The girls pushed their things, as well as some food and water, in a Ralphs grocery cart with one bad wheel. It rattled as they went. Sanjit knew it would never survive the dirt-and-gravel road that led to the lake.
Mason complicated matters further by insisting on wearing a plastic Iron Man helmet that covered his whole head. He had a small paring knife in a woman’s white belt.
Lana had impressed on Sanjit a need for speed when she’d handed him the grubby envelope with the note inside. And he knew he could outpace his three fellow travelers. But somehow, having fallen in with them, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Instead he ended up hefting Mason onto his back.
“Are you and Lana, like, together?” Tabitha asked.
“Um . . . Yes. I guess you could say that.”
“I heard she’s mean,” Keira offered.
“No,” Sanjit protested. “She’s tough. That’s all.”
“You know who’s really mean?” Tabitha asked. “Turk. He pushed me once and I fell down and skinned both my knees.”
“Sorry that—”
“And then I went to see Lana and she told me to go wash off in the ocean and not bother her.” Tabitha lowered her voice and added, “Only she said it meaner, with a bunch of cusswords.”
Sanjit resisted the grin that wanted to spread across his face. Yep. That would be Lana, all right. “Maybe she was just busy at the time.”
It was good to have some silly gossip to distract them all. And the two girls seemed to have an endless stream: who liked who, who didn’t like who, who might like who.
Sanjit didn’t know half the people they were talking about, but it was still better than looking up at the sky and watching the stain grow higher and the ragged circle of light grow smaller.
What were they going to do when the light went out?
As if reading his thoughts, or maybe just noticing his worried expression, Keira said, “Sam Temple can make lights.”
“With his hands,” Tabitha explained.
“Like lamps.” Then without prompting Keira patted Mason on his Iron Man helmet and said, “Don’t worry, Mase: that’s why we’re going to the lake.”
At which point Mason began to cry.
Sanjit couldn’t blame him. Nothing sounded hollower than a reassurance in this place.
Once he delivered his message to Sam he would have to find his way back to Perdido Beach. Would there be any light at all by then? How was he going to get back to Lana across ten miles of emptiness in the dark?
One thing he was sure of: he would go back.
“I have to poop,” Mason said.
Sanjit let him slide down.
More delay. Less likelihood of any light for the homeward trip.
The sun was already most of the way across the narrowed sky. Sanjit knew he should break away, run for it. He could run the whole way there. He’d deliver his message sooner and he’d get back sooner and . . .
Sanjit saw something moving through the brush off at the limits of his excellent sight. Something low and quick, slinking through brush.
Coyotes.
Lana had offered him a pistol, urged it on him. “I don’t know how to shoot,” he’d said, pushing it back.
“Take it or I’ll shoot you with it myself.”
They had kissed after that. Just a hurried kiss in the shadow of the church as Lana moved between injured kids. And he had plastered on his jaunty smile and tossed off a jaunty wave and taken off.
What if he never saw her again?
Mason finished his business. The coyotes were no longer in view. The sun touched the far edge of the remaining sky.
Caine had waited. Patiently, since circumstances had forced patience on him. Lana helped the victims of Penny’s assault.
Quinn was running around getting the morning’s sparse catch brought in and cooked up over a fire in the plaza. Caine recognized that as a smart move. The smell of broiled fish and the soothing sound of a bonfire would help keep kids from rushing off.
Well, some kids, at least.
Now Quinn was ready for Caine.
“Get me out of this,” Caine demanded.
Quinn said, “It’s not so easy. You should know: you’re the scumbag who invented cementing.”
Caine let that go. He had no choice. For one thing, it was true. For another, he was helpless. And finally, he had wet himself. Hadn’t even noticed when it had happened, but somewhere, during one of Penny’s vicious nightmare attacks, he had done it and now it smelled.
All of which left him in a vulnerable position.
“We’ll have to chip it away a little at a time,” Quinn opined. “Try swinging a full-size sledgehammer and someone’s likely to miss and hit your head or wrists.”
