The Grays

But Adam was dead, so—

She saw movement in the woods—a shadow back among the branches that had a great, soft eye like a deer.

At that instant, Conner, who was running blindly, saw Lauren’s face in his mind just as clearly as if she’d been on a TV screen five feet in front of him. Her eyes were full of a very special sort of light, pure blue as the sky, tinged at the edges with a million other colors, the richest, most beautiful light he had ever seen.

She saw him, also, in that moment, as if at the end of a tunnel of light that wound through the trees.

She struggled forward in a haze of cascading snow and whipping branches, and the light gleamed on the snow, elusive, disappearing at moments, then coming again.

Before she could reach Conner, though, a figure was there. The older of the two teens. He had a rifle and he was pointing it. Then Conner came into view. The kid turned toward him.

Lauren raised Rob’s pistol and in one motion fired, and the shooter flew into the snow and lay still. Then she moved toward Conner.

He turned toward her, looked from her face to the pistol—and literally disappeared before her eyes.

She still saw him, but only in her mind’s eye, standing there staring fixedly at her. Like Adam had done, exactly like Adam!

She went down on one knee, put the pistol in the snow, and said, “Conner, Conner, I won’t hurt you.” She projected an image of herself hugging him. Instantly, an image came back into her head from Conner, of him begging silently with his hands. I won’t hurt you, she said in her mind, in exactly the same way she had talked to Adam.

There was a flash of movement before her, then another, this one more clear. Then he was standing there again. She threw her arms around him and lifted him to her. Her mind and his mind seemed to swirl together, and it was sheer pleasure and joy, like counting every number to the highest number, and knowing that there would be ever more perfect numbers ahead.

Katelyn came out of the woods.

As Conner went to his mother, Lauren asked him, “Where are the other shooters? Can you tell?”

“Close your eyes,” he said.

She saw an image of a man lying at the bottom of a ravine with his shoulder bleeding, a woman bending over him. They were huddled together, obviously desperate, trying to keep warm. John and Mrs. Kelton had given up the fight and moved to safety.

Conner asked Lauren, “What’s happening?”

“It’s going to end, honey. Very soon, it’s going to end.”

His face turned red, he grabbed her shoulders. “What is it? Why do they hate me?”

“Conner, it’s going to end, it has to end.”

He pushed back from her, his eyes rolling back into his head. “Dad needs us.”

They began running, then, all three of them coming out of the shock of the moment, realizing that lives still depended on them.

They found both Rob and Dan, and Terry Kelton nearby huddled in the snow. As it turned out, Lauren had missed and he wasn’t even wounded, just in shock. His eyes were glazed with fear and he kept shaking his head. “What—what,” he whispered, “what?”

He’d come out of it, whatever Mike had done to him, whatever evil, evil thing.

Dan was still alive and conscious, and as they lifted him Conner took off his own jacket and tucked it around his father.

Lauren hurried to Rob. The moment she looked at him, she began to weep. She reached out and touched his graying face. The eyes stared, the lips lay open as if amazed by a death that had been, also, a discovery. With trembling fingers, she closed the eyes. Then she doubled over, gasped, and began to grieve.

Conner came. “He’s not dead,” he said, as if that was the strangest idea in the world. He laid a hand on his forehead, and Rob’s eyes flickered open. “See?”

Rob gazed up at her, silent. She looked to him, then to Conner, then back to Rob.

“Help us,” Conner said. Katelyn was trying to get Dan to his feet.

“Let me look,” Lauren said. She’d had standard survival and first-aid training, and she saw that he had a bullet-pierced shoulder. The bones were intact. The shoulder, while dislocated, had not been shattered by the bullet. There was blood, though, a lot of it. “You need a hospital,” she said. “Right now.”

On the way to the car, she saw more movement in the woods beside them. She whirled—but there was nothing there. To her horror, she realized that she had left the pistol behind. That had been stupid but it was also a warning that she was in shock. She had be careful, now, force herself to stay rational for them all. Survival, always, was in the details.

The movement came again.

Dan saw it, too. “A deer,” he gasped.

“Conner?” she asked.

He waved her to silence.

They continued to the car, the five of them, following the tracks that had been laid in madness and terror. Dan cried out in pain, but they managed to help him across the Niederdorfer’s fence.

Once on the other side, he leaned on it. “Give me a second… a second…”

“We need an ambulance,” Katelyn said.

Lauren opened her cell phone. Fortunately, they were close enough to the town for a signal. She called Alfred, got through to Rob’s adjutant, and reported Rob as severely wounded and the pilot as a KIA to a very saddened young man. Then she arranged for air evac. Because of the trouble in the town, it might be delayed, but there was nothing more they could do.

The Air Force would come and gather its dead pilot and take him home in a box, where he would lie in honored earth and the memories of those who loved him. But maybe Rob would live to fight another fight.

Are you gonna marry him?

She actually laughed a little. “If I can.”

Katelyn gave her a questioning look.

“Terry,” Conner said, “your mom and dad are okay.” He looked at Lauren. “There’s another one out there.”

“I know, Rob.”

“No, alive. Near Rob. He’s crawling. He’s trying to get to me.”

“Can he, Conner?”

Conner shook his head.

“What are you talking about?” Dan asked

“Nothing,” Conner said quickly.

Lauren heard in her mind, Don’t tell them I can hear their thoughts.

No, Conner, I won’t.

Dan touched the implant in his ear. It almost seemed as if he had heard Conner talking again, his voice curiously gentled, coming from the center of his own head. He would have to understand this, but not now. Now he had to save his family. He leaned on Katelyn as they walked, and she whispered, “I love you, Dan, I’ve remembered it all, and I love you.”

He turned to her. As much as he hurt, those words filled him with a torrent of swirling, strengthening relief. He raised his arms and held her, felt her against him and felt in his depths the love that defined his soul, for his Katelyn.

She raised her face to his and kissed him, and the kiss seemed to give him new life—until a wrong movement sent a firebrand of agony through his shoulder.

Tears in his eyes, he managed a smile as he went toward the car. “The spare,” he said. “I’ll change the tire.”

“We’ll change it,” Lauren said.

The light was almost gone, now, but they weren’t but two hundred feet away from the car.

“We’ll drive straight out the Wilton Road,” Katelyn said, “and take you to the hospital in Berryville. Unless