The Loose Ends
When O’Hara peeled into the lot behind the bureau’s building, his headlights struck Keel, carrying the shape shifter, and Cam, carrying Mira.
“Shit,” Annie muttered, and leaped out of the car and ran over to them.
O’Hara slammed on the brakes, hurried over to Keel. He stared at Liz, her bleeding wing, dirt smeared on her angelic face. “Is she dead?”
“I gave her a dose of morphine. Do you have any idea where Ian is?”
“His office, with his wife.”
“I’ll take Liz there.”
“And Hal? Where’s Hal?”
“He got away, Sheppard and the others went after him.” He set Liz in the back seat, cuffed her hand to the door.
“What’re you going to do with Liz?”
“Keep her safe.”
“In a lab?”
The question rankled him, O’Hara could see it in the way his expression tightened. “Actually, my wife and I are adopting her.”
O’Hara recognized a human interest story when he heard one. “You’ve got my number, Frank. I’d like to touch base about six months from now and hear this story.”
“Right now, Mira should be your story, Jon. What she did?” He shook his head. “Never seen anything like it. Got it on video. I’ll text it to you. I need to shove off and get that wing treated.”
Keel got into the cruiser and sped away. O’Hara didn’t have any idea what Keel was referring to. Right now, Mira was outside the SUV, trying to steady herself by holding onto both Annie and Cam. Just as O’Hara reached them, Annie said, “Mom, just sit down for a few minutes. Are you hurt?”
“No. Just… spent…” Mira eased herself into the passenger seat.
“I’ll get you some water,” Annie said. “There’s always cold water in the bureau’s fridge.”
“I’ll get it.” O’Hara sprinted across the lot, toward the gaping hole where the back door had been, the door that had once opened onto a porch, now liquified along with the back wall, the window, door frame, and part of the floor.
He turned on his cell’s video and walked into the staggering wreckage, worse than Rincon’s office, worse than the bookstore. O’Hara dodged debris as he made his way up the hall to the front office, saw that the cell block door lay in a cold pool of molten steel. “Hello,” he called. “Anyone in here?” He stuck his head inside the cell block, but all the cell doors were open, the cells empty.
He found the fridge against the wall in the lobby, selected four bottles of water. When he turned around, there stood Rudy Hull, looking like he’d been through a war—his face scraped and cut up, the back of his right hand bloody, his clothes torn and filthy. “You… you’re that reporter.”
“Jon O’Hara.”
“That… that monster put… put Eden to sleep. I can’t… rouse her.”
Monster Hal. “Where is she?”
“I… I was hiding. Back here.”
O’Hara slipped his cell back in his pocket and followed Hull into a small storage room that was pretty much intact. Eden lay on her back on the floor, thumb stuck in her mouth. “If you’d take these water bottles, I’ll get her. Is your car in the lot?”
“It… was… I thought the monster… was going to come back, so we hid.”
Hull picked up the bottles and O’Hara picked up Eden. “Hal did all this?”
“Ye… yes, to rescue the… the aberration, that thing with the wings… He was alone.”
O’Hara went back down the hall, carrying a woman just as Keel and Cam had done. He hated the archetypal image of the helpless maiden being rescued by a knight. It wasn’t the full picture and wouldn’t work for bringing down Hal.
He followed Hull over to his car, opened the back door, and O’Hara set Eden in the back seat. Hull handed him a bottle of water.
“Are you sure you can drive, Mr. Hull?”
“Yes. But… where the hell should I go?”
“Wherever you’ve been staying.”
A light winked on in his eyes. “Right. Of course.” He managed a quick, nervous laugh, ducked into the car, and it weaved away.
Just as O’Hara scooped up the remaining bottles of water, his cell dinged. A text message, from Keel. O’Hara clicked it and watched the twenty-second video Keel had shot of Mira. A helpless maiden?
“Holy fuck.”
He ran back to Annie, Cam, and Mira.
2
Without Nico’s gift of invisibility, Red’s flames, Trixie’s PK, Squirt’s wicked throw, and Cam’s camouflage ability, Hal knew he was just one more weirdo whose ability had made him a White Crow. The dome world of the twenty-second century was his past, the Florida Keys in the twenty-first were his future. He had chosen.
But he had gone about it all wrong and now here he was, alone and separated from the rest of the Crows, on the run and without a way to get off Tango Key. He reached the road, spotted a truck, a car. Either one would do. He didn’t know if he could start a car as he had just a few days ago. He didn’t think he had anything left. But if he didn’t, then he might as well just find a tree, sit down, and wait for annihilation.
Then: shouting.
And a volley of gunfire.
Hal dived for the ground, rolled, leaped up and ran for the truck on the other side of the road. He yanked open the door, threw himself inside. He gripped the steering wheel and conjured that image of his parents on those crucifixes, his father’s whispers, his compunction to throw his arms around his father’s feet—and Wind grabbing his arm, pulling him back.
But this time, the image didn’t prod the beast awake. Nothing happened. He was just a hunted man gripping a steering wheel, pleading with a fucking car to start. “Please, please.” The engine hummed to life, stuttered, died. “No, shit, don’t do that.”
He conjured another image, of Wind on the day he’d rescued her from the Normals who had cornered her in an alley, held her down, and started tearing off her clothes. The truck suddenly sprang to life and Hal pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, sobbing with gratitude and relief.
