’ll bless us again.”
“And again.”
More hands. Dozens of hands, reaching out, touching his skin, his hair, his clothes. He felt himself raised from the ground, and as he looked into the clouded sky, he realized why this all felt so wrong.
His unique talent for making connections showed him a new pattern emerging in the world around him now. There were always a million possible roads, and a million possible futures, but now, every road focused toward one end: a murky darkness of chaos and ruin.
A year ago, during his own dark time, Dillon had sought to trigger the ultimate act of destruction. A quiet whisper that would precipitate a massive chain reaction, eventually shattering every relationship, every connection, every mind until the entire world became like the maddened mobs in Burton. Dillon had thought he’d failed to achieve that final act . . . but now he wasn’t so sure. What if his “great collapse” had simply taken a different course? The swarming patterns of destiny he saw when he looked at these people around him seemed to scream back the same answer.
The destruction never ended.
It just hid, dormant until now—and all the fixing he had done would soon be overshadowed by a new threat.
Some bleak chain of events spreading forth from this moment, that not even he could foresee.
He wailed again in the pain of this revelation, but the crowd ignored all his protests, as they carried him off in the cradle of their happy, needy hands.
In the random rush of water, a pocket of stillness formed where the Columbia River had caressed Dillon Cole’s body. With Dillon’s passing, the entire river slowed . . . and a tiny portion of the river ceased its swirling, defied entropy and came to order, touched by Dillon’s unique gift. It became an oasis of focused calm, beneath the surface of the raging river.
The calm pocket carried within it the simplest of bacteria, born from rotting leaves and dead salmon farther upstream. Only, now those bacteria didn’t swarm and divide haphazardly. Instead, the single-celled organisms drew toward one another, aligning and dividing in unison; positioning themselves in a choreographed mitotic dance—a perfect pattern, as if the millions of bacteria were all of a single mind.
Farther downstream, where the river spilled into the Pacific, plankton fed on the aligned bacteria, and in turn tiny shrimplike krill devoured the plankton. Farther from shore, a school of fish, ten thousand strong, gobbled up the krill with ease and swam south, their tight formation suddenly becoming more perfect, and more orderly than it was possible for a school of fish to be, as it headed south, toward shark-infested waters.
2. Wake-Up Calls
At nine a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Winston Pell bolted awake from a chilling dream to the sound of breaking glass. He knew the sound well by now—it came as regularly as clockwork. If it wasn’t his window, it was Thaddy’s, or his mother’s, or the window in the living room.
Thaddy, who should have known better, came scurrying into Winston’s room. “Stone! Stone! It happened again!” He yowled as his feet came down on the broken glass.
“Thaddy, your brain’s gotta be off in orbit.”
Thaddy hopped onto Winston’s bed. “Ow, ow, ow,” he whined, but let Winston look at his bleeding feet. Thaddy trusted his big brother’s judgment, now that his big brother had grown taller than him again.
“You’ll live,” said Winston.
“How’m I gonna walk?” Thaddy asked angrily. He frowned as if it was Winston’s fault. Winston sighed. Maybe it was. He patted Thaddy’s soles with a balled-up corner of the sheet. He wished he could heal Thaddy’s feet, but his own repertoire of gifts didn’t include Magical Suture.
Their mother walked in, turned on the light, and shook her head. First at the broken window, and then at Thaddy’s feet:
“We’re gonna make the glass-man rich,” she said, then carefully stepped over the glass toward Thaddy, examining his feet. “I just hope it won’t need stitches.”
The suggestion made Thaddy groan. She took Thaddy off to the bathroom for Bactine and butterflies.
Winston stepped into his slippers and gingerly crossed the floor toward the broken window.