Gone Series Complete Collection

by Grant, Michael

  “Yeah,” Caine said. He seemed about to say something more, but stopped himself and just muttered, “Yeah. A baby.”

  “Wait,” Lana interrupted. “Sanjit. Did . . .”

  “Barely,” Sam said. “But as far as I know he’s safe at the lake. I got your message. Too late. And Astrid was bringing a message to you as well.”

  “Funny how things fall apart when the lights go out,” Quinn said. “Lots of plans, and nothing works.”

  “The gaiaphage is looking for a body,” Astrid said. “It needs a physical body. The barrier is dead. It’s going to crack open. It’s finally going to be over. But when that happens the gaiaphage is going to try to get out.”

  “And you know this because of your amazing geniusness?” Caine said, smirking. “You know what time this is all supposed to happen? Because I have to say, I’m ready to get out of this place. Can’t happen soon enough for me. I’ve been really craving some ice cream.”

  “I don’t know when. It could be months. Your son or daughter isn’t due for—”

  “Stop that!” Caine snarled, abandoning his snarky pose. “Don’t play that game with me, Astrid. What do you think I’m going to do? Suddenly become a different person just because I had sex with Diana?”

  “You got her pregnant,” Astrid said quite calmly. “I thought maybe that fact might make you consider something besides yourself.”

  “Oh, it does, Astrid,” he said with savage sarcasm. “It makes me want to go toss the football around in the backyard. Maybe barbecue some steaks. Real daddy kind of stuff. Only slight problem is this darn darkness.”

  A flame leaped into the air not far from the road. They heard the agitated voices of young children.

  “Thanks, that’s better,” Caine yelled over his shoulder. “So Lana says the gaiaphage is coming, and you guys say it’s got Diana—by the way, great job protecting her, Sam—and I should be taking parenting classes, plus, oh, by the way, the barrier is coming down. Someday. Probably after we’ve all starved to death.”

  All the while Sam had been watching Caine like a specimen under a microscope. Trying to figure him out. “You going to fight or not?”

  “Who, me?” Caine laughed. “What’s the matter with you, Sam? Genius girl says the barrier is going to come down. And you want to run out and get killed before that happens? Let the barrier crack open like an egg. If the gaiaphage wants to walk on out I say we wish him well, wait until he’s a ways down the road, and then leave ourselves.”

  “Taking Diana and your . . . and the baby,” Sam said.

  “You hear what Albert did? Did you?” Caine tried to point in the direction of the ocean and the island, but it drew attention to his still-encrusted hand, so he dropped it to his side. “As soon as Albert realized what was happening he caught a boat and ran for the island. And the best part? He’s been planning it for a long time. He bribed Taylor. He apparently got hold of some missiles—who knows how he pulled that off; he’s Albert—and moved them out there, too.”

  Quinn saw Sam’s jaw clench hard at that.

  “Now,” Caine went on, “Albert’s sitting out there eating cheese and crackers and laughing his butt off at fools like us.”

  Sam ignored, or at least pretended to ignore, all of that. He said, “Look, Caine. I don’t know where Brianna is, or Dekka, or Orc. Jack is maybe dead by now. Anyway, he won’t be coming to the fight. So maybe I can take down Drake myself, and maybe not. But I don’t even know what it means to say the gaiaphage is coming. Coming how? Coming as what? With what kind of power? I don’t even know if—”

  Quinn held up his hand and Sam stopped. “Penny,” Quinn said. “We followed her until she crossed the highway. She’s out there somewhere, too. Out there in the dark.”

  “There’s no reason to think she would run into Drake,” Lana said, but she sounded worried.

  “Now, there,” Caine said, holding up his crusted index finger, “there’s someone I’ll fight. Show me Penny and I’ll kill her for you. I’ll kill her twice.”

  The conversation died. And they stood there in silence, the five of them and one dog, underneath a weak mockery of a light.