He detailed a couple of the fishermen, Paul and Lucas, to begin the job. They had a small, short-handled sledgehammer and a chisel. That had taken some doing, since both were in use as weapons. The kids who gave them up had to be paid. And no one was taking ’Bertos anymore; it was strictly barter.
“Tell me if this hurts,” Paul said, and brought the hammer down on the chisel held by Lucas.
CLANG!
It hurt. The sharp force of the blow translated into a dull pain that Caine felt in the bones of his hands. Not quite as bad as being hit directly by the hammer, but it was close.
He gritted his teeth. “Keep at it.”
Lana came swaggering over, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. There were still injured kids crying, but Caine wasn’t seeing many serious cases left. Dahra Baidoo was with her, helping tend the wounded. Dahra looked a little weird to Caine’s eye, like someone sleepwalking, or a mental patient zoned on meds. But what else was new? Crazy was getting to be the norm. And Dahra had better reason than most—she’d borne the brunt of the bug attack here in town.
Lana stepped beside Dahra, put her hand on Dahra’s head, and for a second hugged it against her shoulder. Dahra closed her eyes briefly and looked as if she was about to cry. Then she scrubbed her face with her hands and shook her head almost violently.
Lucas struck a second blow and a three-inch chunk of concrete fell away.
“Caine,” Lana said.
“Yeah, Lana. Want to make some snide crack involving irony and karma?”
Lana shrugged. “Nah. Too easy.” She knelt down beside Caine and then, feeling weary, sat all the way down, cross-legged. “Listen, Caine. I sent Sanjit to warn Sam about—”
“About the wave of refugees on their way? He’ll figure that out soon enough, won’t he? He can make light.” He glared up at the sky, feeling like it was a personal enemy. “In a couple of hours light will be all anyone cares about.”
“That’s not why I sent Sanjit. I was going to go myself before this latest fiasco. I sent him because I think Diana is in danger.”
Caine’s heart missed a beat. The reaction surprised him. As did the catch in his throat when he said, as coldly as he could, “Danger? You mean more than the rest of us?”
CLANG!
All the while Paul and Lucas were chipping away at the concrete. With each hammer fall Caine winced. He wondered if bones were breaking. He wondered how they would get off the last of the cement—the part attached to his flesh. In between the sudden sharp pain there was a constant dull pain and an infuriating itch.
“I can feel its mind sometimes,” Lana said.
He looked sharply at her. “It?”
CLANG!
“Don’t play dumb, Caine.” She touched her hand to his head, where the punctures of the staples still oozed blood. Almost instantly the pain in his head diminished. But nothing helped when the next blow of the hammer and chisel made him feel as if fingers were being broken.
CLANG!
“Ahhh!” he cried.
“You were with it,” Lana said. “I know you still feel it sometimes.”
Caine scowled. “No. I don’t.”
Lana snorted. “Uh-huh.”
He wasn’t going to argue about it. They both kn
ew the truth. That was something he shared with the Healer: too much up-close-and-personal time with the gaiaphage. And yes, it left scars, and yes, it was sometimes as if the creature could touch the edge of Caine’s consciousness.
He closed his eyes and the nightmare came on like a storm-driven wave. It had been all hunger then. The gaiaphage needed the uranium at the power plant. That hunger had been so huge, so frantic, Caine could still feel it as a stifling, heart-throttling, choking feeling.
CLANG!
“AHHHH!” Through grinding teeth he said, “I don’t let the Darkness touch me.”
The chisel was cutting closer now, with more than half the concrete chipped away. Penny hadn’t mixed a very good batch, really. No gravel. It was gravel that gave it hardness. He and Drake had learned that.
“Sorry,” Lucas said, not really meaning it.
CLANG!
No, Caine thought, no gentle concern for Caine’s well-being. They needed him, but that didn’t mean they liked him.
“The sun is setting,” Lana remarked almost without emotion. “Kids will lose it. They’ll set fires. That’s the big worry, probably, that they’ll finish Zil’s work by burning down the rest of the town.”
