Rise the Dark (30 page)

T
his is Markus Novak, reporting in from Wardenclyffe. I've come to see Garland Webb. We are long overdue.”

At the top of the tower, hot stick in hand, Jay heard Novak's voice and thought:
He made it. The crazy bastard actually made it to them.

Then he thought:
He'd better not ruin it.

He reached for the radio and spoke before anyone else had responded.

“Novak, this is Jay Baldwin, where is my wife, have you seen my wife?”

Down below, Eli Pate screamed at Jay to shut up, but Novak's voice returned on the radio immediately.

“Jay, she is safe and well. Repeat, she is safe and well.”

Jay sagged back against the transmission tower. He was not aware of the pulsing, swarming current, his own fatigue, the heights, or even his own tears.

She is safe and well.

Eli Pate's voice came over the radio next. Calm, no trace of the shouting he'd done down below. “Mr. Novak. What a surprise. It will be good to meet you one of these days, but I'm going to suggest you leave the property immediately. It will not end well for you there. That is a promise.”

A long pause, then Novak: “I'm going to assume I'm hearing from the great Eli Pate himself?”

“The same,” Pate said. “You are no doubt proud of your achievements right now. Hold on to that feeling for as many minutes as you can. I assure you, they won't be plentiful.”

Safe and well. Sabrina was safe and well. Jay looked at the radio as if he wanted to embrace it, and then he heard Pate come back with an addendum.

“All listening must understand that this changes nothing. The plan is in motion. Wardenclyffe has not been compromised. I am on scene right now, and we are nine minutes to shutdown.”

He had to be talking about the train. Jay had nine minutes to get off the tower before it came down and brought a half a million volts with it.

“Do you hear that, Novak?” Pate said over the radio. “Please don't believe that you are a concern to me.”

As Pate talked, he walked. Up from the trees and onto the tracks, standing between the strung cables that would be invisible to the engineer until too late. Novak had stopped responding, and all of Pate's attention was on this place, wherever it was.

None of it was on Jay.

Safe and well. Repeat, she is safe and well.

Jay looked down at Pate and thought:
You have no more leverage, asshole. You have no more power.

Except for the gun. By the time Jay came down, that gun would matter. And if he didn't come down to face the gun, he'd be perched up here when the train roared through. One way or another, he was coming down soon, and he'd rather take his chances with the pistol than the five hundred thousand volts. One was likely to kill him; the other was certain to.

It was then, watching Pate stand with the gun in his left hand and the radio in his right, demanding a response from Novak that did not come, that Jay allowed himself, for the first time, to look up at those killing lines overhead.

He was fifteen feet away from turning his cold steel cable into a live wire.

And Eli Pate, a hundred feet below, was standing on metal train tracks.

T
he GPS said that Janell was seven minutes out.

It seemed impossible that so much could go so wrong in seven minutes, but it was happening.

“This is Markus Novak, reporting in from Wardenclyffe.”

Hate for him rose through her like a fever, and her hands were so tight on the wheel that her wrists ached. She looked at the radio but did not reach for it. Eli was still in command, and she was only seven minutes away.

She'd join him, at least. No matter what else happened today, they would escape together. The way it had always been. Together, they would regroup and adjust. Together, they would set it all right.

T
he hot stick could be telescoped to ten feet. The flash zone, depending on conditions, could reach beyond that in the world of a half a million volts.

But it shouldn't. Not today. The air was dry and the sun had baked it all afternoon. There was no rain or snow, no high humidity, none of the things that should extend that flash zone beyond ten feet. With the hot stick, Jay should be able to extend that cable high enough to make it live and kill Eli Pate in a literal flash.

What he had to figure out first was how to do it without killing himself too. The Faraday suit was not enough protection, not when he was standing on a steel pole. In an energized bucket or helicopter, he could do it, but not reaching out from the steel tower. Jay would turn into Tim's corpse in a blink. Worse than Tim's corpse, actually. With this voltage, he'd vaporize. There'd be nothing left of him but boots and smoke.

Just climb down. Take your chances with the gun.

But the memory of Sabrina in chains was back with him, and the image was wider now. It included the blinking lights Jay had watched from bed with his wife, that first warning that the madness of Eli Pate was coming his way; it included the phone in Pate's hand as he sat in Jay's kitchen, sipping his coffee and holding Jay's world under his thumb.

