Astrid was wearing her patient face as she said, “The gaiaphage can’t reach you anymore. That’s why it hates you.”
“Whatever. Not really my problem right now.”
“The question is, can you reach it if you need to?”
Lana’s face was hard as stone. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because it’s coming. And I’m looking for any weapon we can use.”
“I’m the weapon,” a voice said. Brianna sat up on the couch. Her face was still burned, though was no longer blood red. There were patches that looked almost normal. But one eye was swollen shut.
“You’re half blind, you idiot,” Lana said, but not angrily, affectionately.
Brianna jumped up, wiggled her legs like the world’s fastest tap dancer, shook her arms fast enough to create a breeze.
“Sit!” Lana roared. To Lana’s amazement, Brianna sat. So did Patrick. “Listen to me, Brianna: that burn is bad, and if I don’t heal it now you may be stuck with a half-melted face and no hair. Do you understand that? After a while it’s a chronic condition, not an injury, and I won’t be able to heal it any more than I can make someone not be ugly.”
“Ugly may be the least of our worries,” Astrid said. “You have any idea how dangerous a creature we’re talking about? It’s Sam, Caine, Dekka, Brianna . . . all rolled into one.”
Lana felt as if the ground was opening beneath her. But also like she had known it would. Like she’d been expecting it for a long time.
She had fended off the evil; she had not defeated it. She couldn’t. She knew that. It had taken all her strength to shut her mind to the Darkness. It felt almost as if the gaiaphage had infected some physical part of her brain and Lana had healed that damaged bit. But the scar tissue remained and was still sensitive to the slightest touch.
She could feel it reaching for her. It had been out there probing for a moment of weakness for a long time. The gaiaphage did not like defiance. It especially did not like successful resistance. It demanded submission.
Now it had at last brought total war to the FAYZ, and Lana couldn’t sit on the sidelines.
Could she? Could she? Please?
In a dull, lifeless voice Lana said, “Help Sanjit give these kids water.”
“I’m not here to—”
“I’m taking five, Astrid,” Lana said, glaring up at her, and Astrid nodded.
Lana’s knees cracked as she stood up, and it was a few steps before she could straighten all the way. She went out into the hallway, past the crying, scared, and traumatized kids lying under blankets on the floor, past Sanjit’s little brothers and sisters, each trying to offer comfort or prayers.
Down the stairs and out onto the long-dead lawn. Here she was shielded from the eyes of lookers, but she could see the ocean. She soaked in the air, which should have been fresh but tasted of fire.
Then she closed her eyes and turned her thoughts to the Darkness.
Hello, Darkness, my old friend. The words of an old song. Hello, Darkness.
The effort was through a space Lana could not see but could feel, manipulating limbs she didn’t have, listening for soundlessness, looking for an object she could only see by looking away.
But then: the contact. The gaiaphage felt her touch. It reacted violently, lashing out, trying to push her away. Sensing a trap.
Lana cried out in pain. No one heard her.
She wept a little—memories, mostly—then wiped the tears away.
She went back inside, felt rather than really saw Astrid’s expectant gaze.
“It’s coming. But it’s hurt. It’s trying to heal. It’s coming straight down the highway.”
“How soon?” Astrid asked.
“It can be killed, I think. It thinks so, anyway,” Lana said, in a wondering whisper. Her hand moved reflexively to the automatic pistol still stuck in her belt. “It’s afraid.”
“Edilio’s setting up an ambush.”
“No!” Lana said furiously. “Do it now. Now! Kill it now while it’s weak. If it heals that body, we’re all dead.”
Lana grabbed Astrid by both shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Listen to me. I had a chance to kill it once and it beat me. This is a second chance. There won’t be a third. Kill it. Kill it! Tell them all, whatever it takes, Astrid. Kill it!”
“There she is!” Caine said. He was in the front seat of the bus, which Sam was driving with painstaking care, weaving across the highway.
