Нил Шустерман - Scorpion Shards

As he leapt down the stairs two at a time, he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t abandoned the other three. They, in fact, had abandoned him. They had given up. Now he would be alone. He would chase the tail of the other two shards until he could no longer walk, until he could no longer crawl. When his body had withered itself out of existence, he would die knowing he fought to the end. That was dying with dignity, not being buried be­neath ten tons of shattered concrete.

Winston bounded down the stairs to the first level and was surprised to see, just twenty yards away, a worker in a hard-hat, facing away from him. Winston could see he was double-checking the wires, and the realization that there were still a few minutes till the building blew made him reconsider his options.

There was time to save the others! Even if they didn’t want to be saved, he could save them. He would run up to the man in the hard-hat, he would tell him of the others still upstairs, he would ruin their awful plan.

Winston took a few steps closer, about to shout out, when suddenly a second figure that had been eclipsed from Winston’s sight came into view. It was a boy—no older than fifteen, and he was staring straight at the worker. The boy had red hair.

Immediately Winston felt a rush of dizziness that took the wind right out of his lungs. This was wrong. This was very wrong. He ducked behind a pillar and watched.

The worker was frozen, his flashlight at his side, casting a light on the dusty floor. The boy with red hair seemed anxious and sweaty, and very, very intense.

“You’ve be placed the explosives wrong,” suggested the boy to the man in the hard-hat. “You should do something about it.”

The worker just stared at him.. “Okay,” he said dream­ily and strolled off into the shadows.

Winston gasped, and the red-haired boy snapped his eyes to Winston.

The second their eyes met, Winston knew exactly who this was.

He was the fifth shard.

Winston couldn’t break eye contact with the red­headed boy. His gaze riveted Winston to the ground. If there were indeed six shards, then this boy had inherited the largest, most powerful one, and in its shadow had grown the worst parasite. Winston knew he was no match for the force behind those eyes.

The redheaded boy stood stunned by the sight of Win­ston—but only for a moment. Then he turned and disap­peared down a hole in the concrete floor.

Once he was gone, a hundred thoughts flew through Winston’s mind fighting for purchase. Run for your life! No—follow him! No—break the worker out of his trance! But the one thought that overrode them all was the urge to race back upstairs and tell the others!

He bounded up the stairs, racing past the demolition man, who mindlessly whistled a Beatles tune as he moved a pack of explosives from one end of the building to the other.

On the seventh floor, Lourdes, Michael and Tory waited in silence. They could hear the sounds of morning in full swing. Car horns, diesel engines. The occasional shouts of the demolition workers as they diligently pre­pared for the morning’s spectacle.

Then they heard footsteps racing up the stairs and knew by their lightness that it had to be Winston. He had changed his mind. In the end they would be together. As it was meant to be.

Winston burst through the stairwell.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted.

“Winston . . .” said Michael. “We’ve made up our minds. . . .”

“We’re not leaving Lourdes. . . .” said Tory.

“No! You don’t understand!” he grabbed Tory by her plagued arms and looked into her eyes, “Tory, you were right! You’ve been right all along— The Others are here!”

Realization slowly dawned in Tory’s eyes.

“What?”

But the only answer was a blast louder than thunder that shook the world and sent pulverized concrete dust flying into their faces.

Seven floors below, the foundations of the old Dakins warehouse blew apart, and the building began its freefall journey to the earth.

The Chinese Tongs that had built the impossible maze of tunnels beneath Boise were long dead, and the opium dens those tunnels once connected were gone and forgot­ten. Now, more than a hundred years later, Dillon and Deanna traveled those lost passages. Dillon should have found the pattern of the twisting, intersecting tunnels easy to figure out, but as he raced wildly to reach Deanna, he found himself lost. He had never been lost before, but what had happened in that old warehouse had thrown him for such a loop, he wasn’t thinking straight.

They were here.

The Others.

Somehow they had found him, and he was convinced that they were here to kill him.

At last, down the long dim underground corridor, Dil­lon saw Deanna, just as the blast went off somewhere above their heads. The explosion was so loud, it sent pain shooting through his ears, and the rumble that followed rattled his teeth. He fell into a puddle of stagnant muck, while behind him concrete dust shot through the tunnel like steam through a pipe.

Then, through the dust blasting into his face, Dillon saw and heard hideous things. Sinewy gray tentacles reaching for him through the dust cloud—blue flaming hands around his neck, sharp claws digging into his chest, fangs, and eyes—so many angry eyes!

It must be my imagination, he thought in a panic. It can’t be real, yet even so, he felt a tentacle wrap itself around his ankle and dig in. Dillon clawed at the ground to get away, he gripped a stone in the wall, but something stung his hand.

Choking from the concrete dust filling his lungs, Dillon could swear he felt hot breath on his face and heard a sound in his mind louder than the collapsing building.

Knocking.

Many hands knocking on a door—a furious horde de­manding to be let in. Anything! thought Dillon. Anything to stop that horrible knocking in his brain. He opened his mind as easily as opening a door, and the creatures were gone, leaving only the blinding dust in his eyes.

As the dust around him began to settle, Deanna ap­peared in front of him.

“Dillon! What’s happening?” she asked desperately.

Dillon coughed out another lungful of dust. And forced himself not to think about the monster-hallucination. In­stead he let himself feel the wrecking-hunger feed on the collapse of the Dakins building. But that was only a first course.

“Listen,” said Dillon. “Listen, it’s wonderful!” The re­lief filling him soon grew into joy, and then ecstacy.

The first building had come down far above them, but the roaring had not stopped. From the right came another rumble, just as loud as the first, and then another, further away, and then another until they couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.

Deanna sank to the ground, shivering as if it were the end of the world. “It’s like a war out there,” said Deanna.

Dillon beamed a smile far too wide. “Oh, it’s much better than that!”

His dim flashlight went out, but that was all right. Dil­lon didn’t want Deanna looking at him right now, be­cause something was beginning to happen to him. He was beginning to change; he could feel it all over.

Dillon closed his eyes, imagining the beast he had learned to ride so well . . . only now when he tried to picture it, he saw a whole team of beasts instead: a wave of dark horses teamed together by a single yoke carrying him along at a breakneck pace.

There in the dark, his flat stomach began to slowly swell, and his many freckles began to bulge into a swarm of angry zits.

In the dim light of this awful morning, the foreman of the demolition crew could do nothing but watch as his well-orchestrated detonation became a nightmare of unparal­leled proportions.