“Okay,” Sam said. He couldn’t think of anything better to say.
“Here’s the thing I remember clearly: the gaiaphage, Sam. I understand it now. I know what happened.”
For the next half an hour she explained. It began in a rambling way, but, Astrid being Astrid, the thoughts grew clearer, the explanations more crisp, and by the end she was getting annoyed with him for failing to immediately grasp some details.
Nothing was more reassuring to him than an impatient, condescending Astrid.
“Okay. The gaiaphage is part of the barrier,” Sam summarized. “And the barrier is part of the gaiaphage. He’s the building material Pete used to create the barrier. And now the gaiaphage is running out of energy. Starving for energy. So the barrier is failing—going dark, then maybe breaking open. That’s good news, then. In fact, that’s great news.”
“Yes,” Astrid said. “It would be the best possible news. Unless somehow the gaiaphage escapes the barrier.”
“But how is he or it or whatever going to do that?”
“I don’t know, but I can guess. Listen, Sam, when the gaiaphage gave Drake that disgusting whip arm he needed Lana’s powers to do it. Ever since then he’s tried to lure her back. And all the while, too, he tried to entice Pete. Now that Pete has lost most of his power, he can interfere with what he sees as data patterns—people and animals—but he can’t just perform miracles like he could. Somehow Pete’s power was a function of his body. Like Lana’s power is part of her body.”
“The baby,” Sam said. “The gaiaphage wants the baby. We guessed that much, but didn’t really know why.”
“Diana can read power levels,” Astrid said. “Did she ever…”
Sam nodded. “She said the baby is a three bar. As a fetus. Who knows what it will be when it’s born. Or as it grows. Diana’s only, like, four or five months along. I should know exactly, but I forget. When she would talk about it I would kind of, you know.” He made a shivering move, like it all gave him the creeps.
Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “Really. That’s the part of all this that makes you squirm: pregnancy.”
“She made me touch her, you know, stomach. And she talked about her, um, her things.” He pointed at his chest and whispered, “Nipples.”
“Yeah,” Astrid said dryly. “I could see where that would be devastating.”
At that Sam had no choice but to go to her, put his arms around her, and kiss her. Because now she was one hundred percent Astrid again.
“So now what?” Astrid asked a few minutes later.
“Drake’s had plenty of time to get Diana to the mine shaft. Going in there after them is a job for an army, not just me alone,” Sam said, thinking out loud. “In any case, however bad it is for Diana, they won’t kill her until they have the baby, and that won’t happen for months.”
“That must mean the gaiaphage has months before the barrier cracks. How do we survive that long?”
Sam shrugged. “That, I don’t know. Yet. But if we’re going after that thing in the mine shaft, we’ll need help. Brianna, if she’s still alive. Dekka, Taylor, Orc. And Caine. Especially Caine. If he’ll help.”
“So we go to Perdido Beach?”
“Slowly. Carefully. Yeah. And we’ll leave a trail of lights for anyone else needing a safe path. I need to get my troops back together. Then we worry about going after the gaiaphage.”
After a while Drake lifted the baby up with his whip hand. He was gentle. He knew what the baby was. Who it was.
He laid it down just as gently on Diana’s belly.
“Feed it,” he ordered.
Diana shook her head.
Yeah, Drake thought with a smirk, all the snark has been beaten right out of that girl. Still, he’d have loved to make her beg.... But no. The will of the gaiaphage was clear in his mind. The baby body must be nurtured, protected. That baby now was the gaiaphage. Drake’s god. And he would follow it. He would obey it.
Even though the baby itself was a girl.
That was a shame. It would have been cooler if it was a dude’s body. But okay, what was a body but a tool or a weapon?
Drake gave Diana the baby. Diana closed her eyes, squeezing out a tear.
The baby latched on and nursed.
Now, at irresistible urging from the gaiaphage, Drake went to Penny. She was white as a ghost. She was shivering like she was cold, although it was hot as always down here.
She was lying in a pool of her own blood.
