DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
9:10 PM, MONDAY
***ALERT MODE***
The stitch in Fran’s side grew from a minor inconvenience to a major source of pain, a monster that was eagerly clawing out her insides. She clapped her free hand to it - the other John held in a tight grip, pulling her along with ever more speed - and tried not to pass out.
She considered herself to be in fairly good shape, running two miles every day and working out three times a week, a habit she had picked up in the health-conscious Los Angeles suburb she and Nathan had lived in. But no amount of weight training or aerobic exercise could have prepared her for the nightmare run they were now engaged in. Stealth was abandoned. Speed was all that mattered.
All around them sounds of a town, awakened as from a deep sleep of fairy lore, pummeled at them. They were strange, frightening sounds that Fran didn’t want to hear but had to: the sounds of people moving, running, hundreds of them following, but not a one of them speaking a word.
They ran past a house and Fran saw a boy exit as they did. The boy held a hunting rifle that he aimed at them. Fran tried to warn John but the boy fired before she could, the noise deafening even a hundred feet away. The shot zinged past them and John, in one of those strangely speedy reactions that she knew had to come from some kind of special training, spun automatically and shot back.
The boy fell with a cry, a cry that was echoed in John’s own ragged shriek of dismay.
"No!" he screamed. His voice was a study in anguish, and that anguish reflected itself on his face. "Dallas," he cried, and tears fell from his eyes. He stepped toward the porch that the still form lay on, and Fran knew John would go and kneel by the boy and wait to die.
But that couldn’t happen.
Now she grabbed his wrist and began pulling him. "No," she said. "Don’t go!"
John was oblivious to her, pulling against her, dragging her with him.
Then she saw the boy’s feet twitch and he slowly moved to his feet. Fran saw most of his head blown away. He was dead. He had to be dead.
But he moved.
"Oh my God!" she screamed. "What’s going on?"
The sight of his former student seemed to jolt John as well, and he changed course, moving away from the boy with Fran. They quickly outdistanced the boy, who was moving slowly.
They ran on.
They ran forever, it seemed, until their run dissolved into a long montage of Loston’s townsfolk running after them, of hiding in ditches and beside buildings, moving ever onward, ever farther from the town.
Now the sun was peeking over the horizon, and Fran was sleeping on her feet.
She felt a tug as John jerked her awake.
"Come on, tiger," he said, "we’re almost there."
"Where are we?" she asked. He didn’t answer, and Fran finally realized that the question had never made it past her fatigue-muted lips. She looked around her.
They were slowly picking their way up a steep dirt incline, going up the side of a mountain. Fran shook off sleep, or tried to, in order to place her feet firmly on the loose silt of the trail.
"You sure know how to show a girl a night on the town."
She felt rather than sensed the smile on John’s face. "Nothing but the best," he said.
Fran’s eyes closed again, and when she opened them they were halfway up the mountain, John quietly picking his way up and guiding Fran as he did so.
"This is worse than before," she said, and closed her eyes again.
She didn’t see John look at her, his brow wrinkled in confusion. And if she had, she would not have cared. She was too tired to care, too tired to even remain aware as she trudged in a daze on the trail that led up into darkness.
***
It was a meeting quite unlike Malachi had ever seen. Indeed, to his knowledge, no one had ever seen a meeting like this before. It was a standard procedure of an Alert, but Malachi knew that a full Alert had never before been necessary.
The high school gymnasium was crowded. People stood on bleachers, on the floor, every square inch of surface was occupied, with more people crowded outside. Of course, it would have to be full. All of Loston was in attendance. Yet for all that, there were no sounds. No one shuffled back and forth from foot to foot. No one asked to be excused. No one said anything at all. They all focused intently on the man at the podium at the end of the hall.
He stepped to the microphone and began speaking. None of the usual tapping of the microphone; no "Testing, 1-2-3"; not even a tiny joke.
Malachi had never seen the fat little man who now began to speak, but he knew from Controller protocol that it would be the mayor who gave instructions in this situation. It didn’t really matter, of course, a two-year-old could have administered the directives and the townsfolk would have had no choice but to obey. Still, having the mayor do it lent a small semblance of normal life to the proceedings, and Malachi knew how important it was to the Controllers that everything seem real.
Jenna and Deirdre stood beside him, crushed against the people around them, all of whom took no heed of the visitors in their midst. Indeed, Malachi knew that he could probably stand on someone’s shoulders and urinate onto the crowd without any reaction. They were utterly focused on the mayor, and would not break that focus even if the entire world crumbled suddenly around them.
The mayor’s voice, dry as a desert tumbleweed, sounded through the PA system. "We will first conduct a house to house search. All will return to their homes and look for the woman. As soon as you find her, detain her at all costs. The man will become violent. If possible, kill him before engaging the woman. If they are not in any of your homes, we will begin a search of Loston and its environs in the following manner...."
