“I don’t like this place,” Orsay said.
“Yeah. Let’s not go here for spring break,” Edilio said.
Through the town.
Past the ramshackle building.
The path was narrow, but the Jeep managed it at a crawl.
“Stop!” Orsay cried.
Edilio slammed on the brakes. They came to rest beside a high outcropping of rock. If this had been an old Western, Edilio thought, this is where the ambush would take place.
He lifted the gun. It was a reassuring weight in his hand. He checked to make sure it was cocked. Thumb on the safety. Finger resting on the trigger guard, just like he taught his recruits.
He listened but didn’t hear anything.
“Why did we stop?” Edilio asked Orsay.
“Close enough,” she whispered. “I…”
Edilio twisted in his seat. “What is it?”
What he saw shocked him. Orsay’s eyes were wide, glittering whites showing all around.
“What’s with her?” Bug asked in a quivering voice.
“Orsay. Are you okay?” Edilio asked.
Her only answer was a moaning sound so unearthly that at first Edilio didn’t realize it was coming from her. It seemed to generate from her chest, a sound too deep for this frail girl. It was something closer to an animal growl.
“Girl’s crazy,” Bug moaned.
Orsay began to tremble. The trembling escalated until she was shaking, in spasm, like a person being electrocuted. Her tongue protruded from her mouth, gagging her.
She was biting her tongue. Like she was trying to bite it off.
“Hey!” Edilio slammed the glove compartment open and yanked everything out with frantic fingers, screwdriver, flashlight, a thick digital tire gauge. He grabbed the tire gauge and pushed his way into the backseat. He yelled, “Grab her, hold her!” to Bug, who instead shrank away.
Edilio grabbed her by the hair, there was nothing else he could hold with one hand, twisted his fist into her hair until he had a firm purchase, yanked her head forward, and shoved the tire gauge between her teeth.
Her jaws clamped hard, so hard, they cracked the plastic of the tire gauge. Blood flowed from her mouth, but her teeth no longer closed on her tongue.
“Hold that in her mouth!” Edilio yelled at Bug.
Bug just stared, paralyzed.
Edilio yelled a curse and said, “Do it or I swear I will shoot you!”
Bug snapped out of his trance and grabbed Orsay’s head with his hands.
Edilio threw the Jeep into reverse and began backing up as fast as he could go, down the path. The first he noticed of the coyotes was when he felt a bump and heard a canine yelp of pain.
One hand on the wheel, yelling in fear, Edilio smashed the Jeep into an embankment. He threw it into drive, advanced a few feet to get clear, threw it, gears grinding into reverse again as a huge, snarling face appeared beside him. Coyote teeth slavered and tore at the plastic.
Edilio snap-aimed and fired. The burst was short, maybe five rounds, but more than enough to dissolve the coyote’s head into red mist.
Down they bumped, down the path, smashing and jolting. Edilio could barely hold the wheel.
Then, suddenly, they were on flat terrain. He spun the wheel as two coyotes hurled themselves at the plastic sheath. The impact of their bodies was so great, it pushed the plastic in and slammed Edilio’s arm, knocking his hand off the wheel, stunning him.
But his foot was on the gas pedal and he floored it. The Jeep plowed straight toward a building. Edilio grabbed the wheel, slammed on the brakes, twisted hard, fish-tailed into a two-wheel turn, and roared away from the ghost town.
The coyote pack followed for a while, then fell away as it became clear that they would never catch the speeding car.
Bug still had Orsay in a headlock. But she was making more reasonable sounds, now, seeming to ask to be freed.
“Let her go,” Edilio ordered.
Bug released Orsay.
She wiped blood with the back of her hand. Edilio found a rag in the debris of the glove compartment and handed it back to her.
“It told me to chew my tongue off,” she gasped at last.
“What?” Edilio snapped. “What? Who?”
“Him. It. He told me to chew my tongue off and I couldn’t resist,” she cried. “He didn’t want me to be able to tell you.”
“Tell us what? What?” Edilio demanded, desperate and confused.
