Why was she doing this? Dahra asked herself. She was taking a risk, why? Because she hadn’t before? Because she’d stayed out of the battles, out of the wars, except to tend the wounded? Because she wanted, just once, to play the hero and not the person who bandaged the hero?
Stupid.
It was cool under the trees, but the steepness of the road soon brought back the sweat. She—
She hit the branch before she saw it. The bike yanked out from under her, and Dahra went flying. She hit the pavement hard, facedown, hands too slow to cushion more than a little of the impact.
Dahra lay there, stunned, panting into the blacktop. She tasted blood. Gingerly she checked her extremities. Legs moved. So did her arms. Her palms and knees were bloody but not broken; that was a relief. Her jaw felt funny, like it was off center, but it moved okay. She climbed slowly and only then felt the stab of pain in her ankle. She tested it, and yes, oh, definitely, it hurt.
The bike’s front tire was no longer round. It wasn’t going to be any use—not that she could have ridden it with a sprained ankle.
She fought down the panic. She was still at least four miles as the crow flies, more like five in reality, from the lake. That was a long way to hop on one leg.
She glanced around for a stick to use as a crutch. “You’d think there would be more sticks in a forest,” she said aloud, wishing the sound of her voice made her feel braver instead of emphasizing her aloneness. Her abrasions stung, and she’d have liked to wash the wounds at least, although she doubted there were too many terrible bacteria living on the surface of the road.
“You’ll be okay,” she told herself.
The dark trees and her own inner voice said otherwise.
She had felt it when she’d panicked, when she’d broken down in the aftermath of the plagues. When the plagues hadn’t killed her, she had felt then as if she had used up the last of her luck. Yet now she had tempted fate again, and now, with the end of the FAYZ perhaps in sight, here she was.
Why?
“Just to deliver a message?” Dahra asked herself, bewildered.
She sat by the side of the road and cried.
TWELVE
44 HOURS
GAIA HAD SLEPT in, seeming to both age and heal while asleep. She had gone to sleep still burned and perhaps seven or eight years old, and had awakened healed and closer to ten.
Diana had not tried to wake her.
Let sleeping monsters lie.
Alex had raved through much of the long night, had awakened several times after sunrise to cry out in pain, and then had fallen back into a restless, disturbed sleep.
Diana had tried not to look at the cooked arm, now mostly eaten but not entirely, which lay by the softly snoring Gaia.
Finally, with the sun already past its peak, Gaia had snapped awake, stood up without preamble, and stepped behind a tree to take care of necessary business. Then she had eaten the rest of the arm, down to bare bone, while Alex watched in some disturbing mix of awe and horror and hatred.
He’s going off the deep end, Diana thought. She could see it in his eyes. Too much, too fast.
“I’m hungry,” Gaia said. “Growing this body at an accelerated rate demands a lot of nutrition.”
“Gaia, no,” Diana said.
Alex made a gurgling sound and tried to run. Gaia raised a finger, and he found himself running in place, feet slipping helplessly on stony earth. “I have a . . . I . . . Wait! Wait! I have a granola bar!”
“What is a granola bar?” Gaia asked.
“It’s food! Food!” Alex cried. He let the backpack slip from his intact shoulder.
The mere mention of a granola bar made Diana’s mouth water. Hunger pains stabbed at her insides. If Gaia took Alex’s other arm, she would let Diana have the granola bar.
Take it, kill him, eat him; I don’t care.
Diana lifted the pack. It was small, more a runner’s pack than anything meant for camping. She spilled it out on the ground. A small tube of lotion. A knife. A water bottle. An iPhone with headphones and some sort of solar charger. The granola bar. A map.
Gaia moved in. “Which is the food?”
Diana stared at the bar. Unimaginable luxury in the FAYZ. Oats and raisins and dates, it brought tears to her eyes. All she had to do was say, “Take him!” and the bar would be hers.
“There it is! Eat it!” Alex cried.
