“Let’s move out,” Caine said.
One of the soldiers turned the key on the mutilated Escalade. The battery was weak. It seemed at first it wouldn’t start. But then the engine caught and roared to life. Lights came on inside the car. Headlights were painfully bright.
“Everyone in,” Caine ordered. “If Drake’s right and Sam is down—even temporarily—we’re done sneaking. It’s ten miles to the mine. Twenty minutes and we’re there.”
“Where’s my peppermint?” Jack asked.
Caine raised the fuel rod and held it poised in the air above their heads. Close enough that the heat was like a bright, noon sun.
Little Pete lay unconscious.
Astrid was hauled, kicked, and shoved as Antoine tied her wrists and breathed alcohol into her face.
Her brain was spinning. What to do? What to say to stop the insanity?
Nothing. There was nothing she could say now, not with hunger ruling the mob. She could do nothing but witness.
Astrid looked into each face, searching for the humanity that should speak to them, stop them, even now. What she saw was madness. Desperation.
They were too hungry. They were too scared.
They were going to kill Hunter, and then Zil would come for Little Pete and for Astrid herself. He would have no choice. The instant Hunter died, Zil and his mob would have drawn a line in blood down the middle of the FAYZ.
“Dear Jesus, I know you’re watching,” Astrid prayed. “Don’t let them do this.”
“Are you ready?” Zil shrieked.
The mob roared.
“Dear Lord . . . ,” Astrid prayed.
“It’s time for justice!”
“. . . no.”
“Edilio, don’t die,” Dekka begged.
“Don’t die.”
Edilio made a gurgling sound that might have been an attempt to speak.
Dekka had his shirt open. The hole was in his chest, just above his left nipple. When she held her hands against it, the blood seeped from beneath her palm. When she took her hand away, for even a second, the blood pumped out.
“Oh, God,” Dekka sobbed.
Another gurgle, and Edilio tried to raise his head.
“Don’t try to move,” Dekka ordered. “Don’t try to talk.”
But Edilio’s right hand jerked upward suddenly. He seemed to be trying to grab her collar, but the hand wouldn’t connect, the fingers wouldn’t grasp. Edilio dropped his hand and seemed for a moment to pass out.
But then, with what had to be almost superhuman effort, he said two words. “Do it.”
Dekka knew what he was asking her to do.
“I can’t, Edilio, I can’t,” Dekka said. “Lana’s the only one who can save you now.”
“Do . . .”
“If I do, she’ll die,” Dekka said. She was bathed in sweat, sweat dripping from her forehead, dripping onto his bloody chest. “If I do it, Lana can’t save you.”
“Do . . . uh . . .”
Dekka shook her head violently. “You’re not going to die, Edilio.”
She grabbed him around his chest from behind. Like she was doing the Heimlich maneuver on him. Using his own weight against her slippery hands to seal the wound.
She dragged him away from the mine shaft. Dragged him down the trail, his heels making tracks in the dirt. She wept and sobbed as she went, staggered under the weight, fell into boulders, but put distance between herself and the mine shaft.
Because he was right. He was right, poor Edilio, he was right, she had to do it. She had to collapse that mine. But Edilio wasn’t going to be buried there, no way. No, Edilio would have a place of honor in the plaza.
The honored dead. Another grave. The first one that Edilio had not dug himself.
“Hang in there, Edilio, you’re going to make it,” Dekka lied.
She collapsed at the bottom of the trail, at the edge of the ghost town. Dekka sat on Edilio and pressed down on the wound. The force of the blood was weaker now. She could almost hold the blood back now, not a good thing, no, because it meant he was almost finished, his brave heart almost done beating.
Dekka looked up straight into the glittering eyes of a coyote. She could sense the others around her, closing in. Wary, but sensing that a fresh meal was close at hand.
FORTY-ONE
33 MINUTES
DUCK WAS SO high up, he could see smoke rising from the distant power plant.
He was still shaking from being shot at. Shot at! He had never hurt anyone.
