He looked again to see that the bugs were in motion. They were a silvery swarm heading away. He did not see Drake.
Sam swam after the others. He’d stayed with the boat a bit longer than he’d planned and now he was a half mile from the dock. He had a long swim ahead of him.
But water was Sam’s natural element. He’d surfed since he was a toddler, and powering through placid lake water was nothing compared to fighting the surf.
The cold water felt good. Clean. He switched from freestyle to backstroke for a while, gazing up at the night sky, but powering along as fast as he could all the while. If he were back in the world, he’d be looking to join the high school swim team. His butterfly stroke was weak, but his freestyle was as good as anyone’s, and his backstroke even better.
What would it be like to be worrying about improving his butterfly or breaststroke instead of worrying that his friend was being eaten alive from the inside?
What was he going to do next? They trusted him, Dekka and Jack. They expected him to always have a plan. But beyond getting away from Drake and his bug army, he didn’t have a plan.
Drake would go after Perdido Beach next. He would send those creatures rampaging through town killing everyone.
Then he would take Astrid and . . .
Don’t get emotional, Sam warned himself. Just figure out how to win.
He heard clumsy splashing ahead. He rolled over smoothly into a crawl and powered hard and fast.
“Shhh,” he hissed as soon as he was up with them. “You people make more noise than a bunch of littles in the kiddie pool.”
The four of them closed the distance to the dock. Sam motioned for Jack, Dekka, and Toto to slip silently beneath it. Toto had lost his grip on his cushion and it floated away. Jack banged his head on the bottom of the dock and cursed under his breath.
Sam palmed the dock and hoisted himself up, drenched.
“Hi, Sam.”
Brittney stood not twenty feet away.
He spotted three of the creatures over by the marina parking lot. They were waiting. Like a well-trained pack of attack dogs.
He’d been outwitted. Outplayed.
“Hi, Brittney,” Sam said, standing there, dripping.
“I asked you so many times to release me, Sam,” she said. Her voice was cold and far away. Not angry, not scared. Just maybe a little sad.
“I know, Brittney. But I’m not a cold-blooded killer,” Sam said.
Brittney nodded. “No, you’re a good person.” She said it without sarcasm.
“I try to be. Like you, Brittney. I know you’re a good person.”
He glanced at the creatures. They hadn’t moved, but they were alert. They could be on him in ten seconds.
“He hates you,” Brittney said.
“Drake?” Sam laughed. “He hates everyone. Hate is all he’s got.”
“Not Drake. Him. God.”
Sam blinked. What was he supposed to say to that? “I thought God loved everyone.”
“I used to believe that, too,” Brittney said. “But then I met Him.”
“Did you?” She had lost whatever grip on reality she’d had. He couldn’t blame her. What Brittney had endured would leave anyone mental.
“He’s not in the sky, you know,” Brittney said in a normal, conversational tone. “He’s not up in Heaven somewhere.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“He’s in the earth, Sam. He lives in a dark, dark place.”
Sam’s heart missed a beat. He felt cold. “You met God in a dark place?”
She showed her twisted, damaged braces in a surprising, rapturous smile. “He explained His great plan.”
“Yeah?”
“His time is coming. All of this . . .” She swept her arm wide. “It’s all like, like . . . like an egg, Sam. He has to be born from this egg.”
“He’s a chicken?”
“Don’t mock, Sam,” Brittney chided. “He waits to be born. But He needs Nemesis to join Him, Sam, and you . . . you won’t let that happen.”
“Nemesis? What’s a nemesis?”
Brittney had a crafty look as she said, “Oh, Sam. You know who Nemesis is. He has the power to complete God’s plan.” She laced her fingers together, almost awestruck by the act, like it was sacrament. “They must be joined, the Darkness and Nemesis. Together they will have all power, and then, Sam, it all ends, you know. Then the eggshell cracks and He is born.”
“That sounds . . .” He resisted the urge to say “crazy.” “It sounds interesting. But I don’t think the gaiaphage is God. I think he’s evil.”