I'
m not a kind man,
he had said.

No. He was not. And he'd held too much power over Jay for too long, and held it through the force of fear. What was left to fear now was no longer up to Pate. It was up to Jay.

Jay looked down, confirmed that Pate was still in the same position, on the tracks and between the cables, no more than a foot from the cable Jay currently had wrapped around the head of his hot stick, and then he took a few steps higher, edging toward the flash zone.

All it would take was contact. That was just how damn powerful the current up here was; the briefest touch between the world above and the world below would create an epic collision, sending a blast of current strong enough to power a city down that cable in the blink of an eye. Eli Pate had not been wrong about one thing: all that the electricity on these lines wanted to do was return to the earth.

To make it happen, Jay was going to have to let go of the tower completely. He'd need his left hand to free enough slack in the cable to throw the hot stick, and his right hand to toss it. He'd need to be strong with it too, because if he threw it short and the cable swung back into the tower…

Well, if that happened, at least he wouldn't know it. Speed was the only blessing in a death on the high lines. You wouldn't have time to recognize the mistake that killed you.

He held his hot stick in his right hand. Then, six months after he'd frozen seventy feet in the air and known that his climbing days were done, Jay Baldwin removed his left hand from the tower and stood hands-free one hundred and five feet above the ground.

You're going to have to hurry, because if he sees you, he'll understand. And you're going to have to be strong. You'll have to get the legs into it.

He'd have to, in short, make an upward lunge out and away from a tower that had already tried to buck him off like an angry horse and manage not to fall off it.

Just climb down.

No. No, that was not an option. Sabrina had seen to that. She had gotten away somehow, and that was all that had ever mattered. He thought of Novak's voice on the radio and remembered the look in his eyes back when he could have removed all hope from Jay and chose not to. He'd given Jay time, and Sabrina had escaped on her own.

Eli Pate was not allowed to do the same.

Jay balanced the hot stick in his right hand like a javelin and pulled up slack cable with his left. He counted its length as he reeled it up—two feet, four, six, eight, ten. Ten would do it.

The train whistle rose loud and shrill from the east, and Jay glanced toward it and then down at Pate. Pate did just the same, looking first east, then up at Jay, as if remembering, finally, that he was still up there, the bird on a wire.

When he saw the way Jay was standing, he seemed to understand immediately. Eli must have realized that he'd committed the cardinal sin of high-voltage work: he'd allowed his mind to go elsewhere.

As Eli Pate tried to run off the tracks, he backed into one of his own cables, stumbled, and fell. Jay looked away and pivoted his body to the right, winding up for the toss. The hot stick's awkward length nearly kept the momentum going, though, almost spun him right off the tower, but old instincts saved him, and he slid his foot as he turned, muscle memory protecting his balance up on the high steel. He reversed the turn then, whirling back to the left, and released the hot stick and its trailing cable. The cable rustled over his Faraday suit, and he thought,
Dead, you are dead now
, but then the cable pulled free, away from him and the tower as it followed the hot stick toward the power lines.

It never reached them. The throw was short by two feet.

That was still enough.

The electricity-filled air around the lines, crackling with corona discharge, smelled the first, faint chance to return to the earth, and leaped at it. A brilliant cobalt-blue arc flash ripped through the air, found the stainless-steel cable, and rode it home.

Jay heard the explosion below but never saw it. It was over that fast. The hot stick was falling then, out of the flash zone, already turned back into a dead tool carrying a dead line.

He wrapped both hands around the steel tower and looked down at the place where Eli Pate had last stood.

He couldn't see anything but smoke.

W
hen the last radio exchange was finished, Mark stood in the cold breeze and looked up through the dark trees to the place where the faintest traces of crimson light lingered at the summit. Then he turned back to Lynn.

“You know you've got to get her out of here,” he said. “That's the first thing. Everything else is secondary. She's innocent. You've got to get her to help.”

Lynn nodded but didn't speak. She was staring at Mark with soft eyes. This was not the feral woman who'd tried to kill him in the gulch but the one whose face had hovered so close to his in the dark motel room in what seemed like another lifetime.

