Burning Midnight (23 page)

“This is a messed-up situation.”

Sully sat up straight, raised his hand. “You hear that?” He leaned toward the window. A muffled honking came from outside.

Dom turned an ear to the window. “What?”

Dom hadn't burned Turquoise, so he wouldn't hear the honking, given how soft it was. The sound was familiar, but Sully couldn't put his finger on what it was. He went to the window on the opposite side of the office, looked left and right.

Nothing.

Dom's nose was pressed almost to the window as he squinted into the darkness.

Suddenly, he lurched away.
“Everybody up. There's one out there.”

Hunter and Mandy sprang to their feet.

“What color is it?” Sully asked, his heart hammering.

“I can't tell. It's too dark.”

The humming was louder; now Sully knew what the sound was.

“It can't fit through those windows,” Mandy said.

The door crashed open. The harvester surged in, its mouth open wide. Tentacles whipped around both of Hunter's thighs and yanked her off her feet.

Sully lunged, grabbed Hunter under both arms, and locked his hands behind her as more tentacles snared her right arm, her waist, her ankle. Dom grabbed her left wrist, batted away a tentacle coiled like a cobra about to strike.

“Don't let it get me. Please don't let it get me.” Blood soaked Hunter's jeans where the barbs had sunk into her thighs. It poured down her right arm in streams.

Sully squeezed Hunter tight as he scrabbled to stay on his feet. The sound he'd heard earlier wasn't the harvester itself: it was the screams of the people inside it. He heard them clearly now.

Mandy got hold of Hunter's other arm. The harvester was incredibly strong; Sully was pulling with all his might just to keep it from dragging Hunter outside.

It lunged forward suddenly, swallowing Hunter almost to her waist. Sully lifted one foot and pushed against the edge of the thing's mouth for leverage.

The harvester was Tangerine. Hunter had burned that pair of Tangerines on a lark, a silly whim just to give them a laugh by imitating Dom.

Without warning it whipped its head from side to side, trying to shake them loose. Mandy was thrown across the room. She slammed into the desk and flipped, landing hard on the floor, as Sully and Dom struggled to hang on.

“Shit!
Mandy!
” Dom shouted.

Mandy was writhing on the floor. She looked badly hurt, but Sully couldn't let go of Hunter.

The harvester lunged again, swallowed Hunter up to her armpits. Sully's hands were in the thing's wet, hot mouth. He was going to lose her if he didn't do something. His arms were tired and rubbery; the harvester didn't seem to be tiring at all.

Hunter was the only one who'd burned Tangerine, so the harvester couldn't hurt Sully. If he had a chain saw he could cut the tentacles, or go outside and cut the damned thing to pieces while Dom held on to Hunter. He glanced around, looking for a weapon, or something to wedge open its mouth. There was nothing but papers, framed photos, coffee mugs. He needed something big. Had he seen anything outside? Steel pipes, two-by-fours?

He looked out, saw the UPS truck in the driveway.

He didn't have a chain saw, but he had a truck.

The problem was, either he or Dom would have to let go of Hunter to reach it. They were both strong after absorbing the Chocolates, but Dom was still stronger. If one of them could hang on to Hunter on his own, it was him.

“Dom. Come here. Hold her.”

Dom shifted, wrapped his arms around Hunter, and locked his hands behind her back.

“Don't let go,” Sully said. “Whatever you do, don't let her go.”

“Don't leave me.” Hunter's eyes were wide, her breath coming in gasps. “Sully, don't leave me.”

“Trust me,” he said.

“I love you, Sully,” Hunter called after him. “Know I love you.”

Sully raced for the truck. He turned the ignition before his ass hit the seat, threw the truck into drive, and gunned the accelerator.

Most of the harvester was outside, tensing and relaxing as it fought to pull Hunter from Dom's grasp. Sully steered right for the middle of it, building speed.

As he bore down, he thought of the people screaming inside it. He might kill some of them.

He swallowed it down. They were going to die anyway if he didn't stop the harvester.

The truck plowed into it. Sully pressed down on the gas and kept going, driving the harvester right into the concrete building.

