And now all her rage, all her jealousy, all the hate that Caine had used for his own purposes was being turned against him.
He was a powerless toy in the hands of a lunatic with the power to make him as crazy as she was herself.
The FAYZ, Caine thought dully. I always knew it would end in madness or death.
For the first time, his thoughts went to the baby inside Diana. His own son or daughter. All that would be left of him when Penny was finished.
It might have gone either way for Penny at that moment. The crowd was nervous and unsure.
“Now I am the queen, and I am the boss in charge,” Penny announced. “And I don’t have to tell any of you what I can do. Do I?”
No response. Cautious silence.
Then a voice from the back. “Let him go. We need him!”
Caine didn’t recognize the voice. Neither, apparently, did Penny.
“Who said that?”
Silence.
Caine could hear Penny panting. She was in a very excited state. Mostly she didn’t know what to do next. She had expected … something. But she had not expected to be completely overshadowed by this terrible darkness.
“Where is Albert?” Penny demanded petulantly. “I want him here so I can tell him how it is now.”
No answer.
“I said, bring me Albert!” she screamed. “Albert! Albert! Come out, you coward!”
Nothing.
But now the crowd was moving from fearful to mad. They didn’t like this. They were scared and they had come seeking reassurance. What they were getting instead was a shrieking girl who had disabled the most powerful person in town precisely when they desperately needed someone to do something about the fact that the light was dying.
“Let him go, you stupid witch!”
Caine appreciated that, but the cold, calculating part of his mind was wondering just where Albert was. Albert had half a dozen guys who would shoot Penny if he ordered it. For that matter Albert could say something as simple as, “Everyone who wants a job tomorrow, attack her now.”
Where was he?
The top third of the dome was brightening. But that only made it easier to see the tendrils of stain, like a circle of teeth, slowly advancing.
Where was Albert?
Quinn led his boats into the marina.
Last time, maybe, he thought. It made his heart want to break.
He had awakened very early in his camp up the coast—his biological clock ran on fisherman time—and seen that the stain would eat the sun.
They had fished for what they could get in the early hours. But the heart was gone from them. The strike was over whether they wanted it or not: their world was dying, and they had bigger problems than the injustice done, or the loyalty they owed, to Cigar.
Albert and three girls were coming down the dock toward him. The three girls each had a backpack. Albert carried the big ledger book he used to keep track of his businesses.
“Why aren’t you fishing?” Albert asked.
Quinn wasn’t buying that act. “Where are you going, Albert?”
Albert said nothing. How rare, Quinn thought: Albert speechless.
“Not really your concern, Quinn,” Albert said finally.
“You’re running out.”
Albert sighed. To his three companions he said, “Go ahead and get in the boat. The Boston Whaler. Yes, that one.” Turning back to Quinn he said, “It’s been good doing business with you. If you want, you can come with us. We have room for one more. You’re a good guy.”
“And my crews?”
“Limited resources, Quinn.”
Quinn laughed a little. “You’re a piece of work, aren’t you, Albert?”
Albert didn’t seem bothered. “I’m a businessman. It’s about making a profit and surviving. It so happens that I’ve kept everyone alive for months. So I guess I’m sorry if you don’t like me, Quinn, but what’s coming next isn’t about business. What’s coming next is craziness. We’re going back to the days of starvation. But in the dark this time. Craziness. Madness.”
His eyes glinted when he said that last word. Quinn saw the fear there. Madness. Yes, that would terrify the eternally rational businessman.
“All that happens if I stay,” Albert continued, “is that someone decides to kill me. I’ve already come too close to being dead once.”
“Albert, you’re a leader. You’re an organizer. We’re going to need that.”
Albert waved an impatient hand and glanced over to see that the Boston Whaler was ready. “Caine’s a leader. Sam’s a leader. Me?” Albert considered it for a second and shook the idea off. “No. I’m important, but I’m not a leader. Tell you what, though, Quinn: in my absence you speak for me. If that helps, good for you.”
