She moved closer. Her movements were sensual, self-aware, calculated to mesmerize him.
“Look at me. I’m a human, too, aren’t I? This is human.” She gestured at her body.
“You’ve already killed whatever was human there,” Sam said, but he was still talking and he was still moving backward.
“It will be human flesh you burn.”
“It will be you, the gaiaphage, I kill.”
“Do you think you’ll kill me, Sam? I don’t think you expect to. You came here to be killed.”
“If necessary,” he said dully.
“Let’s see if it’s necessary.” Her hand came up, but Sam wasn’t so mesmerized he was unready. He dodged left and the invisible punch only grazed him.
He fired with one hand, still moving fast to his left. But Gaia had learned. She tracked his movement and the beam missed.
He swept the beam of light horizontally and she rose easily above it. Her invisible counterpunch didn’t miss this time. It knocked him twenty feet away. His lungs were empty and wouldn’t draw air, but he couldn’t let her stop him, not this way, not in a way that left him crippled again.
Win or die.
He rolled in the dirt as she laughed.
“I don’t have to kill you, Sam. You do have to kill me.”
He fired even as he rolled, and the result was a weird laser show of twisting green beams that singed Gaia’s hair and otherwise did nothing.
“We’re too far from town,” Gaia taunted. “Surely you want your last battle to be witnessed and admired. Besides, I don’t want my kindling to burn down to nothing. Come on, Sam, let’s go into town. I’ve never seen the place. I go to exterminate. Don’t you want to see?”
Sam jumped up, fired, but she dropped hard right, dodged around his beam, and with effortless power lifted one of the burning logs from the truck and threw it at him. It was a staggering display of power. The log weighed tons.
No time to get out of the way. He fired with both hands and burned through the fire-weakened log. Two massive, separate torches blew past him, burning his skin and crisping his hair.
WHUMPF!
The log sections crashed behind him on the road, showering him with sparks that stuck to his shirt and hair. The smoke billowed around him.
He choked and blasted randomly, blindly, all around him. Her cry of pain was the sound of hope. But he couldn’t see what damage he had done.
Suddenly she was on him, bursting through the smoke, not with Caine’s telekinetic power but with Jack’s brute strength. Her hand grabbed his arm; he didn’t resist, which would have cost him that arm, but leaped straight into her. Her own pull overbalanced her and she fell back.
With no other easy choice, he punched her in the face.
She pushed him off her and he flew through the air. He had time to see the burning logs and Gaia lying on her back, and then he hit the truck’s cab, hard, bounced off, and lay winded on the ground.
Gaia was on him in seconds, leaning over him. “Come on, Sam, you can do better than that.” Her hand closed on his throat. He could feel the immense power behind that grip. “No death for you. No, you’re going to come along and watch.”
She lifted him more easily than she’d have lifted a baby. There was a length of chain on the bumper of the truck. It was red-hot. He heard and smelled the flesh of her hands burning as she wrapped it around him, heard her cry out in pain but accept it just so she could hurt him. He screamed in agony as she laid the red-hot steel against him, as it burned through his clothing and seared his flesh.
“No glorious death for you, Sam.”
He felt himself floating along above the ground, and then he fell down a long, dark tunnel.
When he regained consciousness, he first felt the burns from the chain. Then the weight and strength of it, holding his arms tight against his body. He could move his hands, he could still fire his killing light, but he could not aim.
Floating. Wrapped in chains that stuck to his skin as they slowly cooled.
When he twisted his head, he saw Gaia walking down the middle of the highway.
Behind her the burning truck floated.
She noticed him stirring.
“Watch this,” she said. She raised a hand and one log broke free from the flaming mass, rose in the air, and then hurtled like a missile across the parking lot to smash into the shattered glass and tattered banners at the front of Ralph’s store.
“Fire is a very good distraction, don’t you think?” Gaia said.
He couldn’t speak. Whatever consciousness he had was almost a dream state, a hallucination.