Now it was like he had been drafted into a war he didn’t even know was going on. It was nuts. He could have been killed. He might still be killed.
Instead, he had floated away, unharmed.
While others fought to survive. While others stood up against the evil that was being done.
Fortunately the slight breeze was wafting him away from the town square, where all the madness was going on. In a few more minutes he would raise his density and drop gently back to earth. Then, hopefully, he would find some food. The smell of cooking meat had left him crazy with hunger.
“Nothing you could have done, Duck,” he told himself.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “Nothing.”
“Not our fault.”
He made a weak grab at a seagull that hovered just out of reach, floating on its boomerang-shaped wings. He was hungry enough that he would have eaten the bird raw. In midair.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a blur on the ground below. The blur stopped suddenly. He couldn’t see her face, but it could only be Brianna. In her hand she held a pigeon.
Brianna could do what Duck could not. Brianna could catch and eat birds. Maybe she would share. After all, they were both freaks. Both on the same side. Right?
“Hey!” he yelled down.
Brianna stared up at him. “You!” she yelled. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“I’m so hungry,” Duck moaned.
“How did you get up there?”
He was slowly increasing his density, sinking down to earth.
“It goes both ways,” Duck said. “It’s all about density. I weigh whatever I want to weigh. I can weigh so much, I sink through the ground, or I can float so—”
“Yeah, I don’t care. Sam said get you.”
“Me?”
“You. Get down here.”
She ripped a wing off the pigeon and handed a dripping, gelatinous piece of flesh to Duck, who didn’t even hesitate.
He looked up guiltily after a minute of slavering and grunting. “Don’t you want some?”
“Nah,” she said. “My appetite . . . I don’t know. I’m feeling a little sick.”
Brianna was looking at him in a way that made him distinctly nervous.
“There’ll be some wind resistance,” Brianna said.
“Some what?”
“Say you can control your weight? About ten pounds ought to do.”
“Do for what?”
“Jump on my back, Duck. You are going for a ride.”
The morphine did not eliminate the pain. It merely threw a veil over it. It was still there, a terrible, ravening lion, roaring, awesome, overpowering. But held barely at bay.
Barely.
His wounds were shocking to see. Bright red stripes across his back, shoulders, neck, and face. In places the skin had been taken off.
The morphine nightmare had faded and reality had begun to take on some of its usual definition. The ground was down and the sky was up. The stars were bright, the sound of his shoes on the concrete was familiar, as was the sound of his own breath, rasping in his throat.
He had a while. How long, he couldn’t guess. A short while, maybe, to stop Caine.
And kill Drake. Because now, for the first time in his life, Sam wanted to take a life.
Drake. He was going to kill Drake. More than any high-minded concern for what Caine might do, it was the thought of Drake that kept Sam moving forward. Destroy Drake before the morphine wore o
ff and the awful pain returned and left him crying and screaming and . . .
Should have done it the first time he’d had the chance.
Should have . . .
The scene appeared around him, shimmering, unreal. The battle on the steps of town hall. Orc and Drake, the hammering fist of the gravel boy, and the slashing whip of the true monster.
Sam had been busy with Caine. He’d barely survived. But he could have, should have, destroyed the psychopath Drake then and there. Put him down like the rabid animal he was.
Reality was wobbly as Sam crossed the parking lot. No one there, now. Dekka gone to . . . gone to do what? His mind was foggy.
Gone to destroy the mine shaft. Her and Edilio.
Lana. If Lana was in there . . . If she . . .
Sam’s step faltered. Lana was his only hope. Without her, he would not survive. She could heal him. She could end the pain. Renew him.
So that he could . . .
He sagged into a car. For a while, he couldn’t know how long, his mind went away. Consciousness failed. Not quite sleep, though, just a waking nightmare of memories and images and always the pain in his belly, the pain of his scarred flesh.
Keep moving, he told himself. Which way? The town was ten miles away. But that’s not where Caine was heading.
