He reached forward and slapped Jefferson across the back of the head. “Shut up!”
“Ow, Jesus! Did I say anything?”
“No, but you’re thinking of talking. So shut up.”
Olivia’s .45 automatic had been returned, along with a supply of two packs of ammo given up by Joel Schuster, who had the same make and model of weapon. John Douglas got an Army-issue M9 Beretta that had not been his, since his weapons were lost at Panther Ridge, but Captain Walsh had given the gun to him as well as four extra clips. A couple of rifles and boxes of bullets had been “confiscated” by the soldiers and left aboard, along with two high-powered flashlights. Hannah Grimes had her hogleg revolver and a few cylinder loads. A machine-gun turret would’ve been a nice extra, Dave thought, but they had to go with what they had. At the back of the bus were plastic containers, a hand pump and a twelve-foot hose for siphoning fuel, along with the prybar Dave had used to crack the underground diesel tank’s fill cap.
In a few minutes Ethan came across the parking lot from the mall, followed by Nikki and Major Fleming. The major was carrying a small olive-green drawstring bag.
“Okay,” Fleming said, as Ethan and Nikki took seats behind Olivia and JayDee. “Good luck to you.” He focused on the boy, who still scared the shit out of him, but his rock-solid demeanor would never show it. “I hope you find whatever you need to find.” He gave the bag to Dave. “Four fragmentation grenades in there, model M67. Just pull the pin and throw, like in the movies. You can throw ’em about forty meters, but get in cover because the pieces can travel more than two hundred meters. Don’t blow yourselves up, save ’em for the enemy.”
“Thanks,” Dave said.
“We appreciate everything,” Olivia told him. “Especially the work on the bus, and the fuel.”
“Did what we could. Ethan, take care of these people if you can.”
“I will, sir,” Ethan answered. He was feeling the Cypher presence, had felt it since long before dawn and their breakfast of bread and canned pork’n beans, but he knew what it was and there was no point in mentioning it until they got on the road west. It was not a forthcoming attack, it was something different.
“Right,” said Major Fleming. “Wish us luck, too. We’re going to hold out here until somebody says otherwise.” He gave them a quick salute. “Good-bye, folks,” he said, and when he left the bus Hannah closed the door and started the engine. It fussed and rumbled, just like Hannah had when she’d been awakened around four o’clock, but like her, it was ready to go.
The metal-spiked entrance doorway to the fortress was hauled up-
ward on its chains and the yellow school bus with the names of forty-two soldiers and a captain and a major on its sides passed underneath and along the road lined with concertina wire. Vultures were picking at the half-eaten Gray Men corpses splayed amid the coils. The sun shot crimson rays through holes in malignant-looking black clouds. The broken towers of Denver lay to the south, and so also did the ramp onto I-70.
The fortress doorway was lowered. Hannah said, “We’re on our own now, kiddies.”
Ethan could still feel the Cypher presence. It was like a prickling of his skin, a shadow in his mind, and he knew what it was because the alien within him knew.
“We’re being followed,” he said. “It’s a Cypher tracking device. High altitude.”
“Christ!” Jefferson swivelled around to face the boy as best he could. “Are they coming after us?”
“Just following, for now. But it’s sending out signals, so…they’ll be along, sooner or later.”
“The Cyphers want you too?”
“Yes,” said Ethan. “The one that got away probably communicated with its central command. They want me just like the Gorgons do.” He offered the man the semblance of a smile. “They don’t know what I am, and they’re trying to figure me out. But…it’s good to know that they’re afraid of me.”
“They’re not stupid,” said Jefferson. “But do you even know what you are?”
“Not everything. I think I—what’s in me—must be a soldier, too.” Ethan tapped the symbols over his heart. “I think I’m growing my own uniform, and this is my designation. I’m—it—is getting stronger by the day. Maybe by the hour. Which means…when they come after me, they’re going to send their best.”
“Yeah, and the worst for us!” Jefferson was beginning to think he would’ve been better off staying at the mall, getting a gun or two and putting his back into a corner, but Ethan said, “I’m going to need you before this is done. I don’t know how, but you’re going to have a chance to help me. To help us. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe. But why bring the girl?” He directed his attention to Nikki. “What’s your story?”
“I want to be with Ethan. I trust him. That’s all.”
“No, I mean your eye. What happened?”
“Shut your mouth now, Jericho,” Dave said, leaning forward, “or I’ll shut it for you. How many more teeth would you like to lose?”
“The war happened,” said Nikki, with queenly dignity. “I’m lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky,” Jefferson repeated, and he gave a bitter laugh. “Yeah, we’re all really lucky, aren’t we?”
“We’re alive and we have a chance to do something important,” said JayDee. “I trust Ethan too. Now maybe you’d be better off if you did shut up for awhile.”
“Good thing, so I can concentrate through this damned viewslit,” Hannah told them. “We’ve got a mess of wrecked and abandoned cars in front of us. Gonna have to slow down and ease our way through, so everybody just sit tight.”
It was a torturous route. Fifty or so cars, SUVs and trucks jammed this stretch of Federal Boulevard. A few had caught fire and burned into unrecognizable masses of metal. A thirty-foot-wide crater near the intersection of Federal and West 80th Avenue told the story of damage done by either Gorgon or Cypher weapons that had heightened the panic and caused people to leave their vehicles. Buildings had been burned out on either side of the boulevard and some had collapsed into piles of melted black rubble. Hannah had to thread the needle several times, scraping the bus between cars, erasing some of the names on the paint. “Come on baby, come on baby,” Hannah urged Number 712, as she had no choice but to guide the bus over dangerous shoals of broken glass and pieces of metal. It occurred not only to her but to everyone else on the bus that this could be a very short trip if a couple of tires blew.
“Hang on, this one’s nasty,” Hannah said, as Number 712 slowly scraped between a burned metro bus and an overturned Hormel meats truck. She got hung up on something, and she had to back up and try the approach again. The sound of rending metal made Jefferson Jericho lean his head forward and squeeze his eyes shut in a vain attempt to escape the noise. Nikki clutched Ethan’s hand in a grip that he thought could crush a Jaguars linebacker’s hand at—
“D’Evelyn High School,” he said suddenly, with a flash of recognition. “Right here in Denver. That’s where I went to school.”
“What?” Olivia asked.
“I remember,” Ethan said. “The science class was at D’Evelyn High School. Where I was going to show my Visible Man.” Was he babbling now? He didn’t know. “The teacher’s name was Mr.…” It was close, but still not there. “My mom’s name was…” That, too, was not there. But something was there. “I’m from Lakewood,” he said. “I lived at…it was a number with two eights in it. My house—” He was trying hard to remember, while the scraping sound of metal went on and on and the school bus shuddered as Hannah pushed their way through. “There was a park down the street. A huge park, with a lake in it. I think it was called…Belmar Park.” He nodded, as the name came back to him. “Kountze Lake. I remember that. I used to go fishing there.” He looked into Nikki’s face and felt the return of a small amount of joy. “I can remember a little bit!” he said, almost tearfully. “I know where I’m from!”