The sound of several engines grew closer down the track.
"That's the cavalry," said Alex. She pressed Tom's arm with a tight smile. "Thanks."
"Al!" called Ollie.
She and Tom ran to the F100. Ollie stood by the open door. On the passenger seat, Claire was waking up. The girl's eyes fluttered opened.
"Al..." she muttered.
"Right here, kiddo," Alex replied, resting her hand on Claire's shoulder.
"It's beginning..."
"I know. Can you fight back the pull?"
"Don't think so..."
"Ollie, take Claire to the Hilux and lock yourselves up in there. Whatever happens, don't let'er out. Knock'er out if you need to."
Claire managed to sit up, enough for Ollie to lift her in his arms and take her to the Hilux. Alex turned to Tom, who studied the yard.
"The barn," he said.
"Good idea."
Graham's Jeep drove out of the woods, followed by three trucks that carried some twenty men, Bass' brother Jack and his two hunting pals among them. Alex waved at them to park their vehicles with their headlights pointing at the yard. Graham gathered all the men around Tom and Alex. They gawked at her instructions, but the scene at the yard was crazy enough to silence their questions.
"C'mon, boys! You know what to do!" Graham said, clapping his hands to set them in motion.
They spread around the circle of people oddly static, hallucinated eyes on the mother tree. At Tom's sign, all of them tried to cross the barrier at the same time. The mother tree wasn't strong enough yet to reject them all and keep them away, so they were able to reach the infected people, who didn't even blink at their approach. Every of Graham's men knocked somebody out and dragged them to the barn.
In a scary proof of watchful consciousness, the vines paused their weaving of the trunk and a root busted out from the ground. It wrapped around the closest person and pulled the man down. He seemed to pass out when the root wrapped around him and Graham's men froze, watching in horrified disbelief how the root retreated, dragging the man slowly closer to the trunk and then into the ground. Before they could react, another root shoot out and trapped a woman.
"C'MON! HURRY!"
Alex's shout from the barn startled the men up and they resumed what they were doing. As soon as they dropped their load of knocked-out infected people in the barn, they ran back to the circle to bring more people down and away from the mother tree. While they did that, more roots came out, catching more victims and dragging them underground. Four people disappeared before the rest were secured in the barn, where Alex, Tom and Graham watched over them, in case any root dared to show up in there. When the men tried to go back for the four buried captives, they couldn't cross the barrier anymore, and were rejected like Tom and Alex had been.
"Shit! It's getting stronger!" she snarled. "Dave, Jack, can you guys keep the barn safe for about an hour?"
"We can try," the sheriff replied.
"I'll be back as soon as I can."
"And you better bring something to beat this son of a bitch."
"Yessir!"
She patted Tom's arm and they hurried away together, circling the barrier toward the Hilux.
Alex gave Tom the truck keys and helped Ollie to move Claire to the backseat.
"Talk to me, kiddo," she said, while Tome floored the Hilux down the old road.
Claire was bent over herself in Ollie's arms, both hands grasping her belly, her face contracted in pain.
"She's furious," the girl mumbled, panting. "She's trying to make the embryos kill those she cannot have—myself included."
"The empathic link works both ways?" asked Tom, hands firm on the wheel and eyes on the road.
"Don't think so..." Claire trailed off and suffocated a groan. "The embryo doesn't seem big or strong enough to communicate with her... It can only hear her..."
"So she cannot know what we're up to, whatever it is," said Ollie.
Alex nodded, worried eyes on her niece. "Exactly." She forced herself to look up. "Tom, when we get home, you and Ollie go to Kat's to check on them. Claire and I need a while at home to get everything ready."
Tom nodded and stepped on the gas.
When they got to the Corbans' house, Ollie and Alex helped Claire inside while Tom ran to start the Yukon. When it rocketed away with him and Ollie onboard, Alex opened Bootter's book on the kitchen table in front of Claire.
"Read me the ingredients," she said, moving about the cupboards. She gathered all she needed and ran to the bathroom and back. "Now the recipe. Double everything."
Claire did so, still grabbing her belly and panting out of pain. Alex ground everything to make the same potion they'd given to Rob months ago and injected half of it to Claire.
"Yuck," the girl grunted. "This is when I burke?"
"If you're lucky."
"Then you better help me to the bathroom."
Alex wasn't happy when Claire closed the bathroom door in her face, but there was nothing she could do about it. She went back to the kitchen and injected herself what was left of the potion. She was wondering about going to knock and check on Claire when the girl walked into the kitchen as if nothing had happened.
"The embryo's dead. Lucky me, it was too small to cause any body reaction like the worm did to Rob," she said with a weary smile.
"That's good news. Let's go."