Plague

by Michael Grant

  “It’s bad,” Dekka reported. “But he’ll live.”

  She lifted Toto’s shirt to show Sam a nasty gash. “Jack, see if there’s a first aid kit aboard.”

  Sam sagged, very tired now. “You okay?” he asked Dekka.

  She didn’t answer.

  He looked more closely at her. “Dekka?”

  She looked sick. She bit her lip. “I am sorry to add to your problems, boss,” she said. Then she raised her own shirt and Sam saw the tiny mouthparts poking through her flesh.

  The light died and night fell as the boat rocked on the gentle waves.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  3 HOURS, 47 MINUTES

  DIANA ROLLED OUT of the bed, accidentally pulling the covers off Caine as she did.

  “Hey!” he protested.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t seen. Repeatedly.”

  Caine grinned and laced his fingers behind his head. “I could get used to this life. I think I’ll have another can of peaches.”

  Diana took a quick shower and stepped out, dripping wet, to find him waiting for her, holding a towel.

  “Seriously: no,” she said. “We’re done.”

  “Well, until we get something to eat,” he said.

  She dried off and combed her hair while he watched. The lack of privacy was a little irritating, but she told herself it was a small price to pay for peace. In any universe this would be a lovely room, in a lovely house, on a lovely island. But in the FAYZ every part of it was exquisite, a miracle of beauty and comfort. She remembered Coates all too well. Especially the last months there as the food ran out and the fear and depression and self-hatred set in.

  This was a beautiful place. And Caine was a beautiful boy—a young man, she supposed—at least on the outside.

  If comfort and luxury and Diana herself could keep him pacified, maybe life would go on this way: peaceful.

  Even caring for Penny and dealing with Bug were small problems compared to what she had survived. Panda: she shuddered at the memory and felt sick.

  “What’s the matter?” Caine asked.

  “Nothing.” She forced a smile. “I guess I’m hungry.” Then, seeing his expression, amended the statement. “For food.”

  They pulled on underwear and wrapped themselves in soft, expensive robes bearing famous, embroidered initials. She slid her feet into silk slippers and together they headed down to the kitchen.

  Bug was there, looking even more disturbed than usual. He was breathing hard. Diana glared at him, wondering whether he had been spying on them.

  “There’s a boat coming,” Bug said.

  “What do you mean?” Diana asked.

  “A motorboat. It’s real near.”

  Caine was out the door in a flash and Diana had to run to catch up. The sky was near dark, the sun setting gorgeously and sending fingers of gold and red across the water below them.

  And there, shockingly close, was a motorboat. She saw one person aboard, a boy, but could not make out his shadowed face.

  She looked searchingly at Caine. On his face she saw the expression she expected to see, the expression she dreaded.

  His eyes were alight, his mouth in a feral grin. His whole body seemed to lean forward, anticipating, ready. Excited.

  “Whoever it is, just tell him to leave,” Diana said.

  “Let’s at least find out who it is,” Caine said.

  “Caine, just get rid of him.”

  The boat scared Diana. She wrapped her arms around herself as if shielding herself from cold.

  Now the boy in the boat looked up.

  “It’s Quinn,” Caine said. “What’s he doing here? I expected it to be Zil or one of his losers.”

  “You expected?” Diana frowned. “What do you mean, you expected?”

  Caine shrugged. “Sooner or later one of them was going to come to me.”

  “But . . . Why would you . . . ?”

  He laughed. A smug, cruel laugh. “There are only two four bars in the FAYZ, Diana. Sooner or later someone would get sick enough of Sam lording it over them that they’d come to find me.”

  Diana felt something twisting inside her.

  “Hey, Quinn. Up here!” Caine yelled. Then, in an aside, “Bug, disappear. Stay ready. It might be some kind of trick.”

  Bug faded from view.

  Quinn killed the engine. He stood up, moving easily with the rocking of the boat. “Caine. Where do I land the boat?”

  “No need,” Caine said. He was grinning hugely now. “Sit down and hold on.”

