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  “We didn’t want to wake you,” Roz said to Abby. “This is the fourth one we’ve found. It’s getting crazy. There were warnings all over the radio and TV not to drive, but when we were passing through the last town all the lights went out and the local radio station went off the air. One of the last things we heard was that the plague is still spreading and there’s rioting and looting breaking out in all the worst-infected areas. The cops and the army are trying to keep order, but most of them are already infected and they—”

  Abby interrupted her. “Wait, where’s the army guy? Corporal Redmond?”

  Roz and Lance looked at each other for a moment, then Roz said, “The infection got through to him. One minute he was fine, the next he was coughing his guts up. He told us to pull over, then he said we were to go on without him.”

  “You left him behind?”

  “Abby, he insisted,” Lance said. “He said that we were going to have enough to worry about without having to look after him too.”

  “So . . . who’s driving the truck?”

  “I am,” Roz said. “We’re about forty miles from the prison. We’ve been trying to contact them but no luck yet. The prison should have its own generators so it probably still has electricity.” She led Abby around to the front of the car and unfolded a map on its crumpled hood. The flashlight floated away from her shoulder and hovered over the map, its beam directed at a long, winding line. “This is where we are now, roughly. The prison is here. . . .” The flashlight moved a few inches to the right. “And this”—the flashlight’s beam zipped across the map to a circled area—“is a nuclear power plant.”

  “So that’s what The Helotry are doing,” Abby said. “Sabotaging the power plants.”

  “No, we don’t think it’s that,” Lance said. “Not exactly.” He explained about the pages he had found—stolen, Roz corrected—and how the final page seemed to indicate that the Windfield power plant was The Helotry’s next target.

  “They couldn’t find what they wanted in the first one, so they’re trying this one?” Abby asked. “That doesn’t make much sense, though. If this power plant has been up and running for months, why wouldn’t they just go there first?”

  Roz said, “Clearly there was something in the Midway plant that this one doesn’t have. But Midway wasn’t operational. It didn’t have a core.” She shrugged. “It barely has a paint job.”

  “Ah, I think I’ve got it now!” Lance said, grinning. “It’s not what the Midway plant had that this one doesn’t, it’s what Midway didn’t have. They keep these places pretty secret, right? They don’t want too many people to know exactly what they’re like on the inside. So I’ll bet you a million bucks that both of the power plants were built to the same plans. The Helotry waited until the Midway plant was mostly finished, and they attacked before it went online. It’s an old trick: If you can’t case the joint itself, you case an identical one. Now they know the layout of the place, what equipment will be used, the types of computers. They know everything they need to take over Windfield.”

  Abby said, “OK, that makes sense. But they must have known they couldn’t get out again without being captured.”

  “They probably did,” Lance said. “But Slaughter escaped. The rest of them were probably just . . . What’s the phrase? Cannon fodder.”

  Roz nodded. “Yeah. . . . Yeah, you could be right. Slaughter learned all she needed to know from the Midway power plant. . . . But in this one they’ll be facing much, much tougher security. There’s no way they’re going to get out of there.”

  “Maybe they’re not planning to get out,” Lance said. “Remember what Paragon told me about The Helotry believing they can resurrect the Fifth King? He was probably, like, the first-ever superhuman. If they can do something like that, they’re going to need a lot of power.”

  “Then we have to warn them at the power plant,” Abby said. “I mean, right now!”

  Thunder came around to the front of the car. He held up the two-way radio. “First thing we tried. We’re not getting anyone on this thing.”

  Roz said, “After we get Pyrokine we’re going directly to the power plant. We just have to hope that The Helotry aren’t already there.” She gathered up the map. “Let’s go.”

  Abby looked back toward the woman. “But what’ll we do with her? We can’t take her with us and we certainly can’t leave her here like this.”

  No one responded.

  “You said she was the fourth one, Roz. What did you do with the others?”