Sully hurled forward.

Everything went black.

“Sully? Please be okay. Please be okay.”

Sully struggled to open his eyes. His head was a bright, hot ball of agony. It felt as if it was cracked wide open.

Hunter pressed her cool palm to his cheek. “There you are. You're going to be okay. The Aquamarines will fix you up. Don't forget your Olives.”

Olives. He could numb the pain. He'd forgotten about the Olives. Sully closed his eyes, concentrated on his head.

It was like moving a dial, slowly dimming the throbbing until it was just a whisper.

Hunter helped him sit up.

They were in a cement mixer. Dom was driving. Mandy was on the floor, gasping, her eyes open but face slack, like she might be in shock.

Keeping his eyes on the road, Dom said, “We need to find a doctor. A hospital.”

Sully studied Mandy, trying to figure out what was wrong with her, but there was no outward sign of injury, no blood. “Mandy, what hurts?”

Mandy's wide eyes rolled to look at him. “I think my hip is broken, or my leg up high.”

“It would take a few hours and a lot of driving around, but I could find a pair of Aquamarines to help speed up healing, Olives for the pain—”

“No,”
Mandy said. “Are you
kidding me
?”

She had a point. It was a double-edged sword, though; Sully and Dom had probably been able to hang on to the harvester and avoid getting injured because of the additional strength the Chocolates provided.

Hunter lifted her pack, fumbled in a pocket, pulled out a bottle of Tylenol. “Here.” She shook three into her hand and gave them to Mandy, who dry-swallowed them.

There was no one out to ask directions from, no Internet to check. Heading toward Rhinebeck, they spotted a blue hospital sign and followed it.

“There were people inside that harvester. I could hear them screaming,” Sully said as they drove. “Could you still hear them after I hit it?”

Eyes narrowed, Dom tried to recall. “I don't remember. They may have still been screaming. The thing was thrashing to get free of the truck, I was carrying Mandy on my back…I just don't know.”

Sully looked at Hunter, who shook her head. “I was so focused on you. I thought you were dead. I'm sorry, I don't know.”

So Sully may or may not have killed people, and he probably would never know for sure. He'd done his best to hit the harvester up high, near its head. Hopefully, he'd missed the people inside it. Of course if the harvester freed itself and carried them into the sky, it didn't matter.

Two harvesters circled the hospital. The windows at the front of the emergency room were shattered.

Cursing, Dom swung a U-turn, driving the mixer up over the curb. He headed back onto a country highway. “What now? We can't keep driving around until those things pick us off. Man, I hate those things. They're like something out of my nightmares.”

A police car passed, lights flashing, heading in the other direction.

“Find weapons,” Mandy said. “Axes. Maybe something you can use as a spear to ram down their throats.”

“The first thing we have to do is get you to a doctor,” Sully said.

“My parents are doctors,” Mandy said. “I'm supposed to meet them at the Saugerties exit. Exit nineteen.”

That seemed like a great idea to Sully, provided the harvesters hadn't gotten to Mandy's parents. Unlike Mandy, her parents had no qualms about burning spheres.

Hunter pointed out the windshield. “Up ahead.”

A harvester was in the road. Dom slowed the cement mixer.

“Can anyone see what color it is?” Sully asked. He hadn't bothered to burn Magentas for night vision. He didn't think any of them had.

“Red,” Mandy said. “I think it's red.”

Sully's stomach did a flip. “Rose?”

Hunter squinted hard. “Ruby. I think.”

Sully relaxed. Ruby was white, even teeth. He hadn't bothered with that one, either. He was glad he practiced good dental hygiene.

“Ruby Red?” Dom said. “Anyone?”

When no one spoke up, Dom stamped the mixer's accelerator, his elbows locked, both hands clutching the steering wheel.

“Wait,” Sully said. “There could be people inside it.”

“Shoot, I forgot.” Dom veered to the left, onto the shoulder, and steered for the harvester's head. The mixer's cab jolted, then rocked furiously as they hit the harvester's head and knocked it out of the road.

