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RACHEL
RACHEL IS CERTAIN THAT aliens are a bunch of fake-ass whores. She's spent the entire past three freaking hours wandering by herself in a dark, scary cornfield, and not once did she get abducted or even see a lousy crop circle. Not once!
She huffs, watching her warm breath turn the dark air smoky. Every stalk of corn in this endless field has looked the same, the goddamn same. She isn't any closer to reaching the exit, at least as far as she can tell. For all she knows, she might have been wandering around in circles. But she does know that if she keeps wandering, if she keeps moving, if she keeps hoping, she'll make it out of here. Eventually. What she'll do from there, she has no idea.
All she knows is that she's the last person left. Maybe in the entire world.
Cain, Atlas, and Meredith were carried off in the backs of burning blue-and-red cop cars. The restâher dad and Avani and Silas and Bianca and Callie and Mayaâshe's assumed dead. (It's best to assume the worst.) She knows Vic and her dogs are dead. She feels nothing about it, not even the slightest hint of grief. She hardly knew them, and she has bigger problems. She's gotta look out for her on and only.
She digs her palms into her eyes, trying to keep the tears from flowing. Her throat feels like it's closing itself up. Her feet feel like she's walking barefoot on crushed rocks. Her calves burn. Her throat is full of broken glass, her lungs of sand. Her flashlight died an hour ago. She can't see a foot in front of her face. At this point, she's so exhausted she can hardly breathe. She has to order herself to keep walking, to keep moving, to keep hoping. With each drag of her foot, she's a step closer to the end of this field, a step closer from where she started. Maybe.
All she wants is to go home.
She'd been so close to it. Cain, her dad, Bianca . . . she'd been so close to going home. And now she probably never will. Home, for her, will always lay just out of reach. Close enough to see, to touch, to smell, but never close enough to have.
Defeated, she plops down in the dirt, hugging her knees to her chest. She's just going to sit here a minute, that's all. She's just going to sit here and close her eyes and sleep for a minute. That's all. Just for a minute . . .
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WHEN RACHEL WAKES, everything's on fire.
She lays there for a moment, screwing her eyes up at the sudden brightness, wondering if she's dreaming. Wondering if fire follows her everywhere.
The air's rough and heavy with a dark smoke that mixes with her spit, turning as pasty and gritty as wet sand and as tough as rubber cement. She can't stop gagging; with each cough, she takes in more smoke. Her hair's knotted with dirt. The morning sky's highlighter-pink and rank with the scent of popcorn burned in the fires of hell. A cornhusk is pasted to her cheek with sweat. Disoriented, she sits up and peels it off. More gagging. More smoke. This is why she doesn't vape.
All of a sudden, a cornstalk not even a foot away from her is eaten by the flames. A thin wall of fire shoots up right beside her. The heat blasts her skin, hot as a blue supergiant. She can already feel heat blisters bubbling up in the blood running under her skin.
She pushes herself to her feet, spinning in a tight circle, trying to find where the fire's coming from, trying to find a safe escape route. The smoke's thicker up here, so thick she feels like she's suffocating. There's no escape. There's nothing but fire. Fire and death. Her thoughts are eaten alive by panic and smoke. She can't form a coherent thought other than the obvious: FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK. Is this how it happens?
Is this the end?
No. Rachel shakes her head. It's so hot her body feels ice-cold. It can't be. There has to be another way. There's always another way.
An ember burns her cheek, popping like one of those little snapping firecrackers she and Cain used to throw at each other on the Fourth.
The fire's getting closer; she's running out of time and clean oxygen. She's either going to burn to death or die from smoke inhalation.
Rachel Terranova is going to die.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath of smoke and gags on it, counts to three, to five, to ten. Trying to give herself the time to think up something brilliant. There has to be another way. There has to be something she can do. She can't just let herself die. Not without a fight.
There's a tiny little clearing of clean air and blue sky. Rachel might be tall, taller than most boys her age, but she's also thin and nimble. She could squeeze through it, no problem, except . . . except the opening to the clearing is hidden behind a burning cornstalk. The only thing between her and the rest of her life is a motherfucking piece of corn. The one time her flat chest and ass could come in handy, and this fucking plant is in her way.
Rachel knows that this plan is going to go horribly wrong, but at this point, she's got no other options other than aliens. She's not about to die, not because of the fire nor some problem that might arise during the abduction process. So she rips the burning stalk out of the ground with her mind.
It's easyâalmost too easy. All she does is imagine the stalk flying out of the ground, and it does. But she doesn't consider where the stalk will go. So, like it has a mind of its own, like it thought she was calling it to her, it flies into her hands.
The pain of burning catches her off-guard at first. She panics, jolting backwards, letting out a pained cry. Frantic, she drops the fiery stalk, shaking her hands out as if she's trying to dry them. The smell of burning flesh fans out around her. Her palms have already boiled to a hot shade of American red. A dizzy wave of nauseous fear washes over her. Just looking at her hands burnt to a crisp nearly knocks her off her feet.
And then she really is knocked off her feet as convulsions grip her. Her powerâdid she overexert herself? No. She's leveled houses with her mind. Ripping the cornstalk out of the ground was child's play. She must be going into a shock. Or maybe she's dying. All she knows is that she's lost c o ntrol of her bd ody adn so emthing is bu rnign o n her to n ege an dhtv eheuiden akuhdajskOA9 ERROR ERROR ERROR MISSION ABORT MIND HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM BODY CRITICAL ERROR CRITICAL ERROR CRITICAL ERROR CRITI
She falls, seizing, hot blood spurting out of her nose and mouth and ears and eyes. Her back slams into the dirt. The burning stalk falls on top of her.
Rachel screams, her throat turning to sandpaper, the breath sucked out of her. Her mind goes blank; her vision goes black. Hit with a brief moment of consciousness, she grabs the stalk off her body and throws it into the clearing. Her shirt's already begun to spark, to sputter, to burn.
In a panic, she starts rolling and flailing around on the ground. The pain cuts through her body as razor-sharp as a knife. She can't see anything, can't hear anything, can't feel anything other than pain and fire and her body slamming into rocks as she rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls . . .
Eventually, the damp earth extinguishes the fire. Rachel just lays there, physically and emotionally exhausted. Something tells her that if she moves, she'll die. That if she stays, she'll die.
Which will it be? Will she go out with a fight, or will she die quietly? Which option has the tiniest sliver of the possibility of survival?
Shakily, but with purpose, she climbs to her feet.
She's survived this much. She has to get out of here. She has to. Aside from the little burning stalk laying there on the ground, the clearing's finally clear. She can jump over it, easy.
Rachel takes a deep breath, bracing herself. She backs up as far as she can, gets a running start, and leaps over the flames.
In the distance, red-and-blue lights, flashing. Civilization, maybe. The police, the fire department, or an ambulance. A way out. A point of reference.
Certain it can't mean anything bad, she runs towards them.