  Quinn said, “Everyone saw you, Caine. Dragging that cement bowl around. Hunched over like a monkey walking on its knuckles. That crown stapled into your scalp. You got beat. King Caine, and all you could do was be Penny’s little monkey. Kids will be laughing about that for a long time. Yeah. If the barrier comes down, you’ll be hearing stories about that on TV. Internet jokes about it.” Quinn watched Caine’s hands warily. He was hoping someone would stop Caine before he struck and threw Quinn against and through the nearest wall.

  Caine turned with menacing slowness to Quinn. Quinn felt the heat of his malevolence. Humiliation was dangerous stuff to play around with.

  “What do you think your story will look like, Caine? Always swaggering around, playing all bad and tough. You did one right thing, Caine: you went out, helped Brianna, and you fought those bugs back, and that’s why the people said, yeah, he can be our king.”

  “I helped Brianna?” Caine snapped. “She helped me.”

  “All that, though, that gets wiped out, because the end of the story is how Penny humiliated you—”

  “Enough, all right?” Caine said sharply.

  “What people remember is the end of the story. And if the barrier comes down, the end of the story will be how you cried and crapped yourself and danced like a trained monkey for Penny.”

  There was no way to know whether Caine was as pale as he seemed by the light of the Sammy sun. His eyes were narrow, and his lips were drawn back, almost like a wolf baring its teeth. His face was right in Quinn’s.

  He kept his gaze on Quinn but spoke to Sam. “Your loser friend here must have grown a pair, Sam.”

  “Seems like,” Sam said, sounding amazed.

  Then Caine spoke to Quinn. “Tell you what, Quinn, since you’re so worried about my . . . legacy. Is that the right word, Astrid? Since you’re worried about my legacy, Quinn, I’ll go out Drake hunting with my brother there if.”

  “If what?” Quinn asked.

  “If you come with us,” Caine said with a cruel smile. “You’ve been a pain in my ass, fisherman. It’s because of you I had a beef with Penny in the first place. So it’s real dark out there, and most likely Drake and maybe even our old friend Penny are out there. Not to mention Mr. Nasty himself.”

  Quinn couldn’t stop himself glancing out toward the utter darkness within which he knew monsters hid.

  “He’s a fisherman,” Sam said. “He doesn’t even have a weapon.”

  Caine laughed. “Have you been to Perdido Beach? It’s a nice little town. Not much food, no entertainment, plenty of weapons. Weapons are the one thing we do have. And he’ll need one.”

  “I don’t even know how to shoot,” Quinn protested.

  Caine laughed cruelly. “It’s not for you to shoot Drake or Penny, let alone the Darkness, if he’s actually coming,” he mocked. “It’s for you to stick in your mouth and pull the trigger if any one of them gets hold of you.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  18 MINUTES

  AFTER HOURS AND hours of total darkness, the soft glow of her baby’s skin allowed Diana to walk with more confidence. She was a light in the darkness.

  Gaia. Her baby.

  She felt still the horror at seeing the green pixels, that swarm that was the gaiaphage enter her daughter’s nose and mouth. She would never, ever be able to block that out.

  So many things she would never be able to forget.

  But against it all was this person. This soft, chubby little girl, who looked up at her with eyes so absurdly blue and so unnaturally aware.

  She seemed to grow heavier even as Diana carried her down through the ghost town beneath the mine shaft. Soon Gaia would not need to nurse. Already Diana could feel tiny teeth biting.

  And then what would Gaia do with her mother?

  “Doesn’t matter,” Diana whispered. “It doesn’
t matter. She’s mine.”

  Brittney walked beside her, peering in eagerly to see Gaia’s face. Brittney wore the expression of an ecstatic believer. Diana knew that if Gaia somehow spoke and told Brittney to leap off a cliff, Brittney would do it.

  But Gaia spoke through Diana now.

  She spoke through her mother.

  Diana could feel her baby’s mind probing inside her own. Not the mind of a baby, true, but not quite the cold violence of the gaiaphage, either. The two were becoming one: Gaia and the Darkness. The two were growing together, and the resulting entity might be more than or less than, but definitely not equal to, either the baby or the monster.

  Just one thing, though, that Diana couldn’t dismiss from her thoughts. Just one thing. The way Gaia reached into Diana’s memory and opened it up as if she was thumbing through a picture book. Like she was looking for something. Something the baby sensed must be there.

