Jar or can? There would be no second chance, so he had to guess right the first time. He settled on the jar; the can was thinner, and unless the glass simply melted, the shards ought to have enough punch behind them to slice through aluminum. Pulling the Glock from the small of his back, he squatted and butted the muzzle against the glass. A bullet alone wouldn’t get the job done; that only worked in movie-magic and books and television. What he needed was the muzzle flash.
Sweaty fingers gripping the Glock, he waited through a long second and then another. Maybe ten seconds left, or maybe less, but a long time to wait alone, a lot of life to try to cram into too short a span: focusing on every breath, the hum of his blood, that steady thump of his heart; paying attention to the set of his body—this body—while knowing that each sensation was possibly the last he would ever feel.
Then, in that third second, a voice he knew and had been afraid was gone forever floated through his mind: Proud of you, son.
The relief he felt was so huge he could feel his throat ball and his eyes burn with the sudden prick of tears. “Thank you, Sarge.” He swallowed against watery salt. “I thought you would stay with Casey.”
In a moment. Right now, you need me.
“I needed you before. You could’ve warned me. You had to know what would happen once I got into the barn.”
I’m a soldier, son, and a ghost—not a mind reader.
“That’s not all you are, Sarge. I feel it. That’s right, isn’t it? You l-left me for C-Casey …” Faltering, he forced his trembling lips to cooperate. “But you must have some damn good reason. Please, Sarge, help them. Help Emma. You will, won’t you?”
If I can. I am as I have been written.
“I don’t know what means.” But he thought he might. What if his life, everything he’d experienced, was in preparation for this moment? If this was why he’d been written: to help the others, give them a chance? And where will I be if—when—I wake up? If Lizzie was right, he would open his eyes, and there would be jungle and heat and bullets whizzing, the black echoes waiting, and Chad, grousing about no smokes and lousy food. Perhaps he would have no memory of this, or the others, at all. A wash of sadness filled his chest because, of all the things he wanted to forget, these people weren’t among them. Theirs was a friendship and bond forged in battle, and he was afraid for them. He was afraid for the kid, Casey, most of all.
Something even worse behind that weird rock. I feel it. They got to protect the kid; Battle must know this.
And would he find them again, somewhere else? Was there another Bode, an infinite number of Bodes, living their lives, making their mistakes, writing their own nightmares? Finding these people whose fates were woven with and into his?
Or maybe we’re each other’s salvation. This might be atonement, too, a way of making things right.
“I’m sorry, Sarge.” He didn’t bother trying to hold back the tears now. What the hell; he was dead, no matter which way you sliced it. “I’m sorry I got hung up in the tunnel; I’m sorry I was late. You should’ve left. You should’ve gone, but you were there, waiting for me.” Bode’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry I got you killed.”
We were at war. My choices were mine. I wouldn’t leave you then, and I won’t leave you now.
“Thank you.” Bode’s vision blurred. His cheeks were wet. The air was screaming now. Only a few seconds left. “It’s been an honor to serve with you.”
The honor’s mine. Go with God. Then: I think now would be a good time, Bode.
Yes, he saw them coming, almost on him now: a seething, rippling river sweeping from the dark.
Into the black, he thought, and squeezed the trigger.
2
BODE HAD LESS than an instant and barely a moment, but that was enough for him to know that he was wrong. He was not going into the black at all.
Light bloomed, orange and hot, and took him.
EMMA
Push
1
“BODE, STOP!” BEYOND the tunnel, Emma heard the swell of the scorpions, very close now. She tugged against Eric, who still had her arms in an iron grip. “Eric, please, we have to go after him. We can’t let him do this.”
“Go after him for what, Emma?” Eric gave her a little shake. “Think. Bode knows that this is the only way. We don’t have a choice and there’s no more time! Now, come on! Don’t make this be for noth—”
The room lit with a sudden, brilliant flash. The air exploded with a huge roar. The concussive burst, hot and heavy with burning gasoline, blasted through the mouth of the tunnel, followed a second later by a boiling pillar of oily smoke. She felt her throat closing, the muscles knotting against the acrid sting.
“Em-Emma,” Eric choked, and then he was pulling her down. Hacking, Casey had already dropped and lay gasping like a dying fish as tears streamed down his cheeks. The air near the floor was a little better, although she could barely see through the chug of thick black smog. Emma’s head swirled, her shrieking lungs laboring to pull in breath enough to stay conscious.
“H-hurry,” Eric grunted. “Do it, Emma. Get us out!”
“C-Casey, take Eric’s hand,” she wheezed, and then she slammed her free hand against this strange black-mirror rock and thought, Push.
2
IT WAS DIFFERENT this time, and much, much more difficult.
Her head ballooned; the galaxy pendant, Lizzie’s cynosure, heated against her chest. Their chain of colors spun itself to being, and then the familiar tingle of a blink began as the earth seemed to shift and yawn. Beneath her fingers, she felt not rock but that thin rime of ice frosting her window, the liquid swirl of the bathroom mirror, that featureless black membrane in Jasper’s basement, the thick clot of that murderous fog.
Push. She narrowed her focus. At the same instant, she felt the heat from the galaxy pendant gather, build, surge, and then rocket from her mind, as bright and sizzling as a laser beam shot from the throat of an immense generator. Push, damn it, push, push.
They passed into the walclass="underline" not a plunge but a slow and torturous ooze, the bonds tethering the molecules of this strange, alien glass teasing and ripping. The black mirror—no, this Peculiar, thinned, as if the touch of her mind was a warm finger to frosted glass. Yet the way was not clear; the glass did not melt so much as give and grudgingly deform, the way a too-wet sponge dimpled.
With a stab of horror, she also realized they were slowing down. She was still pushing as hard as she could, but it was as if she were bogged down in something viscous and gluey, like a woolly mammoth caught in an infinitely deep tar pit. The energy sink was sapping them all. The chains of light linking her to Eric and Casey were beginning to fade, the colors bleaching away.
Emma! It was Casey, his thoughts stinging with red panic. Emma, I’m slipping, I can’t hold on, I can’t—