to do so, I gather.”
“Correct.”
So where’s ‘there’?”
“South Africa. For starters. Because they’re an Original Kind, very old…and if we don’t find them there, we might have to go all the way back to the Tigris and Euphrates, the ‘Cradle of Civilization,’ in order to find and confront—”
Kim interrupted them. “I need to pee.” She was standing up, holding her elbows, looking horrible and miserable. Airel stood by her with a look of concern on her face. Everybody looked at each other as awkward silence fell. “I’ll be right back,” she said, walking off toward the wreckage.
Most of the fire had burned out or burned down, and the rain had ebbed, the storm system moving on to drench other places. The massive logs remained, however, intact and strewn across the road. Kim rounded the end of one of them and disappeared behind it.
“Be careful!” Airel called after her.
“Yeah, yeah,” came the dull reply. “I’ll scream if I see a roach or something.”
Airel turned back to Michael and Ellie. “Have you two figured out what to do next?”
Ellie wore an undisguised look of surprise on her face. “You’re agreeable suddenly.”
“Yeah, well, this sucks. I want to get warm and dry.” Airel looked directly at Ellie. “I figure you two Type A’s would have some orders to bark, that’s all.”
Michael just shook his head and smiled. “Actually…I was hoping to hop a train.” He pointed to the tracks in the distance. “Just gotta make our way across that open range. Maybe a couple of miles across…”
“So we’re going for a walk,” Airel said.
“Yep,” he said.
“Do we all have everything we need?” Ellie asked. “Because we’re not coming back.”
In the direction from where Kim had gone came an exclamation of surprise. It sounded like she was in trouble.
Airel looked suddenly very worried. “Kim!” She bolted for her and the other two followed. “Kim! I’m coming, honey!”
Airel skidded around the end of the log to find Kim standing upright, holding a duffel. “Kim! Are you okay?”
“Yeah!” Kim said. “Look! I found my bag.”
“Oh, for—” Ellie cursed.
“Kim! You scared me,” Airel said. “I thought you were in trouble.”
“Nope!” Kim said. “No roaches. But I got my stuff!” she patted the loosely packed duffel now strapped across her shoulder.
“Good,” said Michael. “All is right with the world.”
Michael glanced at the smashed FBI car. He sighed. “Well, I guess we’d better get moving. We’ve got more than one kind of pursuer after us.”
CHAPTER VI
THE FOUR WALKED BACK up the road, right up the double-yellow, back the way they had come when he was driving. Michael wanted to leave as little obvious sign of their continued existence as possible. After about half a mile, at a curve in the road and a sign marked U.S. 97, they got off and took to the wilderness.
There were no fences. Just wide open high desert. The Cascades skimmed the moisture out of everything that came in off the Pacific, leaving their eastern side barren and dry, save for the fingers of green that crowded the draws—mountain streams and rivers that ran east, counter to the mighty Columbia.
That’s where they were headed: the Columbia River. A massive body of water, irresistible in its rush to the sea, wide, deep, cold, fast, dangerous. Right along the river, freight trains more than two hundred cars long snaked along, headed upriver and inland, probably every couple of hours as far as Michael knew. Once again, he had to rely on gut instinct to get by. He tried as hard as he could not to let his training affect him too much—all the demonic files of experience that now, he was thankful, could be turned inward against themselves, against all their past masters, in self-destruction.
He caught himself more and more crying out in his heart and mind to El. It was crazy. But somehow crazy made good sense, in a way unexplainable with words.
Michael walked close to Airel. He wanted to be near her, to see her face in the darkness, to feel her presence.
Ellie broke the silence. “You all should know…I was able to get my phone up and running. I texted a friend back there. He can get us a plane, but he’s at least a day away and we can’t meet him near any big cities.”
Kim looked confused. “Plane?”
“Yeah. You’ve packed your passports, I hope? My bloke can get us in but we’ll need a safe place to land; we’ve gotta figure that out on the fly. He’ll meet us in Arlington and we