Crazy. Not real.
She searched in the dark and found a candle. She clumsily thumbed a lighter and brought fire to the wick.
Yes. Her skin was gold.
Carrying the candle, she went to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror.
She was gold. From head to toe. Her black hair was still black, but every square inch of her skin was the color of actual yellow gold.
Then she leaned close to look at the reflection of her own eyes. And that was when she screamed, because the irises were an even deeper gold.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Shaking, she switched out of her bed shirt into jeans and a T-shirt. Because maybe she was just hallucinating, so she needed to have someone else look at her.
Taylor pictured Lana’s hotel, the hallway.
She bounced.
The pain was instant and unbearable. Like nothing she had ever felt or imagined. Her left hand and the outer meat of her left calf felt as if they were pressed against red-hot steel.
Taylor screamed and thrashed and the pain only grew worse. She was hanging from her hand and her leg, just hanging, not standing on anything, just hanging from… She screamed again as she realized she was not at Clifftop. She was in the forest, hanging from a tall tree. Her left hand and the outer edge of her left calf had materialized in the tree.
In the tree.
She dangled, screaming, right arm and left arm reaching, grabbing, wild and out of control. Her golden flesh shining dully in the moonlight.
And the pain!
It had to be a dream. This couldn’t be real. She hadn’t bounced here. No, it was just a horrible nightmare. She had to bounce away, even if it was a dream, bounce back to her bedroom.
Taylor strained to visualize her room. Pushed back the pain for just a second … just…
Taylor bounced.
The hand was gone. Neatly cut off at the wrist. No blood, just a sudden ending. Taylor could not see her calf. Nor could she feel it.
She was not in her bedroom. She was on a car in the driveway of Clifftop.
On the car. Both of her legs were in the car, but she was on it, on the dusty roof of a Lexus. She had materialized with her legs sticking through the roof.
Taylor bellowed in pain and terror.
Her flailing caused her to topple over. The stumps of her legs didn’t do a very good job of holding her in place. She rolled once, fell the four feet to the pavement, landed on her chest.
Shaking with fear, she fumbled for and reached the door handle and used it to pull herself up into a seated position. Her legs ended in neat stumps, just above the knees. Just like her left hand.
No blood.
But so much pain.
Taylor screamed and fell back and lost consciousness.
Astrid had found the sight of a visibly pregnant Diana disturbing.
It was strange enough to see a fifteen-year-old girl pregnant in any context. In the FAYZ it was far more jarring. The FAYZ was a trap, a prison, a purgatory maybe. But a nursery?
Each week that had gone by from that first day, the number of kids alive in the FAYZ had gone down. Always down, never up. The FAYZ was a place of sudden, horrifying death. Not a place of life.
And who had changed all that? A cruel, sharp-tongued girl and a boy who had never been anything but evil.
Astrid had taken a life. Diana was bringing one into the world.
Astrid sat on the sticky plastic cushions around the houseboat’s tiny dining table. She put her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands.
Edilio came in, nodded at Astrid, and poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the counter. He was being discreet, not asking her questions, not wanting, probably, to scare her off.
“You like irony, Edilio?” Astrid asked him.
For a moment she thought she’d embarrassed him by using a word he didn’t understand. But after a long, reflective pause Edilio said, “You mean like the irony of an illegal from Honduras ending up being what I am?”
Astrid smiled. “Yeah. Like that.”
Edilio gave her a shrewd look. “Or maybe like Diana having a baby?”
That forced a laugh from Astrid. She shook her head ruefully. “You are the most underestimated person in the FAYZ.”
“It’s my superpower,” Edilio said dryly.
Astrid invited him to sit down. He laid his gun down carefully and slid into a seat opposite her.
“Who would you say are the ten most powerful people in the FAYZ, Edilio?”
Edilio raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Number one is Albert,” Edilio said. “Then Caine. Sam. Lana.” He thought about it for a moment longer and said, “Quinn. Drake, unfortunately. Dekka. You. Me. Diana.”
Astrid folded her arms in front of her. “Not Brianna? Or Orc?”
“They’re both powerful, sure. But they don’t have the kind of power that moves other people, you know? Brianna’s cool, but she’s not someone who other people follow. Same with Jack. More so with Orc.”
“You notice something about the ten people you named?” Astrid asked. Then she answered her own question. “Four of the ten have no powers or mutations.”
“Irony?”
“And Diana’s importance isn’t about her power. It’s about her baby. Diana Ladris: mother.”
“She’s changed,” Edilio said. “So have you.”
“Yeah, I’m a bit more tanned,” Astrid said evasively.
“I think it’s more than that,” Edilio said. “The old Astrid would never have just disappeared like you did. Wouldn’t have stayed out there all on her own.”
“True,” Astrid acknowledged. “I was… I was doing penance.”
Edilio smiled affectionately. “Old-school, huh? Like a hermit. Or a monk. Holy men … women, too, I guess … going off to the wilderness to make peace with God.”
“I’m not a holy anything.”