“I realized, when I saw the forest burning, how fascinating the firelight is. It’s beautiful, and people stare at it, don’t they? It destroys things and kills people, but humans love it. Is it because they crave their own destruction, Sam? I want to understand your kind. I am going out into the wider world, and I must learn. But first things first. First, to escape this shell, this egg in which I have gestated, all eyes will be on the fire, all eyes blinded by the smoke, and when I walk out of here, out into your large world with its billions, no one will even see. It’s the beauty of light, don’t you see, Sam? It reveals, but it also distracts and blinds. It’s even better than darkness.”
“Don’t do this,” he begged in a choked voice.
He saw two people running from the burning grocery store. Some kids had been living there—skaters. The skaters loved it for all the smooth tile floors and the way the shelves and freezer cases could be turned into ramps.
Sam turned quickly to avoid looking, to avoid giving the two kids away, but it was too late.
Gaia stretched out her hand, and the nearest of the kids, a boy who insisted on being called Spartacus, came flying toward them, yelling in surprise.
He was twelve years old. He had hair down to his waist worked into mismanaged dreads. He wore a T-shirt that was more hole than cloth and oversized shorts.
“Watch the pretty light, Sam,” Gaia whispered to him, right into his ear.
“No!” he cried.
“You’ve been a problem for me, Sam, right from the start. You were one of the first ones whose names I learned. I saw images of you in their minds, in the mind of the Healer, in Caine’s mind, even distorted versions that Nemesis showed me sometimes. You defied me. Didn’t you, you willful little boy?”
She was laughing, laughing at her own cleverness, laughing at the way Spartacus cried and begged and at the way Sam pleaded, at the way he turned his face away, at the futility of it.
Gaia grabbed Sam’s head in the crook of her arm. She pried his eyes open with fingers dragging on his forehead. “Watch. Watch it all. Your light, Sam. Because you didn’t have the courage to end your own life, did you? You wanted me to do it for you. The hero who missed his chance. Watch now, Sam. I’m going to slice him apart, and his every scream will be your fault.”
“You’re insane!”
“Compared to what?” she asked. “I haven’t gotten out much.”
The light burned from her free hand and like a power saw begun cutting into the boy’s head, and he screamed and Sam roared and Gaia laughed, and Sam’s hands were close enough, he could twist them just enough, and his own hands blazed with the green light cutting into Spartacus’s heart.
Gaia cried out in ecstatic joy. She dropped the dead boy and with her telekinetic power twirled Sam around in the air like a top and laughed.
“Made you kill! Made you kill!” she yelled. “This will be fun.”
She danced in a circle and shouted up at the smoke-darkened, spark-lit sky. “Too late, Nemesis, too late!” Like a child. Taunting. “Too late!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
1 HOUR, 10 MINUTES
“SHE’S COMING.”
Edilio stood atop the town hall. It was the highest spot in the downtown area since the church was nearly leveled. Dekka was beside him, Jack and Orc just a few feet away.
She was coming with fire. Fire against a background of
fire. She wasn’t waiting for the Stefano Rey fire to reach town; she was bringing it, inspired by it.
A massive flaming torch of a truck floated at a stately pace down the highway, like some awful parade float. Next up in the parade, ladies and gentlemen, the float from hell.
Edilio raised binoculars and twisted the focus knob. What he saw made him catch his breath. A person floated before her, a person wrapped in chains.
He knew who it was. He couldn’t see the face, but he knew.
Mary, Mother of God, if ever you were going to intercede, now would be a very good time.
The air was already hard to breathe for the smoke, and now terror crushed the air from his lungs. He could hardly control his body. The gaiaphage was on the march and they would all die. All of them. Just like Roger, they would all die, no chance, no salvation, they would die die die die . . .
“Okay,” Edilio said, tough, unflinching, because that’s what the others all wanted from him. “Let’s go do it.”
He led the way, automatic rifle hanging from his shoulder, finger on the trigger guard, ready, scared. He trotted down the steps: Don’t miss, don’t trip, Edilio; they’re watching you, they’re scared, they’re so scared because they know it’s over, they know death is here for them and there’s no defense against it.