Albert climbed down into the Boston Whaler. Pug started the engine and Leslie-Ann cast off the ropes. Some of the last gasoline in Perdido Beach sent the boat chugging out of the marina.
“Hey, Quinn!” Albert shouted back. “Don’t come to the island without showing a white flag. I don’t want to blow you up!”
Quinn wondered how he would ever reach the island. And how Albert would be able to see a white flag if he did. Unless something changed no one would be seeing anything. It would be a world of universal blindness.
That thought made him think of Cigar. Cigar and his creepy little BB eyes. He had to locate Cigar. Whatever happened, he was still crew.
He heard a surge of sound from the plaza, voices yelling, and one shrill voice screeching. He knew that screech.
He started toward town, then stopped and waited as his fishermen gathered around him. “Guys, I … I, um, don’t know what’s happening. We may never fish together again. And, you know… But I’m thinking it’s better if we stick together anyway.”
As an inspirational rallying speech, it was pretty lame. And yet, it worked. He walked toward the sounds of fear and anger with all his people behind him.
Lana kept her hoodie pulled close around her face. She did not want to be recognized by anyone in the crowd. She had come down to town only to see whether Caine would arrange an armed escort for her. She’d found a scene out of some deranged horror novel.
In eerie shadows the crowd of some two hundred kids, armed with spiked baseball bats, crowbars, table legs, chains, knives, and axes, dressed in mismatched rags and remnants of costume, stood facing a prancing, fist-shaking, wild-eyed, barefoot lunatic and a handsome boy with a crown stapled to his scalp and his hands trapped in a block of concrete.
Now they were taking up a chant. “Let him go. Let him go.”
They were chanting for Caine. They were scared to death and now, finally, they really wanted a king. They really wanted anyone who would save them.
“Let him go! Let him go!”
And a second chant: “We want the king! We want the king!”
Sudden screams from those closest to the steps. Lana could see kids falling back, clawing at their faces, crying out.
Penny had attacked!
“Kill the witch!” a voice bellowed.
A club went flying through the air. It missed Penny. A chunk of concrete, a knife, all missed.
Penny raised her hands over her head and screamed obscenities. A chunk of something hit her arm and drew blood.
The kids who’d been struck by her visions panicked and ran from her, but other kids were shoving forward. It was a melee, a tangle of arms and legs and weapons, shouts, orders; and suddenly from the far side came a wedge of disciplined kids moving forward with arms linked, pushing between the steps and the crowd.
Lana recognized the boy at the center of that wedge. She laughed in rueful surprise.
“Quinn,” she said to herself. “Well.”
Penny was staring transfixed at the wound on her arm, but she tore herself away to advance on Quinn. “You!”
Quinn cried out in agony. There was no way to know what Penny was doing to him, but it must have been awful.
Lana had had enough
. There were injured kids. There were about to be more injured kids. Her mission to warn Diana wasn’t going to happen.
Lana drew her pistol. “Get out of my way,” she snapped at two kids blocking her path. She moved quickly, unnoticed, down First Avenue, skirting the crowd from the opposite direction that Quinn had taken.
A panicky riot had broken out at the base of the steps as Penny wreaked all the damage her sick mind could conjure. Kids were attacking one another, seeing monsters where none existed.
Lana flinched as a crowbar rose high and came down with a sickening crunch.
She made it to the church steps and crossed over from there to town hall. Caine glanced and saw her. Penny did not.
Lana leveled the gun at Penny. “Stop,” Lana said.
Penny’s reddened face grew pale. Whatever visions she was inflicting on the people below her stopped. Kids cried in pain, sobbed from the memories.
“Oh, everyone has to kiss your butt, don’t they, Healer.” Penny spit that last word. She made her hands into claws and pawed at the air. Her lips were drawn back in a teeth-baring animal snarl.
“If I shoot you, I won’t heal you,” Lana said calmly.
