RUN

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

1:15 PM TUESDAY

***ALERT MODE***



The shot rang out, and John felt his fingers slip away, heard Fran shriek once and then go silent, and waited for the end. He expected a sudden burst of pain, a white light, and then the deep black of oblivion, a darkness so pervasive and all-encompassing that the deepest tunnels of Resurrection would seem light by comparison.

But none of that came.

Instead, he felt the boot come off his hand, granting him sudden relief from the pressure and accompanied by an equally sudden jab of pain as the nerve endings in the abraded skin were exposed to the damp air of the cave.

He looked at Jenna, still not sure what had just happened. Blood poured from her mouth, but this time it was more than the blood leaking from the wounds John had inflicted upon her. She was hemorrhaging, and dark arterial blood welled over her lips and fell in a stream onto her chest. Jenna stumbled once, looking surprised at the blossoming stain on her bosom where blood flowed thick and fast. Then she fell past him, tripping into the open shaft and disappearing without a sound.

A man stood behind her, lowering his gun. It was a strange gun, but clearly a gun nonetheless. He was an older man, his hair white and his face deeply creased with age and worry. Even in the dim light, John could see that his eyes were the most startlingly blue he had ever seen.

Several others stood behind the man, all dressed in strange clothing and body armor, all holding the same strange weaponry as the man who had shot Jenna.

He saw all of them watching him, but he didn’t care to know who they were, or how they came to be here, or why they had saved him. He turned to look back down the shaft. Fran was gone, he knew, and his vision swam as tears blurred his sight. But still he had to look.

He swept his head back and forth, looking down in spite of the impossibility of finding her alive. All that mattered was Fran.

Please, God, he prayed. Please let her be there.

The thought that he had not prayed since Annie’s death came to him, and he wondered if God would even listen to him at all, much less answer such a prayer. When we turn our backs on Him, thought John, does He turn His back on us as well?

A moment later he had his answer. Or at least, he had as close to an answer as he was ever likely to get: Apparently He doesn’t.

John sobbed as he saw Fran, upside down and unconscious, her legs tangled in one of the sections of ladder that remained bolted to the wall. She was far out of reach, he knew, but he tried to lower himself farther anyway, unwilling to give her up.

The piece of a ladder that she hung from started to creak, beginning to give.

"No!" shouted John, and redoubled his efforts, straining as though by mere thought or physical effort he might be able to add another inch to his reach.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back from the edge. It was the man who had saved him. The blue-eyed old man.

John fought against him. "I can’t let her die!" he said, almost in tears.

The man shook him. "You won’t. But you’re exhausted and you’re likely to miscalculate. Let one of my people take care of her."

John struggled a moment longer, before the man’s words penetrated his pain-fogged and fatigued brain. He nodded. Immediately the man nodded to one of his crew, a thick, burly man who stepped forward instantly. His clothing, mostly some kind of body armor that John was unfamiliar with, almost glistened in the darkness of the shaft. It wasn’t any material John had ever seen. But it was similar to the fabric worn by the man who killed John’s father.

Answers might be within his reach, he realized. He might at last know who had killed his father, and how his father had risen from the dead to save him. Perhaps he would even learn what had happened to transform the town and the people he knew and loved into undying killers. But not now. Now, Fran needed to be saved, and if that didn’t happen, the rest could fall into the shaft and be lost with her for all he cared.

The burly man withdrew a tiny device from an inner pocket. He pressed a small button on its face, then dropped it to the ground near the rim of the shaft, where it affixed itself with a solid thunk. Then the man slid out over the lip himself, easing himself downward farther and farther and then finally letting go. John saw him float downward toward Fran, and wondered if, on top of all that had happened in the last few days, he was now about to find out that people could fly, too. In a moment, however, he realized that the man wasn’t actually floating, but was hanging from some kind of micro-fiber. The filament was affixed to the man’s belt, and a continuous feed of the thread came forth from the device the man had affixed to the shaft rim above him. He descended like a spider, suspended from a single silken line that was clearly too thin and weak to hold him.

Yet hold him it did. John watched as the man drifted down to Fran, then carefully unhooked her legs and pulled her into his arms. John heard the men and women who stood nearby him sigh, and realized that they had been just as afraid as he. Fran’s safety meant something to them, he could see. The thought comforted him as nothing else in this long nightmare had been able to do. Perhaps he was safe. Perhaps he and Fran would no longer have to run.

John heard the white-haired man speak to another one of the men and women who stood nearby: "Call the jet."

The man holding Fran started up again, the machine attached to the shaft’s edge reeling in the slim fiber that held them aloft against gravity’s insistent tug. Soon they were both at the level of the tunnel floor, and John pulled Fran over to him. A wound on her scalp bled profusely, but John could see instantly that it wasn’t deep. Head wounds bled copiously, but were often of superficial importance. More frightening was the possibility of internal injuries. He began inspecting her expertly, checking her for obvious signs of trauma, then probing gently to see if he could find any edema or other signs of internal damage.

"Please," said the man who had helped them, the white haired man with the sorrowful eyes, "why don’t we do that after we arrive?"

"Arrive?" said John, continuing his examination. He was beyond fear or any other strong sensations, the night having burned out his capacity for normal feeling, cauterizing the ragged edges of his emotion and leaving only unfeeling scar tissue behind. All he felt now was concern for Fran, and he wasn’t going to stop trying to help her to make small talk with this man, whoever or whatever he was. "Arrive where? Who the hell are you, Mister, and why is everyone I know so intent on killing me?"

"All will be explained."

"Explain it now. Who are you?"