Gaia stooped, picked it up, frowned at it, and finally realized it was meant to be unwrapped. She ate it like Cookie Monster scarfing a chocolate chip cookie.
Diana breathed. Decision made.
“What is that?” Gaia pointed at the iPhone.
“It’s his cell phone,” Diana said. “They don’t work in here.”
“I’ve got my tunes on there,” Alex said eagerly. “Want to hear some, Gaia? Do you want to hear some music?”
“Music,” Gaia said. “What is it?”
“See, you listen to it. You stick the white things in your . . .” He had grabbed the headphones with his remaining hand and was trying to proffer them to Gaia.
Gaia took them.
“Gaia, I know how to get to the lake from here,” Diana said. “I can get you food there.” And some for myself.
Gaia laughed as she toyed with the white earbuds. “Once we go to the lake we’ll have plenty to eat.”
“You’re going . . . I mean, wait,” Diana said, confused. “You’re going to the lake? I mean, we’re deliberately going there?”
“Of course, stupid Diana,” Gaia said. Her blue eyes were merry. “Once it’s dark. How else can I kill them all?”
“Kill them all?” Diana echoed blankly.
“Any human that Nemesis can use. I thought that was obvious, Diana. I can’t allow Nemesis to find a host; do you know how powerful he would be? No, he must die. First the people at the lake. It will be easier. Then Perdido Beach. There are many hiding places in Perdido Beach. I know.” She nodded smugly. “How many humans are alive in this small universe of ours?”
“Gaia, you can’t—”
Diana felt herself slammed to the ground, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Then she was hurled straight up into the air, flying, arms windmilling, screaming in terror.
She began to drop. The drop onto hard stone would surely kill her.
Please, yes, let me die.
But Gaia stopped her fall just two feet from impact. Gaia’s child’s face was twisted into a sneer. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do, Mother.”
She let Diana go so that she would fall the last two feet.
“See, she’s the one causing trouble,” Alex cried, pointing at Diana with his one hand. Spittle flew from his lips. His eyes were wild. “Eat her! Eat her! Hah hah hah! Yeah!”
Diana wasn’t even offended. The red-haired man was traumatized. He’d fallen into a nightmare, unprepared. His eyes were rimmed in red. Madness was moving in to claim him.
Wait until he’s hungry enough that the smell of his own cooked flesh begins to . . .
Gaia laughed. It was a jarring sound, strange and out of place. “You don’t want to feed your god?” she asked Alex. She moved close to him, and as he recoiled in fear she took him by his ear and drew him close. It was an act of pure sadism, Diana realized. Gaia wasn’t simply ruthless; she enjoyed causing fear. Gaia whispered to Alex, “You have hope still. You think you might escape me. Stupid man. Don’t you understand? You only live to feed me. You have to hope you can feed me. Beg to feed me. Because when you can’t, you die.”
Alex shook so badly he fell to his knees. Urine stained his pants.
Gaia laughed, delightedly. “See?” she asked Diana. “Now he worships me on his knees.”
“Are you killing them all or humiliating them?” Diana asked bitterly.
“Can’t I do both?”
“Why do you need to do this, Gaia? What . . . Just, why? Why?”
Gaia was suddenly matter-of-fact, businesslike. “Nemesis may take a body for himself. And then where wi
ll I be? I need Nemesis to die, Diana. When he dies, the barrier will fall. When he dies, I will be free to emerge. I am ready. I am seeing this place and realizing that it is small. Look at the world out there.” She waved her arm grandly toward the transparent barrier, toward the desert beyond. “It goes on and on, doesn’t it? How big is it, Diana?”
“What, the whole country? Earth?”
“All of it. Is the earth all of it? Then the earth. How big is the earth?”
Diana shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly honor roll. Astrid would know, down to the mile, I’m sure.”
Gaia turned to her, eyes lit with excitement. “But it’s big. How many humans?”
“Billions.”
That seemed to take Gaia aback. Her mouth dropped open.
“Even you can’t kill them all,” Diana said, enjoying Gaia’s look of consternation.