Dom whooped as they roared off.

Hunter turned in her seat. “It looks sort of twisted and broken, but it's back on the road and moving already.”

What good would an ax or spear be if you couldn't kill a harvester by hitting it with a cement mixer?

“Where am I going? How do I get to the interstate?” Dom asked.

Sully hadn't been paying attention as they followed the hospital signs. He leaned forward, opened the truck's glove compartment. Wedged between receipts and maintenance reports, he found a map of New York.

“You're good,” he said, tracing their route with his finger. “A couple of miles, then left onto Route 9G.”

The cement mixer slowly built speed as Dom shifted gears. “We need a plan.”

“I have a plan,” Hunter said. She'd been quiet for a while. “The Gold and the Midnight Blue don't think it will work, but they're willing to try. They're devastated by what's happening. They care about us, in their way. They do. And we're in this together—if the parents get us, the spheres die, too.”

“What's the plan?” Sully didn't like the flatness in her eyes as she turned to him.

“The plan is, I die.”

“No,” Sully said immediately. “What are you talking about? No.”

Hunter put one hand over his. “If the Midnight Blue is dead, maybe the gate will close. They don't think it will, but I have to try. Billions of people could die if I don't.”

“What good does it do to close the gate? They're here already.”

Hunter shook her head. “The parents have one hand here, in our sky, but mostly they're still home. Wherever that is. If I can close the gate, it will cut off the hand.”

The idea boggled Sully's mind. These giant moons were like an arm stuck through a wormhole or something?

“So what the Midnight Blues opened up was like a window. It wasn't a door they stepped all the way through.”

“Yes, I guess.”

Still, if the spheres didn't think it would do any good, Sully couldn't let Hunter sacrifice herself out of sheer desperation.

“You're our only link to the spheres.” Sully was more worried about losing Hunter than losing the link, but he knew that wasn't going to change her mind. “If you're gone and the gate doesn't close, we have no way of knowing what they're thinking. Then we really have no chance.”

Hunter shook her head. “Unless we can close the gate, it doesn't matter. Help me—” She choked up, took a few breaths to get herself under control. “Help me think of a way that won't hurt.”

“The spheres don't think this will work?” Dom asked.

“Now that the gate's open, they don't see how the Midnight Blue dying would close it, but they don't know anything for sure. They were told so many lies.”

“It's off the table.” Dom made a chopping motion with one hand. “If it's not going to fix anything, it's off the table.”

“Even if it's only a small chance, it's a chance,” Hunter said.

“It's off the table,” Dom said. “Despite what you seem to think, this isn't a dictatorship. We all decide what goes down.”

“That's right,” Mandy said. “Nobody's dying.”

Sully turned his hand over, squeezed Hunter's. “Three to one.”

“No,”
Hunter said, sitting up. “We don't vote on this. I
have
to try.”

It occurred to Sully that Hunter felt she deserved to die after what she'd done. Maybe she was right, and maybe Sully deserved to die for going along with her as far as he had. But their deaths wouldn't solve anything.

“Could the army bomb the gate closed, if they knew about it?” Sully didn't relish being shoved into a squad car, but Dom might be right. Maybe it was time to tell the authorities what they knew.

“It's not one gate,” Hunter said. “It's a million gates. Every parent came through a gate.”

“The Midnight Blue opened them all, but it doesn't know how to close them?” Sully said.

“It doesn't know how it opened them.”

Through the closed window, and over the rumble of the cement mixer's engine, Sully could hear crickets singing in the tall grass along the road. He tried to ignore them; he needed to think. What would reverse the process? Sully pressed his fists against his eyes, trying to think. There had to be something that would…

Sully froze. Reverse the process. Could they? Was burning a sphere exactly like a birth, or could the Midnight Blue revert back to its sphere form? He was afraid to ask, afraid of having this sliver of hope dashed.

“Hunter, can they go back into the spheres?”

“What?”

“Can the Midnight Blue go back into the Midnight Blue spheres? Can it undo itself?”

“Undo itself?” She said it softly, not so much a question as an echo of Sully's words. “It has no idea.”

