Still . . .
I almost couldn’t get the words past the giant lump in my throat. “What’s happening?” I wasn’t sure which of them I was asking, but Chuck heard me.
He no longer pretended to watch the road, yet somehow we stayed on course. I’d heard of cruise control, but this was like full-on autopilot.
Real sci-fi crap.
Like glowing eyes.
Chuck’s voice, when he answered me, was no longer his voice either. I’d heard that sound before . . . in the desert, the night I’d found Tyler. That freaky wheezing I realized now sounded almost electronic, as if someone had hijacked Chuck’s voice box and was transmitting through it, just like the radio.
But . . . no . . . that wasn’t . . . it couldn’t . . .
Except wasn’t that exactly what my dad had heard, the two hikers in the woods with their radio-static voices?
“Time,” Chuck said. “Time . . . time . . . ,” he repeated, and I tilted my head closer, trying to hear his message. He opened his mouth almost impossibly wide and spoke again: “Time . . . is . . . running out.”
Time is running out?
And then Chuck blinked. “Eleven.” Blink. Blink. Blink. “Eleven . . . eleven . . . eleven.” Today’s number—isn’t that what I’d heard at daybreak?—eleven. And then, his voice still electrical, “The Returned must die.”
How could Chuck possibly know that? How could he be speaking in static the way the hikers had?
I wondered if the hikers’ eyes had glowed too. I thought of the way Nancy had growled at me, and a thought hit me: Had Nancy seen them? Was that why my eyes had suddenly spooked her?
“What the hell . . . ?” It was Thom, dragging me back to this. To now. To Chuck.
Every cell in my body seemed to freeze and explode at the same time—microscopic nuclear reactions going off in every sector of my being. And even though only a second or two passed, a million things flashed through my mind at the same time, congesting my thoughts: What was happening to Chuck? What did they—eyes to the sky—want from me? Why was this happening, and what could it mean?
Chuck’s grip started to loosen, and just as I thought he was finally coming around, that they were releasing whatever hold they’d had on him, the same way they’d eventually let Tyler go, he said, in a not-quite-normal voice, “What’s happening? What . . . did you do to me?” He looked at me with his strange glowing eyes, like this was my fault, all of it.
And then I saw it—the mile marker—green marker number eleven on the side of the highway, and everything started to move in double time.
Taking his other hand off the wheel, Chuck reached for me. Before I could react or move out of his way, he had ahold of me and was shoving me—my head anyway. “Make it stop!” he shrieked, remnants of static still shadowing his voice as he slammed my face hard against the passenger’s side window. I heard Thom shout, but that was only a split second before my cheekbone smashed against the glass, rattling my brain so hard I expected the window to explode.
The glass didn’t, but the bone definitely did. Not explode exactly, but when the bone beneath the skin disintegrated, there was an eruption of light behind my eyes that blinded me.
“What the . . . ?” Through the flashes, I saw Chuck reaching for me again at the same time Thom was launching himself at him. I tried to shield myself, thinking, This time for sure. The glass will definitely break this time.
Thom got an arm around Chuck’s neck from behind, but that didn’t stop Chuck, and rather than shoving my head, he reached behind me. Before I realized what he was doing, he had his hand in the exact place where my gun was hidden.
There was no way he could have known about the gun . . . except somehow he did. Just like there was no way his truck could be driving itself—staying exactly on course without wavering the tiniest bit—since Chuck’s hands weren’t even touching the wheel. But it totally was.
“Chuck, no. Please . . . don’t,” I begged because all I could think was I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want him to shoot Thom. Not like this. Not after everything we’d been through. Out in the middle of nowhere, with none of my questions answered. Without saying good-bye to my dad or Tyler or Simon.
Even if I’d wanted to use my telekinesis thing, it was too late because everything was happening too fast.
“Make it stop . . .” Chuck’s voice scratched again as he raised the gun and pointed it at my temple, safety off.
I closed my eyes and whispered a silent apology to my friends for not being able to warn them about what I’d learned from Blondie.
The gunshot came and I jumped, waiting for it . . . the pain . . . the numbness. The nothingness of death.
“Kyra. Jesus. Kyra.” It was Thom, and I snapped my eyes open.