  Caine stepped to the very edge of the cliff. He raised his hands. The boat began to rise from the water. Dripping, and trailing a fringe of algae, it floated up and up and came to rest on the overgrown grass. Caine released it and it tipped onto its side. Quinn jumped to avoid being spilled out of the boat.

  “Well, Quinn, what brings you to Fantasy Island?” Caine asked.

  “Hey, Diana,” Quinn said.

  Diana didn’t respond. She knew. Just like Caine knew. Somehow, despite everything, Quinn was here to bring Caine back.

  “Edilio sent me,” Quinn said.

  Caine smiled skeptically. “Edilio? Last guy on earth I expected to be sending me messages.”

  “Edilio’s mayor now.”

  Diana felt a pang. “Is Sam dead?”

  Quinn started to answer, but Caine interrupted. “No, no: let me guess. I’m going to say . . . Sam got tired of doing every-one’s dirty work, taking all the risks, and then catching all the blame when things didn’t go perfectly.”

  Caine relished the mute confirmation on Quinn’s face. He laughed and said, “Come on, Quinn. Come inside and have something to eat.”

  “I’m just here to—”

  Caine waved this off and said, “No, no, no, you have to come in. I don’t want to stand out here in a bathrobe. After all, this is a big moment in the history of the FAYZ.”

  “A big moment?” Diana said.

  “My triumphant return, Diana. That’s why Quinn’s here: to beg me to come back.”

  “Well, he’s wasting his time,” Diana said, but even she didn’t believe it. She followed Caine and Quinn back to the house.

  “Would you like some crackers and cheese?” Caine suggested brightly. He could barely contain himself. He was grinning hugely. Cocky. Swaggering. Even as Diana felt the small hope she’d nurtured die inside her.

  They brought Quinn some crackers and cheese and a cookie. He didn’t resist but ate them quickly with pleasure he could not conceal.

  “You know, we have a very nice life here,” Caine said expansively. “Plenty of food. Water. Even hot water for showers if you can believe it. In fact, we were just lying in bed talking about it.”

  “Yeah. It’s nice,” Quinn said with an embarrassed glance at Diana.

  Caine watched him eat, considering. “Diana, I think you’d better do a reading on Quinn. Just in case something has developed.”

  Diana hadn’t done a reading in a long time. It was her power: an ability to read whether a person was a freak or a normal. And then to know how much power the person had. Diana was the one to invent the half-mocking bar system. One bar, two bars, like a cell phone.

  Diana stood next to Quinn and laid a hand on his shoulder. She concentrated, forming the picture in her head.

  “Nothing,” Diana said.

  “Could have told you that,” Quinn said, voice muffled by cookie.

  Diana dropped her hand to her hip. “You’re normal, Quinn. Now . . .” She stopped in midsentence. She’d been about to tell Quinn to go home, leave, get off the island right now, this instant.

  But something . . . she felt something. Something registered, some power.

  A freak.

  Bug was close by, still invisible, but not touching her, not making physical contact. Nor was Caine touching her. The power to read freaks only worked on direct touch.

  Was she sensing her own power? No. No, this was something different. It was faint but persistent.
<
br />   She turned away and placed her hand on her stomach.

  “So, Quinn, tell me: what’s the big crisis?” Caine asked.

  Diana nearly fainted. There it was, clearer than before. A reading. Two bars. Definitely. Clear, unmistakable.

  “There’s a sickness,” Quinn was saying. “Like a flu or something, but kids are coughing their lungs out, dying.”

  No, Diana thought. Please, no.

  “And there are these creatures, like, well, people are calling them roaches . . . And Drake . . .”

  “Old Drake’s alive?” Caine stood suddenly.

  “In a way,” Quinn said darkly.

  “I have to . . . ,” Diana said faintly. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  She fled the room and held it together until she reached her room. There she threw herself on the bed and lay both hands on her belly. She read her own power—as always, two bars. But there it was still, definitely there. A second power.

