The end of one era, the beginning of another.
Firstborn’s back muscles flexed and rippled. He had his hands around Erickson’s neck. Erickson reached up to claw at Firstborn’s face, but the old man was already weakening.
Movement on Rex’s right. He turned to look — his heart surged with joy.
“My king,” Sly said.
Rex tried to talk, tried to say
“Don’t speak,” Sly said. “I am here.” He smiled wide, his needle-toothed grin full of love. He had a few burn marks on his clothes, but looked mostly unharmed.
Sly held his hand out, palm up. “May I kill the monster?”
Rex looked over to Firstborn. The great knight still had his hands locked around the monster’s throat. The monster’s hands moved weakly — he didn’t have long.
Rex nodded, then put the knife handle in his friend’s palm.
Sly’s green-skinned hand closed around the handle. “Thank you, my king,” he said, then thrust the knife deep into Rex’s chest.
Rex stared into Sly’s smiling face. What was happening? Rex looked down. The knife handle stuck out. He couldn’t see any of the blade. It hurt. It burned.
Sly put his arm around Rex and pulled him close. “Thank you for making me your successor,” he said quietly. He gripped the knife handle, pulled it out, turned it, then shoved it home again. Rex felt the hilt thump against his sternum, felt the tip poke out of his back.
It
Sly had lied. He was just like all the others. Rex’s only true friend had hurt him, just like everyone else in his life.
Rex fell to his knees.
Sly knelt with him. “I could never have taken over on my own. Firstborn was too strong. Now, I will tell everyone that
Sly let go. He ran off down a trench, vanishing into the smoke.
Rex closed his eyes and fell to his side.
Bryan saw Firstborn let go of Erickson. The old man didn’t move. The smoldering creature turned.
Firstborn stared at the knife sticking out of Rex’s chest.
It was over.
Bryan walked into the wind rushing out of the tunnel. Everyone stood there, waiting for him — everyone except Alder Jessup. The old man lay on the ground, unmoving, a neat, black hole in his blood-smeared cheek. Bryan looked up at Adam, had to shout to be heard. “I’m so sorry.”
Tears streaked Adam’s face. He shook his head. “It’s what Gramps wanted. We can’t help him. Leave him here.”
Bryan started to object, but Adam was right — they couldn’t get a dead body through the booby-trapped columns.
He heard another chunk of ceiling give way somewhere behind him. The ground trembled beneath his feet, just a little.
“Come on, we have to move!”
He held Chief Zou tight and ran deeper into the tunnel.
Bryan’s flashlight beam danced across a jagged, stacked column. He skidded to a halt before he hit it, sliding feet kicking dirt onto the hodgepodge of masonry.
“Everyone,
The sound of panting and coughing filled the air. Almost there …
He set Amy Zou down on her feet, gave her a little shake.
“Chief, snap out of it,” he said. “You have to walk on your own.”
She blinked at him, a glazed look in her eyes. So many blisters, so much scorched flesh; she had been beautiful once, but would never be so again.
“Step where I step, Chief. If you stumble, if you fall, you die and so do your daughters.”
That hit home. Zou straightened, seemed to call upon some inner reserve of strength. She nodded.
Bryan looked at the little girls. Now wasn’t the time to be nice. “No room for mistakes. Step where the person in front of you steps. You screw it up, you die and kill everyone around you. Got it?”
Their eyes were wide, their little faces streaked with sweat and smoke. They nodded just like their mother.
He looked at the rest: Adam, Robertson, Biz-Nass and Pookie nodded as well. Everyone knew the stakes.
Bryan took a deep breath. The air was clearer here, pouring in from the train tunnel beyond. He eyed the narrow spaces between the columns and the wall.
“Hey, Pooks,” he said.
“Yes, my Terminator?”
“You better suck in that gut.”
Pookie did, tried to hold it, but he was exhausted and his air let out in a tummy-puffing huff.
“I guess I’ll go last,” he said.
Bryan nodded, then trained his flashlight beam on the floor and started working his way through.
He made it out, then waited. Zou came next, then Tabz, then Mur, the one who had killed Pierre. Biz-Nass followed, then Adam. As Sean Robertson crawled out of the hole, the ground trembled again.
Bryan leaned in. Pookie was halfway through the columns.
“Pooks,
A pebble dropped from the ceiling and hit Bryan in the head. Both men looked up — the ceiling above Bryan was a single, wide piece of chipped concrete.
More pebbles dropped from around its edges, trailing little comet-trails of dust.
Pookie drew in a big breath, then scooted faster.
Two columns to go.
“Pooks, slow down.”
“
Pookie was panicking. He moved too fast. His elbow hit the second to last column.
Bryan stepped through the hole and reached. He grabbed Pookie’s arm and yanked him forward. Bryan grabbed his stumbling friend in his arms, then threw himself backward out the hole as the tunnel collapsed. A thick cloud of dirt and dust billowed out around them.
As the dust settled, eight people sat on the train tunnel’s narrow walkway, coughing and gasping.
They had made it out alive.
Big Pimpin’
FOUR DAYS LATER
Pookie Chang limped up the steps of 2007 Franklin Street. The porch had been cleaned of debris. Yellow hazard tape was strung between posts, marking the danger of the broken rail that Bryan had driven Erickson through just a few days ago.
Pookie glanced back to his Buick. Night was falling. The streetlights were slowly flickering on. John Smith leaned against the passenger door, sipping on a cup of coffee. He smiled and gave Pookie a thumbs-up.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Pookie tucked the manila folder under his arm. Someone had replaced the wooden front door. The new door was tasteful, artistically etched, and solid steel.