But Gaia had absorbed the new information. “I won’t need to kill billions, Diana. When Nemesis is gone, there will be no other like me. Just me alone. I will grow and spread, one body and then another, and soon there will be so many of me that it will be impossible to eradicate me. Eventually all will be me, and I will be all.”
“Won’t that be boring?” Diana asked. “You’d be dating yourself. You’ll have no one to discuss your evil plans with. No one left to terrorize.”
Gaia nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Yes, you make sense. I will leave some free so that I can teach them fear and pain.”
Diana stared at her, seeing not the fast-growing girl but the monster beneath. Only now did she truly understand. How had she not realized it before? The sadism. The game playing. The irrational fears and grandiose visions of godhood.
Diana had seen enough of it in the FAYZ; how had she not seen it in this creature? Madness. Lunacy.
The gaiaphage was insane.
Gaia was going to kill everyone: that was her plan. Kill the good and the bad, all of them. Diana grasped the truth of it now. That was Gaia’s mad endgame. The gaiaphage couldn’t allow Little Pete to find a body and survive, and that meant killing every living person in the FAYZ.
And it wouldn’t be a simple act of survival. She would enjoy it. She would enjoy watching people run from her. She would enjoy hunting them down and killing them. Gaia wasn’t ruthless and self-serving like Caine; she was evil, like Drake. A psychopath. A mad and terrible beast.
For some reason Diana’s mind went to Orc. Not a regular kid by any stretch. He’d been a bully, a thug, a drunk, and a killer. Then he’d been a penitent. Like Diana he had come to regret what he’d done. He had irritated her with his Bible reading and his endless questions, but he had found a way to redemption.
Could Orc’s life story simply end in Gaia’s flames, just to feed Gaia’s psychotic ego?
Sinder, who was so devoted to her garden.
Dahra, who had worked herself into a breakdown caring for sick kids.
Computer Jack? He’d been confused and aimless, and in her time Diana had used and manipulated him, but to actually die? To be killed by this . . . this abomination?
Astrid, that sanctimonious bitch . . . and Brianna, who Diana had actually come to like. And Dekka, who had never liked Diana but had forgiven her in her own snarling way. And Lana.
And Caine.
Yes, above all, Caine.
All their battles, hers and Caine’s, all their rages? All of it to end in death so this evil creature could walk out to trouble the wider world?
She remembered the touch of Caine’s skin on hers. Who would have guessed that egomaniacal, power-mad Caine would have such a gentle kiss?
Yeah, and that worked out so well. Pregnant with a mutant child who was sacrificed at the moment of her birth to the needs of the gaiaphage.
It wasn’t like Caine could ever walk free from the FAYZ, Diana knew that. He was a criminal ten times over, a rotten, charming, worthless sociopath, and they would lock him up.
And she would visit him and make fun of him behind the security glass at the prison. And then she would wait for him. Years, if necessary. All her years, if necessary.
You make bad choices, Diana, she told herself. So: one more won’t be a shock.
At that moment Diana felt a change in herself. It surprised her. At some level she had, like Alex, held on to hope: she had somehow still wanted to believe that this was her daughter, that she was a mother, that . . .
But this was no little girl. This was a beast with a pretty face and beautiful blue eyes.
Gaia had let the earbuds and the phone fall as Alex wept and whimpered and implored her. Diana picked them up off the ground.
“Music,” Diana said through gritted teeth.
“Music?” Gaia said, confused.
“You wouldn’t like it, Gaia. It’s only for humans.”
Gaia knew a lot of things. She did not know about child psychology.
“I will hear it!”
It would be close to dark by the time they reached the lake. Diana didn’t think much of her chances: what she was thinking of doing was hopeless, futile, and certainly stupid. But what the hell, was there really anything left for her to lose?
Wasn’t there an old song that went “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”?
Gaia was fumbling with the earbuds now, frowning as she mimicked what Diana showed her.
And, to her own dark, private amusement, Diana was planning to play hero.