“Of course he’s evil,” Brittney enthused. “Of course! Evil, good, there’s no difference, don’t you see that? They’re the same thing. Like me and Drake. Yin and yang, Sam. Two in one, a duality, a . . .”
She faltered a little, like a child trying to explain something she didn’t quite understand. She frowned.
“He lied to you, Brittney. The gaiaphage is not God. He reaches into people’s minds and makes them do terrible things.”
“He warned me you would say that,” Brittney said. “My Lord and Nemesis must be joined. And all of you have to die. You’re all like a disease. Like a virus. A plague that must be wiped out so that He can unite with Nemesis and be born.”
Sam was getting tired of the talk. He’d never cared much for religion one way or the other, and some fantasy religion made up by a dead girl to justify the gaiaphage’s lies was even less interesting than Astrid’s religious excuses for not having sex. He was impatient to find out what Brittney meant to do. If there was to be a fight, then let there be a fight.
“And then what, Brittney? Did the gaiaphage explain that to you?”
“Then all the world will be remade. That’s His purpose, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. I guess I missed that part. I was still back at the part where he has to kill everyone.”
“He was forged by a race of gods in the far reaches of space to remake the world, to create it anew.”
“Yeah, well, that sounds just a tiny bit insane, Brittney.”
She smiled. “It’s all insane, Sam. All of it. But He will make it all over again. Once He is born anew.”
Sam felt tired. He wished Astrid were here, maybe she could find out more. Maybe she could talk Brittney out of her lunatic delusion. But he wasn’t Astrid.
“I’ll tell you what,” Sam said. “If your friend in the mine shaft wants me, he can bring it on. Because he’s tried. And I’m still here.”
“Not for long,” Brittney said. “Do you think these creatures just happened on their own? The Lord has molded them, created them to be indestructible, so that you could not stop them, Sam.”
“I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, Brittney,” Sam said. “You’ve been abused about as much as any person ever has been. But I’m still going to have to stop you.” He raised his hands, palms out. “Sorry.”
Twin beams of green fire hit Brittney in the chest. They burned a hole through her.
The bugs leaped, raced to cover the few feet between them and the dock.
“Jack! Dekka!” Sam yelled.
Jack punched straight up through the planks of the deck, but he’d picked a bad spot. He erupted between Brittney and Sam, blocking Sam’s fire.
Brittney screamed, “Kill them!”
Jack tripped, which moved him out of the line of fire. Sam aimed and hit Brittney again but now she was running away. Her back melted, her spine exposed then burned through, and still she ran.
Sam swung his beams at the nearest of the onrushing bugs. Light beams hit the huge creature and bounced away to slice a sailboat’s mast neatly in half. The stump was a torch.
Jack hauled Dekka up from the water and she struck even before she could stand. Gravity beneath the nearest creature ceased. The bug went airborne and its momentum carried it just over Sam’s ducked head. It shot through Dekka’s field and landed half in the water, with its rear portion on the dock.
“Push it!”
Jack slammed into the bug’s rear end and it splashed into the water.
Jack spun, ran at the second giant roach. He ripped a plank from the dock and rammed it with superhuman strength into the gnashing mouthparts.
The board splintered. The creature didn’t miss a step.
Jack fell on his back and the monster was on him in a flash.
“Jack!” Dekka cried.
Jack, flat on his back, kicked up with such force that the wood beneath him snapped.
The third creature swarmed over the first. Its mandibles swept Dekka, missed cutting her in half, but knocked her twenty feet away into the water.
Sam saw in a split second of clarity what he would have to do. He didn’t like it.
The bug rushed at Sam.
The mouth blades sliced.
Sam timed his leap, shouted a desperate curse, and dove straight into the bug’s gaping mouth.
“The days of uncertainty are over!”
Caine stood at the top of the steps to town hall. Below him the sick lay coughing and shivering. Edilio, helpless, as weak as a newborn kitten, shivering so hard he looked like he was having a seizure.
