Tifty, his heart pounding with adrenaline, was sweeping the field from the tower. No sign yet, but it was only a matter of time. And the truck: what was it? Still it idled on the far edge of the windbreak. He tried to get Cruk on the walkie but couldn’t raise him. In all the chaos, probably the man couldn’t hear him.
He tightened the stock against his shoulder. Where would they come from? The trees? An adjacent field? Everything had been swept by Dillon’s team. Which didn’t mean the virals weren’t there, only that he couldn’t see them.
Then: at the periphery of his vision, a faint movement of the cornstalks, no more than a rustling, near one of the flags at the edge of the field. He swung the scope in close and pressed his eye to the lens. The hatch of the hardbox stood open.
It was the one place they hadn’t looked. They’d never checked the hardboxes.
Everyone was running, grabbing their children, dashing into the field toward the flags. Tifty emerged from the base of the tower at a dead sprint.
“No!”
Cruk was carrying two children, Presh Martinez and Reese Cuomo, under his arms. Dee was running beside him, Cece and Ali just steps behind—Cece hugging little Louis to her chest, Ali with Merry and Satch.
“The hardboxes!” Cruk was yelling. “Get to the hardboxes!”
“They’re
A burst of gunfire exploded in the field. Dee saw Tifty drop to a knee and fire off three quick rounds. She turned as the first of the virals burst from the corn.
It landed right on top of Ali Dodd.
Dee felt an urge to vomit. Suddenly she couldn’t make her feet move. The viral, which had finished with Ali, was now burying its jaws in Cece’s neck. The woman was twitching, shrieking, arms and legs flailing like an overturned insect’s. The image seared Dee’s vision like a burst of light; all she could do was watch in helpless horror.
Cruk stepped forward, shoved the barrel of his rifle against the side of the creature’s head, and fired.
Where was Satch? The boy was suddenly nowhere. Merry was standing in the dust, screaming. Dee hoisted the little girl to her waist and began to run.
The virals were everywhere now. In blind panic, people were dashing for the tent, a pointless gesture; it could offer no safety at all. The virals swarmed over it, tearing it to pieces, the air filling with screams. “The tower!” Tifty was yelling. “Head for the tower!” But it was too late; nobody was listening. Dee thought of her daughters, saying goodbye. How stark everything became, at the end, all the wishes for one’s children distilled by the world’s swift cruelty into the desperate hope that death would take them fast. She prayed they would not suffer. Or, worse, be taken up. That was the worst thing: to be taken up.
An immense force careened into her from behind. Dee tumbled to the ground, little Merry rocketing from her arms. Face-down in the dirt, she lifted her eyes to see her brother, twenty feet away, pointing his rifle at her. Shoot me, Dee thought. Whatever’s about to happen, I don’t want it. A prayer of childhood found her lips and she closed her eyes and muttered it quickly, into the dust.
A shot. Behind her, something fell with an animal grunt. Before her mind could process this, Cruk was yanking her to her feet, his mouth moving incomprehensibly, saying words she couldn’t quite make out. His rifle was gone; all he had was the pistol, Abigail. Why would a man name a gun Abigail? Why would he name it at all? Something must have happened to her head, she realized, because here she was, worrying over Cruk’s gun, when everyone was dying. Other thoughts came to her, strange things, awful things. How it would feel to be ripped in two, like Ali Dodd. Her daughters, in the field, and what was happening to them now. How terrible, Dee thought, to live one second longer than one’s own babies. In a world of terrible things, surely that was the most terrible of all. Cruk was dragging her toward the door. He was doing what he thought she wanted, but she didn’t, not at all—she couldn’t die fast enough, in fact—and with a burst of strength Dee tore away from him, racing into the field, calling to her children.
Vorhees could hear his daughters, laughing in the corn. They were, he knew, too young to be afraid. They had snuck away to do exactly what they’d been told not to, and it was all a kind of game to them, this funny thing with the light. Vorhees raced down the rows, shouting their names, his breath heaving with panic, trying to home in on their voices. The sound was behind him, it was ahead, it was on either side. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, even inside his head.
“Nit! Siri! Where are you?”
Then there was a woman. She was standing in the middle of the row. She was draped in a dark cloak, like a woman in a fairy tale, some dweller of the forest; her head was covered by a hood, her eyes by dark glasses that concealed the upper half of her face. So total was Vorhees’s surprise that for a moment he thought he might be imagining her.
“Are they your daughters?”
Who was she, this woman of the corn? “Where are they?” he panted. “Do you know where they are?”
With a languid gesture she removed her glasses, revealing a face sensuously smooth and youthfully beautiful, with eyes that glinted in their sockets like diamonds. He felt a surge of nausea.
“You’re tired,” she said.
Suddenly, he was. Curtis Vorhees had never been so tired in his life. His head felt like an anvil; it weighed a thousand pounds. It took every ounce of will for him to remain standing.
“I have a daughter. Such a beautiful daughter.”
Behind him he heard the final, random pops of panicked gunfire. The field and sky had sunk into an unearthly darkness. He felt the urge to weep, but even this seemed beyond his command. He had dropped to his knees; soon he would fall.
“Please,” he choked.
“Come to me, beautiful children. Come to me in the dark.”
Somebody yanked him to his feet: Tifty. His face was very close. Vorhees could barely focus on it. The man was pulling him by the arm.
“Vor, come on!”
His tongue was thick in his mouth. “The woman…” But there was no one; the place where she had stood was empty. “Did you see her?”
“There’s no time! We have to get to the tower!”
Vorhees would have none of it; with the last of his strength he jerked away.
“I have to find them!”
It was the butt of Tifty’s rifle that brought everything to a halt. A single, crisp blow to the head, expertly aimed; Vorhees’s vision swarmed with stars. Then the world turned upside down as Tifty grabbed him by the waist and hurled him to his shoulder and began to run. Fat leaves streamed past, slapping his face. Vorhees was calling, “Nit! Siri! Come back!” But he had no strength to resist. His family was dead, he knew that; Tifty would not have come for him if they were still alive. More gunfire, the shouts of the dying all around. The hardboxes, a voice said. They came from the hardboxes. Who would survive this day? And Vorhees knew, to his infinite sorrow, that once again he would be one of the lucky ones.
They burst from the corn onto open ground. The shelter was wrecked, the tarp torn away, everything scattered. Bodies strewn everywhere, but he saw no children; the little ones were gone.
Why did it have to be Tifty?
IV. THE CAVE
