The Reach

bitch.

A woman was shouting and gesturing from the front steps, pointing. Inside the eye of that flat, cold scope, Sarah turned to look his way.

Predator to predator, like two lions crouched in the brush.

This time, that split-second difference went the other way.

***

Jess shouted Sarah's name again. There, over there. He's got a gun. At first the girl didn't seem to hear her, and then her eyes rolled and tried to focus. She glanced at the rooftop where Jess was pointing, and instantly a huge ripple of pure energy went tearing away from her, flattening everything in its path like the blast wave from a bomb, vaporizing the last remaining men where they crouched and hid, parked cars and light posts tossed into the air and tumbling like windblown leaves, as if something immense and invisible had gone lumbering down the street.

A bullet screamed past Sarah's face and her head snapped back; the bullet ricocheted off the wall of the Wasserman Facility, leaving a six-inch-deep crater in the brick. She moaned. Blood began to ooze from a furrow on the left side of her scalp. The thing that had wormed its way into Jess's mind clenched violently.

Jess caught another flash of muzzle fire from the roof, and a chunk of steps disintegrated at her feet.

And then the invisible lumbering beast reached the building.

Windows exploded inward as immense pressure came to bear against the walls. For a moment, the structure held, and then with a screech and horrible grinding roar, the lower floors gave way.

It was like a wrecking ball hitting a house of matchsticks. Bits of brick and wood exploded out the back, peppering the surrounding areas with white-hot shrapnel. The top two floors collapsed down into themselves, and a cloud of brick and concrete dust billowed outward and swirled in the wind.

Sarah screamed. She screamed again, as the strange blue fire licked up and down her body and the storm reached a fever pitch.

Jess felt the gathering pressure in her lungs, inside her head, as if she had been grabbed in a vise grip. She took a step forward, then two. Had she been wrong all this time? Was it too late, had they pushed it too far?

You're hurting me. Please. When we first met you asked for my help. Let me give it to you now. Let me make it better.

At first she didn't even realize she hadn't spoken aloud. But Sarah seemed to hear her. When she looked back on it later it was one of the many things she would puzzle over in wonder, but now she didn't think about any of that. She managed to get down the steps without falling and stood a few feet away.

Sarah was trembling. Blood ran freely down her face. Her eyes glittered blue fire in the deepening dusk. I can't stop. It's too hard.

That's the easy way out. It's all over now, they're all gone. You did it. Sarah, did I ever lie to you? Can't you trust me now?

It hurts! Sarah opened her mouth and let out a soundless scream. She threw her head back and the blue fire swarmed over her. Oh, it hurts. . . .

And Jess Chambers, who had come awake many nights sweating and full of blood and the screech of tires, did not hesitate now. She knew that many of the wounded did not get this chance.

She reached out with both hands and grasped Sarah's arms just above the elbows.

The strength of it hit her like a train coming down a long straight track. Every muscle in her body lit up and clenched at once, and she found herself unable to move, unable to breathe, as the blue fire ran down and through her like a lightning rod, as sparks jumped from her toes into the ground. A million frozen images flashed through her mind, her life passing in one constant stream of light and dark, neurons firing like a billion stars in the great deep darkness of space.

She tried to cry out, tried to give life to the mindless scream; but nothing came, she saw nothing finally but blackness, and the only sound she heard at the end was the thunderous, throbbing beat of a heart.

--38--

She did not know exactly how long she lay there, but it couldn't have been as long as it might have seemed, because she woke to the sound of sirens.

She found herself lying stretched full-length on the ground. The spot where she had been standing before was bare and scorched.

The sirens were growing rapidly louder. She sat up, spat out the taste of iron and stale sweat. Her body ached, trembled like a newborn's. She smelled earth and burned flesh, and smoke from the swiftly growing fire that licked around the edges of the Wasserman Facility and spread through the dry brush in back.

How she had survived it she didn't know; how could she possibly have survived the sort of jolt she had taken? But the black clouds above her head had broken up and the sky was lighter now. The wind that had come out of nowhere was slackening.

It had ended, far more swiftly than it began.

Sarah lay ten feet away in the grass. Unable to find the strength to stand, Jess crawled to her side. The girl lay on her back, her eyes open and glassy. There was a lot of blood, too much blood. Sudden panic filled Jess's lungs and made her feel as if she were drowning. No. Not now, not after all that. I won if let you die. The scalp wound looked ugly, but it wasn't deep. She ripped open Sarah's top, found the dark, puckered bullet hole high in her shoulder. The bandage had slid off entirely.

Blood oozed up through the hole, more slowly now. She tore a piece of bloody cloth and pressed her palm to it to stop the bleeding.

'You're all right,' she said. Her throat felt burned and raw as a wound. She gathered the girl's head into her lap, stroked Sarah's hair. A tiny spark like static electricity jumped under her hand, while she kept her other palm hard against the gunshot hole. 'I told you, I'm going to keep you safe. You hear? You're going to be just fine.'

Sarah gave a great, shuddering sigh. She blinked. 'It-- hurts,' she said.

'I know. We'll make it better soon.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ... I didn't mean it.'

'Don't you worry about that. Don't you worry. What they've done to you, they deserve it.'

Tears blurred her vision, turned light into rainbows of color. The hospital had begun to burn faster now. Thicker, black smoke lifted from the roof and drifted lazily in the suddenly calm air.

A few other children emerged from their hiding places. They gathered silently to stare down at the strange couple in the grass like respectful mourners. For a moment this all felt like a dream, and then Jess looked and saw what was left of the man lying at the foot of the steps, hair smoking and skin black and cracked, saw the door blown from its hinges and the darkness inside, and she felt like screaming. She looked down the street at the bodies and the twisted wreckage of cars, and most of all the huge, gaping hole where the sniper's building had been.

It was desolation, destruction. It was Armageddon. She blinked, seeing everything through a broken prism of light. She could not make it all go away. It was too late for that.

The sirens were very close now. Any moment they would be here.

Sarah coughed and her lips stopped moving. For a moment the air crackled and spat; then the feeling dispersed like smoke from a dying fire, and everything was calm. Jess closed her eyes against the stink of the burn, the shattered remains of what had been left behind.

She waited for somebody to come.

EPILOGUE

Here are the smoking ruins, the scars, and the drift and the silence of what used to be. The Wasserman Facility left deserted among the scrub brush and the wilds of greater Boston. Fingers of burnt wooden limbs point jaggedly to the sky, as overhead a triangle of geese flap southward for winter. Soon the remains will be lightly coated with a fine snow, the first of the season sprinkled like a handful of dirt on the lid of a coffin before it is tucked away and forgotten.

The land lies abandoned as all around it life goes on. The Wasserman Facility has joined the ghosts of its kin, and memories of the laughter and screams of the children are all that remain, until even those drift away, carried by the stiff breeze.