heavy, it looked complicated.
Then The Pet raised his hand, but this time didn’t wait to be called on. “Uh, Miss Mary… I think it might be some kind of nuke.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know,” said The Pet.
Mary took a step closer to the object. “Maybe I do.” Then she reached out and touched the surface of the bomb.
Inanimate objects have their own peculiar form of memory. It’s nothing so linear as living memory; it’s more like the sum of the intentions of those who created it. However, when it came to the memory of “The Gadget,” it held in its soulless shell a whole lot more.
The instant Mary touched it, she was flooded with a searing vision of every atomic blast ever created on earth, from here to the Marshall Islands, to Japan, to Siberia, to all the poisoned underground caverns all around the world. The memory of every blast filled her mind, and in that single instant Mary knew! She understood the power, the scope, and the potential. She knew what these silent objects could do and how quickly and how completely they could do it.
She pulled her hand back, her eyes still blinded by the memory of the blasts. It was almost as bright as the light at the end of the tunnel but, oh, so much better! Then, when her vision cleared, she turned to her Afterlights, who were all looking at her, waiting for her. She knew this was the moment she had been waiting for. Her entire existence was leading to this.
She sent out her loving tendrils of light to her skinjackers.
“I need you to find out how many of these devices there are in the living world. Find out where they are and how we can gain access to them. Skinjack anyone you have to.”
“And then what, Miss Mary?” asked The Pet.
She gently touched his face and smiled. “And then we save the world.”
CHAPTER 47
Thunderbird Persuasion
To: stopmarynow@gmail. com
From: bighairbertha@aol. com
Subject: must stop mary
It’s Allie again. Mary is out of control. We’re Tracking her down in New Mexico. Tell Mikey I’m okay. Come soon. Need all the help we can get.
Allie
T here had been no word from Jill, so Allie and Clarence had no choice but to intercept Mary. They flew into West Texas, and Allie skinjacked the driver of a fast car, switching drivers and vehicles every few hours, with Clarence riding shotgun.
They followed Mary’s clear path of destruction; the remains of Eunice, then Artesia. Then they followed the highway west.
“If we can isolate her, and get her away from her skinjackers, I can take her down,” Allie told Clarence.
“And,” asked Clarence, “if it doesn’t work?”
“If it doesn’t work, we always have plan B.”
Plan B was not something to be discussed, but they both knew what Allie was referring to. The touch of a scar wraith. If ever there was a soul in need of extinguishing, it was Mary Hightower… and yet Allie instinctively knew that the premeditated ending of someone’s entire existence, even Mary’s, was a last resort. Ending the physical lives of skinjackers, that was bad enough… but intentionally extinguishing a soul? Squirrel had been an accident, but if they willfully extinguished Mary, it would be a crime against the universe, and perhaps the one act that was truly unforgivable. For that reason, it was a last resort.
Allie, who was skinjacking, couldn’t see into Everlost, but Clarence had the benefit of double-world vision-so it was Clarence who saw the deadspot, just past the town of Alamogordo.
“I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t look good,” he said.
Allie pulled over to the side of the road, and, making sure her fleshie was still asleep, she peeled out. Once in Everlost, she saw the massive deadspot in the far distance.
“Whatever it is,” Allie said, “Mary would have seen it if she came this way, and would have gone to check it out.”
Up ahead there was a restricted military access road, leading to something called Trinity Site. The name sounded familiar to Allie, but she couldn’t recall where she’d heard it before.
“Well,” Allie said, “it looks like I’m gonna have to skinjack someone with military access.”
They returned that afternoon. Allie had skinjacked an Army officer, and let Clarence take the wheel, because only he could see the deadspot with his Everlost eye while Allie was skinjacking. They approached from the north. From Allie’s perspective, all there was to see was a stretch of dark fused sand, more than a mile or two across, but Clarence’s perspective was quite a bit different.
“They’re here!” Clarence told her, in a panic. “They didn’t just come through here, they’re still here! We’ve gotta…” Clarence pulled sharply to the right, and stopped the car abruptly, then he breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re okay-I don’t think they saw us.”
“Won’t they see us now?”
“I got it covered.”
Then, when Allie tried to peel out, she found it difficult.
“Lift your butt about six inches off the seat,” Clarence told her. “ Then try to peel out.”
It worked, and once she was back in Everlost, it all became clear. Clarence had parked the Jeep in the exact same airspace as a vintage pickup truck that had crossed into Everlost. The living-world jeep was hidden from view within the footprint of the larger pickup truck. Allie now found herself sitting in the passenger seat of the Everlost pickup, while the body of the Army officer remained asleep in the Jeep-and as long as he stayed asleep, and didn’t get out, no one would see him.
Allie couldn’t believe the collection of junk around her-a lot of it sorted into piles and stacks, some of which towered over her head-and between the stacks were vehicles parked every which way. Most of them seemed to be from the 1940s or 50s.
A few of Mary’s children were wandering about, but the deadspot was so cluttered, and the branchlike flashes of St. Elmo’s fire were so distracting, that Allie and Clarence were able to slip out of the pickup truck without being seen.
There was more activity deeper in the deadspot, but the farther in they moved, the harder it was to hide. Clarence had it easier, since he could hide at least the living-world parts of his body within larger Everlost objects.
“If your plan was to get captured, you’re doing a great job,” Clarence told her from within a pile of air conditioners.
The current plan was to isolate Mary, and push her down into the living world, because unless they planned to extinguish her, that was their only choice. It meant that, for Allie, this would be a one-way mission. Allie would be going down with Mary.
“We’re going to have to lure her to the edge of the deadspot,” Allie told Clarence.
“And how do you propose we do that? If you show your face, they’ll grab you and bring you to her, right there in the middle, not at the edge. And if I show my face…”
“Right; they’ll all run, and Mary will surround herself with Afterlights to protect herself.”
They pondered their dilemma, until an answer came from a very unexpected source.
“It’s not fair!” said Speedo as he moved farther and farther away from the center of activity, wanting to get as far from Mary as he could. “This was my claim, I found it. It’s mine.”
“Yeah, but we’re back with Mary now,” said Sandman, who used to be in charge of the sleeping car. Now he
