So many left to kill. She would have to hurry.
The firing had stopped.
Edilio couldn’t see much of anything, blinded by smoke tears, trying to make sense of a battlefield. All he knew was that the firing had stopped when Gaia disappeared into the church.
Then he saw Jack and Sam. Sam had rolled Jack over so that instead of the small hole in his back what was visible was the exit wound, an explosion of viscera poking out through his shirt.
“Jesus, Mary,” Edilio said.
From the church came the loud crash of debris falling.
Edilio dropped down beside Sam. Sam was alive but looked almost as bad as Jack. There were burns on his body and arms. His shirt was tatters, a filthy, bloody rag.
Edilio began pulling at the chains.
“Edilio,” Sam gasped.
“I got you, man,” Edilio said.
“Do it, Edilio.”
Edilio shook off the request, pretending not to know what Sam was asking.
From the church a second loud crash.
Voices above called out, “Edilio! What should we do?”
“Do it, man. I tried. I don’t think I have the strength to try again, man: do it for me,” Sam begged.
“Dekka’s got her,” Edilio stalled as he pulled the last chains away. The links tore at burned flesh as he pulled them free.
“She’ll come out of there and—”
“Damn it, I can’t kill you! You’re asking me to commit murder!” Edilio exploded.
Sam stared. Nodded. “Yeah. Give me your gun, Edilio. I think I can do it with a gun. The other thing, though . . . It’ll be easier with—”
“I can’t do it,” Edilio said, shaking his head, weeping.
“She’s going to kill everyone—”
A third crash from the church.
“I’m going to go shoot her myself,” Edilio said.
“Edilio!” Sam called after him.
Edilio spun around, stabbed a finger at Sam, and said, “I’ll kill. I’ll kill. That’s enough. It’s enough! I won’t murder!”
“It’s all the same,” Sam muttered weakly, as Quinn appeared out of the smoke.
Edilio took two steps back, grabbed Quinn by the shoulder, and said, “He’s not in charge. Don’t listen to him. You understand? You listen to me.”
Whether Quinn understood what was going on or not, he knew the power of conviction when he saw it. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Tell you what, Sanjit,” Lana said.
“What, Lana?” he asked.
“See this?” She held up her cigarette. “This will be my last one. I promise.”
Sanjit shook his head slowly. “What are you talking about?”
Lana looked around the shambles of a room. There were twenty-one victims: Some were dead and hadn’t been cleared away. Others would live, for now, at least. There were more in the room next door. More still in the hallway.
Lana felt hollowed out. The endless hurry to save this one or that one, the sleeplessness, the soul sickness that came from seeing death and disfigurement, it was all finally too much.
And still she felt it. She felt its mind, its will, its glee as it killed.
She took a long drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out, savoring it. “Last one.”
“What are you doing?”
Lana put her hand on Sanjit’s face. He made a tentative reach for the pistol at her waist. She was surprised. She pulled it out and handed it to him.
“No, not that,” she said, smiling. “I don’t think that’s in me. Different fight I have in mind. The time has come. Listen to me, Sanjit. I’m going outside. Don’t follow me.”
She left then, walked down the hall, ignoring the pleas of the desperate, down the stairs, and out onto the lawn.
She took another drag, squared her shoulders, closed her eyes, and said, “This is going to hurt.”
Gaia’s goal was not a fight. Her goal was slaughter.
Kill them all. Kill every last one of them.
Gaia did not rush out to meet the guns in the town plaza. She blew out the remains of the back wall of the church and stormed onto Golding Street.
Time. She felt it slipping away, and it would take too long to hunt down the shooters right now, too inefficient. Kill more sooner, that was the right move. Kill more now.
Seconds and seconds and she couldn’t run because there was a bullet in her leg and that leg did not want to run; it wanted to fold up under her.
Never mind, she would heal herself when they were all dead, and then, yes, there would be time, but her body, the body she had stolen, filthy weak sack of blood that kept leaking out, it was weakening, wasn’t it? She could feel it. The blood leaking out of her. Had to stop and heal that, at least, had to stanch the bleeding.
She bent over and pressed her hand against the wound, hobbling down the street as she did, an awkward, laughable-looking creature.
And Nemesis was doing something, moving, preparing, wasn’t he? She could feel him. He was a shadow of himself, weak, a ghost. Just die!
Just finally die, you stupid little boy!
The blood still leaked between her fingers. Why wasn’t the healing working?
She reached the highway and there were people, kids, running in panic toward the brilliant lights of the barrier.
A burned-out gas station.
An overturned FedEx truck.
Panicked children.
“Die!” she roared, and fired after them. “Die!”
Her body woozy. And the healing . . . too slow. Why wasn’t . . .
And then Gaia knew. She felt the mind pushing against hers, fighting her. Not Nemesis.
No, the Healer. Wrestling her for control of the healing power. Blocking her. Wanting her to bleed to death! Trying to kill her!
Gaia struck at her, invisible tentacles through the indescribable space that connected them. She saw the Healer in her mind, saw her face, her actual human face as though she was there on the road standing between Gaia and her victims.
