“Thirteen years ago.”
“Must have been something to see. A meteor smashes a nuclear power plant? People must have freaked.”
“You could say that,” Connie said dryly. “You know they still call Perdido Beach ‘fallout alley.’ Naturally they told us everything was fine. . . . Well, they didn’t tell me that. In fact, what they told me was that my husband, the father of my two little boys, was the only person killed.”
Darius sat up, tilting his head, and leaned in. “The fallout?”
“No, the actual impact. He never suffered. Never even knew what was coming. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Killed by a meteor.” Darius shook his head. Connie knew he had seen death in Afghanistan.
“After that the depression came back. Worse than ever. And with it this conviction, this powerful belief that there was something wrong with David. Something very, very wrong.”
The memory of those days swept over her, making it impossible to speak. The madness had been so real. What had begun as a symptom of postpartum depression came to be something like a psychotic symptom. Like there was a voice in her head, whispering, whispering that David was dangerous. That he was evil.
“I was afraid I might harm him,” Connie said.
“Harsh.”
“Yeah. Harsh. I loved him. But I was afraid of him. Afraid of what I would do to him. So.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I gave him up. He was adopted immediately. And for a long time he disappeared from my life. I gave all my attention to Sam and told myself I had done the right thing.”
Darius frowned. “I’ve read through the Wiki. There’s no David Temple. I would have noticed because of the last name.”
Connie smiled slightly. “I never knew who had adopted him. I never knew where he was. Until one day I was at work, at Coates. I wasn’t even employed there at the time; I was filling in while their regular nurse was on maternity leave. And this boy was brought in. I knew immediately. Never any doubt. I asked him his name. He said he was Caine.”
“How had he turned out? I mean, you had this idea he was going bad. . . .”
Connie lowered her head. “He was still beautiful. And very smart. And so charming. You should have seen the girls flock to him.”
“He got his looks from his mom,” Darius said, trying to be gallant.
“He was also cruel. Manipulative. Ruthless.” She spoke the words with great care, considering each one. “He scared me. And he was one of the first to begin the mutation. The same time as Sam, actually, but Sam was a totally different person. Sam lashed out with his power, lost control of himself, and was devastated by it. But Caine? He used his power without the slightest concern for anyone but himself.”
“Same mother, same father, and so different?”
“Same mother,” Connie said, her voice flat. “I was having an affair. I never had a DNA test, but it is possible that they had different fathers.”
She could see that this shocked Darius. He didn’t approve. Well, why should he? She didn’t approve of herself.
The room suddenly felt cold.
“I’d better get going,” Darius said. “You cooking some ribs on Friday?”
“Darius. I told you my secret,” Connie said. “I gave you everything. What is it you aren’t telling me?”
Darius stopped at the door. Connie wondered if he would ever come back. He’d seen a side of her he had never expected.
“I can’t tell you anything,” Darius said. “Except that the military loves acronyms. Just saw a new one the other day I didn’t recognize on some vehicles that came into camp. NEST. Sounds innocent, huh?”
“What’s NEST?”
“Look it up. See you Friday if I can.”
He left.
Connie opened her laptop and tied into the hotel’s wi-fi. She opened Google and typed in NEST. It took a few seconds to find that NEST stood for Nuclear Emergency Support Team.
They were the scientists, technicians, and engineers who were called in to deal with a nuclear incident.
A nuclear response team.
And the colonel threatening to quit.
Something was going on. Maybe some controversial new experiment. Something dangerous. Something involving a possible radiation spill.
Which may have been how this whole thing had started to begin with.
EIGHTEEN
18 HOURS, 55 MINUTES
FULL NIGHT.
Sam had recalled Brianna when the sun went down. The darkness was deadly to her. One stumble and she’d be a bag of broken bones.
Brianna raged and demanded to be turned loose again. But she knew better. Sam sent her below to take one of the unused bunks and get some sleep. Mere seconds later he heard her snoring.
The guards were changed. Edilio sat blinking sleep away. Dekka brooded. Sam hadn’t seen Astrid in a while. He assumed she was down in his bunk. Maybe she was mad at him. Probably. And maybe he deserved it. He’d been curt with her.
He wanted to go down there and be with her. But he knew if he gave in to that need, if he found peace and forgetfulness, he might not have the strength to come out again.
The light was dying. But the moon—or an illusion of it—was rising. This was not yet true darkness. But it was coming.
“Where is he?” Sam wondered for the millionth time. He scanned the beach, already dark. He scanned the woods and the bluff. Drake could be in either place. Beneath those dark trees. Or somewhere up in those rocks.
He sank into a canvas chair.
“You awake enough to keep your eyes open?” he asked Dekka.
“Catch some z’s, Sam.”
“Yeah,” he said, and yawned.
Astrid was waiting for him.
He said, “Sorry I snapped at you before.”
She didn’t say anything but kissed him, holding his face with her hands. They made love slowly, silently, and when they were finished, Sam drifted into sleep.
When Cigar looked at Sanjit he saw a dancing, twirling, happy creature that looked like a greyhound walking erect. The one called Choo looked like a sleepy gorilla with a slow-beating red valentine of a heart.