The side of the hill behind the power plant was glowing. Like it was burning in patches. A hallucination.
He would never be able to walk that far. The drug would never last that long. Faster. He needed to move faster.
He needed help. Someone . . .
“Someone help me,” he whispered.
He began the long, wearying walk up the sloping road toward the security gate. No way he could move overland. Not a chance. And even . . .
Even . . .
Sam’s head was playing tricks on him now. He saw a light. Like a flashlight. But coming from the ocean.
He sat down hard. The light swept slowly over the parking lot, like someone out at sea was car shopping.
The light crawled over the side of the power plant. It climbed the hill, then came back down. Someone was searching.
But he was just a crumpled form on a road, too small to be spotted. The light would never land on him. It was like some sick game. The light would come his way and then veer off.
He was invisible.
“No, Sam,” he told himself as the realization dawned with ridiculous slowness on his addled brain. “Stupid moron. The one thing you have is light.”
Sam raised his hands high. A pillar of pure green light pierced the night sky.
The searchlight zoomed instantly toward him.
“Yeah, here I am,” Sam said.
It took Quinn a few minutes to beach the boat and climb up the rocks to reach Sam.
“Brah,” Quinn said.
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I look pretty bad. How . . .”
“I was fishing. I saw the fire.” Quinn knelt beside him, obviously unsure what he could do to ease his friend’s suffering.
“I look bad, and my head isn’t exactly on straight,” Sam slurred.
“I’ll get you back to town,” Quinn said.
“No, brah. Get a car.”
“Sam, you can’t . . .”
“Quinn.” Sam took Quinn’s arm and gripped it tight. “Get a car.”
“Back off, doggies,” Dekka growled.
The coyotes moved closer, circling, always circling. Each circuit just a little closer.
“Which one of you is Pack Leader?” Dekka demanded. Desperate. How could she stop them circling closer and closer? “I have an offer. I . . . I can help you. I want to talk to Pack Leader.”
One of the coyotes stopped moving and turned his intelligent face to her. “Pack Leader me.”
The voice was high-pitched, strained, as though the act of attempting speech was painful.
Dekka had only seen Pack Leader from a distance, but she knew this wasn’t him. Pack Leader had a nasty-looking face, a scar on his muzzle. He was old and mangy. This coyote was obviously younger.
“You’re not Pack Leader,” Dekka said.
The coyote tilted his head quizzically. “Pack Leader die. Pack Leader now.”
Pack Leader dead? Maybe this was an opportunity. “If you hurt me,” Dekka warned, “my people will kill coyotes.”
Pack Leader—the new Pack Leader—seemed to consider this. His eyes were bright and focused, but almost seemed to contain a trace of humor.
“Pack eat dead human,” Pack Leader said in the eerie, grating voice of the mutated coyotes.
“He’s not dead,” Dekka said.
“Pack eat,” Pack Leader said.
“No,” Dekka said. “If you try, we will—”
There was a flash of tan and gray fur and something bowled Dekka over. She rolled and came up into a squat. Three coyotes were on Edilio. Blood was pumping freely from his chest.
“No!” Dekka cried.
She raised her hands and suddenly Edilio was floating up off the ground, along with three panicked, scrabbling, yip yip yipping coyotes.
Pack Leader bounded away to a safe distance.
And there came the sound of a car approaching at high speed.
•••
“Almost there!” Drake cried, ecstatic.
The night wind whipped their faces as the torn-open Escalade bounced and flew. Overhead the fuel rod was like a cruise missile, keeping pace. Caine stood braced against the seatback, hands held high.
Diana could only see the side of his face, but his was not an expression of wild joy like Drake’s. Caine’s eyes stared from beneath low brows. His mouth was drawn back in a grimace. It was the only time Diana had ever looked at him and found him ugly. No trace of the easy charm. The movie star bone structure was there, but now he looked like a shrouded corpse, a mockery, a fading echo.