  Not rustling around blindly, but looking for something.

  Diana had no defenses against Gaia. She could hide nothing from her. Diana could only watch as her memories unfolded to reveal pictures of things past. And of people.

  Gaia was studying the people Diana knew. Now Brianna. Now Edilio. Now Duck and Albert and Mary.

  Not Panda. No.

  Caine. Gaia lingered long on pictures of Caine. A first meeting at Coates. The many flirtations. The teasing. The way Diana had made him want her. The dark ambition she had seen in him. The first time he had revealed his power to her.

  The terrible things they had done. Battles.

  Murder.

  Yes, but don’t look any further; all that I confess, Gaia, my daughter, but enough. Enough.

  Please don’t.

  The smell. That was what the baby found first. The aroma of roasted human flesh.

  Diana’s eyes filled with tears.

  “What’s the matter?” Brittney asked.

  The baby tasted what Diana had tasted.

  The baby felt her stomach gratefully receive the meat that had been a boy named Panda.

  Yes, Diana said to the mind within her own, I’m a monster, and so are you, little Gaia. But your mommy loves you.

  “There’s a string of lights up there,” Penny said. “They look like Christmas lights.”

  Yes, go there, Gaia said inside Diana’s thoughts.

  “Go to the lights,” Diana said without even thinking about it. “Then follow them to the left.”

  “Shut your mouth, cow,” Penny said. “You don’t give orders.”

  Gaia kicked against Diana’s enfolding arms. She pushed herself up so that she could see over Diana’s shoulder. She looked at Penny.

  The baby pushed her clenched fist over Diana’s shoulder, opened her hand, and Penny screamed.

  Diana stopped. She watched and listened. And did it fill her with a brutal sort of joy to see Penny writhe in terror and pain? Yes. As it pleased her daughter to cause that terror.

  Gaia laughed a baby’s innocent, gurgling laugh.

  Penny’s scream seemed to last a very long time. Long enough that Drake merged from where Brittney had been.

  When at last Penny stopped, and just sat on her meager haunches, staring, staring in horror at the baby, Drake said, “So, the baby has game.” He unwrapped his whip from around his waist and said, “Don’t think that means I can’t do what I want with you, Diana.”

  Diana met his dead gaze. It occurred to her for the first time that she felt better. Much better. She had just gone through hell, but she felt . . . fine. She inventoried her body, checking in with her whipped back, her bruises, her murderously stretched belly, her torn parts.

  She was fine.

  Gaia had healed her.

  “Actually, Drake,” Diana said, “I think it means you’d better watch very carefully what you do or say to me.”

  Gaia, once more cradled in her mother’s arms, grinned a two-toothed grin.

  “Something coming down the highway,” Sam said.

  “It’s a light,” Astrid said.

  “A light called Darkness,” Lana said in a faraway voice.

  “It’s following the Sammy suns. Straight for us,” Caine said. He wasn’t snarking or snarling anymore. Sam saw the same look on his face and Lana’s. They both knew, deep down in their souls, what was coming.

  Lana went to Caine and put a hand on his arm. Just making contact. Caine didn’t shake her off.

  It was a weird bond they shared: memories of the gaiaphage. Memories of its painful touch deep inside their minds. Scars left on their souls.

  “‘Fear is the mind-killer,’” Lana said, reciting from memory. “‘Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I . . .’ I can’t remember the rest. From a book I read a long time ago.”

  To almost no one’s surprise, Astrid said, “Dune, by Frank Herbert. ‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.’”

  She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. “‘Only I will remain.’”

  There was a collective sigh that was almost a sob.

  Sam pulled Astrid to him and they kissed. Then Sam pushed her away and said, “I love you. All my heart. Forever. But get the hell out of here, because I can’t be watching out for you.”

  “I know,” Astrid said. “And I love you, too.”

  Lana took a furious, defiant look down the highway. Sam knew what was in her heart.

  “Lana. What you’ve got won’t kill him. What you’ve got may save a bunch of others. Go. Now.”