Beyond the sick were dozens of kids, many wet from having come through the rain in the west. Many still wiping the sleep from their eyes. Some of the youngest were carrying their blankies.
Diana stood apart, blank, downcast. Penny had been given a chair. Lana leaned against a tree in the plaza, her hand resting on her pistol, with Sanjit nervous beside her.
Caine saw it all. Every upturned, moonlit face. He saw the fear and the anticipation. He reveled in it. Gloried in it.
“First, I say this,” Caine said. “Taylor, who has joined me, reports that the creatures are almost here. They are nearing the highway and will reach town in minutes. When they do they will hunt down, kill, and eat . . . every living person.”
“We can fight!” someone yelled. “We beat the coyotes. And we beat you, too, Caine!”
“How will you fight without Sam?” Caine demanded. “Is he here? No! Sam can’t stop these creatures. He tried, and he failed, and now he has run away!”
He waited for someone to speak up in defense of Sam. But not a word.
Gutless, faithless weaklings, Caine thought. He was almost sorry for Sam. How many times had Sam put himself in harm’s way for these ingrates?
“He saved himself,” Caine went on, “for a while, at least, by running away with Astrid and Dekka. He saved his friends, but abandoned poor, sick Edilio there. And all of you.”
Stony silence.
“That’s why Quinn—Quinn, who works night and day to feed you all—came to get me, to beg me to help.”
“What are you going to do?” someone shouted.
“What am I going to do?” Caine asked, relishing the moment. “I’m not going to run away, that’s the first thing.” He stabbed a finger in the air and shouted, “When the ultimate danger came, Sam ran. And I came back. I was safe and warm and well-fed on my island. I had my beautiful queen, Diana. I had my friends, Penny and Bug. It was a very good life.”
He moved to Diana and gave her a little kiss. She let him, no more.
“A very good life. But when I heard what was happening here, what terrible dangers threatened to destroy you, I could not sit there eating delicious food and watching movies while swathed in clean sheets.”
He watched those words take effect. Food? Movies? Clean anything? They were magical concepts to these desperate, starved, and, until recently, parched kids.
And the subtle implication that he had been sleeping with Diana worked in a way, too, making older boys jealous, and some girls as well.
Caine smiled inwardly. It was working. He had them. The sheep.
“I will save you,” he said humbly, eyes down. “But not just from this terrible threat. No. Isn’t it time we all had a better life? Haven’t we suffered enough?”
A murmur of agreement.
“You’ve suffered from hunger, from thirst, from violence. Well . . .” He waited, waited for the moment to build. He was deliberately stretching time, knowing they were picturing the insect horde advancing on the town. At last he said, “Well, that’s enough suffering.”
“What about Drake?” someone shouted.
“He’s your friend,” another voice accused.
“No,” Caine snapped. “I was the one who destroyed him. Or had. Until Sam and his followers allowed Drake to return.”
He paused, watching the reaction, hearing the murmurs of agreement. He sent Diana a secret droll look. Nothing worked better than a really big lie.
“Listen to me. You need a true leader. But this thing where they force you to elect someone, like it’s some popularity contest, like we’re picking a prom queen or whatever, that has to stop. Edilio is a good kid. But he’s just a kid, just Sam’s loyal dog. No offense.” He raised a hand indicating that he may have chosen his words carelessly. But kids were already nodding. Yes, Edilio was just like Sam’s dog. Brave, yes, and decent, yes. But he hadn’t saved them.
“And Sam?” Caine said, raising his voice. “Sam was a brave leader once, but he’s burned out and you all know it. His heart was never in it. Now at last he’s run away. Sam is not what the FAYZ needs. He’s not a king.”
He turned away while that word sank in. He could hear a voice asking, “Did he say a king?” And he distinctly heard a sardonic laugh from Lana.
Caine raised his hands high. “We need a true leader, not someone who has to answer to a town council. Come on, folks, Howard is a member of the council!”