Many hours had passed, night was falling, and Dahra had managed to hobble maybe three hundred yards. It was painful work. Her hands were bloody from the bike crash, and she kept tripping and landing on them again, leaving red handprints on the road behind her.
Maybe, she thought, the barrier would come down and there would suddenly be cars driving down this road. If so, it had better happen fast. Night came dark and intense in the forest. She could barely make out the tree trunks on either side of the road. Looking up, she could see that the sky was the darkest possible blue before going black. Far up above and well off to the east she saw the blinking lights of a passenger jet. A plane full of people, regular people, not captives of the FAYZ, on their merry way from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the right side of the aircraft, you can see the Perdido Beach Anomaly.
Maybe if it all did come to an end, there would be tours of the former FAYZ. And here is where Dahra Baidoo starved to death by the side of the road.
That made her start to cry again. What had she done to deserve—movement! She raised her head, and there, not twenty feet away, stood a coyote. Its head was low. Its eyes glittered in the gloom. It was bedraggled, filthy, skin and bones. Dahra knew that Brianna had played grim reaper to the coyote population, chasing them down one by one. After the terrible coyote attack on panicked kids just south of the lake Sam had made it part of Brianna’s job to eliminate the mutant canines once and for all.
But here was one who was not dead.
The coyote sniffed the air, ears cocking this way and that, on the alert for the sudden death brought by the Breeze. It was nervous, but it was more hungry.
“Go away!” Dahra yelled. “The Breeze is coming to meet me. She’ll be here any second!”
The coyote didn’t buy it. “Not here,” it said in its strangle, glottal voice. It advanced, still cautious. Saliva dripped from its muzzle.
An awful terror took Dahra then. The coyote wouldn’t just kill her; it would eat her. It would eat her alive, and she would watch it happen until blood loss deprived her of consciousness. She knew. She had heard the stories; she had seen the bloody, mangled survivors dragged into the so-called hospital to await salvation at Lana’s hands.
She began to pray. Oh, God, save me. Oh, God, hear me and save me.
Then, aloud, she said, “Kill me first. Kill me before you . . . before . . .”
Oh, God, don’t let him . . .
The coyote closed to within two feet. His nostrils were filling with the scent of her; his mouth was foaming
in anticipation.
“No,” she whispered. “No, God, no.”
The coyote froze. Its ears swiveled to the right. It hunched low, and now Dahra could hear it, too, a slow crashing of underbrush and fallen leaves.
“Help! Help!” she cried, having no idea who or what might be in those woods, only knowing that whatever it was, the coyote didn’t like it.
The coyote made a low growl.
The crashing sound came closer, and with a furious, frustrated whine the coyote trotted away.
“Help me!” Dahra cried.
At first she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing in the shadows. It looked like a person, but built on too thick a scale, with outlines all blurred and indistinct. Then she recognized him and almost fainted with relief.
“Orc!”
Orc easily climbed the incline up to the road, then squatted beside her.
“Dahra? What are you doing here?”
“Praying for you to show up,” she gasped.
Orc couldn’t make much of a smile; it was only the human part of his mouth that could do that. “You prayed to God? Like in the Bible?”
Dahra was about to say she would happily have prayed to any and all gods and the devil, too, but she stopped herself and instead said, “Yes, Orc. Just like in the Bible.”
“And he sent me.” This seemed to give Orc great satisfaction. His huge chest swelled. “He sent me!”
“I crashed my bike. One leg is twisted. Can you help me get to the lake?”
“Shouldn’t you go see Lana?”
“Lake first, if you don’t mind. I have an important message to deliver. I have to talk to Astrid.”
Orc nodded. “Be sure and tell her God saved you. He brought me here, just to save you. Maybe then Astrid will . . . Anyway, I can carry you.”
He lifted her up like she was a doll. He had always terrified her. He was as strange as if he was from another planet.
But she felt safe in his arms.
He chuckled to himself, giddy, as he carried her.
THIRTEEN
40 HOURS, 3 MINUTES