“But you made peace?”
Astrid took a deep breath. “I’ve changed.”
“Ah. Like that?” Her silence was confirmation. “Lots of people, they go through bad times, they lose their faith. But they come back to it.”
“I didn’t lose my faith, Edilio: I killed it. I held it up to the light and I stared right at it and for the first time I didn’t hide behind something I’d read somewhere, or something I’d heard. I didn’t worry about what anyone would think. I didn’t worry about looking like a fool. I was all alone and I had no one to be right to. Except me. So I just looked. And when I looked…” She made a gesture with her fingers, like things blowing away, scattering in the wind. “There was nothing there.”
Edilio looked very sad.
“Edilio,” she said, “you have to believe what’s right for you, what you feel. But so do I. It’s hard for someone who has had to carry the nickname ‘Astrid the Genius’ to admit she was wrong.” She made a wry smile. “But I found out that I was … not happier, maybe; that’s not the right word.... Not about happy. But … honest. Honest with myself.”
“So you think I’m lying to myself?” Edilio asked softly.
Astrid shook her head. “Never. But I was.”
Edilio stood up. “I have to get back out there.” He came to stand beside her, put his arms around her shoulders, and she hugged him, too.
“It’s good to have you back, Astrid. You should get some sleep.” He nodded. “Use Sam’s bunk.”
Astrid felt weariness rise up and almost close her eyes where she sat. A nap. Just a brief one. She made her way to Sam’s bunk and flopped down.
The bed smelled of salt and Sam. The two smells had always been connected in her mind.
She wondered who he had found to be with. Surely someone by now. Well, good. Good. Sam needed someone to take care of him, and she hoped he’d found that.
She felt around, looking for a pillow. She hadn’t had a pillow in a long, long time, and now the idea of one seemed incredibly luxurious.
<
br /> Instead of a pillow her hand touched sheer, silky fabric. She pulled it to her and ran the fabric against her cheek. She knew it. It was her old nightgown, the filmy white thing she used to wear back in the days when she didn’t need to sleep with her clothes on and a shotgun nestled to her breast.
Her old nightgown. Sam kept it with him, in his bed.
TEN
34 HOURS, 31 MINUTES
“I’M GOING TO risk some light,” Sam said.
“I think some light would be a great idea,” Dekka said.
Sam raised his hands, and a ball of light, like a pale greenish sun, began to form in midair. It created more shadows than illumination. So he leaned to his right as far as he could without moving his feet and hung a second light in midair. The two lights banished some of the shadows.
“Okay, everyone kneel down real slowly and check all around your feet,” Sam instructed.
“Aaahh!” Jack yelled.
“Don’t move!”
“I’m not moving, I’m not moving, my foot is underneath a wire, I’m not moving, Oh, God, I’m going to die!”
Sam formed a third light down by Jack’s feet. Now he could easily see the taut wire crossing the toe of Jack’s boot.
“Dekka, are you clear?” Sam asked.
“I think so. Anyway, I can see where the wire runs now.”
“Okay, then move back to a safe distance.”
“Any idea what a safe distance would be?”
“Far,” Sam said. “Okay, Jack, just stand still. I’m going to scoop the sand out from under your foot. That’ll take the pressure off the wire.”
Sam used his two index fingers to begin very, very delicately scooping sand. Then he used two fingers from each hand.
Jack’s shoe dropped half an inch. Then a bit more.
“Okay, now just move your foot back.”
“You sure?”
“I’m right here next to you, aren’t I?” Sam snapped.
Jack moved his foot. Nothing blew up.
“Now we all just back away.”
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” It was Brianna atop the bluff. “What’s with all the light? I thought we were being all—”
“Stay right there!” Dekka yelled.
“Okay, jeez, you don’t have to yell.”
Sam explained what was going on. “We can’t leave this thing booby-trapped. Some innocent person could stumble across this place. We either have to disarm it or blow it up.”
“Since I’m the tech guy, and disarming a booby trap is a sort of tech problem,” Jack said, “I vote we blow it up from a safe distance.”
“Oh, come on, Jack, don’t be a wimp,” Dekka teased.
“Breeze,” Sam called up to her. “Find us a rope or a long string.”
Brianna blurred out of view.
“Okay, let’s all go down to the water,” Sam said.
They did not have to wait long. In five minutes Brianna was vibrating to a stop next to them.
“I don’t guess you can outrun an explosion, right?” Sam asked doubtfully.
Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.”
“Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said.
“In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.”
He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation.
Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.”
She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?”
“She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—”
BOOOOM!
The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand.
Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth.
In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.”
He looked toward the south. From where he was standing he couldn’t exactly see Perdido Beach. There were no lights except for his eternal Sammy suns, and they would be behind curtains at night.
Down there in town his brother, Caine, was … doing what exactly? That was the question. Had this been Caine’s idea, this booby trap? Had he heard or seen the explosion and was he now rejoicing, believing Sam had been killed?