“Don't go up there,” she said. “We'll call the police. They'll handle him.”

“When he wakes up,” Mark said, “I want mine to be the first face he sees.”

Lynn started to speak, stopped, and finally settled on “Don't take chances that you don't need to.”

“Right.”

“There will be other times to get him. Other places. Better places.”

Mark nodded. Lynn tugged Sabrina forward, and they were walking down the slope in the twilight when Mark and his uncle began to climb toward the last patch of daylight on a mountain summit drowning in darkness.

The sun was completely gone when they reached the top. They watched the headlights of the stolen truck Lynn was driving crawl over the rock-riddled path toward the road, toward safety.

Mark had no flashlight, but he'd found the body of the man Larry had shot and taken his rifle, an AR-15 with a flashlight mounted on the barrel. Mark panned the area inside the fence with light before he entered. He saw no movement. The gate stood ajar, and beyond it were a cabin and an outhouse and a bizarre collection of utility poles. Shadows everywhere. Everything still and silent.

“Stay here and cover me,” he said, and he took Larry's silence as assent and stepped through the fence.

“Garland,” he called. “Where are you? I've come a long way. It's time to talk.”

Silence.

He advanced through the strange compound and was closing on the cabin when a voice came from behind him.

“Markus.”

He whipped around, rifle elevated, finger on the trigger, and saw that he was aiming the gun at his mother.

She sat on the ground with her back against the fence, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt that was too large for her, making her look small inside of it. There was blood on her hand, and two streaks of it on her face, one beneath each eye, like war paint. Her eyes were wet and shimmering as she squinted into the glare.

Mark said, “Where is Garland Webb?”

“Inside. Unconscious.”

“Take me to him.”

“Markus…”

“Take me to him.”

She sighed. “He's at the bottom of the steps.”

Mark turned from her and advanced toward the cabin, and there he saw Garland Webb collapsed at the base of the wooden stairs. Webb's eyes were only partially closed, but he didn't react to the light. He didn't move at all.

Just shoot him,
Mark thought
, just put a line of bullets in him from head to toe, and then get the hell out of here.

But…no. It couldn't go like that. Not without Webb being awake and understanding who had come for him.

And why.

Mark knelt and removed the paracord that was still in his back pocket, the remnants of his work on Salvador Cantu, and used it to tie Garland Webb's hands around the bottom banister. Before he was done he heard footsteps and his uncle said, “Just me, stand down.”

Mark returned to his work securing Webb. Satisfied, he picked up the rifle and stepped back. He was still looking at Webb when he heard Larry whisper, “Good Lord, Violet, what happened to you?”

Mark turned and saw Larry kneeling beside her.

“Markus, she's bleeding out.”

Only when Mark went closer did he see the dark wound in his mother's stomach. She'd covered it with her hands before, but now Larry had pulled them aside and the damage was evident. Larry unbuttoned his shirt and folded it and pressed it gently to her belly, murmuring reassuringly. Her eyes were fixed on Mark.

“Markus,” she said, her voice filled with both wonder and sorrow. “Look at you.”

Mark couldn't find any words.

She said, “I'm so sorry about Lauren. I didn't know.” Her voice quavered and tears shone in her eyes. “They never told me. I didn't know.”

“Violet, stop talking,” Larry said. “You're going to need to be still.”

The blood had already soaked through his shirt. She tried to push him aside.

“I need to speak to my son.”

Larry rocked back on his heels and looked down at his bloody hands, then up at Mark. His eyes said all Mark needed to know about the wound.

“I'm so sorry,” his mother said. “I know she was lovely. In the—”

“Stop.”

“—letters she was always so kind, so generous, and—”

Mark said “Stop” again before her words registered. Then: “What did you just say? In what letters?”

“I wrote to her. I knew you wouldn't answer. But there were things I needed to tell her. Things you wouldn't be willing to hear.”

Mark knelt beside her, close enough that she reached for him but not quite close enough that she could make contact.

“She wrote the words
rise the dark
in a notebook. Did you tell her that?”

“Of course. I needed to warn you that the darkness was coming. Eli wouldn't have allowed it, but…you're my son. I had to warn my son. And tell her the things you don't know. About your gifts.”