  “We left them. There isn’t any other option, Abby. We . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I know what you’re thinking: She might die out here on her own. We’ve already gone over this. We have to stop The Helotry.”

  “But . . . This stuff about the Fifth King—it might not be true. I mean, they can’t resurrect someone who’s been dead for thousands of years.”

  Thunder said, “Maybe they can’t. Could be that they’re all just delusional nutcases. But they think that they can, and for whatever reason, they need an operational nuclear power plant to do it. We can’t let them get that far. If something goes wrong and the reactor goes into meltdown . . . this whole state is toast.”

  Abby shook her head. This is wrong, we can’t leave the woman behind! “What if it was one of us? What if it was me? Would you leave me to die alone at the side of the road?”

  “Yes,” Roz said. “You or me or any of us. This is bigger than any one person’s life.”

  “Then I’ll stay with her,” Abby said. “You guys go, get to the prison and free Pyrokine. If you have him, you won’t need me.”

  “We need you to get to him,” Lance said.

  “Then you stay!” Abby shouted. “You’re not a superhuman anyway. We don’t need you!”

  Thunder took Abby’s arm and led her away from the others. Softly, he said, “What could he do for her, Abby? Hold her hand and watch her get sicker and die? Annoying as Lance is, he is—and I wouldn’t tell him this to his face—he is useful. He’s got brains, and he’s got guts. He’s able to think around problems and see solutions quicker than the rest of us. He’s the one who thought of recruiting Pyrokine. So we stick together. All four of us. OK?”

  He’s right, Abby thought. We have to see this through to the end. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  They lifted the sick woman back into the backseat of her car, and wrapped her in a blanket Lance found in the trunk. Then Abby pushed the car a little farther into the ditch so that it wouldn’t be hit by another car, but was still close enough to the road to be seen by any passing emergency vehicles.

  Abby looked back as they returned to the truck. She couldn’t help wondering whether they would be the last people ever to see the woman alive.

  They were six miles away from the prison when a sign was caught in the truck’s headlights: YOU ARE ENTERING OAK GROVE—A PLEASANT PLACE TO LIVE!

  They crossed the town’s outskirts a few minutes later. Ahead Roz could see the side of a building flickering orange, but otherwise the town was in almost complete darkness.

  She slowed the truck to a crawl. “Abby? Better wake Lance and Thunder.”

  Sitting between them, the boys had fallen asleep and Lance’s head ended up resting on Thunder’s shoulder. Thunder pushed Lance away. “Get off! You’re drooling all over me!”

  “What are you complaining about?” Lance said, yawning. “Your costume’s waterproof.”

  “Guys,” Roz said. “The prison’s on the other side of town a few miles out, but I think we might have trouble before we get there.”

  Ahead, the square at the center of the small town was blocked by a group of people, silhouetted against the light of a burning car. Roz couldn’t be sure at this distance, but it looked like most of them were holding crude weapons—baseball bats, bicycle chains, hunting knives—as well as flashlights.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Thunder said. “Is there any other way through the town?”

  “Not un
less we turn back and take the freeway. That’s going to take even longer. I say we keep going, take it slow and easy.”

  At least a hundred people, almost all boys in their late teenage years, formed a line three deep across the town square, all staring at the truck as though daring it to keep coming. Four of them were sitting on large motorbikes.

  Roz hit the brakes and the truck squealed to a stop. “Now what?”

  After a moment, one of the bikers peeled away from the others and rode toward the truck. He was short and thin, wearing faded denims and an off-white T-shirt with a red fist crudely painted on the front. His hair was cropped so close he looked almost bald. He had a wooden baseball bat tucked into a loop on his belt.

  As he reached the driver’s side of the truck, Roz could see the look in his eyes that told her he was very much enjoying himself.

  “Outta the truck,” the skinhead said. He revved the bike’s engine for emphasis.

  “No.”

