Fear (37 page)

The rest were out of range by then, some even abandoning their meat.

Sanjit came running up to stop beside a heaving, panting Sam.

A boy, maybe twelve, unrecognizable but alive and crying pitiably, lay in two pieces in a bush off the road.

Sam took a deep breath, marched to him, took careful aim, and burned a neat hole in the side of his head. Then he widened his beam and played it over the corpse until there was nothing but ashes.

He shot an angry look at Sanjit. “Anything you have to say about that?”

Sanjit shook his head. He couldn’t form a complete thought. Sam wondered if he’d be sick. He wondered if he himself would be.

“If it was me,” Sanjit began, and ran out of words.

That blunted Sam’s anger. But only a little. This was his fault. It was his job to protect.... Why hadn’t he sent Brianna off months ago to exterminate the last coyotes? Why hadn’t he thought to send a patrol up the road to meet the inevitable refugees?

He now faced the task of cremating the rest of the dead. There was no way he could let brothers and sisters and friends see what the coyotes had left behind. These mangled, barely recognizable slabs of meat could not be what loved ones carried with them in memory for the rest of their lives.

“Why are you here?” Sam demanded as he began his grisly work. “Did you bring these kids here?”

“Lana sent me.”

“Explain.” He didn’t know Sanjit well. Just knew that he had pulled off something close to a miracle in flying a helicopter from the island to Perdido Beach.

“Bad stuff in Perdido Beach,” Sanjit began. “Penny somehow managed to cement Caine. They’re going to try to free him, but last I saw Caine he was crying and having his cemented hands beaten on with a hammer.”

Sam’s reaction surprised him: his first feeling was worry, and even outrage, on Caine’s behalf.

Caine had been an enemy from the start. Caine was responsible for battle after bloody battle. He had come close to killing Sam on more than one occasion. Maybe, Sam reflected, he was reacting to the fact that Caine was, after all, his brother.

But no. No, it was that Caine was strong. And however much of a power-mad jerk he was, Caine would have tried to keep some kind of order. He would have—probably—worked to avoid panic. Always for his own reasons, but still…

“So, Albert’s in charge,” Sam said thoughtfully, and burned a foot resting almost comically upright.

“Albert bailed,” Sanjit said. “Quinn talked to him as he was heading to the island with three girls.”

This was worse news than the incapacitation of Caine. A lot worse. There were three major powers in the FAYZ: Albert, Caine, and Sam. Three people whose combination of power and authority and skills might have kept things together for a few days or a week until … until some kind of miracle happened.

Albert, Caine, and Sam. That was the foundation of the stability and peace of the last four months.

“Did you see Astrid?” Sam asked.

“Astrid? No. I don’t even know if I would recognize her; I’ve only seen her once, months ago.”

“She went to warn you guys about the stain. And offer my … my light-hanging services.”

“Well, I guess I’m relieved that I’m not the only one off on a wild-goose chase.”

Sam looked sharply at him. There was some steel in this kid. He had been the last one to run from the coyotes. And judging by the fat pistol in his hand and the discarded weapons lying along the road, he’d been the only one to really give them a fight.

And he hadn’t quibbled when Sam did the hard but merciful thing.

“Sanjit, right?” Sam said. He held out his hand.

Sanjit took it. “I know who you are, Sam. Everyone does.”

“Well, you’re with us for now.” He jerked his head up at the sky.

“I have a family,” Sanjit said. “I have to get back.”

“Brave is good,” Sam said. “Stupid is another thing. Those coyotes don’t need light to find you. You’re a friend of Lana’s, right?”

Sanjit nodded. “Yeah. We live at Clifftop with her.”

“The Healer has you living with her?” he asked incredulously. “I’m learning all kinds of things today.”

“I guess she’s my girlfriend,” Sanjit said.

Sam fired at what looked like a chunk of hamburger wearing a part of a T-shirt.

“If you’re with Lana, then your family is as safe as anyone. You getting killed won’t help them. You’re with us now. Just one thing: talk freely to Edilio, but no one else. Clear? If kids hear that Albert has bailed…” He shook his head. “I thought better of Albert than that.”

It left a bad taste in his mouth, Albert running away. No doubt it made good business sense. But the word “treason” was on the tip of his tongue.

Backstabber.

Coward.

Astrid was on her way to offer an alliance with a beaten and humiliated “king” and a cowardly “businessman.”

He shoved away the image of the coyotes finding her before she could reach town. There were thoughts too painful to allow.

He had to think, and think clearly, not let his mind be seized and paralyzed by lurid images of Astrid brought down in some lonely place by coyotes, or zekes, or Drake.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Are you okay?” Sanjit asked.

“Okay?” Sam shook his head. “Nope. I’m not. The guys I was counting on to be with me aren’t. It was already hopeless. Now?”

“Lana’s still there,” Sanjit said. “And Quinn.”

“Quinn?” Sam frowned. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

“Lana put him in charge. He’s got his people with him.”

Sam nodded, distracted. He was seeing a chessboard in his mind. Most of the pieces he might have played, the powers that might have helped, his bishop sand knights and rooks, were all down or missing. Dekka, Brianna, Jack, Albert, possibly Caine, all down or missing. His steady knight, Edilio, would have to watch over the lake. Which left Sam with pawns.

On the other side Drake. Maybe Penny. The coyotes.

And the opposing king, the gaiaphage, who was so well protected he might be impossible to reach, let alone destroy.

“What was that TV show?” Sam asked, rubbing his face to clear away the smoke of burning bodies. “The one where they vote you off the island?”

“Survivor?”

“Yeah. ‘Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.’ Right?”

“I guess,” Sanjit said doubtfully.

“Outwitted and outplayed. That’s me, Sanjit. You just joined the losing team. I’ve got nothing left. And pretty soon? I’ll be blind.”

