terror-stricken, as her mother was dragged away.
Fingers squeezed one last time, trying to hold on.
Seichan stared down at him, at the impossibility of her
“Your mother…” he said, his eyes wide with the urgency of those last words, the last gasp of meaning all sought during that final breath. “Escaped… still alive after… don’t know where…”
With his message sent, he sagged, hollowed out by his escaping life, relaxing into death. His eyes drifted closed. His last words were oddly clear and sad.
“No father should lose a daughter…”
With that, he was gone.
Gray pulled Seichan to him, holding her as she held her father.
Then the world quaked, booming with the thunder of gods.
41
July 4, 3:00 P.M. EST
Blue Ridge Mountains
Painter hovered high as the world exploded below.
Seconds earlier, his parachute canopy had burst wide, becoming a wing of fabric overhead, jolting him in his harness-then the entire plateau bulged upward, reaching toward him with the heavy bass note of buried warheads.
His teammates hung in the air to either side. Monk and Kowalski headed toward Kat’s position at the cliff’s edge. Tucker was several yards lower, skimming toward Lisa’s ledge beside the waterfall. He carried Kane strapped to his chest in a tandem harness.
Between Painter’s legs, the entire landscape fell away, shattering apart, vanishing down into a growling pit of churning rock, fire, and steam. Entire sections of forest dropped into the hellish gorge. Smoke and rock dust blasted upward, swallowing his group. Twisting thermals wreaked havoc. Painter’s chute swung wildly and sailed higher on a column of superheated air.
Choking, Painter held his breath and covered his face with an arm, protecting his eyes.
He fought his chute’s toggles to stabilize his spin, losing sight of the others. He had experienced this level of destruction once before. He recognized the superheated signature of thermobaric weapons-only never on a scale strong enough to raise a significant chunk of the earth’s crust.
The initial plume whirled higher, dragging the worst of the smoke and superheated air away, clearing a glimpse to the ongoing destruction. Below, a gateway to hell opened: a gaping, steaming hole, breathing fire and stinking of brimstone.
At its edges, more of the landscape succumbed. Hillsides slid, dragging trees and boulders. Rivers and creeks poured down that black throat, only to belch back out as clouds of steam. Down deeper, a heavy flow flooded the giant pit, boiling and stirring everything into a toxic soup.
Painter stabilized his chute, sweeping out, catching a glimpse of twisted steel beams and honeycombed sections of concrete, fossilized hallmarks of man-made construction.
The remains of a massive subterranean base.
Even these structures slowly vanished into the roiling mire at the bottom. Painter tore his gaze away, searching around him. The three other parachutes floated lower, managing the thermals better than he did. The curve of the cliff that was their destination remained intact, taller now, looming over that steaming sinkhole.
“Going for Kat,” Monk reported.
“Crapping my pants.” That was Kowalski.
The pair dropped fast toward Kat’s position, angling into as much of a glide as possible, still fighting the unpredictable thermals. If they missed the cliff’s edge, they would go plummeting into the churning maw below.
Painter twisted in his harness, spotted Tucker and Kane soaring toward Lisa.
Her ledge remained intact-little else.
The waterfall still fell alongside it, but there was no river below to catch it. The thirty-foot falls had become a three-hundred-foot plunge into smoky darkness. Farther away, a massive section of the cliff face broke away and slid, like a calving glacier, into the depths of the sinkhole.
Lisa’s ridge looked like it might fall at any time. Pieces were already chipping and cracking under it.
But at the moment, that wasn’t her biggest danger.
The shifting waterfall had driven her out of hiding-and into the view of the monster sharing her perch. The two crouched on opposite ends of the plateau.
“Heading down to her!” Tucker radioed.
“Captain Wayne, go topside. Set a rope.”
“Negative. I’m past the point of no return. Too low, not enough lift to carry me to that edge. The only drop zone for me is that ledge of rock.”
He might be lying, playing hero, but Painter
“Understood,” Painter radioed back, though it killed him to head away from Lisa. “Going topside.”
He pulled his toggle with a sweaty hand and swept to the right-angling for the edge, knowing time was running short. As he turned, he caught a glimpse of the Lodge, cloaked in smoke, its heart glowing with hellfire.
The crack of a pistol drew his attention down.
Tucker dove toward the ledge, going in fast, firing his pistol at the beast-then Painter was over the cliff’s edge and he lost sight of the battle, pitting man against machine.
3:03 P.M.
Tucker needed room.
The ledge was the size of a basketball court, with Lisa on one end and the bear-size beast on the other. Drawn by his approach, the creature dashed into his path, knuckling on its curved claws. It skidded sideways, its large, obsidian-glass eyes staring up at him.
He fired, but the round pinged harmlessly off of its hardened armor.
Still, the shots drove the beast back to its side, long enough for Tucker to haul on both of his toggles, flare his chute, and brake his plummet to a smooth but heavy landing. His heels hit first, then toes, and he rolled to his knees. He pulled two releases at the same time.
The first unhooked his chute, which went wafting against the cliff, then skimming away, dragging lines and harness.
The second freed Kane. His partner dropped to his paws, a ridge of hackles raised like a Mohawk down his back.
Tucker pulled out a second pistol. He held it flat toward Lisa, warning her to stay back. The beast crouched low, perfectly motionless, studying and assessing its new prey-but that wouldn’t last long.
Lisa whispered to him, her eyes wide with fear, but not for her safety. “Baby’s going into shock.”
He crept back to her, signaling Kane to stand guard.
Dog and machine faced each other, mirroring each other’s wary stance.
Lisa was soaked from the waterfall, the baby hung in wet swaddling, not making a sound, tinged bluish.
Tucker swore to himself.
A scrabble of steel on rock sounded as the monster charged. Sparks lit each step as steel clashed with rock. It barreled straight at them. Tucker raised his pistol, recognizing how useless it had been before, knowing that nothing could stop it, but he was ready to defend with his life.
He wasn’t the only one.
