Everfound

“Thank you so much,” she told Speedo, “for taking care of these children and finding this wonderful place for me.”

“Right,” said Speedo, “for you.” There wasn’t a trace of his typical over-wide smile on his face.

Around them, Speedo and his squad had begun to separate things into piles. One pile caught Mary’s attention. At first glance it appeared to be a pile of bodies.

“What on earth?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Speedo. “I know what it looks like—but they’re just plastic.”

“Plastic?”

“Yeah, I know. Weird, right? Lots of weird things here.” Then he got a little bit quiet. “But that’s nothing. I’ll show you the weirdest thing of all.”

The plastic personages scattered about the deadspot might have seemed odd if one didn’t know where they came from. The fact is, it was common for many nations to use test dummies to discover the effects of a nuclear blast on the human body. Entire communities were evacuated and test dummies were installed in the homes, and then bombed. The communities were usually old military housing, but sometimes not. There were entire islands in the South Pacific blown to radioactive smithereens, along with the abandoned homes of those who once lived there.

And, of course there were the wartime attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that not only took things, but people as well. In those two deadly blasts, more than 100,000 souls were instantly sent into the light, bringing a tragic end to a painful war.

. . . But the things consumed by nuclear fission in those cities, as well the things incinerated in every nuclear test ever performed, did not leave the universe entirely. They came here: ground zero of the first cataclysmic blast—the one that made all the others possible, and therefore will forever bear the burden of all things lost.

The Trinity vortex was the repository of nuclear memory.

To Mary, whose lifetime had not included such things as nuclear fission, it was all new. She knew the living world had found extraordinary methods of large-scale destruction, yet she had no idea the extent of it. . . .

. . . But as Speedo led her deeper into the deadspot, Mary began to tingle. The gravity that had pulled her here felt stronger than ever before, and she knew, without ever having to ask, that Speedo was leading her to the center of the Vortex.

“Have a look at this,” Speedo said. They came around one of Speedo’s sorting piles, to reveal a clearing about fifty feet across. In the center was an object hovering just above the sand. To Mary it resembled some sort of metallic jar turned upside down or maybe a child’s top. It was dull green, with wires all over it and it stood more than ten feet high.

“It looks sort of like a space capsule,” said one of her skinjackers.

“We think,” said Speedo, “it’s a bomb. . . .”

“Really? How very interesting.” Mary approached it, with her skinjackers close behind her. The thing looked 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 tu

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: [email protected] /* */

From: [email protected] /* */

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

There 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 go

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.”