Shuttered Sky

death.

The dock buckled from the sudden blast of energy. A shock wave expanded outward, and then silence. Then in a few moments, three figures stood, making their way from the ruined dock, to the shore. The man, the woman, and the boy. But those three human souls were gone; devoured. Something different resided within their bodies now.

With steady, determined strides, the three climbed the switchback trail, indifferent to its beauty, or the smell of its flowers. While behind them, in the air above the twisted piles and planks of the dock, the fracture in space left by their projectile arrival slowly healed itself closed.

PART III -ANGLERS

19. Deep Gathering

A double shock wave spread from the shore of lake Miraflores—a blast of undefined radiant energy, accompanied by a slower-moving sonic boom, like thunder after lightning. The boom echoed within the hulls of the freighters and pleasure craft traversing the Panama canal, but while its power faded with distance, the strength of the first wave did not.

Some felt the psychic blast as a visceral flash of deja vu, gone before it could be grasped. Others felt it as a burst of mental static that mo­mentarily derailed their train of thought. But there were three indi­viduals whose reactions were far stronger.

On a cruise ship between locks of the canal, Lourdes Hidalgo col­lapsed and began to convulse in a grand mal. Since her physiology controlled all those within her immediate sphere of influence, so did all others on the vessel.

Toward the rear of a plane that had just touched down in Dallas after an emergency landing, Winston Pell began to scream uncontrol­lably, unable to catch his breath, and unable to understand why.

And on a two-lane interstate in rural East Texas, a stolen pickup truck flew off the road and wrapped around a tree.

* * *

Half an hour earlier, Dillon and Maddy had crossed from Louisiana into Texas.

Maddy had begun to liken Dillon to a shark again—a creature that could not stop moving, lest it sink and drown—so powerful, yet a slave to its own motion. He spoke little, kept the radio off, and de­manded the wheel, claiming that driving kept his mind focused as they plunged West through the lush East Texas foliage. For the longest time, there was nothing but trees on either side of the straight road, until they passed a huge, incongruous blue billboard. The billboard featured a bold yellow 800 number, and beneath it the words “vasectomy re­versal.” Seeing that sign all by itself in the middle of nowhere made Maddy laugh aloud.

“See, Dillon,” she said, nodding at the sign, “there are things in this world more bizarre than you.”

“I could do the job without an 800 number,” Dillon deadpanned. “And I’ll bet I charge less, too.”

“I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor,” she told him.

Dillon considered that. “Do I take myself too seriously, Maddy?”

“You are the most somber deity I know.”

He chuckled at that. It made Maddy feel a touch more powerful in the situation.

More hints of civilization passed around them, until they actually began to see homes through the trees.

“At least we’re getting somewhere,” Dillon said.

Maddy reached over to wipe some sweat dripping down the side of his face. He had a beautiful profile, in spite of the scars. To her he was perfect, and she wondered when it was she had fallen in love with him. Perhaps it was the first time she had touched him, reaching in through that horrible face mask to scratch his nose.

All at once she felt a sudden, uncomfortable surge in her solar plexus, and for an instant forgot what she was thinking about. Then Dillon screamed and jerked the wheel left, pulling them across the double-yellow. Maddy’s shoulder slammed into the side window with the force of the turn.

“Dillon!?”

In an instant they were off the road entirely, and the feel of the asphalt beneath them gave way to airborne numbness as they flew over a ditch, toward the trunk of a huge oak.

Even before the wheels contacted the ground, the pickup hit the massive tree at seventy miles an hour.

The old pickup had no air bag, and Maddy’s seatbelt tore loose from the impact. Her skull smashed the windshield. Her shoulder hit the tree. Her broken body tumbled in the dead grass.

Intense pain.

Darkness.

But no loss of consciousness.

In a few seconds the pain was gone.

Maddy was on the ground, looking up at a gray sky beyond the branches of the oak. Her hair was matted and wet with blood. It covered her clothes. She saw the bloody hole in the windshield through which she had ejected, but no wounds remained on her body. She had been healed so quickly, her battered body hadn’t even had the chance to die before being restored.

Dillon was still in the pickup, pinned by the steering wheel, wail­ing—but his screams didn’t seem to be about the pain. Maddy climbed on the crumpled hood, punching loose what was left of the windshield. “Dillon! Dillon, calm down!”

It was as if he didn’t see her—his eyes were wild, like the eyes of the people he shattered.

“They’re here!” he wailed. “They’re here!”

“Who’s here?”

He gritted his teeth, fighting the steering wheel, pushing back, and it seemed as if he made the crushed cabin longer again. Until Maddy realized that the truck was indeed stretching. She tumbled from the hood and watched in disbelief as the crumpled steel of the totaled vehicle unfolded. Shattered glass fought the pull of gravity, crawling back into place.

“My God . . .”

Another fifteen seconds and the Nissan pickup was in mint con­dition, its grill kissing the bark of the oak. Not a dent; not a scratch.

Dillon’s power had never acted this quickly—it had never been this strong. Maddy could feel his strength now. She could always feel his power simmering beside her—but not like this. Now his presence was like the heat of a furnace. Whatever had set him screaming in the first place had charged him to a new high.

* * *

Dillon barely noticed hitting the tree. He was faintly aware that his body had been crushed and healed at a speed unlike anything he had done before. But none of that mattered . . . because they were here.

He had no idea who they were, or why their entrance to this world was of such significance. He didn’t even know why he had been dreaming about them. Even as his powers spiked, he felt weak, vul­nerable and powerless in the face of what they were. For a moment he saw Maddy trying to get his attention, but there wasn’t room enough in his mind to hold her. She was little more than a snapshot as he ran past her through the trees that lined the highway and onto a service road, where several people had already come out of their homes to view an accident that was no longer there.

There were three homes on the street and a business with a gravel parking lot. Through an empty lot there were more buildings on what must have been the main street of this one-stoplight town.

There was a steepled building across that lot. A church. Plain beige brick. Humble and unprepossessing. He reached for the cross around his neck—the one his parents had given him when he was a boy—and remembered