“Would that close the gate?” Dom asked.

Hunter was silent for a long moment. “They're not sure. But they have trouble imagining the gate open and the Midnight Blue spheres intact, both at the same time.”

“Maybe because it's not possible for them to go back into the spheres,” Sully said.

Mandy grabbed Sully's ankle. “You can try it on other spheres.”

Yes. If the regular spheres could do it, the Midnight Blues could do it.

“Hunter, are there two matching spheres anywhere close?” Sully asked.

“Yes.” She pointed toward the passenger door. “That way. Slate Gray.”

Dom slammed the brakes; the mixer skidded to stop.

“I'll wait here with Mandy,” Dom said.

Hunter led Sully into an apple orchard at a jog. She pulled a Slate Gray from beneath a rotting straw basket in the weeds, then hurried over a stone wall, squeezed through a barbed-wire fence, and pushed into the dark forest.

Sully ran, branches snapping against his outstretched hands and occasionally his face, until they reached a brook. In the darkness he could see the barest outlines of a makeshift bridge—planks laid across the water. Clearly the work of kids.

Hunter squatted, tipped one of the planks, and plunged her hand into the stream. She pulled out another Slate Gray.

With water still dribbling from the sphere, Hunter touched the pair to her temples. She lowered the spheres, closed her eyes.

“Well?” Sully asked.

“The Slate Gray was just born. The Gold says it's excited—it can't wait for me to sing. It'll take a minute for the Gold to break the news and explain what the Slate Gray has to try to do, and why.”

Sully eyed the Slate Gray spheres. It was so dark they were nothing but dark circles surrounded by more darkness. “Let's head back to the mixer. We're going to need its headlights to see anything.”

As they left the woods, four different moons were visible in the sky, their colors disguised by the darkness. The real moon was a barely visible glow behind heavy clouds.

As they stepped in front of the mixer, Dom flicked on the headlights.

The Slate Grays were pale and mottled, clearly spent.

“Okay,” Hunter said. “Here we go.” She closed her eyes, pressed them to her temples.

Sully watched her face, waiting to see either joy or disappointment bloom. Her brow stayed pinched in concentration.

“Well?” Dom said, his head poked out the window.

“It's trying. It doesn't know what to do. The Gold and Midnight Blue are coaxing, but they're not sure, either.”

Headlights appeared down the road. Still holding the spheres to her temples, Hunter stepped to the side, where the cement mixer would block the driver's view of her.

Red lights flashed. A police car—probably the one that had passed earlier. The window lowered as the cruiser pulled to a stop beside them.

“You need to get inside.” The police officer, who had a thick white mustache, glanced up at the cement mixer. “What the hell are you doing?”

“One of them almost got our friend,” Sully said. “We drove a truck into it and pinned it to the wall of the gravel office, then used this cement mixer to get away.”

The officer nodded. “Good for you. But you need to get inside. The high school's set up as a shelter. What are you doing out here? Did you run out of gas or something?”

“Oh, my God.”
Hunter stepped from behind the mixer holding out the Slate Grays. “It worked. Oh, my God, it worked.”

Sully gaped at the Slate Grays. Their deep, rich color was restored.

“And you know what? I can't sing worth a damn.” Hunter belted out a few lines of a song Sully didn't recognize. She was right, she wasn't very good. “It's like I never burned them.”

The police cruiser's door slammed. “What the hell is going on here?” The officer approached Hunter, frowning. “What happened to you? Are you the one who was almost eaten? Did it infect you or something?”

“It's makeup for a school play,” Dom blurted.

The officer reached out to Hunter, swept his finger across her cheek, examined his finger. “That's not makeup.”

“It's waterproof. Spray-on,” Dom said.

The officer studied Hunter. The name badge pinned over his shirt pocket said
WILKES
.

As if she could care less about the police officer, Hunter turned to Sully. “Where are the spent Midnight Blues? We have to get them.”

She was right. That was all that mattered now. If they went to the shelter, Mandy might be able to get medical attention, but people were dying, and they might be able to stop it.