Allie's scream of joy and relief could only be matched by his mother's. She tried to grab him, but Chainsaw held her back with a strong arm. "Give him time."
Chainsaw rolled him over on his side, and Danny coughed up more water, as if he had the entire pool in his lungs. He coughed, coughed some more, then his eyes opened. His mother took him into her arms against Chainsaw's warnings.
"I'm tired, Mom."
But that was okay. It was all right for him to be tired now. Chainsaw went over to Curtis, shaking him, screaming at him in fury for what he had done, but Curtis's mind was entirely gone. He would be the victim of all this, but Allie could not save him. She had saved Danny; she couldn't save everyone.
She turned to Milos, who was surprised, and maybe a little impressed, by what she had done for Danny.
"Always the good Somalian," he said.
"That's 'good Samaritan.'"
"Why does it matter?" Then he held out his hand to her. "Now we go."
Allie didn't move. "Do you think I would ever come with you after what you just did?"
"You gave me your word."
"Then call me a liar."
Milos signaled to Squirrel who began to circle behind her. "I do not wish to take you by force," Milos said, "but if I have to, I will."
"You'll have to catch me first."
Allie ran, while behind her Mrs. Rozelli said a quiet, thankful prayer as she carried her little boy into their home, and the deadspot at the bottom of the pool faded away into nothing.
Chapter 35 Allie-Allie-Oxen-Free
The Union Avenue Bridge was narrow, always crowded, and nowhere near as efficient as the two interstate bridges that carried the bulk of the city's traffic over the Mississippi into Arkansas. It was the oldest bridge in Memphis, first built for the transcontinental railroad, but it had been modified years ago to add lanes for automobile traffic on either side of the train trestle.
Reports of its crumbling structure were occasionally seen on the inner pages of the Memphis Daily News, but there were always more immediate things for the living to worry about--like who killed the beauty queen, and who fathered the rock diva's baby.
Still, the Union Avenue Bridge was an accident waiting to happen. Of course some accidents need to be helped along.
While Milos was "freeing" Allie from Danny Rozelli's body, Jackin' Jill waited with Moose on the bridge--an impossible feat for most other Afterlights, who would be blown into the river by the Everlost wind--but Jill and Moose were safely packed into two fleshies. They might have looked suspicious just standing around on the bridge, but their fleshies were road workers, and road workers have been known to just stand around on a regular basis.
"What if Milos and Squirrel don't come?" Moose asked.
"We can do this without them," Jill told him, annoyed by Milos's absence, and further irritated by her own fleshie's bad teeth and chewing tobacco breath.
A freight train blared its horn, and rattled down the bridge's central trestle between the east- and westbound lanes of snarled traffic. It startled Jill, and she gagged on her fleshie's chew. She had half a mind just to hurl him off the bridge, and find another fleshie--but that would definitely draw unwanted attention.
A police car stopped on the bridge beside them, and the officer lowered his window. Moose looked panicked, and Jill told him to go fiddle with some traffic cones.
"Everything okay here?" the officer asked. "Need us to divert traffic?"
Jill adjusted her hard hat. "Naah, just filling in a pothole. We'll be done soon enough."
Once he was gone, Jill glanced down at the gym bag at her feet. Moose, idiot that he was, had left the zipper open. It was just luck that the cop hadn't seen the explosives. All that effort to skinjack a demolition engineer just to get them-- how stupid would it be if their fleshies got busted here on the bridge? They couldn't afford a slipup, and every minute they waited made it more likely they'd get caught.
"Forget about Milos and Squirrel," Jill finally said. "We'll do this without them." Jill would take care of the bridge, and Mary would know that Milos was a no-show. Maybe then Jill could squirm her way out from underneath Milos's thumb.
A few miles away, Allie raced from the Rozelli backyard. There was no one in range for her to skinjack, so she had to rely on her own speed, hoping that her will was strong enough to propel her faster than Milos. Twice she felt him grab at her, and twice she shook him off. Then she finally reached a crowded rush hour street, filled with plenty of people and plenty of cars. She could jack to her heart's content. This would be the Grand Ole Opry all over again, soul-surfing as quickly as she could, playing hide-and-seek in fleshies, hoping she had learned enough from Milos's lessons to beat him at his own game.
She leaped blindly into a car moving through the intersection, grabbing the driver, swinging off of him, and hurling herself into a car moving in the other direction. She grabbed hold of a passenger in that car, then pushed off again, leaping into the air, this time catching a passing truck driver. She bounced from one vehicle to another, playing a human shell game. She was sure Squirrel couldn't keep up, but Milos was another matter. She knew he was surfing just as deftly as her, so Allie surfed random and wild, until landing in the passenger seat of an SUV, diving deep inside a fleshie.
--Late--late--we're always late--it's not my fault--it's his fault--it's always his fault--why do we always have to be late -