Cigar knew he wasn’t seeing what other people saw. He just didn’t know whether what he was seeing was a result of having his new eyes, or whether it was madness that turned everything so strange and incredible.
Strange eyes. Strange brain. Some combination of the two?
Even objects—the beds, the tables, the steps at Clifftop—had an eerie glow, a vibration, a streaming light as though, rather than being fixed in place, they were moving.
Mad eyes, mad brain.
Memories that made the screams rise in his raw throat.
When that happened Sanjit or Choo or the little one, Bowie, who looked like a spectral white kitten, would come to him and speak soothing words. At those times he seemed to see something like dust in a strong beam of sunlight, and that . . . that . . . he didn’t know what to call it, but that . . . stuff . . . would calm the panic.
Until the next panic.
There was another thing, very different from the sparkly sunlit dust, that reached tendrils through the air, passing through objects, rising sometimes like smoke from the floor and other times like a slow, pale green whip.
When Lana came the green whip would follow her, reaching to touch her, sliding away, reaching again, insistent.
And sometimes Cigar felt it was looking for him. It had no eyes. It couldn’t see him. But it sensed something . . . something that interested it.
When it came close to him he would have visions of Penny. He would have visions of himself doing terrible, sickening things to her.
Making her suffer.
He wondered if the rising smoke, the slow green whip, this stuff, could give him power over Penny. He wondered if he said yes—Yes, reach me; here I am—if then he would be able to get revenge on Penny.
But Cigar’s thoughts never lasted for very long. He would put together pictures in
his head; then they would fly apart like an exploding jigsaw puzzle.
At times the little boy would come.
It wasn’t easy to see the little boy. The little boy always stayed just to the side. Cigar would sense his presence and look toward him, but no matter how quickly he moved his head, Cigar could never see the little boy clearly. It was like seeing someone through a narrow opening in a door. It was a glimpse, and then the little boy would be gone.
More madness.
If you had inhuman eyes and a shattered mind, how could you ever know what was real and what was not?
Cigar realized he had to stop trying. It didn’t matter, did it? Did anyone ever really see what was there around them? Were regular eyes so perfect or normal minds so clear? Who was to say that what Cigar saw wasn’t as real as what he had seen in the old days?
Weren’t regular eyes blind to all sorts of things? To X-rays and radiation and colors off beyond the visible spectrum?
The little boy had put that thought in his head.
There he was now, Cigar realized. Just outside of view. A suggestion of a presence. Right there where even Cigar could not see.
Cigar’s thoughts fell to pieces again.
He stood up and made his way to the door that vibrated and pulsed and called to him.
There was a knock on Penny’s door.
Penny did not fear a knock at the door. She opened it without even checking the peephole.
Caine stood framed by silvery moonlight in the door.
“We have to talk,” Caine said.
“It’s the middle of the night.”
He came in without waiting for an invitation. “First things first: if I see anything I don’t like, even so much as a flea, anything that comes from your sick imagination, Penny, I won’t hesitate. I’ll throw you through the nearest wall. And then I’ll drop the wall on top of you.”
“Hello to you, too. Your Highness.” She closed the door.
He was already sitting, flopping down in her favorite chair. Like he owned the place. He had brought a candle. He lit it with a Bic and set it on the table. So very Caine: he would arrange to be dramatically lit, even though candles were rarer than diamonds in the FAYZ.
King Caine.
Penny swallowed the rage that threatened to boil over. She would make him crawl. Make him scream and scream!
She said, “I know why you’re here.”
“Turk said you were ready to get real, Penny. He said you wanted to negotiate some terms. Fair enough. So spit it out.”
“Look,” Penny said, “I screwed up with Cigar. And I know what happens if the food supply dries up. I’m not as pretty as Diana, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously.
“So, like I told Turk to tell you, I’m going to leave town. I already packed a few things.” She gestured to a backpack lying in one corner. “I just don’t think it should look like you made me go, because then it’s like Quinn won. I think I should make it be like I just chose on my own to leave.”
Caine stared at her, obviously trying to figure out what she was up to.
Penny showed a little anger then. “Hey, I’m not happy about it, all right? But I’ll get by. Believe it or not I can survive without you, King Caine.”
“Take all the food you want,” he said.
“How generous of you,” she snapped. “The deal is I leave, but you have to make sure I don’t starve. Once a week I’ll meet Bug out on the highway, right by the overturned FedEx truck. If I need something he brings it. That’s my demand for leaving and making it easy for you.”
Caine relaxed a bit. He tilted his head sideways and looked at her, considering. “Fair enough.”
“But we have to talk about how to make it look good. Let’s face it, Caine: you and I can still be useful to each other in the future, right? So I need you to stay in charge. Better than the alternative.”
“What do you have in mind?”
She sighed. “Right now I have in mind some hot cocoa. Taylor brought me some from the island. Have a cup with me and we’ll work something out.”
Caine didn’t ask why Taylor would have brought her something as precious as cocoa from the island. Taylor no doubt used Penny’s fantasy-making powers for something.