  Not possible. It didn’t happen this quickly. She tried to recall half-remembered lectures from sex ed a million years ago. Words like “blastocyst” and “embryo” swam in her brain.

  It had been just twenty-four hours since the first opportunity for fertilization. She knew from past experience that a home pregnancy test wouldn’t even work until ten days after.

  Absurd. She was panicking. She was misreading. There was no way, none. Impossible, not this quickly.

  Impossible, some cruel voice inside her said, as impossible as an impenetrable dome. As impossible as everyone over the age of fourteen disappearing. As impossible as coyotes who could speak.

  As impossible as a boyfriend who could mock the laws of physics by raising a boat from the sea with nothing but a thought.

  • • •

  Little Pete’s fever was spiking again. Astrid had found a thermometer in the former nurse’s office at Coates.

  Nurse Temple—Sam’s mother—she realized with a pang. Nurse Temple. This had been her workplace. Of course like everything at Coates it had been trashed—medicine cabinet emptied, glass doors smashed, sheets on the cot soiled, reference books tossed around for no apparent reason.

  Someone had made a little fire of medical records. The ashes were scattered near the window.

  A bird had built a nest on a high shelf and then abandoned the nest. There were pinfeathers wafting around on the floor, mixing with the ashes.

  That’s how she’d found the thermometer, by noticing the feathers. There was no way it would be sterile, of course, but nothing had been clean in the FAYZ for a long time.

  Little Pete registered 103.1. And his cough was worsening.

  “What are you going to do, Petey? Are you going to let yourself die?”

  Did he even know he might be dying? Little Pete knew nothing about viruses. How would he cope with an enemy he didn’t even know existed? He didn’t understand germs, but he knew he was hot. A breeze had started blowing. How long until he blew this roof off?

  Astrid heard Orc bellowing out a song downstairs. She couldn’t watch him anymore. If he wanted to drink himself to death, why stop him? For the sake of his immortal soul?

  Orc drunk was Orc dangerous. She had seen him looking at her with a strange, intense gleam in his eyes.

  She realized she was crying. Let him kill himself. Wouldn’t she want to die if she were Orc? Didn’t she want to die herself?

  It was all a macabre joke. The FAYZ: full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but death and despair. Why cling to this life?

  She tried to imagine being out in the real world. She tried to call up pictures of her parents and her old house. Of course that house was burned to the ground. And her parents would hardly even recognize her, let alone their son.

  No, that wasn’t true. They would recognize her and him and think they were still the kids they’d loved. Only gradually would they come to understand what monsters they were: grown as ugly inside as Orc was outside.

  Maybe if the FAYZ ended, Orc might be restored to his normal form. But how would she ever be restored to hers? How would the girl who loved math and science, who could read all through the night, the girl of sweet romantic daydreams and big plans to save the world, how was that girl ever going to exist again?

  “It ends with all of us dead, doesn’t it?” she asked Little Pete. “It ends when evil wins and we all surrender.”

  The sad thing was, they were already lost, all of them.

  She could see her own breath. The room was getting colder by the minute.

  She stuck the thermometer in Little Pete’s mouth again. He coughed it out.

  “Yeah, okay,” Astrid said. “Petey, I . . . I think if you can’t stop this . . . All of this . . . Petey, it has to end. There are kids dying of this cough. And it’s all because of this place you made, this FAYZ. You changed the rules and that has consequences.”

  Little Pete did not answer.

  She had not expected he would. There was a pillow. Press it down over his face. He wouldn’t even know, probably. He wouldn’t be afraid. He wouldn’t suffer. He would cross painlessly from life to death and down would come the barrier and in would rush the police and the ambulances and food and medicine. And no one else would die.

  Mom. Dad. I’m alive. I made it. But Petey didn’t. I’m so sorry, but . . .

  Astrid jerked back. She was trembling. She could do it unless Petey himself stopped her. She could. And she would never be caught. No one would ever reproach her.