C’mon, get moving. Where to?
3
Sheppard raced across the field, firing repeatedly, peppering the banyans and the space between them with a barrage of bullets. He and Gutierrez reached the road just as the truck on the other side tore out of the lot. They both opened fire, the back windshield shattered, the truck careened. They ran after it, but the truck turned again and took off.
“Shit, we need a car,” Sheppard spat.
“Carlos went back to get one.”
Sheppard radioed their position to the others. “Hal’s in a truck, following the feeder road to Old Post on the Gulf side of Tango. Carlos, where are you?”
“Nearly there, amigos.” Headlights flashed at the far end of the street and moments later, Delgado’s police cruiser screeched to a stop and Sheppard and Gutierrez scrambled in.
4
Mira guzzled the bottle of water O’Hara had handed her, then swung her legs out the door, pressed her feet against the ground, and stood. Annie and Cam immediately reached for her, to steady her, but she didn’t want or need anyone holding her up. She had to be elsewhere. She shrugged off their helping hands and moved awkwardly around the front of the car to the driver’s side. She slid behind the wheel. “Car keys?”
Cam stuck his head inside and passed her the keys and her bag. “You going somewhere?”
“Yes.” She set her bag on the console, stuck the key in the ignition, turned it, and loved that gratifying hum. “Cam, the passenger seat is yours. Annie, Jon, best if you follow us.”
“Follow you where?” Annie asked.
“Hal’s going to be racing up Old Post Road to the preserve. I’m going to meet him.”
“We’ll follow you,” O’Hara said.
Cam shut his door. Mira slammed the SUV into gear and it tore out of the back lot.
“How do you know where he’s headed, Mira?”
“A hunch. I saw him in a truck.” She unzipped the bag next to her, withdrew her handgun, slammed in a clip.
“He’s not just yours, Mira. He’s ours.”. “I know. I realize that.”
“No, I mean all of us. Hal’s the Jungian shadow, the archetypal dark heart that lacks empathy, love, compassion. Hal’s the evil that lives within all of us, our baser instincts, our nemesis if we’re seduced.”
Heady words, she thought. But true.
The empty road was cast in a nicotine-colored light from the street lamps. Insects hummed, frogs croaked, but these sounds only heightened the absence of human noises. It all felt eerie to Mira, surreal, like a scene in a movie seconds before the serial killer appeared, the monster leaped out, the world ended.
They passed the empty dock and climbed into the hills. “He had enough left in him to start the goddamn car, Cam.”
“He’s terrified. That probably stoked it.”
As she came out of a curve, she saw the truck. “Headed into the preserve, just like I saw.”
“May I have your gun?”
Mira thrust it at him, he lowered the window and leaned out of it, aiming, firing. The first three shots missed. The fourth shot flattened one of the rear tires and the truck swerved crazily for a moment, slowed, then regained traction and tore into the parking area of the preserve.
She smashed her foot against the accelerator and the SUV crashed over a curb and raced through the parking lot, closing in on him. Mira bore down on him and slammed into the rear of the truck, knocking it sideways. Cam leaned out the window again and fired twice at the side windows, shattering one of them. Then Hal turned sharply left, aimed at the west side of Old Post.
Mire sped after him, caught the rear of the truck again, and it veered dangerously close to the guardrail, the only thing between the road and the edge of the cliff. “Again,” Mira shouted. “And this time see if you can shoot out the other rear tire.”
“Ready,” Cam yelled.
But when she rear-ended Hal this time, their bumpers locked together, a symbolism she really didn’t like. His car swerved, so did hers. She kept slamming on the brake, hoping the bumpers would disconnect, but they didn’t.
Hal’s truck swung left, toward the guard rail, and Mira shouted, “Jump, Cam! We’re going over the edge!”
Mira slammed on the brakes again, threw open her door, and leaped.
Hal’s truck careened over the edge of the cliff, falling so fast that the rear of the SUV, still hooked to it, bumper to bumper, flipped and hit the roof of the truck, then both vehicles vanished over the edge.
Mira, sprawled on the pavement, heard the cars crash together when they struck the rocky beach a hundred feet below. One or both of them exploded.
The flaming debris lit up Old Post.
Cam lay close to the edge of the cliff, motionless, head turned away from her, and Mira couldn’t tell whether he was knocked out or dead. She rolled onto her knees, fell forward onto her hands, and scrambled toward him. In those moments, she felt like an abruptly exposed cockroach as a human closed in for the kill—a folded magazine, a whack from a shoe, a clenched fist. She felt so mortal that when she reached Cam, she threw her arms around him and pulled him away from the edge, the abyss.
He fell back against her, a bony old man whose destiny, like her own, was now permanently changed. Cam, pressed against her on the road, rolled to the right, out of her embrace and turned his head, looking at her.
“I don’t feel that he’s dead,” Mira said.
“Not yet. If he survives the swim to Key West…”
“Can he swim? The other Crows nearly drowned in that swimming pool.”
“His survival instinct is powerful.”
“If we never find his body…” What then? Would Hal become the bogeyman hiding under their beds? The monster in the closet? “What does that mean for us, Cam?”
Sirens shrieked, brakes squealed, car doors slammed open, people hurried toward them. “I don’t know. We continue with our lives. We strive to make a difference so the dome never becomes a reality.”
“That’s it?” “Right now, that’s all that matters.”
Was it?