What would Caine do if he thought Sam was dead? Would he come against the lake? Could Albert stop him?
Caine wouldn’t dare attack the lake as long as Sam was alive. As long as Sam was alive and could join forces with Albert, Caine would be careful.
But he wondered how long it would be before Caine moved against Albert and Sam. Would Caine really let Diana have his child and stay with Sam?
It did occur to Sam for just a fleeting moment that Caine might not be the one who had taken the missiles. But there was really only one other possibility. A ridiculous possibility.
Ridiculous.
No, Caine had the missiles. Which meant the four-month-long peace was coming to an end. It was dark, and no one was looking at him, so Sam didn’t feel too guilty about the fact that he was smiling.
Cigar felt hands touching him.
Maybe. Maybe hands. Maybe the paws of a monster who would sink terrible claws into him and rip the flesh from his arm.
He screamed.
Maybe. He couldn’t be sure. Had he ever stopped screaming?
He heard a far-off wail, a hopeless, helpless sound. Was it coming from him?
“I’ve never been able to grow an organ back,” Lana’s voice said. “Last time I tried… Let’s just hope you don’t end up with whip eyes.”
He knew her voice. He knew she was there beside him. Yes. That was her touch on him. Unless she was the creature that smiled before chewing your fingers off and then ate its way up your arms, blood spurting around its grinning, needle-toothed mouth, laughing at his pain, chewing him, ripping until he screamed and screamed and his screaming throat became a roaring animal, a lion’s mouth roaring out of his throat....
“Look! Something’s happening.”
Cigar didn’t recognize that voice. A boy’s voice, wasn’t it?
“Who are you?” Cigar cried out.
“It’s Lana.”
“Who are yoooooou?”
“I think he means me. It’s me, Sanjit.”
There were snakes in Cigar’s dried-blood eye sockets. He could feel them. They were writhing like mad.
“Nerves,” Sanjit said.
“You might be feeling something,” Lana said.
“Aaaaahhhhhh!” Cigar cried. He tried to claw at his eyes but his hands were pinned. Helpless. He’d had his arms chewed off, hadn’t he? He didn’t have arms anymore. So how had he clawed the roaches out of his eyes if he had no arms? Answer that, Bradley. His real name, Bradley.
Answer that.
And if you don’t have arms how did you light those cigars, those big fat cigars and puff until the ends were glowing red and so hot and then plunge those red-hot tips into the empty holes of your eye and then shriek in agony and beg God, “Kill me, kill me, kill me”?
“The nerves are regrowing. Unbelievable,” Sanjit said.
“He’s trying to claw his eyes again,” Lana said.
“Yeah,” Sanjit agreed. “This can’t ever happen again. That witch has to be stopped.”
“It was Caine’s doing,” Lana said angrily. “He knows what Penny is like. She’s a mental case. She’s evil. She was always twisted, but after her injuries … something snapped in that girl.”
“My eyes!” Cigar screamed.
Something. A bar of faint, distant light. Like the ea
rliest hints of sunrise, like the blackness was just a little bit less black.
“Something is happening,” Sanjit said. “Look! Look!”
“My eyes!”
“Not yet, dude, but something is growing. Little white balls, no bigger than BBs right now.” Sanjit put his hand on Cigar’s chest and dug his ripping, tearing, stiletto fingers into Cigar’s heart and…
No. No. That wasn’t real. That wasn’t real.
The light bar, that faint glow was growing. Cigar stared at it, willing it to be real. He needed something to be real. He needed something to not be a nightmare.
“Cigar,” Sanjit said in a kind voice. “It looks like the gouging and the cuts are healing up. And it seems like tiny little eyes are forming.”
But then Lana’s more astringent voice said, “Don’t get your hopes up too much.”
Her hands. On his temples. On his brow. Slowly, slowly she probed toward the black sockets.
“No, no, no, nooooooooo!” he wailed.
Lana’s fingers slid back.
Lana was real. Her touch was real. The light he could see was real. He tried so very hard to hold on to that.
“We’re going to cover your eyes with a cloth, okay?” Sanjit said. “Your eyeballs are jerking around and it may be that the light from the Sammy sun bothers them.”
An eternity, during which he slid in and out of consciousness, in and out of screaming nightmares. At times he was on fire. At times his skin crisped like bacon. At times scorpions burrowed into his flesh.
All the while, Lana kept her hands on his face.
“Listen to me,” Lana said at last. “Can you hear me?”
How much time had passed? The madness was not past, but it was diluted, weakened. The screams still threatened to tear his throat, but he could hold them off; he could mount some resistance, at least.
“We’ve been here all night,” Lana said. “So whatever you’ve got is what you’ve got. I can’t do any more.”
“I’m here, too, brother. It’s me, Quinn.” Quinn laid his calloused hand on Cigar’s shoulder and it made him want to cry. “Listen, dude, however it turns out, you’ve got a place with your crew. You’re one of us.”
“We’re going to take the cloth off now,” Sanjit said.
Cigar felt the cloth slide away.
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