Gaia was a quarter mile away, just passing a pair of burned-out cars. She was dragging what looked a lot like a human leg. The foot wore a tattered red sneaker.
“Floor it!” Caine said.
“She’ll hear us,” Sam countered.
“Look again. She has earbuds in. We’re only about two miles from town. Now or never, surfer dude. Floor it! Floor it!”
Sam did. The engine didn’t exactly leap to respond. It accelerated at a slow, stately pace, only gradually picking up speed. Caine watched the speedometer needle.
Twenty.
Twenty-five.
Thirty.
Sam weaved madly around an overturned van, and the bus squealed on two wheels.
Thirty-five.
“She doesn’t know we’re here; hit her, hit her!”
Forty.
The distance was eaten up in a rush.
Thirty-five.
“What are you doing?” Caine demanded. He was gripping the chrome pole with white fingers.
“I don’t know!” Sam yelled. “It’s not me!”
The engine sputtered. Coughed. And suddenly they were freewheeling.
“We’re out of gas!”
The bus slowed but did not stop.
Fifteen miles an hour and a hundred feet left. Gaia was smack in the middle of the road.
The engine caught! It found a last sip of gas and the bus jolted forward, and the instant before it reached Gaia she leaped nimbly aside.
The bus seemed to be moving in slow motion now. Caine saw Gaia twist, her face older, no longer quite a little girl, her eyes mad with fear and fury.
She raised a hand, and a beam of light stabbed through the bus, not a foot away from Caine, then burned right through seats, sidewall to sidewall. Acrid smoke filled the bus.
But Gaia was off balance and tripped. Sam slammed open the door. Caine swung to hang off it, raised one hand, and threw Gaia back. The bus veered, clipped a car, slowed further still, and Caine was out, running, stumbling, fighting for balance, trying to close the distance with Gaia when a punch of invisible force knocked him down flat on his back.
Through misted eyes Caine saw Sam jump from the bus, roll, jump up, and fire with both hands at once.
The beams were nowhere near Gaia: they fired without effect over her head.
Gaia raised both hands, laughed, and lifted Sam up and up into the air. Sam fired at her and burned furrows in the concrete.
Suddenly Sam fell.
He did not cry out. He didn’t stop firing. But he hit the concrete with a loud crunch. He cried out in pain, struggled, but did not rise.
Gaia walked calmly toward them, and Caine raised his hands to hit her with everything he had . . . and the inside of his head exploded. Caine fell to his knees, clutched his head, and screamed in unbearable pain.
“Gaaaahhh!”
Like knives. Like a wild beast tearing its way into his skull through his eyes. Like being crushed in some massive vise. It was impossible to believe nothing was touching him.
He shrieked. “Stop it! Stop it!”
But the pain did not stop.
Through a swirling migraine distortion Caine saw Sam pulling his broken body around to face Gaia. Gaia used her telekinetic power to lift the crashed van and drop it just in front of Sam, cutting him off from view, blocking his field of fire.
“Stop it!” Caine begged.
Gaia stood over him, glowing faintly green, feet planted wide, and watched as he writhed in agony, as he bent double, holding his head in his hands, an
d screamed.
On it went, and his voice was hoarse from screaming. On and on it went as his entire body went into spasm, as he lost control of himself, slavered and drooled and wet himself.
If he could have taken his own life . . .
And still it went on.
Then the pain stopped.
Caine lay on the concrete road. He gasped air through a raw throat. His heart jackhammered in his chest. His entire body was slicked with sweat.
“Father,” Gaia said.
“Don’t hurt me,” Caine whispered. He didn’t have the will to look up at her.
Gaia laughed. “Have you seen Mother? I seem to have lost her.”
“Don’t do it again. Just don’t do it again.”
“I asked a question.” Steel in her voice.
Caine couldn’t recall a question. Words? Had she spoken words? His body still shook. He still clutched his head, as if somehow his hands could shut her out.
“Have. You. Seen. Mother?”
“No. No. Diana . . . I thought she was with you. Did you . . . ?”
