Sam looked down, not pleased, really, but maybe a little gratified. At the same time, though, he was beginning to realize something. It took a few moments to form coherently in his mind. He had to check it against what he knew, because at first it seemed wrong.
Finally he said, “No. No. I’m a lousy leader.”
There was a pause before Toto said, “He believes it.”
Sam laughed, amazed that he really did believe it. “No, I’m a lousy leader,” he repeated. “Look, I mean well. And I have powers. But it’s Albert who kept people fed and alive. And up here it’s Edilio who really runs things. Even Quinn, he’s a better leader than me. Me? I get pissed off when you need me, and then I pout when you don’t. No. Edilio’s a leader. I … I don’t know what I am, except for being the guy who can make light shoot out of his hands.”
He stepped back, out of the direct glow of the Sammy sun, baffled by the unexpected turn his speech had taken. He had meant to tell everyone to stick together and be disciplined. He had ended up feeling like a fool, taking a momentous occasion to just make an idiot of himself.
Edilio spoke up. He had a softer voice. And still had a trace of his Honduran accent. “I know what Sam is. Maybe, like he said, he’s not a great leader. But he’s a great fighter. He’s our warrior; that’s what he is. Our soldier. So what he’s going to do, Sam, what he’s going to do is go out there into the dark and fight our enemies. Try to keep us safe.”
“He believes it,” Toto said unnecessarily.
“Yeah,” Sam whispered. He looked down at his hands, palms up. “Yeah,” he said louder. Then, still to himself: “Well. I’ll be damned. I’m not the leader. I’m the soldier.” He laughed and looked at Edilio, his face nothing but shadows in the light of the Sammy sun. “It takes me a while to figure things out, doesn’t it?”
Edilio grinned. “Do me a favor. When you find Astrid, repeat that to her, word for word, the part about how it takes you a while. Then remember her exact reaction and tell me.”
Then, serious again, Edilio said, “I’ll take care of these people here, Sam. Go find our friends. And if you run into Drake, kill that son of a bitch.”
The sky closed.
Darkness. Absolute, total darkness.
Astrid heard her own breathing.
She heard Cigar’s hesitant footsteps. Slowing. Stopping.
“We aren’t far from Perdido Beach,” Astrid said.
How strange what absolute black did to the sound of words. To the sound of her own heart.
“We have to try to remember the direction. Otherwise we’ll start walking in circles.”
I will not panic, she told herself. I will not let the fear paralyze me.
She reached for Cigar. Her hand touched nothing.
“We should hold hands,” Astrid said. “So we don’t get separated.”
“You have claws,” Cigar said. “They have poison needles in them.”
“No, no, that’s not real. That’s a trick your mind is playing on you.”
“The little boy is here,” Cigar said.
“How do you know?” Astrid moved closer to the source of his voice. She thought she was quite close to him. She tried to call on other senses. Could she hear his heartbeat? Could she feel his body warmth?
“I see him. Can’t you see him?”
“I can’t see anything.”
She should have brought something to use as a torch. Something she could burn. Of course, showing light out here in the open would make her visible to people and things she didn’t want seeing her.
It was just that the pressure of the dark—and that was how it felt, like pressure, like it wasn’t an absence of light, but like it was black felt or something hung in drapes all around her—was hemming her in. Like it was a physical obstruction.
Nothing had changed except that light had been subtracted. Every object was exactly where it had been before. But that wasn’t how it felt.
“The little boy is looking at you,” Cigar said.
Astrid felt a chill.
“Is he talking?”
“No. He likes quiet.”
“Yes. He always did,” Astrid said. “And darkness. He liked the dark. It soothed him.”
Had Petey made all of this happen? Just to get his blessed silence and peace?
“Petey?” she said.
It felt ridiculous. She was talking to someone she couldn’t see. Someone who probably wasn’t there. Someone who, if he existed at all, was not human, not anything physical or tangible.
The irony made her laugh out loud. She’d just given up talking to one perhaps unreal spiritual entity. Now here she was doing it again.
“He doesn’t like when you laugh,” Cigar said, shushing her.
“Too bad,” Astrid said.
That brought silence. She could hear Cigar breathing, so she knew he was still there. She didn’t know whether he was still looking at Petey. Or something that was supposed to be Petey.
“He was in my head,” Cigar whispered. “I felt him. He went inside me. But he left.”
“Are you saying he took you over?”
“I let him,” Cigar said. “I wanted him to make me be like I used to be. But he couldn’t.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s gone now,” Cigar said sadly.
Astrid sighed. “Yeah. Just like a god, never there when you need one.”
She listened hard. And smelled the air. She had an impression, barely an impression, that she could tell in which direction the ocean lay.
But she also knew that the land between where she was and the ocean was largely fertile fields seething with zekes. Zekes that had probably not been fed in some time.
There were fields between her and the highway, but once she got to the highway she would be able to follow it toward town. Even in the dark she could stay on a concrete highway.
Sam wanted to follow the road from the lake down to the highway, because that was where Astrid would be. Most likely. Despite none of the refugees having seen her on their way from Perdido Beach to the lake.