“Oh Lord…”

“You must have your father's gifts, because they were in the blood, passed from generation to generation. That's why I tried to encourage your contact with the spiritual world, took you to places like Medicine Wheel, because I knew—”

“Stop, please.”

“—that you had rare gifts. I didn't know how to call them forward, what it would take. He wouldn't explain that…he didn't like to talk about it. He could sense death coming, though, he could and his father could and his grandfather and grandfathers even beyond him. I know that smoke is part of it. And voices. There will be smoke and there will be voices. Premonitions. That's in you, so I hope you can—”

“Stop!”

Larry lifted a warning hand. “For God's sake, son, she's dying! She doesn't know what she's saying.”

Her eyes flicked to Larry and back to Mark. “I do,” she said. “I know this. It is one of the few things I know for sure. I've always struggled with the truth.”

Mark gave a harsh bark of a laugh at that.

“Markus,” she said, “the things I did, things I told people, they weren't all lies. You need to—” She choked and fresh blood poured from her stomach. Larry swore and reapplied pressure. She closed her hands over his. “It wasn't all a lie. You're special. Once I had you, I had traces of it. Glimpses. But not like what's in you.”

“Rest,” Larry said. “Please, just rest.” His voice was ragged.

She ignored him, straining to speak, blood in her mouth now. “I had to write to Lauren because I wanted you to know…about your father. You'd fled from me before I was willing to share it. His name was Wagner. Isaac Wagner. He was from Maine. A town called Camden.”

She was struggling so hard to get the words out that Mark felt obligated to respond, even if this was just more of her madness.

“Camden,” he said. “Okay. Thank you.”

She seemed pleased to hear him say it, but when she tried to speak again, no words came. Just blood. Her eyes dulled, and when Larry gripped her shoulder she showed no reaction. She was still looking at Mark but couldn't seem to see him.

He didn't intend to reach for her. It was like the shot he'd made down in the gulch, an involuntary action, recognized only after it was done. But when he closed his hand around hers, her eyes brightened.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Always. You were the reason for all of it. I had to find ways to provide for you.”

There were so many terrible memories associated with his mother, but the terrible memory that came for him then wasn't one of her. It was of Lauren, his last moments with her, his last words.
Don't embarrass me with this shit.

Mark said, “I love you too.”

Did you hear that, Lauren? You deserved those words. Deserved so much more than them, deserved so much more than me. You were the light. The only one I had. I'm sorry. But I'm learning. I will be a better man because of you. I promise.

When he squeezed his mother's hand, she squeezed back, but her eyes were dull again.

Larry said, “Come back, Violet, come back.”

She wasn't coming back. Mark felt her grip slacken, and he was about to withdraw his hand when she spoke.

“Don't kill him,” she said.

He stared into her eyes, which looked absolutely lifeless. “I have to.”

“No, you don't. Lauren doesn't need that. And she doesn't want that.”

“You have no idea what she wants,” Mark said.

“What the hell are you saying?” Larry asked.

“She doesn't know. Nobody can,” Mark said to his uncle.

“Doesn't know what?”

“You heard her. Telling me that Lauren wouldn't want me to kill him.”

His uncle reached out and grabbed his shoulder and shook him. When he did it, Mark's hand was pulled away from his mother's, and there was a fragile static jolt and then stillness. Mark blinked and looked at her face—dead; she was unquestionably dead.

“She's gone,” Larry said. “She's been gone. What in the hell is the matter with you?”

Mark sat back on his heels. She was gone. He wiped at his eyes again, as if to clear something from them, and then turned to Garland Webb. He was motionless at the base of the steps.

Mark got slowly to his feet. He'd never felt less steady. Well, in Siesta Key, maybe. After the sheriff's deputy gave him the news. Maybe then.

He said, “You need to get out of here, Larry.”

“I'm taking her.”

“No. She'll slow you down.”

Larry's voice was firm. “I'm not leaving her in this place. I'll set her somewhere clean. Not here.”

Mark didn't argue. Didn't speak at all, in fact, while Larry gathered his mother's body gently into his arms and stood. She looked so small.

“She's my sister, son,” Larry said. “I've not left her behind yet.”

His uncle left without another word, carrying her body through the high fence and out to the world beyond. Then it was just Mark and Garland Webb.