  Then it was just the three of them, Sam, Caine, and Quinn, watching the dim light advance. Seeing now that it was three indistinct shapes. It was as if the one in the middle was carrying a Sammy sun of a different hue. Sam couldn’t make out faces. But he was sure he saw a tentacle twisting, twisting.

  “Three of them,” Caine said. “That means most likely Penny is one of them.” Caine took a deep breath. “Get outta here, Quinn.”

  Quinn said, “No. I don’t think I will.”

  “Hey. I’m letting you off the hook, fisherman, okay? I’m being a good guy. You can go tell everyone the last thing I said was, ‘Just get out of here, Quinn, and try to stay alive.’”

  “Quinn,” Sam said. “You’ve got nothing to prove, man.”

  They had found Quinn a pistol. A revolver. It had three bullets.

  “I’m in this,” Quinn said shakily.

  “You have a plan, Sammy boy?” Caine asked.

  “Yeah.” He extinguished the nearest Sammy sun, plunging them into darkness. The next one back was a hundred yards down the road. “Quinn, you start walking backward toward the last light. They won’t have any depth perception, no more than we do in this light. They’ll keep coming toward you. Caine, you drop left; I drop right; we hit them when they’re fifty feet out. Hopefully before Penny can find a target.”

  “Great plan,” Caine said a little sarcastically. But he melted into the darkness on the left-hand side of the road.

  “Quinn. My friend. What Caine said before. Save one bullet.” With that Sam plunged into the deep, enveloping darkness.

  He watched Quinn begin to walk backward. It would mean Quinn was in darkness until he neared the next Sammy sun back. If Drake had seen them at all, he probably hadn’t been able to tell how many there were. But he would eventually be able to see Quinn. At that point he would fixate, anxious to take whoever it was standing in his way.

  There might be an opportunity there. A few confused seconds where Caine and Sam could strike unexpectedly. If they were fast and lucky they could take out at least one of the three and reduce the odds.

  Who was that third person?

  Drake. Penny. And someone—or something—glowing like an old headlight.

  Whoever it is, he told himself, fi
rst go for Penny.

  Penny was the one to fear.

  “Dada,” Gaia said.

  Diana stared down at her bright, glowing child. She was already the size of a two-year-old. There were teeth in her mouth. There was hair—dark like her parents’—on her head. Her movements were already deliberate and controlled, no more wild lack of coordination. Diana wondered if she could already walk.

  “Did you say ‘Dada’?”

  Gaia was looking fixedly at the dark off to the right. Straight ahead a lone figure stood beneath the light of a Sammy sun. Beyond him at least two fires could be seen, one fairly close and dramatic.

  Gaia was in her head again, not straining to use her child mouth, but reaching straight into Diana’s memories. Pictures of Caine. And suddenly it was clear.

  “It’s an ambush!” Diana said.

  “Shut the—” Drake said, and was hurled bodily onto his back with such sudden force that he skidded clear out of sight.

  A beam of terrible green light shot from the other direction.

  Penny had reacted faster to Diana’s warning. She was already moving to hide behind Diana when the light split the night. Half of Penny’s hair frizzled and burned, leaving a terrible smell.

  A roar from the dark behind them and Drake was rushing forward, his terrible whip at the ready, searching for a target. Light sliced deep into his side. He spun and fell. But even as he fell the burn was healing.

  Diana saw Sam rush from the darkness. He yelled, “Diana, get down!” and fired at the spot where Drake had been a split second earlier.

  Suddenly, revealed by the flash of light from Sam’s palms: Caine.

  It had been four months since she had seen him. Just a little longer since together they had made Gaia.

  Their eyes met. Caine froze. He stared at Diana. A look of pain creased his brow.

  That moment’s hesitation was too long.

  Caine reeled back, slapping at his body with hands weirdly encrusted on their backs. Slapping and yelling, and then Sam was yelling, “It’s Penny, it’s just Penny, Caine!”

  Caine seemed to get control of himself, though barely, and for only a moment as he raised his hands and, with a wild sweep of both hands, flung Penny into the dark.