He had blown the thing up. Completely destroyed it, just by wanting it to happen. His hand was back to normal, his arm, his brain, everything. Back to normal. But he was thinking that normal for him was far different than for anyone else who had survived that crash. He thought he remembered seeing what looked like fiery wasps or burning bullets striking the Gorgon and tearing the thing to shreds. And that recoil, knocking him down as if he’d actually fired a wickedly powerful rifle. He examined the palm of his right hand again, as he had several times already. Nothing there but the lines of fate.
And then Ethan let himself think it, and let it sink deep.
I am not just a boy. JayDee is right. I’m something different.
Something…but not totally human anymore.
Survivors were still emerging from the ruins. A few of them, bloodied and battered, stood around Olivia waiting for her to speak, to take control, to make Panther Ridge a secure fortress again, but she could not, and so they passed on. The wooden door covered with metal plates was opened, and people began to leave. Some refused, even as they were urged on by friends or loved ones; dazed and hopeless, they sat down on the ground and could not be moved. An occasional shot was fired up in the remaining apartments, but whether someone was shooting at Cypher soldiers or the slithering Gorgon or taking their own lives was unknown.
“Oh my God! Olivia!” A figure wearing a blood-spattered white t-shirt and khaki trousers came hobbling toward Olivia and Ethan. John Douglas had found a rusted length of rebar and was maintaining a precarious balance on a sprained right ankle. He had a few bumps and bruises, but otherwise he was all right. The blood on his shirt had come from others he’d helped out of the ruins. He had escaped death by going out his front door to watch the show of alien fireworks, had seen the ship coming down, and with a shout of warning to anyone who could hear, he’d thought to get into the hospital for whatever he could grab. The door was chained and padlocked, as usual after dark. The ship seemed to be coming right at him. There was no time to get the key. Other people were already running past him. A collision with Paul Edson had twisted his ankle, but Paul had helped him get clear of the crash. “Jesus,” he said to Olivia, his voice hoarse and harsh. “I thought you were likely dead!” His swollen eyes went to Ethan. “You,” he said, and maybe there was a hint of accusation in it. But then he took a long breath to regain his composure and his focus, and he asked, “You all right?”
“Yes sir,” Ethan answered. The nail-puncture wound at the back of his thigh was nothing, not compared to the wounds he’d seen on people coming out of the ruins…and there were eleven dead bodies covered with bloody sheets and blankets lying about twenty feet away.
“John!” said Olivia, as if she’d just recognized him. “I was trying to find Vincent. He was calling for me. I heard him calling…but I couldn’t find him. Did you hear him?”
JayDee glanced quickly at Ethan and then back to the woman. “No, Olivia, I didn’t.”
“Ethan was with me,” she explained, her voice steady and earnest but her eyes sunken and wild. “He took care of me. I think…there was something bad up in there. Something…” She struggled to find meaning. “Bad,” she repeated. “I think Ethan…kept it away from me.”
“A Gorgon from the ship,” Ethan told the doctor. “Up in the ruins.”
“You kept it away from her? How?”
It was time to tell the truth, no matter how incredible it might sound. When Ethan spoke, he stared directly into the doctor’s eyes, and he spoke like a man instead of a boy. “I killed it. I tore it to pieces.” He followed that up with, “I wanted it to be destroyed, and it was. But there’s another one up there somewhere. The Cyphers are looking for it. I wouldn’t want to see one of those again.”
JayDee gave no reply. His face was pallid except for a purple bruise on his chin where someone’s elbow had hit him in the confusion of escape. “Well,” he managed to say, “I’ve never seen one, and I sure as hell don’t want to. Spare me any more details, won’t you?”
Ethan nodded, and that seemed to close the subject.
Someone suddenly moved past Ethan and sat down beside Olivia, hugging her and then beginning to sob. It was the young blonde girl with the eyepatch that Ethan had seen lying on the ground, studying the stars last night. He saw now that the stick-on rhinestones formed a star on her eyepatch. It was, he thought, an effort at making the best of a bad thing. An eyepatch as a fashion statement, or a statement of attitude. Her long blonde hair and her face were dirty with dust and smoke. She was wearing jeans, a dark red blouse and blue Nikes that were all the worse for wear but maybe as clean as any clothes Ethan had seen on anyone so far. As the girl hugged Olivia and continued to cry, Olivia sobbed a little bit too and then she got herself under control; she put her arms around the girl and asked in a voice that was nearly strong, “Nikki, are you hurt?”
The girl shook her head, her face buried against Olivia’s shoulder.
“All right,” Olivia said. “That’s good.” She gently stroked the girl’s hair, her own eyes reddened by tears. “We’re going to get out of this,” she said. “We’re not done yet.”
Ethan took stock of the apartment complex, while JayDee hobbled over to give whatever aid he could to a bloodied Hispanic couple who was being helped along the road toward them. A little boy about seven or eight was holding onto his mother’s hand. The father had suffered a gash across his face, his hair whitened by dust. Ethan said quietly, “We have to leave here. We have to get out before dark.”
“Just where are we going to go?”
It had been spoken by the girl with the eyepatch. She was staring up at Ethan as if she thought he was insane. “Who are you?” she asked sharply. Then: “Wait…wait. You’re the boy they brought in a few days ago. Your name is…Ethan?”
“Yeah. Ethan Gaines. Well…” He shrugged. “It’s a made-up name. I can’t remember my real one.” He tried to find the semblance of a smile, but could not.
“I was a sophomore at the high school,” she replied. “How’d you pick that name?”
“Just did. Saw the sign, I guess. As good as any. You’re Nikki…what?”
“Stanwick.” Her good eye, though bloodshot from dust and smoke, was chocolate brown.
“Where are your folks?”
“Both dead,” she answered, without emotion. Ethan figured it had happened in the early days. “My older sister, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. How about yours?” It was asked matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing brands of sneakers. It had become a hard world, Ethan thought, and those who survived had seen and endured much. If they weren’t hard by now, they would have already died.
“I can’t remember that, either.” Ethan noted a scar just above her eyepatch and several small scars on her cheeks. A deeper scar on her chin ran up to just beneath her lower lip.
“Nikki’s been with us a long time,” Olivia said. “She came in that first summer. I need to stand up. Can you help me?”
Both Ethan and Nikki helped Olivia to her feet. Olivia wavered a little bit, and Ethan was ready if she fell, but she held herself steady. “Thank you,” the woman said. She saw a group of six people walking down the road in their direction, two of them nearly carrying a third. She recognized among them Joel Schuster, Hannah Grimes, Gary Roosa, and…
“Dear God,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “There’s Dave!”
Ethan’s heart gave a jump. Dave McKane was one of those supporting a thin elderly man with a white beard and long white hair braided into a ponytail. Dave was dusty and dishevelled but he looked like he’d come through the catastrophe intact; he was wearing his jeans, a black t-shirt torn almost to tatters and his usual dark blue baseball cap. His brown beard edged with gray was made more gray by dust. He had his Uzi in its holster at his side and, around his waist, the holster with the .357 Magnum in it. His face was grim and there was a bloody cut across the bridge of his nose. He saw Olivia, Ethan, Nikki Stanwick, and JayDee and nothing about his face changed; he gave them a nod of recognition and said in a husky voice, “Let’s set Billy down here. JayDee, I think his right leg’s broken. How about you?”