So Krysty gathered the power within her and crouched, coiling her muscles for the leap. The bank continued to recede.
Then she took a deep breath, focused the Gaia force and leaped.
Even with the weight of Mildred on her back, Krysty felt light as she sailed through the air. Miraculously, she overtook the dissolving rim and kept going, past the point where the sinkhole might take her as soon as she touched down.
When she did land, Ryan and J.B. were waiting for her. The second Krysty put down Mildred, J.B. had his arm around the woman’s shoulders, urging her forward to flee the approaching pit.
Ryan did the same for Krysty. “Can you keep going?” he asked as they ran.
“Yes.” Whenever Krysty tapped Gaia’s power, she always went through a slump afterward, as if the superhuman exertion had unnaturally exhausted her. But perhaps because of the continued danger, she hadn’t gotten to that point yet.
She and Ryan ran onward after J.B. and Mildred, trying to get past the limits of the sinkhole’s expansion…if there were any. Up ahead, Jak and Ricky had stopped running and were waving their arms, urging them on.
Suddenly, a fresh bolt of pain shot through Krysty’s skull, and she stumbled. She tried to keep running at full tilt, but another bolt caught her, and she stumbled again, heading for a fall.
Ryan’s arms stopped her from hitting the ground. In one smooth movement, he scooped her off her feet and kept going, carrying her away from the sinkhole.
Just then, a shock wave plowed into both of them, nearly bowling them over. Krysty saw the ground around them flow like liquid, and she knew what was coming next.
A blinding flash lit the landscape. Ryan reeled with Krysty in his arms, teetering in the light, and then the flare was suddenly snuffed out.
Instantly, Krysty could feel that the air was different. Everything was quieter and more still than before, with good reason.
The constant rushing of the collapsing ground had ended.
“It stopped.” Looking back, she saw that the sinkhole had finally stopped expanding, leaving the farthest reach of the rim at about thirty feet from them.
“Best news we’ve had all day,” Ryan said. “But why the hell did it start?”
Krysty concentrated, trying to probe their surroundings for a clue, but then the post-Gaia weakness finally struck. Her thoughts scattered like ripples from a pebble tossed into a pond, and she slumped in Ryan’s arms.
Mildred was at her side in a heartbeat. “Are you all right?”
Krysty nodded weakly. “Just worn-out.”
“You just let me know if you need anything.” Mildred patted her cheek lightly.
“What about you?” J.B. put a hand on Mildred’s shoulder, gazing at her with deep concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mildred said. “Not a big fan of this place, but I’m fine.”
“It hellhole,” Jak stated. “We stay longer, it take us like took Doc.”
“Mebbe we should split up,” J.B. suggested. “One group could get Krysty out of here before the next disruption while the other group stays here and keeps looking for Doc.”
“Or,” shouted Ricky, who was standing on the rim of the crater, pointing into the distance, “we could all follow that.”
Ryan carried Krysty to the rim, and the others joined them. As Krysty looked where Ricky was pointing, she saw what he was talking about.
J.B. blew his breath out in a low whistle. “Dark night!”
“Maybe one good thing came out of that crap storm,” Mildred said.
In the distance beyond the giant sinkhole, Krysty saw that a channel now ran through the surface of the earth—a rough-hewn canal filled with a glowing red liquid. The red substance churned and bubbled, shedding plumes of rippling gray steam that revealed, at a distance, just how hot the channel’s contents had to be. Meaning the red liquid could most likely be only one thing.
“Lava,” Krysty said.
“Magically appearing in the middle of the Sandhills, where there’s zero volcanic activity,” J.B. commented.
“That we know of,” Ryan corrected. But how the lava had gotten there wasn’t the important part, and they all knew it. More important by far was what it might do for them.
And whom it might lead them to.
“Don’t you think it could be a trail?” Ricky asked. “Mebbe it’s pointing at the middle of all this.”
J.B. nodded. “The epicenter of the effect.”
“And that might be where they’re taking Doc,” Ricky added.
Ryan nodded. “Might be, at that.”
“Seem like long shot to me,” Jak said. “How know that where taken?”
“We don’t,” J.B. replied. “But we don’t have any better ideas, do we?”
“I think it’s worth a try.” Ryan looked down at Krysty, still resting in his arms. “But mebbe we should still get you out of here.”
Krysty shook her head. “I don’t want us to split up.” She shifted in his grip, signaling that she wanted him to let her down, which he did. “I can handle whatever comes our way. Don’t worry.”
Ryan held her gaze for a long moment, reading all that remained unsaid between them. Krysty knew he was aware she was making a sacrifice, and that it would cost her, but she would gladly do it if it meant finding Doc.
And she knew he was well aware of one other fact as well: once she decided to do something, there could be no stopping her.
“All right, then.” Ryan nodded. “Let’s gather up what’s left of our gear and get moving. The longer Doc’s out there on his own, the less likely it is that we’ll ever see him again.”
Doc blinked furiously as he was dragged from the pitch-blackness and dumped in a space awash in bright white light. For a long moment, he couldn’t see a thing beyond a few dim outlines in the flaring brilliance.
Then, as his eyes adjusted, things slowly took shape around him. He saw that he was in a round, stone-walled chamber, open to the sunlight overhead. He lay on a dirt floor at the feet of a group of muties, unarmed and at their mercy.
The question was, what did they want with him? And why had they brought him here, wherever here was?
“Oh, dear.” As Doc looked around, the muties stared back at him with great interest. They couldn’t take their eyes off him; even as they giggled and tittered in childlike voices, their stares never left him for an instant.
At least they didn’t seem to be exuding hostility. Doc smiled as he sat there, and many of them smiled back at him. The crimson skin of their faces crinkled around their mouths and the corners of their eyes, suggesting a response that was the polar opposite of hostile.
“Well, then.” Doc slowly got to his feet. “Perhaps I have made some new friends after all. Perhaps this has all been an unfortunate mistake.”
Just then, a familiar high-pitched voice piped up over the noise from the crowd. “Not a mistake at all. And we are old friends, not new ones.”
Instantly, Doc recognized the voice as that of the first being who had grabbed him in the lightless stone cell. Turning to look at