53
Good Gandhi, she’s an Amazon, Aura thought, as she watched Tank hoist an enormous boulder with her bare hands. She wasn’t sure a crane could do that job. Certainly not so quickly. She tried to assist, but she didn’t kid herself. Her puny little arms weren’t helping much. Tank sweated and strained like she was about to bust a gut. Her muscles rippled. Veins popped out on her neck. But she got the damn boulder up.
Barbara lay underneath. With her face smashed in.
Judging just from the remains, it would be difficult to determine whether Barbara had ever had a face, or what it might have looked like. She wouldn’t have recognized the woman at all but for her clothing.
She averted her eyes. She had never felt anything but contempt for this woman. A complete and utter tool. But she wouldn’t have wished this clownfest on the lady. She wouldn’t wish this on anybody.
“Let’s keep moving, Tank. There must be more survivors.”
“Must?”
Hope. She surveyed the rubble. Flat and dirty. No signs of life.
“We have to keep looking.”
“If you say so.”
“What about over there?” She pointed toward a small raised bump in the surface of the debris. “Something’s under there.”
“Rubble on rubble.”
“Could we just look?”
Tank tucked in her chin. “Okay. Zipping my lip. Forgive me for speaking. I’m just the grunt here. You’re the boss.”
She’s the boss? When did that happen? Even after she botched the escape?
She hadn’t meant to boss Tank around. But they had to try everything that might possibly uncover a survivor. And realistically, Tank was the only one who could do it.
Tank bent over and grabbed an enormous chunk of roof. Her whole body shook with the strain.
She tried to clear some of the side obstructions. It wasn’t much help, she knew, but at least she was contributing.
Tank let out an enormous grunt and then all at once, she heaved the roof into the air. It landed ten feet away with a ground-shuddering thud.
An overturned bathtub was visible where the roof had been. She remembered seeing that tub during the meeting…
The tub moved.
She heard muffled sounds beneath.
“Tank, there’s someone under there.”
“Already on it.” Tank wrapped both hands under one end of the tub. She let out another ferocious—or frightening—roar and flipped it over onto its side.
She had hoped to find one Shine huddled underneath.
She never dreamed there might be five.
“Oh. My. Gandhi,” Dream said, rolling out of the pack. “I don’t ever want to be that close to any of you ever again.”
Twinge pushed herself to her feet. Her knees cracked. “I thought we were dead and I’d gone to some overcrowded afterlife. What happened, Aura?”
“I don’t know. A bomb, I’m guessing, given what Harriet said just before.” She scanned the pile of bodies. “Is Harriet in there somewhere?”
Mnemo and Gearhead had their arms wrapped tightly around one another. They rolled away, leaving Harriet in their wake. That figured. The smallest of the five had been safely tucked underneath.
“Are you okay, Harriet?”
She didn’t speak, but she did eventually move. She coughed a huge quantity of dust out of her mouth. Then her hands started working the air.
“Did you not hear her?” Dream asked. “Aura asked—”
She tugged on Dream’s arm. “No, let Harriet work. We may need whatever intel she can intercept.” She helped Gearhead to her feet. “How did you all survive?”
“Thank Mnemo,” Gearhead said, beaming. “Or blame her, depending upon how you look at it. She had the idea.”
Mnemo shrugged. “I read somewhere that a bathtub is the safest place to be in a tornado. I thought the same might apply here. I was on the alert after Harriet made her comment about bombs. So as soon as I realized the building was going down, I dragged everyone I could reach to the tub—just before the floor gave out. We fell the distance, flipped over, landed hard. But I think the tub protected us from the crashing girders and concrete.”
“That fall must’ve hurt.”
“It did. Something sort of cushioned the blow, though.”
“You had a pillow in there?”
“Actually, I think it was Dream’s butt.”
Dream whirled. “Are you saying my butt is big?”
“Not big. Pillowy.”
She cut off Dream’s angry response. “You survived. That’s the main thing.”
Gearhead nodded. “But about a billion tons of rubble fell on top of us. We couldn’t budge. I thought we’d die from suffocation. Or starvation.”
“Or excessive proximity to fellow inmates,” Dream added.
“The important thing is that we made it out. I don’t think anyone else did.” She paused. “Though I think everyone who wasn’t in that meeting wasn’t on the island.”
“Like they evacuated everyone else?”
Long pause. “I hope so.”
“Which would mean someone knew what was coming?”
“Or the bomber created a diversion to protect the non-targets.”
“Because we were the only ones they wanted dead?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“If Coutant and her gang are still alive,” Twinge asked, “does that mean they’re going to drag us to another twelve-step meeting somewhere else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Thank Gandhi. I need some alone time. With no one’s body parts pressing up against me.”
“No, that’s exactly wrong. We need some togetherness time. Working together.”
Dream frowned. “Are you starting up again with the—”
“Do you get that someone just saved your life?” She pointed. “Tank.”
Tank shook her head. “I just did what Aura told me to do.”
“And I’m only alive because Tank saved me. And you’re only alive because Mnemo had a brilliant idea. And she’s only alive because Harriet gave you enough warning to crawl to the bathtub. Do you not get it? We’re alive because we all worked together. So maybe we should continue with more of the same.”
“I think what you’re saying is against the law,” Dream said.
“I don’t care what party line the government is shoving down our throats. As long as we remain solo acts, people are going to have no trouble pushing us around. But if we work together, we’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”
“Last time we worked together, we got slammed. And you became a force to be tortured with.”
“We learn from our mistakes. We’ll do better.”
“You can’t rewrite the law. Shine is illegal. Who’s gonna let us get away with Shine now?”
“The question isn’t who’s gonna let us,” she replied. “The question is, who’s gonna stop us.”
Twinge shouted. “Hey, look at Harriet.”
She turned. The tiny girl’s hands worked with a frenzy, sculpting invisible sand castles in the air.
“What is it, sweetie? Have you got something?’
Her face looked cold, but not in an unfriendly way. In a terrified way. “They’re still coming for us.”
She held the girl by her arms. “Who is, sweetie? Who’s coming?”
“The soldiers. The one with the guns and the bombs.”
“Then we’ve got to hide.”
“Where?” Twinge asked. “Look around you. It’s all rubble. There’s no building. There’s no nothing.”
“We have to think of something. Harriet, what—”
The tiny girl looked up. “Too late. They’re almost here. They’ve been after us all along.”
“But why?”
“Because they want you, Aura. But they won’t leave any of us behind.”