Lana. Something was burning in her mouth. Smoke was coming from her nose. And she was unafraid. She was ready for the pain the gaiaphage could cause her.
Well, then, I wouldn’t want to disappoint!
She saw Lana staggered by the lashings of pain, the burning thing falling from her mouth, hands pressed against the agony in her head, but fighting back, draining Gaia’s strength, delaying, delaying.
With every last ounce of her strength Gaia struck at the Healer. She felt the Healer’s pain, felt the Healer’s weakening, and Gaia crowed, tilted her head back, and howled at the red-glowing sky in triumph.
Someone was shooting at her from behind a truck.
She rolled the truck over, crushing the shooter.
This time when she bent down to touch the bleeding hole, it sealed. The blood would no longer flow, but she could do no more; the healing power was ebbing fast as Lana pushed back again, fought Gaia for control.
How does she fight me?
Still time. Still time. Nemesis had not done it yet. Nemesis had not found his home. Not . . . just . . . yet.
And there it was finally: the barrier. It would mean showing herself. Not at all how she had planned this. Her body, her face, they would be revealed. It would make things much harder later, when Nemesis died and she walked free. But she had been stymied, attacked, burned, shot, hurt again and again, nearly killed . . . No time for half measures. No time for clever plans. Time to ensure that Nemesis died and took this trap of a place down with him.
Like spooked cattle the humans gathered there. So many of them. So easy to slaughter.
They cowered. They cried for mercy. It would be easy.
Gaia felt the peace inside her. She felt the joy of the moment. She felt victory.
I don’t need to heal if I can kill.
She raised her hands. Spread them wide apart.
And fired two beams of killing light. One to the left. One to the right. Slowly she brought the bea
ms toward the center.
The people screamed as the beams began to slice into those on the left and right flanks.
They climbed over one another to escape.
Seconds and it would be over.
Connie Temple stood in the press of frantic parents and hangers-on and thrill seekers who spread across acres of land beside the barrier.
She had been worrying for days about what would happen if the barrier came down. She’d occupied her mind with concern for the future, and with the gnawing guilt from fearing that she might have sent her closest friend’s daughter to her death.
Now she watched the TV monitors on the satellite trucks with mounting despair. They had showed satellite footage of the spreading conflagration. They’d shown the video of a little girl ripping a man’s arm off and eating it. They’d shown endless “interviews” with terrified, starving children. There had been long-distance drone video of something that looked like a monster made of stone and, in these last hours, what was undeniably a gun battle in Perdido Beach.
The whole world was watching. And the whole world was helpless. In the end it wasn’t going to matter at all what she said or did or felt. In the end it would all come down to the kids in that awful fishbowl.
She thanked God the barrier had been opaque for so long: had she been able to see, had the world been able to see, the parents would have been driven mad.
She stood now just ten feet from the barrier. Almost within reach were children crying, screaming soundlessly, begging.
And just beyond them a lovely teenaged girl, with arms raised, who now fired bright beams of light. The dazzling green beams struck the barrier and passed through the transparent force field.
The people outside never realized their own danger until the left-hand beam burned through a National Guard Humvee.
And then, yes, everyone then knew that death was coming not just for their children, but for them, too.
Like a herd of panicked cattle they surged away from the barrier, screaming.
Connie Temple did not move. She couldn’t. She had to watch this final slaughter. A witness, even if she died for it.
On the left and on the right, the first of the children inside burned. And the first of the adults outside screamed as hair caught fire and limbs fell severed to the ground.
And something large pelted down the hill, a monstrosity, a nightmare creature.
THIRTY
25 MINUTES
YEA, THOUGH I walk . . . valley of the shadow of death . . .
Orc was not a great runner. He weighed hundreds of pounds. His gravel legs were not quick.
His staff will comfort me . . . Angels and so on . . .
But the downslope helped a little. And the smoke didn’t bother him so much. Maybe his throat was different.
I will fear no evil . . .
She didn’t hear him coming.
The Lord is my shepherd . . .
A hundred yards left.
Her lights burned slowly toward the center, and she threw her head back and laughed and laughed as the crowd outside panicked and ran and died and the crowd inside crawled over one another like desperate animals to escape the slaughter and were cut in half.
Thou art with me. Not just thy staff.
Thou.
Orc hit Gaia like a truck.
She flew. Hit the ground facedown amid the panicked children. The impact rolled Orc into the barrier, squashing a girl beneath him. He hit the barrier and it sent a shock through him, so he jumped up, raging against it, searched for Gaia, saw her rolling onto her back, saw her face distorted with fury, saw her raise her hands.
He was off balance, trying to get to his feet, when she fired.
Both beams hit him mid-chest.
Orc collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
He lifted one massive stone fist to try and shield the patch of human skin that still covered part of his mouth.
People inside and out scattered in panic. The air was filled with screams.
Orc was on his knees. Two holes had been burned right through him. He looked at Gaia, who stood now, enraged, and advanced on him.
“I’m not scared of you,” Orc said, slurring the words like in the bad old days when he was a drunk. “I’m going to dwell . . . I forget . . . forever.”
Gaia advanced on him, but the crowd, the huddled, terrified mass, had used the distraction to break and run.