Orsay spit blood onto the floor of the Jeep. She wiped her mouth again with the rag.
“He’s hungry,” she said. “He needs to feed.”
“On us?” Bug cried.
Orsay stared at Bug. Then she actually laughed. “No. Not on us. Ow. My tongue.”
“On what? On what?”
Orsay ignored Bug and spoke to Edilio. “We don’t have much time,” she said. “Food is coming. People are bringing it to him. And when he feeds he grows strong, and that’s when he will use her.”
“Use who?” Edilio demanded, knowing the answer before he asked the question.
“I don’t know her name. The girl. The one with the healing touch. He can use her to give him legs and arms. To give him a body.
“He’s weak now,” she added. “But if he gets what he wants…becomes what he wants to become…then you will never stop him.”
“Hungry in the dark,” Little Pete said.
He was tucked into his bed, but his eyes were bright.
“I know, Petey. We’re all hungry. But it’s not really dark,” Astrid said wearily. “Go beddy boody. Nap time.”
It had been a very long night and morning. She wanted Pete to take a nap so she could catch some sleep as well. She could barely hold her head up. It was hot in the house with the power off and the air-conditioning dead. Hot and stuffy.
She had been badly shaken by Sam’s meltdown. She wanted to be sympathetic. She was sympathetic. But more, she was frightened. Sam was all that really stood between the relative decency of Perdido Beach and the violent psychopathy of Caine and Drake and Diana.
Sam was all that protected Little Pete, and Astrid herself.
But he was breaking down. PTSD, she supposed, post-traumatic stress disorder. What soldiers get after they spend too much time in combat.
Everyone in the FAYZ probably had it to one extent or another. But no one else had been in the middle of every violent confrontation, every new horror, and also been saddled with all the endless, endless details. There had been no down-time for Sam. No break.
She remembered Quinn laughing about how Sam never danced. She loved him, but it was true that Sam was lousy at relaxing. Well, if she ever got the chance, she would have to help him find a way.
“He’s afraid,” Little Pete said.
“Who?”
“Nestor.”
Nestor was the nesting doll Sam had accidentally crushed. “I’m sorry Nestor got broken. Go to sleep, Petey.”
She bent over to kiss him on his forehead. Of course he gave no response. He didn’t hug her or ask her to read him a story, or say, “Hey, thanks for taking care of me, sis.”
When he spoke, it was only about the things in his head. The world outside meant little or nothing to him. That included Astrid.
“Love you, Petey,” she said.
“He has her,” Little Pete said.
She was already out of the door when that last statement registered. “What?”
Pete’s eyes closed.
“Petey. Petey.” Astrid sat down beside him and put her hand on his cheek. “Petey…is Nestor talking to you?”
“He likes my monsters.”
“Petey. Is…” She barely knew how to ask the question. Her brain was fried. She was beyond exhausted. She lay down beside her brother and cuddled close to his indifferent body. “Tell me, Petey. Tell me about Nestor.”
But Little Pete was already asleep. And in seconds, so was Astrid.
It was in sleep that she began to fit together the pieces
of the puzzle.
THIRTY-FIVE
02 HOURS, 53 MINUTES
TWENTY-ONE HOURS WITH no food. Not a bite.
No likelihood of food suddenly appearing.
Jack’s stomach no longer growled or rumbled. It cramped. The pains would come in waves. Each pain would last a minute or so, and stretch out over the course of an hour. Then there would be a reprieve of an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. But when the pain came back, it was worse than before. And lasted longer.
It had started in earnest after about twelve hours. He’d been hungry before that, hungry for a long, long time, but this was different. This wasn’t his body saying, “Hey, let’s eat.” This was his body saying, “Do something: we’re starving.”
A new round of pains was just beginning. Jack dreaded it. He wasn’t good with pain. And this pain was worse, somehow, than the pain in his leg. That pain was outside. This pain was inside.
“Have you figured it out yet?” Caine demanded. “Have you got it, Jack?”