“If I ever get out of this, I’ll stop them,” Caine snarled, biting back a cry of pain as the hammer rose and fell again.
“It’s going after Diana,” Lana said. “It wants the baby. Your baby, Caine.”
“What?”
The hammer waited, suspended. This wasn’t exactly a private conversation, and Paul was shocked. He snapped out of it and dropped another awful blow.
CLANG!
“Don’t you feel it?” Lana demanded.
“All I feel is my fingers being broken!” Caine yelled.
“I’ll fix your fingers,” Lana said impatiently. “I’m asking you: do you feel it? Can you? Will you let yourself?”
“No!”
“Scared?”
His lips drew back in a snarl. “You’re damned right I’m scared of it. I got away from it. You’re saying I should open myself up to it again?”
CLANG!
“I’m not scared of it,” Lana said, and Caine wondered if she really wasn’t. “I hate it. I hate myself for not killing it when I had the chance. I hate it.” Her eyes were dark but hot, like smoldering coals.
“I hate it,” she repeated.
CLANG!
“Oh. Ohhhh!” He was breathing in short gasps. “I won’t . . . What makes you so sure it’s going after Diana?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m talking to you. Because I thought you might give a damn if that monster is after your kid.”
Caine’s hands felt lighter. The concrete block had split. There was a wedge about the size of a double slice of pie hanging from his left hand. His hands were still locked together in a crumbly mass that looked like the stone from which a sculptor might chisel a pair of hands.
Paul and Lucas readjusted their positions, and Caine lifted the hands and carefully, carefully used a piece of concrete to scratch his nose.
“Caine—” Paul said.
“Give me a minute,” Caine said. “All of you. Give. Me. A. Minute.”
He closed his eyes. Pain in his hands, a deep ache of something—or more than one thing—broken. The pain was terrible.
Worse by far: the humiliation.
He’d been outwitted by Penny. Weakness.
He’d been made to bear the torture he and Drake had invented. Weakness.
He sat here now on the steps of town hall, the steps where not two days earlier he’d ruled as king. He sat there now with piss-smelling pants, made to feel weak and small and cowardly by Lana.
He hadn’t been this low since he had walked off defeated into the desert with Pack Leader. Since he had crawled, weeping and desperate, to have his mind messed up by that malevolent, glowing monster.
Lana could let it touch her mind. She was that strong.
He could not. Because he was not.
What did it matter anymore? he wondered. It was the end at last. Darkness would fall and the sun would never rise again and they would wander lost in inky blackness until they starved. The smart ones would just walk into the ocean and swim until they drowned.
What did he, Caine, matter? Let alone Diana. Or the . . . whatever. Baby. Kid. Whatever.
He closed his eyes and he could see Diana. Beautiful girl, Diana. Smart. Smart enough to keep pace with him. Smart enough to play her games with him.
They’d been happy, mostly, on the island. Him and Diana. Good days. Then Quinn had come with a message that he was needed to rescue Perdido Beach.
He had come back. Diana had warned him not to. But he had come back. And he had proclaimed himself king. Because kids needed a king. And because after he saved their stupid lives for them he deserved to be that king.
Diana had warned him against that, too.
And no sooner was he in charge than he’d realized it was Albert who was the real boss. And no one really respected Caine. They didn’t realize how much he did for them.
Ungrateful.
Now they wanted him, but only because they were all scared of the dark.
“We’ll try a smaller hammer now,” Paul said anxiously.
Caine gritted his teeth, anticipating the blow.
CLANG!
“Ahhh!” The chisel had missed. The hardened steel chisel blade skipped and bit into his wrist. Blood poured out over the concrete.
He wanted to cry. Not from the pain but from the sheer awfulness of his life. He needed to use the bathroom. He wouldn’t even be able to lower his own pants or wipe himself.
Lana took his wrist. The bleeding slowed.