That caught Penny off guard. But she recovered quickly. She put her head down and started to laugh. It began low and rose a few decibels at a time.
Lana’s arm burst into flame.
A noose was flung from the ruined church wall. The rope dropped over her head, landed on her shoulders, and tightened around her throat.
The limestone beneath her feet was suddenly a forest of knives all stabbing up at her.
“Yeah,” Lana said. “That won’t work on me. I’ve gone one-on-one with the gaiaphage. He could teach you a few things. Stop it. Now. Or bang.”
Penny’s laugh choked off. She looked hurt. As if someone had said something cruel to her. The visions ceased as suddenly as if someone had switched off a TV.
“I’m kind of opposed to murder,” Lana said. “But if you don’t turn and walk away, I’ll blow a hole right where your heart is supposed to be.”
“You can’t…” Penny said. “You… No.”
“I missed killing a monster once. I’ve always regretted it,” Lana said. “But you’re a human. Sort of. So you get this chance: walk. Keep walking.”
For what felt like a very long time Penny stood staring at Lana. Not with hatred, but with disbelief. Lana saw her very, very clearly: a head resting atop the sights of her pistol.
Penny took a step back. Then another. There was a wild look of defiance, but then it died.
Penny spun on her heel and walked quickly away.
Quinn quietly motioned three of his people to follow her.
A dozen or more kids were screaming now for her blood, demanding she be killed.
Lana stuck her gun back in her waistband.
“I don’t think Caine is in any condition,” Lana said. Then she raised her voice to be heard. As usual she sounded irritated and impatient. “So here’s the way it is: Quinn is boss. For now. Mess with him, and you mess with me. And I will cut you off from healing. You lose a leg, I will stand by and watch you bleed out. Clear?”
It was apparently clear.
“Good. Now I have work to do. Get out of my way.” She descended into the gore left in Penny’s wake. Quinn came to her side.
“Me?” he said.
“For now. Make sure Penny leaves town. Kill her if you want to, because she’ll be trouble if she lives.”
Quinn made a face. “I don’t think I’m a guy who kills people.”
Lana smiled her exceedingly rare smile. “Yeah, I think I figured that out about you, Quinn. Send one of your people to bring Sanjit down here. He has to reach Sam. So find him a gun. Taylor is done for, and we need to be working with Sam, so it’s communication the old-fashioned way. Being divided will get us all killed.”
“You’ve got it.”
Lana’s smile died. “The Darkness is going after Diana. She has to be warned.”
“Diana? Why?”
“Because she has a baby in her belly. And the Darkness needs to be born.”
TWENTY-THREE
14 HOURS, 39 MINUTES
DRAKE EMERGED.
He had no idea where he was. It was a cramped, damp place that smelled of oil. He moved his head slightly and felt an impact that would have been pain back in the old days. He had bumped against something steel.
He blinked. The light was very dim. It came from a square in the low ceiling. He realized it was the edge of some kind of hatch. Just inches above him.
With his hand and his tentacle he felt around this tiny space. It took some time to make sense of things. The complex metal object. The square of light. The way the floor seemed to move slightly beneath him. The smell of oil.
He was on a boat.
In the engine room.
Barely room to move.
He grinned. Well, well: clever Brittney. Good job. Somehow she had found a way to sneak aboard one of the boats. Probably not the boat where he’d seen Diana. Could she have pulled that off? Simple metal-mouthed Brittney?
No. But a boat. Definitely a boat.
Nice.
Now what? He still had to get to Diana.
Easier said than done. First, he had to know where he was. He spent a good twenty minutes trying to squirm his body in such a way as to bring his head up against the hatch. He couldn’t hold the position for long.
He held himself in place by wedging his hand against the engine block, then used the tip of his tentacle to push gently, gently upward on the hatch.
It moved up easily enough. A quarter of an inch. A half an inch. And then he could see a long, very narrow slice of the world beyond. A single spoke of a steering wheel. A bucket. Then a foot.