But finding Astrid was not the right move. Not yet. She would slow him down, even if he found her. And she wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t Dekka or Brianna or even Orc. They could help him win a fight; Astrid could not.
But oh, Lord, how he wanted her now. Not to make love but just to have her there in the darkness beside him. To hear her voice. That above all. The sound of her voice was the sound of sanity, and he was entering the valley of shadow. Walking into pure, absolute darkness.
He walked until he was out of the faint circle of light cast by the numerous Sammy suns of the lake. Then he hung a new light, taking solace from the sphere as it grew in his hands.
But the light reached only a few feet. Turning back as he walked on, he could see it. But it cast only a faint light, a light whose photons seemed to tire easily.
Into the darkness. Step. Step.
Something was squeezing his heart.
His teeth would fragment if he bit down any harder.
“It’s just the same as it was,” he told himself. “Same but darker.”
Nothing changes when the light goes out, Sam. His mother had said that a thousand times. See? Click. Light on. Click. Light off. The same bed, the same dresser, the same laundry you’ve strewn all over the floor…
Not the point, that younger Sam had thought. The threat knows I’m helpless in the dark. So that’s not the same.
It’s not the same if the threat can see and I can’t.
It’s not the same if the threat knows it doesn’t have to hide, but can make its move.
Useless to pretend the darkness isn’t any different.
It’s different.
Did something bad happen to you in the dark, Sam? They always wanted to know. Because they assumed all fear must come from a thing or a place. An event. Cause and effect. Like fear was part of an algebra equation.
No, no, no, so not getting the point of fear. Because fear wasn’t about what made se
nse. Fear was about possibilities. Not things that happened. Things that might.
Things that might… Threats that might be there. Murderers. Madmen. Monsters. Standing just a few inches from him, able to see him, but his eyes useless. The threats, they could laugh silently at him. They could hold their knives, guns, claws right in his face and he wouldn’t be able to see.
The threat could be. Right. Here.
His legs already ached from tension. He glanced back at the lake. He had been climbing and it was below him now, a sad collection of stars like a dim, distant galaxy. So very far away.
He couldn’t look back for long because the possibilities were all around him now.
The light of day showed you the limits of possibility. But walk through the dark, the absolute, total darkness, and the possibilities were limitless.
He hung a Sammy sun. He didn’t want to leave it behind. It was light that revealed stones. A stick. A dried-out bush.
It was almost better not to bother. Seeing anything just made the darkness seem darker. But the lights were also a sort of bread-crumb trail, like Hansel and Gretel. He would be able to find his way home.
Hopefully as well, he’d be able to see whether he was veering left or right.
But the lights had one other effect: they would be seen by whatever else was out here.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But in the darkness the one man holding a candle is a target.
Sam walked on into the dark.
Quinn had brought everyone into the plaza with grilled fish. The fire still burned, but lower and lower.
Lana had healed all who needed it.
For now there was quiet.
Kids had broken into Albert’s place and come back with some of his hoard of flashlights and batteries. Quinn had quickly confiscated them. They were worth far more than gold, far more even than food.
Some of Quinn’s crew were using the light of a single flashlight and a number of crowbars to tear apart the pews in the church and bring them out to keep the fire going.
No one was leaving. Not yet.
The orange-red glow cast a faint, flickering wash of color on the limestone of town hall, on the long-abandoned McDonald’s, on the broken fountain. On grim young faces.
But the streets leading away simply disappeared. The rest of the town was invisible. The ocean, occasionally faintly audible over the sound of snapping wood and muted conversation, might as well be a myth.
The sky was black. Featureless.
All of the FAYZ was just this bonfire now.
Close to the fire sat Caine. People left plenty of room for him. He smelled. And he still cried out in pain as a new pair of kids—the third pair—chipped away at his hands by firelight. They were down to the small stuff now. The very painful, small strokes that often drew blood.
Every now and then Lana would come by to heal a cut or two so that the blood didn’t render the concrete too slippery for the chisel.
Quinn was there at the moment when a firm blow separated Caine’s hands so that they were no longer attached to each other.
“The palms first,” Caine ordered, still somehow commanding, despite everything.
They used needle-nose pliers to pry pieces off. Skin came away, too. Each time they asked him if it was okay, and each time he gritted his teeth and said, “Do it!”
His hands were being skinned. Piece by piece.
Quinn could barely stand to watch it. But he had to admit one thing: Caine might be a thug, an egomaniac, a killer, but he was no coward.
Lana pulled Quinn aside a little way, into the dark beyond the reach of firelight. Down Alameda Avenue until Quinn could see nothing. Not even the hand in front of his face. “I wanted you to see just how dark it is,” she said.
She was inches from him. He could see nothing.
“Yeah. It’s dark.”
“Do you have a plan?”
Quinn sighed. “For total darkness? No, Lana. No plan.”
“They’ll burn buildings if the fire goes out.”
“We can keep the bonfire going for a while. We’ll feed the whole town in, piece by piece if we have to. And we have water. Little Pete’s cloud is still producing. It’s the food.”
They both had too many memories of hunger. Silence.