Fine with Drake. She was too full of herself. Way too impressed by her own power. The gaiaphage didn’t need her.
But a voice in his head made him turn around. The baby was sitting up on Diana’s belly. Sitting up. Looking at Drake.
Drake knew nothing about babies, but that wasn’t right. He knew that much. This was definitely not right. Babies still covered with slime weren’t supposed to be sitting up and making eye contact.
Then, to his even greater shock, the baby seemed to be trying to speak. No sounds came out, but he knew without question what the gaiaphage wanted.
“Yeah,” Drake said, annoyed but submissive.
He curled his tentacle arm around Penny. She was small, not hard to carry. So he brought her, shivering and muttering incoherently, to the baby gaiaphage.
Drake set her down and the baby toppled over. It would have been comical in another time and place. The baby’s giant head was too big for the body to support it very well.
So it toppled, but then, with surprising speed, it was on all fours. It crawled the few inches to Penny.
It reached out a pudgy hand and touched the grisly wound.
Penny gasped, a sound that might have been either pain or pleasure.
Drake felt a stab of jealousy, thinking the gaiaphage might give Penny the gift of a whip hand. But no, all it did was to heal the wound.
The baby healed the shotgun-destroyed flesh in seconds.
And then the baby crawled back to her mother and nursed.
Brianna had not expected to return to Justin. But there he was, breathing softly in the pitch-black. And here she was, a mess of cuts and bruises, but alive.
“It’s me, kid,” she said wearily.
“Did you rescue her?”
“No. I didn’t. I couldn’t pull it off. It was a fight I couldn’t win. Not by myself. Besides…” She stopped herself, unwilling to explain about the baby. And about the overwhelming urge to place the baby on the gaiaphage.
“I need to find Sam,” Brianna said. “Which is pretty hard in the dark.”
“Take me, too, okay?”
“Yeah. Of course, little dude, what am I going to do, leave you here?” Actually the thought had occurred to Brianna. She was already slowed to a crawl by the dark. With Justin she’d be moving at whatever it was that was slower than a crawl.
They began feeling their way, inch by bruising inch, toward the mine shaft entrance. In her imagination, with her boundless optimism, Brianna still hoped that when they emerged they would find the world magically restored. Sun shining. Light everywhere.
But when, after a terribly long time, Brianna finally felt clearer, cleaner air on her face, she knew her hope had been futile.
The trip was from narrow darkness to wide-open darkness. She was still blind. And still slow.
The bonfire in the plaza was much smaller now. They’d realized that it had to be if they were going to keep it burning. Even with Caine’s sullen help, ripping flammable materials out of buildings and carrying them to the fire was not easy. So now the bonfire was more like a campfire. And the light of it barely cast a glow on the first circle of kids. Most sat in darkness, staring at the fire, unable even to see the person sitting beside them.
In the dark fights broke out. And there was nothing Quinn could do but yell at them.
One fight went from curses to sickening thuds of some blunt weapon on flesh and bone.
A few seconds later someone—no one knew who—dashed forward to grab a burning chair leg an
d ran off into the night.
The first home fire had flared in the west end of town. It sent sparks a hundred feet into the air, and Quinn was certain it would spread. It didn’t seem to, at least not quickly, but the greater glow did draw some of the people to it. They could be heard jostling and calling out to one another as they felt their way to it like moths drawn to a lightbulb.
“I wish I knew whether Sanjit was safe,” Lana said.
“I was just thinking about Edilio for some reason,” Quinn said. “Somehow I always feel like if Edilio’s still standing, we’re not totally beaten yet.” He laughed. “Weird, I guess, because I didn’t used to like him. I used to call him a wetback. Not the worst thing I ever did, I guess, but I wish I could take it back.”
Caine was resting beside them, having used his power to noisily rip some wooden doors off houses and then carry them back to feed the fire.
“It’s stupid to waste time worrying about what you did,” Caine said. “It’s not going to matter.”
“Your brother, Sam, he worries about it all the time,” Quinn said. He winced, thinking maybe that was violating a confidence. But weren’t they past all that? Past everything, in fact? Wasn’t this maybe the last peaceful conversation before the end?