  “Don’t think you get what’s goin’ on here, girl. The world’s endin’ or somethin’. Everyone over nineteen or twenty is sick. World belongs to the young now.” He grinned. “We take what we want and no one is ever gonna tell us what to do again!”

  A cheer rang out from the other teenagers.

  “There’s no law but what we make, and we say you get outta the truck!”

  “Let’s see how tough he talks after this,” Lance whispered. He leaned past Roz and pushed his head out of the window. “You guys have worked out a system for the burials, right?”

  A frown appeared on the biker’s face. “What?”

  “The burials. When the adults die, you have to bury them. And go deep—at least ten feet. Otherwise the plague will hang around and when you guys get old enough, bam, you’re dead too. Oh, and you have to bury them no more than twenty-four hours after they die. Any longer than that, and they’ll start to decay. The bacteria eat the infected flesh, the maggots eat the bacteria and turn into flies. They’ll spread the virus even further. You know how it goes: Birds eat the infected insects, the birds die and infect the soil, the plants start to die. In a few years the whole planet is a plague-ridden wasteland. Now, you’re going to want to stock up on canned food, dry cereals, anything that doesn’t easily perish. As much as you can get. And you’ll need bottled water too. The virus can’t be killed by boiling the water. Don’t bother with frozen stuff, ’cos with the electricity gone it won’t last more than a couple of days. You’ll need to round up portable generators and all the batteries you can find. Do any of your people have any medical training?”

  The skinhead numbly stared at him.

  “No? That’s not good. All right. . . . You can’t help the plague victims, of course, but eventually some of you will be injured, or get sick. Now, the people in the last town we passed through back there . . . they’re using the high school as a fortress. They’re already boarding up the windows and filling the place up with supplies. They’re planning to barricade the roads. And they’re armed with more than just baseball bats, so don’t get any ideas about raiding them. They’ve got half a dozen generators already wired up to spotlights and you wouldn’t get near the place. From what we saw, they outnumber you by about three to one. For you guys, that’s a bad thing in two ways. . . . First, if they come here and you’re not ready, they will absolutely slaughter you. And second, because there’s so many of them they’re going to run out of supplies pretty soon.”

  Under his breath, Thunder muttered, “How the heck do you come up with stuff like that?”

  The skinhead chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “All right. What you said could be true. If it is, we’re gonna need everythin’ we can get our hands on. We’re takin’ the truck and whatever you got in it. An’ you guys are part of the team now.” He grinned. “I mean, you guys know all this useful stuff, so it don’t make sense to let you go tellin’ everyone else.” He slapped the bat against his palm. “Get outta the truck. Now.”

  Roz said to Lance, “Well, you got them scared all right. Well done.”

  “You have to the count of five to get outta the truck. Or we’re gonna take you out.”

  “Back in a minute,” Roz said to the others. She opened the passenger-side door and jumped out. She walked around the front of the truck and up to the skinhead. “You are going to let us through.”

  He laughed. “Or what?”

  Roz stared at him, and concentrated. She didn’t know exactly how her telekinesis worked, but at times she visualized it as an invisible, flexible tentacle that she could use to lift or move objects.

  Now she slammed it into the skinhead’s stomach. His body jerked and he toppled sideways off the motorbike—it crashed down with him, pinning his leg to the ground.

  The mob started toward her. “Come on, then,” Roz said. She bent down and picked up the baseball bat. “Who’s next for a set of broken ribs and ruptured intestines?”

  The nearest teenagers stopped abruptly, and the ones at the back collided with them.

  “I can take you all on. One at a time or in a bunch. I’m a superhuman, and so are my friends in the truck.” To prove this, Roz let go of the bat; it remained floating in midair. “So if you people want to avoid the slow, agonizing death of the plague and instead have a quick, agonizing death right here and now, then we’re happy to oblige. Otherwise, you’ll get out of our way.”

  They didn’t move any closer, and it took Roz a moment to realize that they weren’t looking at her anymore. They were looking past her.