Don’t trip. Careful.
Out the front door, out onto the patio that overlooked the plaza. There were kids there, the few who hadn’t yet run to the barrier, and yes, still some up in the windows with gun barrels visible.
You’ll run when you see, he thought; you’ll run and scream and so will I.
“Listen up,” he shouted in a voice so calm it could not possibly be his. “Remember to make every shot count. Aim. Fire. Aim again. Fire. Keep that up until you run out of ammunition.”
“Edilio!” someone cried out, but it wasn’t a question: it was a slogan, it was a rallying cry.
“Edilio! Edilio!”
They shouted from their dark windows.
Like he was seeing her in a dream, he made eye contact with Dekka, who nodded and said, “Edilio!”
Quinn appeared, carrying a gun. He was grim. A spark floated past his face, illuminating his eyes.
“There’s a boat coming in,” Quinn said.
Edilio nodded like he understood, but he understood nothing except that he had no power to resist what was coming.
Drake dragged her down Second Avenue, not seeming to have any plan or direction, really, just to drag her.
Astrid was in and out of consciousness, eyes misted red, hands scratching weakly at the powerful whip arm around her throat. A false night had fallen, a night that stank of smoke.
She must have passed out, because when she opened her eyes she was in a house. Vague, disjointed memories of footsteps on a porch, of a door kicked in, of herself hurled against a dining-room table.
Over her head a brass-and-crystal chandelier—much abused over the months—swung back and forth. Someone who had occupied the house at some point had hung Barbie dolls and action figures from the chandelier with bits of colored yarn. There was a smell of sewage to join the reek of smoke.
He threw Astrid onto the table, faceup. She gathered her strength and screamed, “Help! Help me! Help me!”
Drake came into view from behind her head, stepped around so she could see him and he could look into her eyes. There was something odd and disjointed about him. The body didn’t match the head. He was taller than he’d been, stronger, more muscled. His head was pale; his neck was tan.
A lizard’s tail whipped madly, protruding from his brow, right between his eyes.
The windows glowed orange and red. The fire was coming.
Endgame.
“Help me! Help me!” Astrid screamed.
Drake nodded in satisfaction. “That’s good. That’s very good. I’ve waited a long time to hear you—”
She rolled away from him, trying to get off the table, but his whip arm had her and dragged her back. She kicked and punched and none of it mattered. He enjoyed it.
He laughed.
She fell silent.
So he whipped her across her belly and she screamed in pain.
“Better,” he said.
“You’re a sick person, Drake. You sick creep!”
“Who, me? Hey, who was it who put whose head in a beer cooler and weighted it down with rocks? I’m sick?”
“Go ahead and kill me, because if you don’t, when Brittney comes she’ll let me go.”
He cocked a pistol finger at her. “You know: I thought about that. I get a few seconds of warning before the changeover, so what I’ll do is kill you as soon as I feel it coming on. But until then . . .”
He slashed at her again. Again. Again, and she tried not to scream, but she did, she screamed: she screamed and he laughed.
“Sam will burn you to ashes!” she gasped out.
“That would be the only thing lacking now,” Drake said, sounding genuinely disappointed. “I wanted him here. It would be way better if he could see. If he could watch. It’s a hard thing to watch someone you care for being hurt.”
She heard something there. Something.
“Who did you watch being hurt?” she asked, desperate to engage him, stall, distract . . .
“Really? You want to get into my head? Figure out what makes me me? You’re not here to play shrink. You’re here to suffer.”
He slashed at her again. Astrid cried out. The pain was too awful to endure. She wished for unconsciousness. She wished for death. She sobbed quietly.
Petey.
Jesus.
Anyone . . .
But she felt no presence. Just the psychopath in the shadows cast by firelight.