“Does he?” Caine asked. “Idiot.”
So much for peaceful conversation. Caine was returning to form. Soon he’d grow tired of pretending to get along. Of course, for now he still liked the fire, as they all did. No wonder ancient man had worshiped fire. On a dark night surrounded by lions or hyenas or whatever, it must have seemed like it was more than just burning twigs.
“I’m hungry!” a voice cried out of the dark.
Quinn ignored it. It wasn’t the first such cry. It wouldn’t be the last. Not by a long shot.
Lana had been quiet for a long time. Quinn asked her whether she was okay. No answer. So he let it go. But a few minutes later Patrick came nosing against Quinn, and so he said, “Lana, I think Patrick’s starting to wonder about dinner, too.”
And again she didn’t answer. So Quinn leaned past his former king and saw Lana staring, eyes wide, into the fire.
He reached past Caine and shook her.
“What?” she snapped. Like someone awakened from a dream.
“Are you okay?”
Lana shook her head, a frown deepening the black and orange lines of her face. “None of us are okay. It’s free. Oh, my God, it finally did it.”
“What are you ranting about?” Caine snapped, irritated.
“The gaiaphage. It’s coming.”
Quinn saw Caine snap his mouth shut. He saw Caine’s eyes widen. His jaw clenched hard.
“I can feel it,” Lana said.
“Probably just—” Quinn started to say something reassuring, but Caine cut him off.
“She’s right.” He shared a strange, frightened look with Lana. “It’s changed.”
“It’s coming,” Lana said. “It’s coming!”
Quinn saw then what he never expected to see in this life: sheer terror in Lana’s eyes.
THIRTY-FIVE
4 HOURS, 6 MINUTES
THE BABY TRIED to walk. But it failed. It toppled over, legs still too weak, coordination lacking. But it wasn’t supposed to try. It shouldn’t even be born, let alone attempting to stand up.
“I’ll carry it,” Drake announced.
“No,” Penny said. “You may need your whip hand free. I will carry it. My powers don’t need me to use my hands.”
Diana could see that Drake was not happy. Not happy at all with Penny. He’d have been happier to see her die. Drake was now trapped with females he couldn’t just beat on or intimidate.
“What do we do with her?” Penny pointed at Diana with utter contempt, curling her lips at Diana’s disheveled appearance. The torn clothing barely put back together. The stains. The wounds. The weakness.
Drake’s dark discontent grew darker still. “The gaiaphage says she has to live.”
Penny snorted. “Why? Is the gaiaphage getting sentimental now that it has a girl’s body?”
“Shut up,” Drake snapped. “It’s just a body. It’s a weapon the master uses. He’s still he. He’s still what he always was.”
“Uh-huh.” Penny smirked.
Drake squatted down in front of Diana. “You’re a mess. You look like roadkill. You even stink. You’re sickening.”
“So kill me,” Diana said, meaning it. Willing him to do it. “Do it, Drake. Big man. Do it.”
Drake sighed theatrically. “Babies need milk. And you’re the cow, Diana. Moo.”
That made him laugh, and Penny, after a hesitation during which Diana saw contempt for Drake in her eyes, joined in. More terrible by far, the baby girl, Diana’s baby, grinned as well, a weird smile revealing pink gums and no teeth.
“Let’s go, cow,” Drake said.
“Are you a moron?” Diana said. “I just had a baby. I can’t—”
They hit her then, both of them, competing to see who could force her to her feet. Drake’s whip hand, Penny’s sick visions. Diana was on her feet, woozy, feeling she should vomit except that her stomach was empty.
The greenish glow of the gaiaphage—because not all of the lurid green had flowed onto or into the baby—had faded so that there was almost no light. Within a few feet they found themselves in total blackness.
Diana recalled that there were places where she might throw herself down a crevasse and end her hellish life. If Drake didn’t stop her.
No, not Drake now; now it was Brittney. The sound of her breathing was different from his. Were the emergences coming faster? She dared to hope that Drake was weakening. She dared to hope that he and Penny would go after each other.