He lowered the hatch as quietly as he had raised it.
Something had bumped against the side of the boat. He heard a muffled voice, a guy.
Then a second male voice that froze his marrow. Sam.
Sam!
Drake heard sounds of someone clambering up the side. Now he could hear the voices more distinctly.
“T’sup, Roger?” Sam said. “Hey, Justin, hey, Atria. How are you guys holding up?”
The first male voice, presumably “Roger,” whoever that was, said, “We’re fine. Doing fine.”
“Good. Well, I’m just here to hang some lights for you.”
“Sammy suns? So…” Roger hesitated. “Why don’t you kids go play? Old-people talk here.” The sound of running feet, but no high-pitched voices. Then, “So it’s like that?”
“Well, Roger, we don’t know for sure.” Sam sounded weary.
Could Drake take him? Right here and now when he was alone, without Brianna or Dekka to add to his power?
No, Drake told himself. He would never get up out of this hatch before Sam started burning him. And his mission was to get Diana, not kill Sam.
“Is it going to be totally dark?” Roger asked in a voice that quavered just a bit.
“Not totally dark,” Sam said reassuringly. “That’s why I’m here. You’ll have plenty of light on board. Is she up or is she asleep?”
They wandered out of earshot at that point, presumably into the cabin. But Drake had heard a female pronoun.
Was it possible? Was Diana on this very boat?
He grinned in the darkness. He would wait and be sure. The opportunity would arise. His faith in the gaiaphage had not failed him yet.
From boat to boat, one after the next, Sam rowed.
At each boat he climbed aboard and crouched to enter whatever cabin they had. In the smaller sailboats or motorboats he installed one or two Sammy suns.
Sammy suns were the long-lasting manifestation of his power. Rather than firing light in a killing beam he could form balls of light, which then burned without heat and hung in the air. They experimented a bit and discovered that the Sammy sun would stay in place relative to the boat when it moved, a rather important consideration.
Some of the boats, like the houseboats, got as many as three or four Sammy suns.
Halfway through the process, Sam realized he was feeling very weary. He’d had this same feeling after battles where he’d had to use his powers. He’d always assumed it was just the depression that followed any fight. Now he was wondering if the use of the power itself had some kind of tiring effect.
Maybe. But it didn’t matter. The Sammy suns were reassuring to kids. No one—least of all Sam—could tolerate the idea of being trapped in perpetual darkness. It was inconceivable. It struck terror right down to his core.
The last Sammy suns were for the big houseboat. Five in all, including an especially large one floating beside the front railing.
They would be in the dark. But they would not be totally blind.
“That helps,” Edilio said, welcoming him back.
“For a while,” Sam said grimly.
“For a while,” he agreed.
He couldn’t help but pick up his binoculars and scan the shore. Orc was still out searching. Good. If they were lucky he might find Drake, and Sam would rush to help.
But he wasn’t really interested in watching Orc. It was Astrid he searched for.
If she made it to Perdido Beach, what was the earliest she could get back? It had to be before the sky closed. If she was trapped out there in the dark, she would have to literally crawl along the road. And not everything needed light to hunt and kill. The darkness might keep Drake at bay, but the coyotes and snakes and zekes…
He had to do something. But he didn’t know what. It ate out his insides, that not knowing what to do.
“I could hang Sammy suns along the road,” he said.
“Once we have a deal with Albert and Caine,” Edilio agreed. “But if we do it now, it will just be a beacon enticing all of Perdido Beach to come. We aren’t ready for that.”
Sam clenched his mouth shut. He hadn’t really expected Edilio to say anything about it. He was just thinking out loud. And he was still mad at Edilio. He needed to be mad at someone, and Edilio was there.
Worse, Edilio did not seem to fear the coming darkness. He was his usual calm, capable self. Normally that was reassuring. But Sam was having a hard time just taking a full breath. He was exhausted from hanging suns and making all sorts of reassuring noises to his people on the boats.