“You need to let them keep at it,” Lana said. “It’ll be a lot worse in the dark.”
Caine nodded. He had nothing more to say.
He bowed his head and cried.
TWENTY-FIVE
12 HOURS, 40 MINUTES
SINDER WEPT AS she and Jezzie ripped up their vegetables. It was all over. Their hard work, almost done now. This was the final harvest.
Their little dream of helping to make things better for everyone was at an end. And like all failed hopes it seemed stupid now. They’d been idiots to hope. Idiots.
This was the FAYZ. Hope led to a kick in the face.
Idiots.
They filled plastic trash bags with carrots and tomatoes. And cried silently while Brianna stood watch over them, pretending not to notice.
It was hard for Orc to tilt his head back and look up at the sky. His rocky neck just didn’t like to bend that way. But he made the effort as the sun, with shocking speed, was swallowed by the western edge of that toothed hole in the sky.
Straight up, over his head: blue sky. The clear blue sky of a California early afternoon. But below that sky was a blank, black wall. He was only a few hundred feet away from it. He could walk over and touch it if he wanted.
He didn’t want to. It was too . . . too something. He didn’t have a word for it. Howard would have had a word for it.
Orc was buzzing with a weird kind of energy. He hadn’t slept. He had searched through the night, sure that Drake was out here, sure that he could find him. Or if not find him, then at least be here when he showed up.
Then he would rip Drake apart. Rip him into little pieces and eat the pieces and crap them out and bury them in the dirt.
Yeah. For Howard.
No one cared Howard was gone. Sam, Edilio, those guys: they didn’t care. Not about Howard. They just cared that something bad was happening. Someone had to care that Howard was dead and gone now. And would never come back.
Orc had to care, that was who. Charles Merriman had to care that his friend Howard was gone.
People didn’t know it, but Orc could still cry. They all figured he couldn’t. . . . No, that wasn’t true; they didn’t figure anything. They never saw anything but a monster made out of gravel.
He couldn’t blame them.
The only one
who saw past that was Howard. Maybe Howard used Orc, but that was okay, because Orc used him, too. People did that. Even people who really liked each other. Good friends. Best friends.
Only friends.
Orc was walking a pattern, back and forth. He walked along from almost the dome to as far as the dock was, then maybe a hundred yards farther out, and back and forth, and another hundred yards out. He’d gone all the way to the far end of the lake and back. But something told him Drake wouldn’t go all the way around like that.
No, no, not Drake. Orc knew Drake a little from when Drake was running things for Caine back so long ago in Perdido Beach. Back when Drake was just a creep, but a regular human creep.
And he’d known Drake in a way while he and Howard had been his jailers. He’d spent a lot of hours listening to Drake rant and rave.
It was Orc’s fault Drake had ever gotten away.
Drake could be tricky, sure, but he wasn’t like Astrid or Jack or one of those real smart kids. He wouldn’t have some big plan. He would just hide until he saw a way.
A way to do what? Orc didn’t know. Sam and the others hadn’t told him anything about it. Just that Drake had killed Howard and let the coyotes eat him. And that he was out loose.
Orc kept his eyes down for the most part. Easier that way. Plus he was looking for something: a footprint, maybe. Coyote prints if he could find them. But even better would be Drake’s footprints.
He’d heard all about how you couldn’t kill Drake. You could smash him or cut him up into little pieces and he’d still put himself back together.
Well. That might discourage most people. But while a drunken Orc wore out pretty easy, a sober, determined Orc had plenty of time and plenty of energy. He wouldn’t mind just taking Drake apart over and over again. And he didn’t feel tired. He felt more awake all the time.
Orc was walking in the gloomy shadow of a rock bluff. There were cracks all in those rocks, and he had decided now to check in every one. One by one. Every crack. Under every rock.
Orc froze. Was that . . . Yeah, that was a footprint. Most of a footprint. The ground was hard, and the only reason the print showed at all was that a gopher or whatever it was that dug holes up here had dug out a bit of fresh dirt.
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