“Did I kill her? Is that what you want to know?”
Caine was afraid to nod, afraid that she was toying with him, afraid she was looking for a pretext to hurt him again.
“Not yet,” Gaia said. “Soon. Probably.”
That slight uncertainty gave Caine a glimmer of hope. But still he did not look up, afraid to give any offense.
“I dropped my food,” Gaia said. “Pick it up and carry it for me.”
“Your—aaaaahhhh!”
This time the pain only lasted a second. A reminder. A whip snapped at a difficult horse.
Caine saw the leg. It had been gnawed.
“Take it and walk in front of me. If you even turn around, I’ll hurt you and make it last until your mind is gone. My power grows, Father. You can no longer defy me. No one can. Not even her.”
Caine did not know who she meant by “her.” Did she mean Diana? Gaia glared toward Perdido Beach.
Caine took the leg by the ankle. It was heavy. It smelled like a barbecue grill that needed cleaning. Shaking, he lifted it and headed toward town.
Would Sam be able to kill her as they passed by?
Please let him kill her.
They walked around the van, and there was Sam. His body was twisted at a comical angle. He was propped on one elbow and raised the other to strike. But he couldn’t keep his hand elevated. Something was wrong in the bones of his shoulder, the bones of his back. His face was white.
Gaia calmly lifted Caine and held him suspended ludicrously between herself and Sam. Sam would have to burn through Caine to reach her.
As they drew nearer, Gaia flicked a finger and knocked Sam onto his back. His head hit pavement with a sickening crack.
“Lie there until I’m ready to come back and kill you,” Gaia said. “It won’t be long.”
She put her earbuds back in and walked behind a beaten Caine.
TWENTY
23 HOURS, 8 MINUTES
THE ISLAND, WHERE she looked at a startled Leslie-Ann.
The power plant, where she saw no one.
The forest. Same. No one. But lots of fire. She bounced out of there quickly.
The beach, where she saw a dead fish and some driftwood.
The so-called hospital, where one sick girl was wandering, calling for Dahra.
The lake. Dead bodies bloated in the water. Others like fish washed up onshore.
Taylor paused there.
What. Was. What.
What was she?
She had memories. Like old predigital photographs curled with age. She looked at them and understood them. But they weren’t really hers. They belonged to Taylor. She was Taylor, but she was not that Taylor.
A random spot in the desert. No one.
A wrecked train. No one.
A field of artichokes. Worms seethed from the ground, touched her, and retreated.
What. Am. I?
Taylor saw that someone was following her, but not someone she could quite see.
No one could move like Taylor. But he could.
She bounced to the ruined ghost town by the mine shaft. He bounced with her.
What. Are. You? Invisible bouncer?
She had an idea then. She bounced twelve times instantaneously, spending only a half second in each place.
He was there.
Following her.
What are you? he asked her.
I don’t know, she answered.
Maybe I can help you, the invisible one said. I made you this way. I didn’t mean to. Maybe I can fix you.
Taylor felt. She hadn’t felt lately, but now she felt. Something. Like she was water and someone was plunging a hand into her. She gave way: she formed around the probing.
For a moment she was gone. Then back. For a moment she felt disturbed, and then not.
Suddenly she gasped. She drew air into her mouth. It was surprising. She hadn’t breathed lately, though she remembered breathing before. That other Taylor.
“I can’t remember what I did to make you this way.”
She heard the voice, though she saw no one here.
“But I’m trying.”
She reached up and touched her hair with a golden hand. “My hair,” she said, the words a shock to her. The voice coming from her thoughts felt alien. “It’s wrong.”
“Like this?” Little Pete asked, because now she knew it was him.
She touched her hair, and it was no longer a single rubbery sheet. It was black hair. Her hair.
“This is better,” she said.
“Your eyes,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Is this better?”
She felt that strange touch, that solidity where she was somehow liquid. And suddenly she saw him. He didn’t look like Little Pete. He looked like a swirl of light, like a thousand fireflies swarming together.
