Нил Шустерман - Scorpion Shards

Activity was growing at the front of the warehouse as the three kids followed Lourdes in through the back door.

Once inside they paused to listen and heard the heavy footsteps of Lourdes straining on stairs high above.

“What she gonna do? Climb out on the roof and jump?” said Winston, trying to catch his breath.

The very thought made Michael turn and bound up the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him.

Tory took a moment to look down at her hands. Her knuckles were swollen and they cracked when she bent them. It made her so angry that she squeezed them into a fist, but that only hurt more. She turned to Winston, who was still catching his breath. “Did you ever think you’d be chasing someone through a warehouse at the crack of dawn?” she asked.

“No,” said Winston, in a voice that was higher pitched than the day before. “But then I never thought I’d be five years old again either.”

It was as they turned to go upstairs that Tory glanced at the great cavern around her. The tiny slits of windows were mostly boarded over, and in the dim half-light, she could see a series of pillars stretching down the empty warehouse, holding up the floors above. There were bulges near the top of a good dozen of those pillars; bulges like tumors growing out of the concrete. And each of those bulges had a tiny, blinking red light.

Tory grabbed Winston’s arm, and yanked him around. “Winston, tell me you don’t see what I see. ...” This time when they looked, not only were the tumors visible on the concrete, but so were the wires. They draped from the dark tumors, snaked across the floor, and all came to­gether in a bundle that made a determined path out the front door.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the tumors were explosives.

Michael reached the seventh and final floor of the warehouse, before the others had even begun to climb.

“Lourdes?”

She stood at the far end of the vast empty loft. She wobbled a bit and finally collapsed under her own enor­mous weight. As she hit the ground, the concrete echoed with a boom like the slamming of a heavy vault door, and the dust burst out from beneath her like her very soul dis­persing. She didn’t move.

Michael, afraid to say anything, for fear that she wouldn’t answer, approached with caution, and to his great relief saw that she was still alive.

“You okay?” asked Michael.

“Go away.” Lourdes made a mighty effort to turn her head, so Michael could not see her tears. In all the time he had known her, Michael had never seen Lourdes cry like this. She had stoically borne all her hardship with a stiff— if somewhat fat—upper lip, but not now.

Michael sat beside her and wiped the tears away.

“I feel like a beached whale,” she said.

“Well,” said Michael, “the Pacific Ocean’s only three hundred miles away. . . .”

Lourdes laughed in spite of herself.

“When I die,” she said, “I’m gonna sit on God until he yells uncle.” They both laughed again, then a silence fell between them.

“Why did he do this to us, Michael?”

Michael shrugged and thought for a moment. “He didn’t do it to us, he just didn’t stop it.”

“That’s just as bad,” said Lourdes.

Michael lifted her heavy head and began to gently stroke her hair. “Maybe he’s a clutch player,” said Mi­chael. “And he’s just waiting for the right time to make a move.”

Winston and Tory finally made it to the top floor.

“We gotta get outta here now!” shouted Winston as he ran with Tory from the stairs. “This building’s con­demned and it’s coming down today. They’ve already rigged the explosives.”

“I know,” said Lourdes.

That caught everyone off guard.

Lourdes gritted her teeth and closed her eyes to keep herself from crying. “Maybe the three of you have some time left, but not me. If I have to die today, then I want to go out with a bang, not a whimper.”

“We won’t let you do this,” said Tory. “Can’t you feel how close The Others are . . . If we just hold on a little longer ...”

“I don’t feel anything anymore,” said Lourdes. “All I feel is fat, and I’m tired of feeling it.”

Outside there were shouts from the demolition crew.

“That’s it!” shouted Winston, the preschooler on the verge of a tantrum. “I don’t care how lousy you feel! Get yo’ butt down those stairs!” His voice slipped deeper into his Alabama drawl, which always grew stronger when he got angry.

“I can’t,” said Lourdes. “I can’t move anymore. At all.”

They all looked at her there, straining to breathe as she lay on the ground. Winston panicked and rammed into her with what little weight he had. “C’mon, help me!” They all took to pushing against Lourdes, but she wouldn’t budge.

“Grab her arms,” suggested Tory. They grabbed her arms and legs to pull her, but nothing helped.

“Just go!” shouted Lourdes, through her thick throat. “It’s better if you just go!”

They let go of her arms and legs, and just stood there, unable to help her . . . and in that moment of silence Mi­chael made a decision.

“I’m not leaving you,” he said, and he sat down next to her.

Winston stared at him incredulously. “You’re just gonna sit here and let yourself get blown to smithereens?”

“Face it,” said Michael. “None of us has much time left. A day or two at the most...”

Tory, grimacing in pain, looked at her swollen knuck­les, then at her swollen knees. “Michael’s right. We haven’t had control over anything for the longest time . . . maybe here’s something we can control. . .”

Winston turned to her, his eyes filled with terror “No!”

“If I gotta die,” said Tory, “then I want to die with dig­nity.”

Winston threw up his hands. “I can’t believe this! You said yourself, Tory, The Others are close now—we can find them—we can stop them. . . .”

“We lost, Winston,” said Michael. “We fought hard, but we lost.”

“No!” shouted Winston defiantly. “With our luck, instead of dying proper, our souls’ll get blown up again into a thousand cockroaches or something. No! If I gotta die, I ain’t going out in flaming glory—I’m going the way I was meant to go!”

Winston grew red in the face as he looked at them. He threw himself on the ground kicking and screaming in a full-fledged tantrum, then finally gave up on his compan­ions. “Fine,” he said, tears swelling in his eyes. “We started this together, but if I have to finish it alone, then I will.” Then Winston, all three feet of him, stormed across the dusty floor and disappeared down the stairwell.

When he was gone, Michael turned to Tory. “When we die,” said Michael, “you think those . . . those awful things will die with us?”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Tory.

Lourdes, without the strength to move her lips any­more, could only rasp her breath in and out.

They held hands, now just a circle of three. “I’m glad,” whispered Tory. “I’m glad we all came together. No mat­ter what, I’ll never regret that.”

Outside the rain had stopped, the wind had stopped and the black clouds above waited with guarded anticipa­tion. Far away lightning struck, and every distant rumble echoed within the warehouse, shaking the walls and re­minding them of the great thunder that would soon tear out the foundation of their lives. With every rumble, con­crete flakes skittered to the ground, like the footfalls of a thousand cockroaches.

Winston, with the physiology of a five-year-old, found his days swinging back and forth between complete ex­haustion and uncontrollable energy. Had he been ex­hausted when they asked him to stay, he might have just curled up, thumb in mouth, and fallen asleep before the big blast came—but Winston was feeling very much alive and did not intend to go quietly. Today was a day to live.