Gaia felt the fear creeping back in.
And then the missile exploded against the barrier.
Lana stumbled down from Clifftop. It felt like forever since she’d been away from that foul room, that now-terrible place.
She could see in the distance fire eating at the edge of Perdido Beach. She tasted the smoke.
“Not much point quitting if the air’s going to be one big cigarette,” she muttered.
Her battle was over. She felt it inside. The gaiaphage had ceased to struggle against her. She had fought and won her own little war.
Suddenly Patrick came bounding up beside her.
“So, Sanjit sent you to look after me, huh?” She reached down and patted his head. “You and me, boy. You and me.”
There came a loud explosion, a flat but powerful sound, just off to her right.
There would be people hurt by that kind of a thing.
For the last time, the Healer headed toward the sound of suffering.
The missile hit the barrier immediately behind Orc. His body took most of the blast.
It blew him apart. TV cameras caught the moment when a thousand little stones went flying like shrapnel. The rock was blown from his back and much of his chest, from his shoulders and most of his head. It was as if he was a mud-crusted shoe knocked against the wall. The mud gravel was knocked away in patches.
His internal organs were crushed. His eyes bled. For a terrible moment a body, the body of a young man, with pink flesh rising from still-stony legs, tried to push itself up off the ground. Surely just a physical instinct, surely not a conscious effort, because he could not be alive.
Charles Merriman, long known as Orc, tried to rise, and instead fell dead.
Orc’s massive body had shielded Gaia from the worst of it.
She lived, still, but the shrapnel and the fire had stripped the skin from much of her body, a terrible mimicry of Orc’s own destruction.
She was a creature of blood, red from head to foot.
But she lived still.
Sinder ran from the terrible scene. She tripped over bodies, got up, and ran some more.
She glanced back once and saw Orc hit.
She could hardly breathe for the beating of her heart and the sobbing that tore at her.
Her feet pounded earth, tripped, stood, ran, glanced back again and saw Gaia coming.
A beam of light shot past Sinder and she screamed. A girl to her right made a soft gasp and fell. The hole in her neck was smoking.
Feet on concrete now, the road, running. Clifftop! To the left, but uphill, and Gaia was coming, and another deadly beam of light, so close Sinder felt the heat of it on her cheek and cries and shouts and the sound of people gasping for breath, gagging in the smoke.
And suddenly, Caine rising up behind a wrecked car. He was holding something long and white.
The panicked crowd parted around him. Sinder ran on, glanced back, saw Gaia still running and firing, and Caine grim and steady.
“Damn,” Caine breathed. “That is one tough monster Diana and I made.”
The rest of the missiles were off to the side of the road in their crates. He kind of didn’t think he’d get a chance to reload.
Edilio was there, unpacking a second missile, but nope, Caine thought, Edilio isn’t going to get the shot, either.
Gaia saw him.
“You,” she said.
“Yeah, me,” Caine said, disappointed. “Well, I thought it was worth a try. Better than my backup plan.”
“Your backup plan?” Gaia asked.
Caine nodded
. And for a moment he hesitated, seeing Diana in his mind.
Diana.
A good final thought, that.
“Now, Little Pete,” Caine said. “Right now.”
Little Pete was ready, but he was still worried. Living inside a body had not been good for him. His brain had been his enemy all his life. And the only peace he had ever known was in this fading twilight unreality he had shared with the Darkness that called itself the gaiaphage.
But the gaiaphage had attacked him. The gaiaphage had hurt him, even while crooning softly to Pete to just fade away.
Little Pete didn’t remember much that his parents and sister had taught him back before. But he remembered that it is not okay to hit.
It is definitely not okay to hit.
Then he had seen the ghostly shapes of all the people starting to flicker and disappear. All those game pieces, all those avatars, just disappearing, and they were being destroyed by the Darkness, weren’t they?
The gaiaphage wasn’t just hitting Little Pete.
Which was wrong.
It was hitting other people, too.
He had tried to fight back using Taylor, but he’d been too weak to make her whole, and too weak to stop the slaughter.
And then he’d heard his sister calling to him. Little Pete, take me and fight it.
But he didn’t really trust her very much.
Other voices had drifted to him, calling him through the emptiness, even as the Darkness tried to tell him no, no, Nemesis, just fade, fade into nothingness and be happy.
A girl he didn’t know had called to him. Take me. I deserve to die.
But then had come the voice that said, Come on, you little freak, wherever the hell you are, whatever the hell you are, let’s get this done with.
Pete had seen the scars on him, the fresh marks of the gaiaphage.
You and me. Blaze of glory, Little Pete. Blaze of glory.
Pete didn’t know what a blaze of glory was, but it sounded good.
Now, Little Pete. Right now.
The Darkness was wrong. It was not time for Peter Ellison to fade away. It was time to hit back.
Caine had not wanted to feel it happening. He’d wanted it just to be over quick. Bam, over. But he did feel it.
He felt like maybe he’d stepped into a hot shower and was having that lovely sense of relaxation as the water warms the back of your neck, and you close your eyes, and you sigh away the night’s bad dreams.