“We’re bringing all the food in. From storage at the Ralphs, from Albert’s compound. People didn’t have much in their homes. Add it all up and we’ve got maybe two days’ short rations. Then it starts.”
“Starvation.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t know what the point of this conversation was. “Do you have a plan?”
“It won’t take two days, Quinn. You feel what this darkness does to you? The way it closes in around you? All of a sudden kids realize they’re in this big fishbowl. Fear of the dark, fear of being closed in. Most will be okay for a while, but it’s not about ‘most.’ It’s about the weakest links. The kids who are already about as messed up as they can be.”
“Anyone goes nuts, we’ll deal with him,” Quinn said.
“And Caine?”
Quinn said, “You’re the one who put me in charge, Lana. I hope you didn’t think I had some magic answer.”
A third breathing sound could be heard. “Hi, Patrick. Good boy.”
Quinn heard her fumbling around in the dark, looking for his ruff, finding it, then scratching it vigorously.
“They’ll start going crazy,” Lana said. “Absolutely crazy. When that happens … ask Caine for help.”
“What’s he going to do?” Quinn asked.
“Whatever it takes to keep people under control.”
“Wait a minute. Whoa.” He had an instinct to grab her arm. But he didn’t know where her arm was. “Are you telling me to turn Caine loose on anyone who gets out of line?”
“Can you stop some bunch of kids if they decide to steal the food for themselves? Or go nuts and start burning things?”
“Lana. Why does it matter?” he asked. He felt the energy draining from him. She had asked him to take over. Now she was telling him to use Caine like a weapon. For what? “What does anything matter, Lana? Can you tell me that? Why should I hurt some kid for losing his mind when anyone could lose their mind?”
Lana said nothing. She said nothing for so long, Quinn began to wonder if she had left silently. Then, in a voice so low it didn’t even sound like her: “In the dark like this I can feel it. So much closer. It’s more real to me than you are because I can see it. I see it in my head. There’s nothing else to see, so I see it.”
“You’re not telling me why I should hurt anyone, Lana.”
“It’s alive. And it’s scared. It’s so scared. Like it’s dying. Like that kind of scared. I see… I see images that don’t really mean anything. It’s not really reaching for me anymore. It doesn’t have time to reach for me anymore. It’s the baby it wants. All its hopes are on the baby.”
“Diana’s baby?”
“It doesn’t have the baby yet, Quinn. Which means it’s not over yet. Even here in the dark, with all of us so scared. It’s not over. Believe that, okay? Believe that it’s not over.”
“It’s not over,” Quinn said, feeling and probably sounding puzzled.
“Those kids back there, if they start to panic they’ll hurt themselves. I won’t be able to find them and help them, so they’ll die. And see, that’s what I’m not going to let him do. The gaiaphage, I mean. I can’t kill him, I can’t keep him from getting the baby. What I can do, and what you can do, too, Quinn, is keep as many of us alive as possible, for as long as possible. Maybe because it’s the right thing to do. But also … also…” He felt her touch his chest, fumble from there to find his shoulder, then down to take his hand and hold it with a surprisingly strong grip. “Also because I’m not letting him win. He wants us all dead and gone, because as long as we live, we’re a threat. Well, no. No. We’re not going to give up.”
She let go of his hand.
“It’s the only way I ha
ve left to fight him, Quinn. By not dying, and by not letting any of those kids back there die.”
THIRTY-ONE
8 HOURS, 58 MINUTES
PENNY HAD NEVER felt like this before. She’d never experienced a sense of awe. Never even known what people were talking about when they went on and on about some sunset or the sweep of stars in a clear night sky.
But now she was feeling something.
She couldn’t see. It was as black as if her eyes had been gouged out. (A thought that made her smile at memories of Cigar.) And yet she knew where she was going.
Her cut foot no longer mattered. When she stubbed her toe on a rock it didn’t matter. That she had to feel her way along the narrow path with her hands out like a blind person, it didn’t matter, none of it, because she could feel … feel something so great, so, so magnificent.
She’d never been here before, but it was a homecoming anyway.
She laughed out loud.
“You can feel it, can’t you?”
Penny was startled by the voice. It was coming from where Drake had been but it was a girl’s voice. Of course: Brittney.
“I feel it,” Penny confirmed. “I feel it.”
“When you get closer you’ll hear his voice inside you,” Brittney said. “And it’s not some dream or something; it’s real. And then, when you get all the way down to the bottom, then you can actually touch him.”
Penny thought that sounded weird. Not that she had a big problem with weird. But Brittney was not Drake. Drake she could respect. The Whip Hand—and even more, the will to use it—made Drake powerful.
And attractive, too, as she remembered from former days. She hadn’t ever paid that much attention to him back then because Caine was the one for her. Caine had the dark good looks and the brain—so smart. Drake had been a very different boy: like a shark. He looked like a shark, with dead eyes and a hungry mouth.
Well, she’d been wrong about Caine. Caine was totally under the thumb of that witch Diana. Drake, though, he sure didn’t love Diana. In fact, he hated her. He hated her as much as Penny did.
Maybe Drake was better-looking after all. Anyway, good luck to Diana trying to steal him away like she had Caine.
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