“What the hell are we going to do?” Holly asked.
*
Two thousand thirty-one miles above the southern Great Plains, Miranda Twenty-six trained its instruments on the countryside north of Topeka, Kansas. Its lens platform made microscopic adjustments, keeping its viewing frame on the target it had been commanded to cover whenever it was in range. The target was a house centered in a broad square of uniform surface vegetation, a grass 97.441 percent likely to be Bouteloua gracilis, given the region and time of year. There were two human beings outdoors within the target frame, just entering the broad square of grass from the southern edge and moving north toward the house at walking speed. Their shapes suggested an adult and an adolescent, both female. Miranda Twenty-six relayed the image stream to the secure downlink designated 0814-13151, as instructed 12 days, 4 hours, 27 minutes, 41 seconds earlier. Since that time, there had been no further contact from the human operator.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Three minutes since Dryden had tried calling Gaul. No response. Holly had tried, too, with the same result. Then she’d called Dryden’s phone to make sure the damn things worked at all. She’d gotten through immediately.
They moved from window to window, staying on opposite sides of the house from one another, watching the dark fields for any sign of approach.
“This is stupid,” Dryden said. He came out of the kitchen and met Holly in the living room. “Even if we spot her, so what? What good would it do?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Dryden turned and looked back toward the kitchen—then past it to the door leading to the garage.
“What if we just get the hell out?” he asked. “Get in one of the cars, leave the headlights off, and make a run for it across the fields.” He looked through the screen door, toward the porch and the south field. “If they’re coming from the edge of town, we’d want to go north. We could be out of her range in less than a minute.”
“Unless she hears the engine and locks us again.”
“We stay here, it’s going to happen anyway.”
Holly shut her eyes hard, thinking. “Even if Gaul’s dead, we don’t know the plan is off. We can’t even be sure he is dead. If it’s still on, and we leave, we’re going to screw it up. We may not get another chance at this.”
Dryden started to respond but stopped. Out in the dark beyond the porch, two hundred feet from the house: movement. Two silhouettes. He didn’t need detail to recognize their size and shape.
Holly turned and followed his gaze. Dryden heard her breathing go shallow.
Her hand found his and took hold of it. He squeezed back.
The silhouettes came on, still deep in the darkness beyond the house’s glow. As Dryden watched, something in their movement struck him, but he couldn’t place what it was. He didn’t get the chance. A second later the night flashed blinding white, and then a blast front of sound slammed down over the house, blowing in the windowpanes on the south side. Holly screamed and threw her arms around Dryden. A second flash followed, and over Holly’s shoulder Dryden saw the two silhouettes turn to run. A moment later the flashes were coming one after another like strobe pulses at a light show, and the sky sounded like the inside of a machine-gun barrel.
“What is it?” Holly screamed.
“The plan,” Dryden said.
In the wild flickers of light, he saw Rachel and Audrey still running away. Running south, back the way they’d come from. They covered sixty feet and made it no farther. Thick white streamers of powder were raining down over the field, as if a giant were slinging handfuls of flour into the wind. Where the stuff hit the ground it billowed out in all directions. Rachel and Audrey were right in the middle of it. In the last of the flashes, Dryden saw them both double over and fall.
Darkness. Silence.
Dryden’s ears were keening. He almost missed the ringtone of the phone in his pocket. He took it out; Gaul’s number showed on the display. He answered.
“Where the hell were you?” Dryden asked.
“Sorry about that,” Gaul said. “I wanted you both panicking, in case Rachel was reading you. Better to keep her confident.”
There was a noise in Gaul’s background. It sounded like chopper turbines powering up.
“Go to the couch and tear the middle cushion off,” Gaul said. “There are two gas masks underneath.”
Dryden turned and crossed to it. The cushion came off as if it had been held by fewer than a dozen threads. He reached into the space below and took out the masks.
“I’m ten miles south,” Gaul said. “I’ll be on-site in three or four minutes. Rachel and Audrey should be unconscious a lot longer than that, but as a precaution I want Holly to leave right now. Have her take either vehicle and just go anywhere, any route. Best if she doesn’t tell you where she’s going. Again, as a precaution.”
“Good enough,” Dryden said.