Someone flicked on an overhead projector and a map of the city flashed to life behind the mayor. Malachi marveled at how evenly planned out the town was. All the streets ran in perfect lines. All the blocks stood as perfect squares. Fields existed in perfect ratios to one another, in a mathematically-balanced composition.
Of course, there was no other way the place could have been designed, Malachi thought. Though later areas had been built with more flair and imagination, the designers that had first planned Loston were not noted for imagination. Not those soulless monstrosities.
The mayor used a laser pointer to highlight the areas he assigned as he continued. "All those residing on Cherry Tree Lane and South Avenue will search from the North River to the Foothills. All those residing...."
Malachi shut out the mayor’s voice, looking at the map, seeking the most likely place. He knew that, like those that had built Loston, John would not be terribly imaginative in his flight. He would go to the most logical hiding place to make his plans with the woman.
Malachi’s eyes danced as he studied the map of the Loston area.
And then he smiled.
He knew where they were.
***
John helped Fran up the last part of the hill. She was dead on her feet, and John didn’t feel much better than that himself. He had gone as long as four days without sleep during his tour, but he knew that after two days, people started losing control. In three days, most people hallucinated, and after four a kind of madness overwhelmed them.
It had only been twenty-four hours since his last rest, but adrenaline and the fighting he had been engaged in had taxed him physically and emotionally. He needed sleep as much as Fran did.
He walked to the Resurrection mineshaft, the destination he’d had in mind since they started running. It was locked, as he’d expected, a thick wood plank covering the door and secured with a heavy Master lock.
"We’re going in there?" asked Fran, looking about her with eyes that barely remained open. Her voice was thick with fatigue.
John nodded. "There’s about ten miles of tunnels down here: it’s one of the largest mines in the country. It’ll be hard to find us in here. Impossible to pin us down. And," he said, picking up a rock from nearby the entrance, "I know this place."
He pulled at the rock and it split apart. Fran gasped, clearly astonished at his apparent ability to split solid granite with a mere tug. "It’s not real," he said with a grin. He withdrew a key and used it to unlock the door, throwing it open. The tunnel that led into the bowels of the mountain gaped before them, like the open throat of a pitcher plant, waiting for its unwary insect victims to venture inside.
"How well do you know this place?" whispered Fran.
"Pretty well."
"We won’t get lost?"
"No." He was silent a moment, then said, "My dad worked here."
He motioned her inside, then followed himself, swinging the door shut behind them. The external padlock meant he couldn’t lock the access door from the inside, but to a casual observer it would appear the mine was closed down as usual. Not that casual observers were likely, he knew. From what he could see, all of Loston was after them now, and anyone making their way up to the mine wouldn’t have any casual business at all. Only the serious business of finding - and apparently killing - him and Fran.
Or perhaps only him. He remembered the incredible care with which Mertyl had placed Fran during the run-in they had. He had no clue why Fran merited such better treatment, any more than he had a clue as to what was going on tonight. Further, he knew that he was not in possession of the facts necessary to clear up those mysteries, so he put away thoughts of what was going on for the moment. A few minutes more and he would feel safe enough to bend his mind to the task of figuring out what was happening. Until then, however, the questions must remain unanswered.
With the door shut, they stood in complete darkness. Fran had let out a little cry as the mineshaft entrance swung shut behind her. John couldn’t blame her. For all that everyone on earth lived half their lives in the night, very few had ever experienced the absolute darkness of a closed mineshaft. In four days of such darkness, the eyes could cease to function. You could go legally blind.
Miner lore was replete with stories of men coming out after being lost in the darkness only a week and never being able to see again. Other, more disquieting stories - stories told to every beginning miner, because they were true - told of those who remained for several weeks in the dark.
After as little as a week, you could go blind. But after thirty days, you would be insane.
John didn’t plan on spending thirty days in Resurrection. But the stories rang in his head as he groped for Fran’s hand. She held onto him tightly, and the warmth of her palm spread from his hand through the rest of his body, giving him strength that he did not possess alone.
"Come on," he said, and began feeling his way through the dark.
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
Jason stood behind Adam and watched the monitors. He held Sheila close to him, clinging to her for support. He knew that many of the other Controllers viewed his decision to marry as nothing more than rank foolishness. Eventually one or the other of them would begin the inevitable spiral into madness that all of them grappled with sooner or later, and that destructive plunge would be all the harder for the person left behind.
But in spite of that, he was glad that he had married her. She was dear to him, too dear to live without, and at times like this it felt good to have someone nearby to truly lean on. This was one of those times, when support was needed, for the world seemed to be spinning out of control beneath them, loosed from its moorings by the actions of Malachi and his insane followers.
All the monitors showed the same thing: the citizens of Loston, literally tearing their homes apart in the search for John and Fran, but what they didn’t show was any sign of the two.
Jason glanced at Adam. The older man scowled. A look at Sheila revealed her face set similarly. Both of them knew what Jason did; both of them knew that Fran was the most important person in the world.
She was the mother of the world, and only if she survived could the rest of humankind.