Penny saw the look of distaste on his face as he worked it out. She went to the kitchen, to the little Sterno stove she used to heat the water and the cocoa.
She lit the Sterno.
Caine did not follow her into the kitchen.
He was still sitting there with a puzzled look on his face when she handed him the cup.
They each sipped.
“So I guess if I’m leaving and making it look like it’s not your fault, we should maybe act like we’re fighting,” Penny said.
“It would have to be where people can overhear. But not right out in public, because that’ll look phony,” Caine said. And sipped again at his cocoa. “Kind of bitter,” he said, grimacing at the cup.
“I have a little sugar I could add.”
“You have sugar?”
She fetched it. Two sugar cubes, and she plopped them into his cup. He swirled it around to stir the sugar in.
“You’re right about one thing, Penny,” he said. “You’re useful. Crazy, but useful. No one has sugar, but you do.”
She shrugged modestly. “People like to get away, you know? Think about something more fun than just life and work and all.”
“Yeah. Still: actual sugar? That’s worth a lot.”
“I guess you know I have a crush on you,” Penny said.
“Yeah, well, no offense, but it doesn’t go both ways,” he said.
It took all her self-control not to lash out at him, to cause his skin to burn and bubble.
“Too bad,” Penny said. “Because I can be anyone . . . in your imagination.”
“Do me a favor; don’t give me any details,” he said. “Now . . .” He yawned. “Let’s lay plans here. I’ve had a long couple of days, and I want to get this over with.”
So Penny made a suggestion.
And Caine countered with another.
And she smiled and made a small objection.
And he yawned. A long, long yawn.
“You look tired, Caine. Why don’t you close your eyes and rest a few minutes.”
“I can’t . . .” He started to say, but yawned again. “Talk later. In the morning.”
He tried to stand up. He barely rose, then sagged back. He blinked and stared at her.
She could practically see the wheels turning slowly, slowly in his brain. He frowned. Forced his eyes open and said, “Did you . . . ?”
She didn’t bother answering. She was bored with the game and sick of playing nice.
“I’ll kill you,” he said. He raised one hand, but it wavered in the air. She got up quickly and stepped aside. She came around behind him.
He tried to turn but he couldn’t do it. Could not get his body to respond.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness. In fact, I don’t think you’ll be able to worry at all pretty soon. In addition to the Ambien I mixed in some Valium.”
“I’ll . . . k . . . ,” he said, and breathed heavily, unable to go on.
“Nighty-night,” Penny said. She picked up a heavy snow globe from the knickknack shelf, where it had no doubt been a prized possession of whoever had owned this house. The snow globe had a little Harrah’s casino inside. A tacky keepsake.
She smashed the globe against the back of Caine’s head. He slumped forward.
The glass shattered, lacerating his scalp but also slicing her thumb.
She looked at the blood on her hand.
“Worth it,” she snarled.
She wrapped a towel around the cut on her hand, then brought in a large wooden salad bowl and a pitcher of water.
Then she dragged the heavy bag of cement from the closet.
NINETEEN
17 HOURS, 37 MINUTES
SILENT AS A shadow Astr
id crept from the bunk. It was so hard to leave the warmth of his body. He was a magnet and she was an iron filing, drawn almost irresistibly back to him.
Almost irresistibly.
She crept out into the hallway. Brianna was snoring. It almost made Astrid giggle to realize that she snored at normal speed, like anyone else.
She found her old clothes. She dressed in the shadows. T-shirt, multiply patched jeans. Boots. She checked her backpack. Shotgun shells still there. She would refill her water bottle from the lake. Some food would be good, but Astrid had long since adjusted to extended periods of hunger.
Hopefully this trip wouldn’t take too long. If nothing happened, she could make the walk to Perdido Beach in what, five hours? She sighed. Walk to Perdido Beach through the night or crawl back into bed with Sam and let him wrap his strong arms around her and entwine her legs with his and . . .
“Now or never,” she whispered.
She had the letters. The ones Mohamed had failed to deliver. She folded them and stuck them into her front pocket, where they couldn’t possibly fall out or be dropped.
The whole plan rested on what she found when she went up on deck. The houseboat was still moored at the dock—a symbolic defiance—but someone would be on watch.
She emerged on the dock side. Maybe whoever was on the top deck wouldn’t notice. Maybe she could just walk away.
“Freeze,” a voice said. Dekka.
Astrid cursed under her breath. She had made it about six feet down the dock. She was well within Dekka’s range, which meant Astrid had zero chance of getting away. Dekka would cancel the gravity beneath her feet, and it was hard to run while floating in the air.
Dekka stepped to the edge of the top deck and then off into space. She canceled gravity for a split second, just enough to allow her to make the drop silently.
“Heading out for a snack run?” Dekka asked dryly. “Pick me up a pack of Ho Hos.”
“I’m going to Perdido Beach,” Astrid said.
“Ah. You’re going to be the big hero and deliver Sam’s letter.”
“Minus the ‘big hero’ snark, yes.”
Dekka jerked her thumb toward the land. “Drake’s out there. And the same coyotes that ate Howard for lunch. No offense, honey, but you’re the brains, not the muscle.”
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