  She spun around in time to see a dark-red human figure streak out of the sky and crash into the side of the truck.

  She darted forward, but something impossibly bright flared on each side of the truck’s cab, blinding her. Roz automatically covered her eyes and thought she heard one of the others—Abby, maybe, or Lance—scream, then she felt a small, hard fist slam into her jaw.

  Still dazed, Roz staggered backward. She felt hands close around her neck, almost tight enough to choke her, then the sickening lurch of movement that told her she was being lifted into the air.

  She grabbed for her assailant’s arms, but the grip was too strong; the muscles were like concrete, the tendons like steel cables.

  And she heard Slaughter’s voice whisper, “No more games. You’re all going to die.”

  CHAPTER 22

  At first Lance thought the truck had been hit by a missile. There had been an earsplitting bang and the whole cab rocked.

  For a second he saw Slaughter caught in the truck’s headlights as she rocketed toward Roz, then the night turned to day as a sharp, agonizing glare burned through the cab’s doors. Lance screamed—it felt like his eyes were on fire.

  He felt Abby shift beside him, heard her kicking out at the windshield, then her hand grabbed his collar and suddenly he was moving up and forward. His knees smashed against the dashboard, then for a moment there was only the sensation of movement—until his left shoulder slammed into the ground. He collapsed onto his back and felt the particles of glass crunch under him.

  Without waiting for the pain to subside he rolled onto his hands and knees. Then he heard Thunder shouting, “Lance! Get out of here!”

  He scrambled to his feet and staggered forward, hands stretched out before him, unsure whether he was heading toward the truck or away from it. All he could see was a shifting green and red blur, a thousand times stronger than the afterimage of a camera flash.

  There was a crash behind him, and Abby shouted, “Thunder, get down!”

  Another crash—metal on metal—and a man roared in pain. Lance hoped it wasn’t Thunder.

  Lance’s right foot hit the curb and he almost toppled over. Which way am I going? He jumped as someone or something brushed past him, but whatever it was didn’t stop. Then his hands touched cool glass—a store window. Moving away from the sound of the battle, he felt the window’s wooden frame, then a corner and a recessed doorway.

  He stepped into the doorway, feeling for the door, but the re
cess seemed to go on for too long. It took him a moment to realize that the door was already open and he’d walked into the store. Over the sound of the battle, he heard something scrape along the floor ahead of him. “Who’s there?”

  A frightened voice—“Stay away!”—followed by more scuffling.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Lance said. “I . . . I can’t see. Where are you?”

  “Don’t come any closer!” It was a girl’s voice, or perhaps a very young boy.

  Lance stopped moving. “Just tell me where I am. Please. The flash of light blinded me—I can’t see anything.”

  A pause, then, “Bookshop.”

  The window behind him shattered and the voice screamed. Lance dropped flat to the ground, his left elbow colliding painfully with the edge of a wooden display stand.

  Lance slithered forward, hoping that he was going in the right direction. “What can you see outside?” His fingers brushed aside fallen paperbacks and shards of broken glass.

  There was no reply.

  He worked his way around another display stand. “Come on! What can you see?”

  “Fighting. . . . There’s a girl with a sword. A man in shiny armor.”

  Paragon! Lance thought. No, can’t be him. He was too sick—he couldn’t have recovered yet.

  “Two men now . . . No, lots of them.”

  “The girl with the sword . . . is there a tall boy with her? He’s wearing a costume—”

  “There’s a man on fire!” the voice said, high-pitched with panic. “He’s burning but he’s not hurt!”

  “All right. Don’t look out there anymore. Look at me instead. What’s your name?”

  “Dylan.”

  “How old are you, Dylan?”

  “Seven.”

  “OK. Dylan, I’m one of the good guys, I promise you. I’ll help you get away, but I can’t see so you have to help me. Deal?” His right hand touched a sneaker, which was instantly pulled away.