Jack hesitated. If he said yes, then the next round of this nightmare would begin.
If he said no, they would sit here and sit here and sit here until they all starved.
He didn’t want to say yes. He knew now what Caine planned. He didn’t want to say yes.
“I can do it,” Jack said.
“You can do it now?”
“I can withdraw a single-fuel rod from the pile,” Jack said.
Caine stared at him. Almost as if this wasn’t the answer he wanted.
“Okay,” Caine said softly.
“But I have to start by lowering the control rods all the way. This will stop the reaction, which means it turns off all electricity.”
Caine nodded.
Diana said, “You mean, there won’t be any power for anyone. Not just Perdido Beach.”
“Unless someone restarts the reactor,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Caine said, but distracted, like his head was somewhere else.
“I can lift out a power rod. It’s twelve feet long. Actually it contains pellets of uranium 235. It’s like a very long, thin can filled with pebbles. It’s extremely radioactive.”
“So your plan is to kill us all?” Diana said.
“No. There are lead-lined sheaths they use to carry the rods. They aren’t totally effective, but they should shield us for the time we need. Unless…”
“Unless?” Caine demanded.
“Unless the sheath is damaged. Like if you drop it.”
“Then what happens?” Diana demanded.
“Then we’re hit with massive doses of radiation. It’s invisible, but it’s like someone is shooting tiny bullets at you. They blow millions of tiny holes through your body. You get sick. Your hair falls out. You vomit. You swell up. You die.”
No one said anything.
“So we don’t drop it,” Drake said finally.
“Yeah. We carry it for miles and we don’t drop it,” Diana said. “While Sam and Dekka and Brianna are coming at us. I can’t see how that would be a problem.”
Jack said, “The closer you are, the deadlier it is. So if you’re a couple feet away, you’re dead real quickly. If you’re farther away, you die slowly. If you’re far enough away, maybe you don’t die until you develop cancer. And if you’re even farther away, you’re safe.”
“I choose farther away,” Diana said dryly.
“How long to get ready?” Caine asked.
“Thirty minutes.”
“It’s late enough now we should wait for dark,” Caine said. “How do we get out?”
Jack shrugged. “There’s a loading dock behind the reactor.”
Caine sagged into a chair. He bit savagely at a thumbnail. Drake watched, making no attempt to disguise his contempt.
“Okay,” Caine said at last. “Jack, get everything ready. Drake, we’ll need a diversion. You attract Sam’s attention out front. Then you catch up with us.”
“Let’s just grab a truck,” Drake suggested.
“We can’t go up the coast road. They’ll see us right away,” Caine said. “We have to go overland. There are trails going up over the hills. We find a way to the highway. Cross it. Then get a vehicle and head into the desert.”
“Why should we sneak?” Drake asked. “We’ll have the uranium, right? Who is going to mess with us? Who is going to take a chance on you dropping it?”
“Let me ask you something, Drake,” Caine said. “If you were Sam, and you saw me and you and Diana and Jack all together marching up the coast road, and you saw that I was carrying this big, dangerous radioactive thing around, what would you do?”
Drake frowned.
“Oh, look: Drake’s trying to think,” Diana said.
“This is why I run things and you don’t, Drake. Let me explain it in terms you might grasp. If I’m Sam, and I see the four of us, and I figure I can’t go after us…” Caine held up four fingers. One by one he subtracted them. He left the middle finger up.
“He takes the rest of us out,” Drake said. He gritted his teeth, and his eyes blazed with suppressed rage.
“So if the three of you want to just walk out of here all bold and brave, let me know,” Caine said, meeting Drake’s glare with one of his own. Then he leaned close to Drake, almost embracing him. He brought his mouth to Drake’s ear and whispered, “Don’t start thinking you can take me down, Drake. You’re useful to me. The minute I start thinking you’re no longer useful…”
He smiled, patted Drake’s gaunt cheek, and with a hint of his old swagger said, “We’re going to reshuffle the deck. Sam thinks he holds all the cards. But we’re going to change everything.”