“Look! Hah hah hah! It’s growing back!” Drake shrieked, and waved the end of his hideous tentacle in her face. He was right. Within the blunt-cut disk a bump was forming, a new growth. Like a salamander’s tail, the whip could be cut, but would regenerate.
“There! It’s the town,” Drake yelled. “There! Now you’ll see. Now you’ll all see!”
“What is this place?” Jack wondered aloud. He glared at Diana, accusing, blaming her.
Not my fault, Diana argued silently. Not my fault, Jack, not my fault you were weak and followed me, you stupid fool, you needy, stupid fool. Not my fault any of this.
I’m just trying to survive. I’m just trying to get by, like always, like always.
It’s what she did, Diana, survive. And always with style. Her own terms, no matter what anyone thought. It was her special genius: being used, but always using back. Being abused, but then returning the abuse, with interest. And remaining, always, Diana, cool Diana.
Not her fault, any of this.
“Look!” one of the soldiers yelled.
Something was happening in the road ahead. Like a small tornado, like a whirlwind made of coyotes, and there, at the center of the madness, a human body.
“Dekka,” Drake said with special relish.
Dekka dropped the coyotes. Dropped Edilio, too. No choice. Nothing she could do to help him now.
“Good-bye, Edilio,” she whispered.
Now there was only the mine shaft. She ran.
The Escalade skidded to a stop. Drake was out and running after her before the car had even stopped.
She had a head start of no more than thirty feet. And Drake was faster than she was.
The air cracked from the sound of his whip hand. She felt the breeze on the back of her neck. No way she’d make it back up the trail. No way.
Dekka spun and raised her hands.
Suddenly Drake’s legs were pumping in air. He rose off the ground in a vortex of dirt and rock. Like a slow-motion explosion had gone off under him. His whip hand twirled crazily.
“I’ll kill you, Dekka!” he yelled.
Dekka turned gravity back on, and Drake fell from t
en feet up.
She turned and ran again, and now the coyotes were around her, bounding along on both sides of the trail, moving ahead of her. They would easily cut her off.
She powered up the hill, breath rasping in her throat. She turned a corner, and there was the new Pack Leader. She raised her hands. Too slow. They came from right and left. Leaped at her from all directions at once.
Dekka went down beneath a snarling, yelping, slashing pile of coyotes.
She screamed and tried to use her power, but iron jaws clamped her wrists.
The powerful made powerless.
The coyotes would have her.
FORTY-TWO
27 MINUTES
DRAKE WAS FIRST up the trail. He was limping, one leg badly bruised by his fall.
Jack was just behind him.
Drake limped up to the snarling coyote pack gathered around their intended kill. One of the coyotes, a creature with bright eyes and an almost human expression of detached interest, snarled a warning.
Dekka was pinioned, helpless. If she was conscious, she showed no sign of it. But she was still alive. Jack could see that she was still alive. And that in a few seconds, less, she wouldn’t be.
“Don’t worry, my coyote brothers,” Drake said with a laugh. “I’m not here to stop you.”
Drake looked down and shook his head mockingly at Dekka. “You don’t look so good. I don’t think this is going to end well for you.” Then he looked back at Jack and said, “So much for mutant powers. Right, Jack?”
It was a warning. A threat. But Jack didn’t care. He was sick. So sick, so sick deep down inside. He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in his stomach. He wanted to run away into the night. But Drake or Caine or the coyotes would come for him.
Why was he here?
Because you’re a stupid fool, Jack told himself. Smart stupid. Stupid smart.
“Just a little farther,” Drake cried from up ahead. “Come meet him, Jack.”
Jack stopped and looked back. He saw the fuel rod first. Floating along. Then Caine beneath it. Caine seemed almost bowed over, like he was carrying the weight on his shoulders. Like it was almost too much for him.
Jack felt as if a weight were pressing down on him, a weight that wanted to squeeze the blood from him, crush him like a piece of ripe fruit. Tears were running down his face, although he didn’t remember when he had started crying.
Gone Series Complete Collection Page 82