Pulse

she kills you. Just stay here. I mean it.”
    Dylan took a step backward, then flew off the building and landed where Faith had stood on the tree, over Clara. She smiled sadly.
    “So you’re one, too,” Clara said. She assumed he was a first pulse, a mere nuisance like Faith, and this complicated things. “No wonder I liked you from the start. You put off a certain energy. I should have known.”
    Dylan was surprised she hadn’t moved the tree. It wasn’t like her to stay down.
    “I’ve got no reason to fight you,” Dylan said. “We’ll leave, and we won’t come back.”
    “I think we both know it’s too late for that. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I really did like you, Dylan Gilmore.”
    Clooger landed on the building overhead with nine other Drifters, and they all stood in a circle around Faith, awaiting instructions.
    “Faith, just go!” Dylan shouted. “Let us handle this.”
    But she wouldn’t stop making herself stay right where she was.
    “I brought backup, too,” Clara said. “Mine’s better.”
    In a flash of sound and fury, the tree broke in two, sending shards of wood flying in every direction as Dylan leaped for the ground. Wade Quinn advanced along one of the pathways, lifting the concrete slabs in front of him. Each slab was three feet wide, five feet long, six inches thick. They rose like a snake, chasing Dylan up in the air and onto the roof as he ducked and dodged for cover.
    “It sure is hell finding a man under these circumstances,” Clara said, brushing herself off as she walked over to her brother. Wade was looking up on the roof where Clooger was standing with his men.
    “Let’s kill some Drifters.”
    Clooger unpinned three grenades and tossed them into the courtyard. The explosions created a diversion he needed, in which Dylan freed himself from the concrete slabs and slammed into Wade’s midsection with a brutal kick. Wade sailed through a sheet of plate glass and landed on the floor inside the school. Dylan needed to get Clara and Wade away from Faith, so he picked up Clara before she could wrap her mind around what was happening and threw her into the same corridor with her brother.
    “Get down!” Clooger yelled, raising his hands over his head as desks started flying out of the hole where Wade and Clara had entered the school. The Drifters all used their powers to hold off the incoming assault while Faith stood in the middle, wondering what was going on down below. She took a big chance, shooting herself straight up in the air a hundred feet; and when she looked down, she saw headlights on the football field. Six white vans were parking themselves along the center of the field, and she had no idea why. From her vantage point she could see something Clooger and the rest of the Drifters could not: Wade and Clara had picked up the concrete slabs and swung them out like a boomerang. They were making a wide arc, heading straight for the roof of the school.
    “Clooger!” she yelled, but there was so much noise and she was so far overhead that he couldn’t hear her. She surveyed the ground in the courtyard and decided on a section of the tree she’d already felled. Picking it up with her mind made her fall from the sky in jerks and starts, like the effort was short-circuiting her system.
    “Clooger!” she yelled once more, and this time he looked up briefly. “To your left!” Faith yelled. Just as she said it, the first three sections of concrete slammed into the tree she’d moved. The tree fell from the sky and slammed into the side of the school, but three more slabs of concrete were still coming in hot.
    “Move!” Clooger commanded, and the group of Drifters dispersed in different directions. The slabs of concrete exploded onto the roof, breaking into brick-sized chunks. One of the pieces careened into a Drifter, and he fell from the sky, landing hard on the grass outside the school. Faith couldn’t say whether or not the Drifter was alive or dead, but she watched as Dylan flew out into the open air, followed closely behind by Clara and Wade Quinn.
    Dylan knew the risks involved. He had to get Wade and Clara as far away from everyone else as possible. No one else on his side had a second pulse, so he was the only one who could go toe to toe with the Quinns and live to tell about it.
    “Clooger, get the hell out of here! Now! Go!”
    “We can’t find Faith,” Clooger responded. “She’s gone!”
    Dylan hoped against all hope that Faith