Diana relaxed a little. Brittney was as much a tool of the gaiaphage as was Drake, but she lacked Drake’s own personal hate-fueled insanity.
She also, unfortunately, had less knowledge of the path. And she did not intimidate Penny.
“You know what would be creepy, Diana?” Penny asked. “If you were pregnant again. Only this time with, let’s say, a belly full of rats! Hungry rats!”
Diana felt her belly swelling, felt the hundreds of—
“No,” Brittney said calmly. “No. She’s our lord’s mother.”
The illusion, barely begun, ended abruptly.
“Shut up, Brittney,” Penny said. “Maybe I listen to Drake, but I don’t listen to you. You’re nobody.”
Brittney didn’t argue. She just said, “She gave birth to our lord.”
Penny must have tripped over a rock, because she went sprawling with the baby in her arms. She plowed into Diana, almost but not quite knocking Diana over.
The baby hit solid rock with a sickening thud.
From the darkness a thin wail of baby fury. It was the first time the baby had cried. It cried just like any baby.
Diana felt her heart respond. And her body, as her breasts leaked milk.
She felt in the dark and touched the baby’s arm. She fumbled the baby to her and cradled it. It latched on and again began to suck vigorously.
In that first contact Diana had read the baby’s power level. A four bar now. The equal of Caine or Sam.
A four bar. And still just a baby!
“Our lady should carry our lord,” Brittney said.
“Are you mental?” Penny was disbelieving. “Are you that stupid? You think this is Jesus in the manger and she’s Mary, you dumb metal-mouthed hick?”
“I will walk in front,” Brittney announced. “I will make straight the way of the lord.”
Diana looked down at the baby. She could see its cheek. Impossible. Nothing could be seen in this absolute darkness.
And yet, she did see the baby’s cheek. And her squeezed-shut eyes. And her little rosebud mouth holding on. And then her fat little arm, and her tiny fist pressed into her mother’s breast.
“She glows!” Brittney said. “Our lord gives us her light!”
“That’s it, I’ve tried to put up wi
th your—”
“Hush!” Brittney put up a hand, amazingly visible in the glow that came from the baby. “She speaks to me. We must go forth....”
“Go forth,” Penny echoed with cutting sarcasm. “Hallelujah. Drake’s a psycho but at least he’s not a moron.”
“We must go to the barrier and prepare for our rebirth.”
Diana heard all this, but her thoughts were all for the baby at her breast. It was, after all, her baby. The gaiaphage might be inside it, might take over its thoughts and use it. But something in there was still her daughter. Hers and Caine’s.
And if terrible things awaited this little girl, whose fault was that? The guilt lay on Diana and Caine.
Diana had no right to reject Gaia.
The name came to her as if she’d known it all along. It made her sad. It would have been so much better if she could have named her baby Sally or Chloe or Melissa. But none of those would have been the right name.
Gaia.
Gaia’s eyes opened. She squinted blue eyes at Diana.
“Yeah,” Diana said. “I’m your mommy.”
“It’s a trail of lights,” Dekka said. “Wow. I can see my hands.”
She stepped close to the Sammy sun and checked her body for marks. Penny’s vision had been powerful. Even now it was almost impossible to believe it was just an illusion. But her skin was unmarked.
“Most of them go that way.”
Orc pointed, and Dekka could actually see him. Not well, of course. Each small pebble that made up his body was surrounded by blackest shadows. His eyes were down inside deep wells. The small patch of human skin around his mouth and part of one cheek looked as gray-green as every other part of him.
But he was real, not just a sound and a resistance at the fingertips.
“Yeah. But what does that mean if more go one way?” She could see perhaps half a dozen of the suns spreading out to the right. Just four to the left. “I mean, they could be blocked. And it’s not like they show up all that well anyway. If we had a compass… I mean, Orc, we don’t even know which way is which. We don’t know if Sam is moving right or left from this point.”
“I have an idea. But it’s probably stupid,” Orc said.
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