That earned a knowing laugh.
“So Sam’s faithful dog Edilio reports to a known crook like Howard.” He allowed his smile to fade. It was time to finish it. “You need a leader who will actually lead. A leader to save your lives today and give you better lives from now on.”
Caine spotted Turk and Lance waiting, smirking.
Caine had sent Taylor for them. He had told them he could use a couple of tough kids like them. He’d promised them a trip to the island.
“Turk. Lance. Come on up here,” Caine said.
They climbed up the stairs to stand beside him, pale and shaken, but sure they were about to be handed new and important positions.
“These two admitted to me that they shot Albert while robbing him.”
That started the crowd muttering angrily, and even some of the sicker kids looked up bleakly. Albert might not have been popular, but he was necessary.
Lance and Turk exchanged a nervous, uncertain look.
“You’ll be relieved to know that Lana has been able to save Albert’s life,” Caine said. “But what are we to do with two would-be murderers like these?”
Turk was looking even more pale. This wasn’t going the way they had expected. Lance was edging away, getting ready to run.
Barely moving, and with a slight smile, Caine raised a hand and Lance found himself pushing weakly against an invisible barrier.
“Shall we convene a council meeting? Hold a trial? Waste everyone’s time while minute by minute the threat gets nearer and nearer? We know what should be done. Justice! Quick and sure and without a lot of meaningless delay.”
“Hey!” Lance cried. “That’s not what you—”
“He says a lot of things,” Diana muttered.
With a broad, dramatic sweep of his hand Caine sent Lance hurtling through the air. Lance flew like he’d been launched from a catapult. Up into the night sky with every eye following. A thin scream floated down.
There was something comical about it and Caine could not keep from smiling.
The scream changed in pitch as Lance tumbled down and smashed into the ground at the far end of the plaza.
“Justice!” Caine cried. “Not later, right now. Justice and protection and a better life for everyone!”
Turk lost control of himself. “No, no, no, Caine, no, no.”
“But not justice without mercy,” Caine said. “Lance pai
d the price in his way. Now Turk will pay by serving me. Isn’t that right, Turk?”
He looked at Turk and in a low voice said, “Bow down.”
Turk fell to his knees without any further urging.
“It’s a sign of respect,” Caine said. “Not for me. It’s not about me. It’s about you, all of you. You’re the ones who need a ruler. Isn’t that true? After so much suffering, don’t you need one person to take charge? Well,” Caine said, “that’s what I’m doing. And when you bow down you’re just showing respect. Like Turk here.”
In the mob of kids maybe half a dozen knelt. A few more executed awkward head bobs, unsure of themselves. Most did nothing.
Good enough, Caine thought. For now.
“The creatures are coming,” Caine said in a low voice. “In all the FAYZ, who can defeat these creatures?”
He waited, as if he really was expecting an answer.
“Who can defeat them?” he repeated. “Me. Only me.”
He shook his head as if marveling at something awesome. “It is as if God himself chose me. And if I win, if I save your lives, God’s will shall be very clear.”
THIRTY-SIX
1 HOUR, 45 MINUTES
SAM LEAPED INTO the open mouth of the creature.
Head and shoulders made it in. The bug’s throat spasmed, like wet rubber, crushing the air from his lungs.
His eyes were tightly closed, but he could not close his nostrils and nearly vomited from a wave of stench like rotten meat, seaweed, and ammonia.
He grabbed with his hands, trying to get something to grip, had to pull his legs in before the mouthparts sliced, had to right now, right now, quick!
Something sharp against his calves. But the bug was just reacting, choking, not yet trying to chop him apart.
He yanked his legs in. All the way inside the wet, stinking, pulsating throat.
Not fast enough: the mouthparts clipped his right heel. He didn’t notice the pain, too awful, stifling, squashed, skin burning, blackness, no air.
He pushed his hands out and fired.
He couldn’t see the light, his eyes were shut tight. But he could feel the shudder that passed through the bug’s body.
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