AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Could you hold this for a few seconds?” And he put a coin into Hammerhead’s hand. “Tell me, is it warm, or is it cold?”
“Wow,” said Hammerhead. “It’s hot!”
“Good,” said Nick. “Would you like to see a magic trick?”
It was late in the afternoon when Mary awoke. When she looked out of her cabin window, she saw the asphalt of the airfield tarmac. They had returned to Lakehurst. Speedo had told her he didn’t feel comfortable landing the airship anywhere else. It was hard enough to get him to land on the Steel Pier. She supposed convincing him to take them all the way back to Manhattan was out of the question.
If they were lucky, the train would still be there waiting for them. If not, they would have to walk, following the dead tracks all the way home. At worst it would take them a few days to get there. Then she could begin the task of processing this large group of children, and integrating them into her society.
In one fell swoop, the population of her little community had quadrupled — but as she had told them, there was more than enough room. She would convert more floors into living space. She would work with Finders to furnish them in comfort. And in the meantime she would give each of these children her personal attention, helping them, one by one, to find their perfect niche. It was a monumental, yet noble task—and with Nick’s help she’d be able to do it.
When she left her cabin, she was surprised to find the hallways and salons of the airship empty. There were no voices coming from the higher reaches of the ship either. Nick must have already roused them and gotten them off the ship. He was very efficient, and it was good of him to let her sleep, although it wasn’t exactly her plan to sleep the entire day.
She descended the gangway expecting to find kids clustered around, but there were none. There was only one figure out there. Someone sitting on the ground a hundred yards away.
As she approached she could see that it was Nick. He sat cross-legged, staring at the Hindenburg. She realized he “was waiting there for her. Beside him sat the bucket of coins.
Only now did Mary begin to get worried.
“This is a pretty big dead-spot,” Nick said.
“The entire tarmac,” Mary answered. “The death of the Hindenburg was a large-scale event. The ground here will remember it forever.” She waited for Nick to say something more, but he didn’t.
“So,” Mary said, “where is everyone?”
“Gone,” said Nick.
“Gone,” echoed Mary, still not sure she had heard him correctly. “Gone where, exactly?”
Nick stood up. “Don’t know. Not my business.”
Mary looked into the bucket at his feet. To her horror the bucket was empty. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing—what he was telling her.
“All of them?” She looked around the tarmac hoping for a sign that this wasn’t true, but there was not a soul in sight.
“What can I say?” said Nick. “They were all ready to go.”
For the first time in her memory, Mary was speechless. This was a betrayal of such magnitude there were no words to express it. It was as awful, and as evil as anything Mikey had done in all his years as a monster. It was worse!
sideswiped a car to the left, bounced off of it, and headed for the guard rail above the bay.
Do you see what you did? screamed the jogger girl.
“What I did?”
They smashed into the guard rail, and Allie had a horrifying moment of déjà vu.
The sound of crashing glass and metal. She was flying forward, she hit the windshield, and in an instant the windshield was behind her… …and yet this wasn’t the same as her fatal crash, for when she looked back she saw the jogger girl still in the driver’s seat, behind an inflated air bag. The girl got out of the car, frightened, bruised, but very much alive.
Only then did Allie realize what had happened. The crash had thrown Allie clear out of the girl’s body. Now Allie was a spirit again, and on the hood of the Porsche, sinking right through it.
Desperately she tried to find something to grab on to, but everything here was living world—there was nothing she could grasp. She felt the heat of the engine inside her as her body passed through it, and in a second she plunged through the car, which hung out over the edge of the bridge, and then she was falling through the air.
“Oh no! Oh no!”
She didn’t even feel the difference as the air became water—only the light around her changed. She was falling just as fast, and the dimming blue light of the bay became the charcoal darkness of the earth as she hit bottom. She could feel the mud of the bay inside her, and then solid bedrock. The density of the Earth slowed her, but not enough. Not enough. She was going down, and nothing could stop it now.
Stone in her heart, stone in her gut. Soon it would get hot. Soon it would be magma, and still she would fall until years from now she would find herself trapped in the center of gravity waiting for the end of the world. Allie was doomed.