“I can’t do more right now,” Little Pete said. “I am weak, and the Darkness will notice. It looks away from you now. It has forgotten you.”
Some part of Taylor, some reawakened part of her, some fragment of the old Taylor, realized that she was not back to what she had once been. Her eyes saw things and her ears heard things differently than in the old days, before. But there was breath in her lungs. And a heartbeat in her chest.
And she had hair.
“I hurt you, even though I didn’t mean to. I can’t ask you to help me,” Little Pete said.
“You don’t have to,” Taylor answered. “I know the Darkness. I know it hates the Healer. I know what side I am on.”
TWENTY-ONE
18 HOURS, 57 MINUTES
EDILIO HAD HEARD Lana’s warning by way of Astrid. But attack? With what? With who? People were just now coming back in from some of the fields. Brianna was still down. Sam missing, Caine missing, Jack reluctant, Orc willing but exhausted.
Attack? Where?
No, that might be good advice in other circumstances. Not with what he had available. Besides, he had an instinct. If Gaia wasn’t already here, it was because she was waiting for darkness. She might be a monster, but she was a monster used to darkness, not to broad daylight. She had attacked the lake at night, despite having Brianna’s speed. She had waited for night.
She would wait for darkness again.
Edilio was well aware that he was playing a hunch, and playing with all their lives. Like every general since the dawn of time, he was assessing his forces, trying to understand his enemy, putting his bet down and rolling the dice.
He had made his arrangements. He was on automatic now, not thinking about Roger, not thinking about the images of corpses floating on the lake.
If he’d been there, maybe . . .
“Dekka, how long can you maintain a gravity-free zone?”
“As long as you want, Edilio.”
She was being too nice, feeling sorry for him.
“I want you to be out of sight,” he said.
“But anytime
I do my thing, everything floats up. Dirt, plants, rocks . . . It’s not exactly invisible.”
“I know. I was thinking if you kept it just to the concrete on the road. Just like a narrow slice. Nothing to float there. Also, it’s starting to get dark, and the ash from the fire . . .”
Dekka nodded. “I can do it.”
Edilio had chosen a spot right at the edge of town, near Ralph’s grocery store. Open ground was his enemy: he needed places to hide shooters, he needed a complex terrain, and he needed to be concealed.
There was an overturned moving van. It had long since been looted, of course, and the household goods were strewn all around the area: leather easy chair, cracked by the sunlight; a dining-room table with wood bleached by exposure; a mattress in plastic wrap; boxes of books and boxes that had once held clothing. Knickknacks, lawn furniture, a bundle of brooms and mops, all of it tossed around on the road and the shoulder. The van itself was two-thirds empty, and what was left was just a jumble of small tables and chairs and cardboard. It was dark inside.
“Are Orc and Jack here yet?” Edilio called over his shoulder.
“Just walking up,” Dekka said.
“Okay, Dekka, find your spot, do your thing. About twenty yards down the road. You can hide behind that burned-out Volkswagen.”
Orc and Jack—one lumbering, the other stepping cautiously—appeared. Edilio pointed at the roof of the moving van, which was now a wall. “I want six holes punched in here, just big enough for a shooter to see through and shoot from.”
He walked away and heard six hard blows.
Did he have six capable shooters? He looked around. He’d started the day with twenty-four of his trained people. Somehow he was now down to seventeen. Some had gone to pick food, driven by hunger more than cowardice. Ten were lying in wait around the town plaza—plan B. More might join when the field hands came back. He had seven here. Six for the van, one to use as a sharpshooter with a scoped rifle fifty feet down the road.
“Don’t shoot until you see Gaia stumble or start to kind of float, right? When she walks into Dekka’s field. Once that happens, you shoot.” He held up a cautionary finger. “Shoot smart, like you’ve practiced, right? Aim every shot. Don’t stop until you’ve run out of ammo. Don’t assume she’s dead. Don’t forget, she can heal like Lana.”