  “No,” she whispered in a shaky, uncertain voice. Then, stronger, “No.”

  It should have made her feel good. Maybe in the past it would have. Maybe she would have congratulated herself for making the high and mighty moral choice. But she knew deep down inside that her choice would condemn many to death. No police and ambulances rushing in through the open barrier. Just more of the plague, more of the monsters, more suffering and death.

  Astrid put her hands together, meaning to pray for guidance. But the words would not come.

  From the recesses of her extraordinary memory she dredged up an old, old text. A fragment from a lecture she’d attended. From one of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle? No, Epicurus.

  Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

  Is he able, but not willing?

  Then he is malevolent.

  Is he both able and willing?

  Then whence cometh evil?

  Is he neither able nor willing?

  Then why call him God?

  There was only one god in the FAYZ. God was a sick, disturbed, unaware child on a filthy cot in an abandoned school.

  “I can’t stay, Petey,” Astrid said. “If I stay here . . . I’m sorry, Petey. I’m done.”

  Astrid shivered, rubbed her hands together for warmth— the breeze had grown downright chilly—and walked out of the room.

  Down the hall.

  Down the stairs.

  Out through the front door.

  “Done,” Astrid said, standing for a moment atop the stone steps. “Done.”

  She walked off into the falling night.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  2 HOURS, 51 MINUTES

  “YOU’RE GOING? ” DIANA asked.

  “Of course,” Caine said. “We’re going. We’re even going to bring Penny. She’ll come in handy. Maybe Lana can fix her legs. And then she’ll be very useful at controlling people.”

  Caine started whistling happily as he stuffed clothing into a Dolce & Gabbana bag.

  “You should grab some clothes,” Caine said. “It might be a while before we get back here.”

  “I’m not going,” Diana said.

  Caine stopped. He smiled at her. Then his eyes went dead and she felt herself pushed by an invisible hand, shoved toward the closet.

  “I said pack,” Caine said.

  “No.”

  “Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret,” he warned. Then in a more reasonable tone, “I thought you loved me. What’s all thi
s about?”

  “You’re a despicable person, Caine.”

  Caine laughed. “And now you’re shocked. Right.”

  “I hoped—”

  “What?” he snapped. “Hoped what, Diana? Hoped you’d keep me happy? Hoped you’d tame me?”

  “I thought maybe you were finally growing up a little,” Diana said.

  Caine made a negligent, come here gesture with his hand. Diana was propelled toward him. She tripped but did not fall. He held her immobile with powers she could not resist and kissed her.

  “I have what I wanted from you, Diana. And it’s great. I mean that. I got you to give it up willingly. I could have forced you whenever I wanted, but I didn’t, did I?”

  She did not answer.

  “But if you think,” he went on, “that you’ve gotten some kind of control over me, well, guess again. See, I’m Caine. I’m the four bar. I’m the one running things. And I’m happy to have you be a part of that. You can go on teasing me and making fun of me: I’m not sensitive. I like having one person who can stand up to me and tell me what she thinks. A good leader needs that.” He leaned so close she could feel his breath on her ear as he whispered. “Just remember: I’m Caine. And people who fight me regret it. Now pack up. Make sure you bring that little lacy black thing. I like you in that. Bug. Go tell Penny we’re leaving.”

  Bug faded into view. He’d seen and heard it all. From behind Caine’s back he gave Diana the finger.

  • • •

  “We’re going to figure something out, Dekka,” Sam said.

  She sat perfectly still in the back of the boat. Sam sat beside her. Toto had been banished to the bow—Sam didn’t want him pointing out every soothing lie.

  “I’m not scared,” Dekka said. “I mean, look, I don’t know if any of us are ever getting out of the FAYZ alive.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.

  “I mean, you think about all the kids,” Dekka said. “Bette. The twins. Duck, poor old Duck. Harry. E.Z. Hunter.” After a pause, “Mary.”

  “Lots of others,” Sam said.

  “Yeah. We should remember all their names, shouldn’t we?”