"Deus ex machina," answered the man, speaking with the tone of one who was making a private joke, though his eyes did not glint with any kind of merriment. Rather, they seemed to look even more sorrowful, if such were possible.

If the response was a joke, John didn’t get it. Fear and amazement fraying his patience to mere threads, he repeated his question more emphatically, making it clear that he wasn’t going to tolerate any more nonsense.

"Answer me, dammit."

The other man’s eyes grew cold and flinty, and now John discovered that they were capable of filling with more than just sadness and wisdom. They contained strength beyond anything John had ever before seen. Clearly this was a man who was accustomed to being obeyed. But John also sensed something more than the existence of a man of power. This man was not one of those pale dictators and petty tyrants whom John had dedicated much of his life to putting down. Instead, the man before him seemed to wear the mantle and bearing of a true king, evoking a sense that he must be obeyed not merely because he was the monarch, but because he was right.

"Really, John," said the man. "We’ve devoted quite a large of amount of effort to you. The least you can do is come with us."

The men and women standing near the man leveled their weapons at John. It wasn’t a request.

"Who are you?" asked John again, his tone pleading this time. It was a defeatist gesture, he knew, begging at least a morsel of information in return for his acquiescence to their wishes.

The man nodded and looked as though he felt pity for John, his face clearly conveying a sense that he hated all this, but that for some reason it was necessary. "My name is Adam," he said, and nodded at his crew. Two of them holstered their weapons and moved as though to pick up Fran. John gathered her into his arms and stood before they could do so, standing before Adam, daring the man to try and take her from him.

Adam nodded, conceding John’s right to hold the unconscious woman, and gestured for him to move.

John looked down the tunnel the way the man had pointed "We going back into the mine?" he asked.

"What? No, we’re leaving," said Adam.

"Then we go this way," said John, walking in the direction opposite to the way Adam had indicated. He walked a few feet, turned the corner, and headed to the entrance, feeling a bit better knowing that, for all their mystery and apparent technology, these newcomers couldn’t get out of a hole in the ground without his help.

A few feet from the mine entrance, scant meters from being able to finally leave Resurrection, he stopped in his tracks.

There was something in front of the mine entrance. It looked like a small private jet, only it had absolutely no windows or visible doors. It hovered in midair before the mine, soundlessly hanging in the still air of midday, so still that it seemed to be less a construct of steel and metal than an inanimate rendition done by some itinerant artist who specialized in painting mechanical miracles on canvas of air.

Adam came and stood at his side. "After you, John," he said. At that moment, the side of the jet split open and a ramp dropped out.

John looked around him. He still didn’t know what was going on, but again the presence of the guns leveled at him convinced him that the graciousness and politeness that had so far abounded could quickly change to hostility.

He stepped the rest of the way out of the mine, approaching the opening. Two more people dressed in the same strange garb as Adam came down the ramp out of the jet and held out their hands to help him in.

John glanced down the mountainside as he shuffled into the strange craft. He saw a thin line of people, some of them his friends, all of them known to him, following several hounds up the mountain trail. The queue ululated in perfect synchronization, every person marching to the hypnotic cadence of an unknown drummer.

It was the entire town, making its way up the mountain. John’s stomach lurched with renewed dread. They were coming for him, he knew. This nightmare was not yet over.

Adam saw them too, but did not react with terror as had John. He calmly pulled what looked like a button from his pocket.

"Control," he said into the tiny device.

"Yes," answered a woman’s voice, apparently emerging from the button. It must be some sort of radio or communications device, but the voice that came from the small machine Adam held was unaccompanied by the tinny sound that John expected from field communicators. It was crystal clear, as though the speaker was standing by them, unseen but present.

"Sheila, this is Adam. We have them."

"Thank God."

"Thank Him later. Right now initiate shut-down on Loston. And roll everyone back two days."

"Okay."

Adam repocketed the button and looked down the hill again. John followed his gaze and saw the men and women and children making their way up the hill suddenly stop. They swayed as in a breeze for a long moment, then slowly crumpled like papers in a strong wind and slumped to the ground.

Adam pushed John gently into the craft before them. The rest of the Controllers followed, and the ramp retracted into the ship, sealing it behind them.

***

Malachi poked his head into the tunnel, watching John carry Fran out, followed closely by Adam and his group of Controller drones.

Malachi couldn’t take them on, he knew. Deirdre and Jenna were undoubtedly dead, and for him to attack all the Controllers on his own would be tantamount to suicide. But, if he was lucky, if he was blessed, the situation could still turn to his advantage.

He watched carefully, ready to dart back into the side room where he had secreted himself upon emerging from the depths of the mountain only minutes before John and Fran had arrived. He could be gone in an instant should Adam or anyone in his group turn this way. But no one did, and he followed them cautiously down the tunnel. He saw them get into the dropjet, and it started to rise. Malachi ran out of the mine, pulling a tracer pin from his belt. He threw it at the rising craft, heard it click to the metal and knew that it would instantly solder itself to the metal of the jet.

The jet was taking Adam home.

And home was where the heart was. The Controllers had moved their headquarters since his defection from their ranks, and every one of the Fans who had tried to pinpoint its new location had met with failure. But there was nowhere else this jet could possibly be going than back to its own time and place, to care for Fran. The risk of her dying was one that frightened them enough that they would take her there to care for, in a place where she could receive the best possible medical attention. They would probably also wipe her memory.

Of course, Malachi hoped to stop all that. Fran had escaped, for the moment. But now he could follow her. Could follow them all, and that meant he could at last find the Control HQ and do what he wanted to.

He would see the world in flames.