“We’re going to feed the monster who has his hooks in your head,” Diana said coldly. “Don’t try to dress it up. We’re feeding a monster and hoping it will show its gratitude by letting go of your leash.”
“Let it go, Diana,” Caine said. The bluster was gone.
Diana glanced to see that Drake was out of earshot. “Bug’s not coming back. You know that.”
Caine chewed at his thumb. Jack had the unsettling thought that he might be hungry enough to eat his own finger.
“You don’t know that,” Caine said. “He might have had trouble finding Orsay. He wouldn’t turn against me.”
“No one’s loyal to you, Caine,” Diana said. “Drake is itching to take you down. No one at Coates is rushing to bail you out. You only have one person who actually cares about you.”
“You?”
Diana didn’t answer. “I know it has a hold on you, Caine. I’ve seen it. But that monster of yours isn’t loyal to you, either. It will use you and throw you away. It will be everything and you will be nothing.”
“Most of what I have to say is speculative,” Astrid began.
Sam, Astrid, Edilio—almost from the start, they had been a team. They’d fought Orc when he was calling himself Captain Orc and trying to dominate the FAYZ. They’d fought Caine and Pack Leader. They had learned to survive the Big One-Five.
Now, the picture of something much more terrible was becoming clear.
“From what Edilio has said, what Lana’s letter said, what we’ve learned of Drake’s story from Lana in the past, and all the little things we’ve pieced together.”
She glanced at Little Pete, who sat in a chair by the window, looking out at the slowly sinking sun and nodding mechanically. “And from what I’ve been able to guess from my brother. Something…maybe some type of freak, a mutated human. Maybe a mutated animal…maybe something else entirely that we don’t understand at all…is in that mine shaft.”
“This thing, this gaiaphage, has the ability to reach out, mind-to-mind, and influence people. Maybe especially people it has had some contact with. Like Lana,” said Sam.
“Or like Orsay,” Edilio interrupted. “Someone with that kind of mind, you know? Like, sensitive, or whatever.”
Astrid nodded. “Yes. Some may be more vulnerable than others. I am sure, now, that it is in contact wit
h Little Pete.”
“They talk?” Edilio asked skeptically.
Astrid rolled her head, stretching her neck forward, trying to shake off the tension that tightened her jaw. Sam was struck by how beautiful she still was. Despite everything. But he saw as well how delicate she seemed, how thin and fragile. She had lost weight, like everyone. Cheekbones more prominent than before, eyes bruised by exhaustion and worry. There was a welt just in front of her temple.
“I don’t think they talk, not like you mean,” Astrid said. “But they can feel each other. Petey’s been trying to warn me…I didn’t understand.”
“Short version,” Sam said in a low voice. “What do you think?”
Astrid nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m not…” Her voice trailed off. But she shook her head vigorously and refocused. “Okay, it’s some mutant creature. Origin unknown. It has great power to influence minds. That power is greater over people who’ve already encountered the creature. Like Lana. Drake.
“And possibly Caine,” Astrid added.
Sam said, “You think Caine has had a run-in with this gaiaphage?”
“You asked for the short version. So I’m leaving out the epistemology.”
Sam recognized Astrid’s favorite ploy: dazzling people with polysyllables. He managed a faint smile. “Go ahead. Leave out the…whatever it was.”
“Suddenly,” Astrid went on, “after months of relative quiet, Caine reemerges. We know from Bug that he was in some kind of a coma, or delirium, before that. But suddenly, he’s better. And the first thing he does is charge off to take over the power plant.”
“At the same time, Lana begins to feel the gaiaphage calling to her. And Petey is starting to talk about something being hungry in the dark.”
“Orsay says the thing is expecting to be fed soon,” Edilio said.
“Yes. And then, there’s Duck.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Duck?” He had not expected this.
“No one listened much to his story. Me included,” Astrid admitted. “But he kept saying there was a cave down there that glowed. Like from radioactivity. He said like something from The Simpsons.”