“Gaia wanted me to bring you to her. So she could use you as a hostage. But I don’t take orders from her anymore. I wasted too much time following. I followed Caine. I followed the gaiaphage. But she’s not the gaiaphage, not really, not in that body, not with that face . . .”
“She’s pretty,” Astrid managed to say, gasping out each word. “Is that what you hate? Is that the sickness in you?”
Drake barked out a laugh. “Do you have any idea how many shrinks have tried their words on me? You think you can do better? It has to be some sickness, some syndrome, right? Put a label on it and everything will be all better.” He laughed at the idea. “Are you as clueless as the rest of them, Astrid? It’s simple. Here it is, here’s the answer, Astrid the Genius: it’s fun to hurt people. It’s such . . . it’s such joy, Astrid. Such joy realizing that all the power is yours, and all the fear and pain is right there, in your victim. Come on, smart girl, you know what it’s called. You know the word for it. Come on, say it.” He cupped his hand to his ear, waiting for the word.
“Evil,” Astrid said.
Drake laughed, threw up his hand wide, and nodded his head. “Evil! There you go. Good for you. Evil. It’s in all of us. You know that, too. It was in you. I saw it in your eyes as you looked down at me in that cooler. Evil, hah. We all want to have someone powerless beneath us while we stand over them.” His voice had grown husky. “We all want that. We all want that.”
He slid his whip arm over the painful wounds on her belly.
“I wish Sam was here to see. But he’s probably dead by now.” He sighed. “And if he’s not, well, we’ll tell him, won’t we? We’ll tell him every little detail.
“Be sure to scream,” he said.
“You too,” she said.
He looked at her, puzzled, his face inches from hers.
Astrid jerked her face forward, clamped her teeth down on Drake’s nose, and bit down as hard as she could.
At Sheridan Avenue a group of kids broke and ran from a house. Gaia cut them down.
Sam turned his palms inward, toward himself. He couldn’t turn them far enough to aim for his own head or internal organs. His only chance was to use the light to cut through a leg artery and bleed to death.
Better than watching his power be used to mu
rder.
“If there really is a God, forgive me,” he said, and clamped his palms to his thighs and . . .
The pain was searing. The beams of light burned into his thighs.
Gaia was on him in a flash. She twisted his hands away as Sam roared in pain.
Had he done it? Had he cut an artery? Could it be over now, please, please could it be over now?
“No, no, no, I don’t think we can have that,” Gaia said.
Sam struggled against the chains, struggled against her grip on him, but his strength was nothing compared to hers.
Gaia slapped him hard, a backhand blow that sent him reeling into a state that was neither conscious nor unconscious. He was vaguely aware of Gaia rewinding the chain, this time tightly binding his hands together so that they were palm to palm. This left his shoulders free, but he had missed his only chance.
He began to cry. He had failed. Finally, permanently, he had failed. And hadn’t he always known he would? Wasn’t that why he had resisted for so long becoming the leader? Wasn’t that why he’d been relieved, finally, to turn much of it over to Edilio?
He wasn’t a hero. He never had been. School Bus Sam, the great myth that had caused kids to turn to him at first, that hadn’t been heroism: it had just been quick thinking and self-preservation.
Everything he had done, it wasn’t courage: it was all just a desperate effort to stay alive, wasn’t it? In the end wasn’t that all it was?
And now, failure.
Failure, and he would watch them all die, one by one, die because he had chosen life over heroic sacrifice.
Gaia had tired of levitating him before her as some kind of prize. She was angry now. She threw him twenty feet down the highway. He landed on his back and smacked his head against the concrete.
She ran up to him, laughing, and kicked him, crushing ribs and sending him rolling down the highway, chains clanking, crying like a baby, beaten.
“Aaaaahhhh!”
People running. Sam could barely see them through the smoke. Three girls who had never been anything important in the life of the FAYZ, three regular kids, Rachel, Cass, and Colby, three sisters who had never fought, never been in on any of the battles, had just kept their heads down and done what work they were given, now rushed madly, hopelessly, at Gaia with tire irons and clubs.