“No. Not you, Sam. You’re the only one who won’t be.”

“Sammy suns?” Sam laughed derisively. “They might as well be candles.”

“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king,” Sanjit said.

“In the dark the one guy with a candle is an easy target,” Sam countered.

One thing was crystal clear to Sam: his job was not to sit here and protect his charges at the lake. That was a losing move. That was him waiting for the enemy to gather its forces to come for him. Maybe he’d been outwitted and outplayed. He had not yet been outlasted.

Without another word to Sanjit he headed back to the lake.

Diana saw Penny and her knees gave way. She sat down hard in the dirt. She couldn’t breathe.

No
, she mouthed soundlessly.

Penny looked at Drake first. At his terrible tentacle. At the little boy suspended in the air. She glanced curiously at Brianna, like she wasn’t quite sure who she was.

Then she looked at Diana, and her eyes widened with pleasure. Her smile started small and grew and grew and became a laugh of pure delight. She clapped her hands together.

“Too good,” Penny said. “Too, too good.”

Diana’s mind had stopped working. Thoughts would not form. Reactions would not take shape. Fear took her. A low keening sound came from deep in her throat.

This was no longer about pain: terror was here.

Drake shot a look at Penny. “Who are you?”

“I’m Penny,” she said. “You used to push me out of your way back at Coates. I was nobody to you.”

“You have a beef with me?” Drake asked, just a little worried.

Penny smiled. “Oh, you were just a jerk, Drake. Nothing special. Whereas Diana…” She laughed her demented, delighted laugh. “I absolutely love Diana. She took such good care of me on the island.”

“Leave me alone,” Diana heard herself beg, like hearing someone else, not like the words were coming from her, because she had no words in her brain; she could see what was coming; she knew what was coming.

God save me, Diana begged, God save me, save me, save me.

“How’s the baby, Diana?” Penny asked, her voice slithering, her eyes bright. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

And suddenly the baby woke up, and its claws came out like the claws of a tiger, and its insect face with saber mandibles ripped at her insides, tearing through the flesh of her belly, tearing out of her, a wild animal, nothing human there, but no, that wasn’t true; it had Caine’s face, his face but smeared across a soulless ant face and the claws and the pain, and she screamed and screamed.

Diana was facedown in the dirt. Penny’s bare feet—one of them crusted with bloody mud—were in front of her.

There was no monster baby.

Her belly had not been torn open.

Diana cried into the dirt.

“Cool, huh?” Penny said.

“What did you do to her?” It was Drake, fascinated.

“Oh, she just saw something. She saw her baby as a monster. And she saw it rip her apart from the inside. Felt it, too,” Penny said.

“You’re a freak?” Drake asked.

Penny laughed. “The freakiest of the freaks.”

“Don’t hurt the baby,” Drake warned. He tossed Justin aside, ready to take this interloper on if necessary. The boy landed hard but without breaking anything.

Penny was not intimidated by Whip Hand. “What’s in there?” She indicated the narrow path leading up to the mine shaft.

Drake didn’t answer. His whip was ready to slash at her. But he hesitated, unsure if she was friend or foe.

“I’ve felt it since I got close,” Penny said, looking past Drake up at the path. “I was just wandering. Going nowhere. And then, little by little, I realized I was going somewhere.” She said this in a singsong voice. “I was going here.” Then, like a person waking out of a dream, she said, “It’s that thing Caine went to, isn’t it? The Darkness. The thing that gave you that Whip Hand.”

Drake said, “Would you like me to introduce you?”

“Yes. I would,” Penny said very seriously.

Diana had stolen tear-distorted glances at Brianna, who seemed content to let this go on, so long as it ate up more time. Now Brianna spoke. “I don’t think you two are going anywhere.”

She flew at Drake.

But Diana had been there at times when Brianna moved at top speed. When she moved at top speed you didn’t see her arms or legs; you didn’t see her draw her deadly machete. Diana saw those things now and knew that the Breeze had slowed.

But she was still fast.

The machete swung and Drake’s whip was cut in half. Five feet of flesh-colored tentacle lay in the dirt like a dead python.

Brianna spun, came back around fast, but with her eyes carefully down on the ground, cautious, distracted, and suddenly she cried out, skidded, leaped across something Diana could not see.

Penny had struck!

Drake picked up his severed tentacle and pushed the two stump ends together. He looked less furious than peevish. The injury was at worst a temporary inconvenience.

Brianna was jumping around like a crazy person, leaping from place to place, focused like mad on every move, arms windmilling for balance.

“What is she doing?” Drake asked.

Penny laughed. “Trying not to fall into the lava. And her friend, Dekka? The one she was expecting to show up? She’s out there somewhere....” She jerked her head back toward the night-dark desert. “Trying to get her little brain back to reality.”

Diana saw wary concern on Drake’s face. It was beginning to occur to him that perhaps Penny might be more than he could handle. “Let’s go. The gaiaphage is waiting.”

“Do you think I’m cute?” Penny asked him.

Drake froze, stood stock-still, and now the look on his face was more than just wary.

“Yeah,” Drake said. “Yeah. You’re cute.”

His tentacle had grown back, the stumps melding quickly together, smoothing as if he was made out of clay and an invisible hand was pinching the edges together, then rolling the whole thing like a Play-Doh snake. He raised the whip high and snapped it in front of Diana’s face.

“Now move,” he said.

Diana watched Brianna, still leaping desperately, trapped in some illusion of danger.

And she saw the little boy, Justin, crawl ahead of her into the darkness.

Dekka lay sobbing in the darkness. She could barely see her hands in front of her face.

She didn’t know what had happened to her. Just that in an instant she had been frozen, completely immobile. Paralyzed.