It was shocking. He had not known such a thing was possible. No one could hit him! It wasn’t okay. It was not okay to hit. His sister had told him that a lot of times. So had his mother.
It was not okay to hit. Even if you were mad or frustrated.
If it could happen once, it could happen again. The dark mind that had touched him very early on, that had shaped him in some ways, that had manipulated him at times, that had scared Pete at times—and feared him always—that constant if faraway companion had just hurt him.
Pete had begun to accept his own fading, the almost pleasurable sense of giving up and letting go of a life that had been short but painful. He was ready to go away. He was ready to fade out.
But that sudden attack . . . it was wrong. He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
It was wrong.
And it made Pete angry.
Don’t hit me again, he thought.
Or else.
FOUR
76 HOURS, 52 MINUTES
THEY CLOSED THE door on the cabin. There wasn’t room enough for them to stand, so they fell into each other’s arms on the bunk.
Sam kissed her and tried not to think that it was for the last time.
He was happy. That was the hell of it. He was finally happy. Right here, right now, in this place, with this girl in his arms, he was happy. Was that why he felt the hammer about to fall on him? No, that was crazy. He was happy. Happiness didn’t mean that tragedy was coming around the corner. Did it?
“He shouldn’t ask you to do this,” Astrid said.
“Sure he should,” Sam said. “Who else is going to go if not me?”
“You’ve done enough. You’ve done more than enough. A hundred times more than enough.”
They were only inches apart, so close that Sam could feel her breath on his face when she spoke. So close he could hear her heart beating too fast.
“It’s the endgame, Astrid,” Sam said softly.
“You’re supposed to survive the endgame,” Astrid pleaded.
“What am I going to do? Hide here with you and hope it all blows over?”
“Maybe, yes. Maybe just don’t go out looking for a fight this time. Maybe just let it be on someone else.”
“Gaia ran off with Drake and Diana, but I don’t think it was because she was weak. If she is weak, great, let’s find out now and maybe end this easily.”
His words made sense. She wouldn’t be able to dispute them.
“And if she’s not weak? If she’s exactly what we think she is and just as dangerous as we’re afraid she is? Then what, Sam?”
“Then better to move on her before she’s ready. Better not to let her choose the time and place.” He tilted his head to rest against hers, sharing the pillow. “Edilio’s right. You know he is.”
He was a little disappointed when she didn’t have a good counterargument. A part of him had been hoping that he was wrong. Her silence was his doom.
Another fight. Another battle. How many could he survive? He was living on luck. Was he supposed to believe that the world meant him to be happy with Astrid? That didn’t sound like the world he knew.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too, for all the good it does.” She sounded bitter. Angry. Not at him, but at the universe. Then, in an intense whisper: “First, isolate her. Take out Drake. And Sam, if you need to, take out Diana.”
That cold-blooded advice shocked him. “Diana?” Since when had Astrid used a euphemism like “take out”? And since when had she ever counseled him to be so hard?
“Gaia seemed to be relating to her. If you find Diana’s still alive, it will be because Gaia needs her or maybe even cares for her. That’s a vulnerability. Exploit that vulnerability.”
He tried to treat it lightly. “You’re kind of ruining the mood.”
“I’ll recapture the mood,” she said. “But first, you promise me, Sam: whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to survive.”
“Astrid—”
Suddenly she grabbed his face with one hand and squeezed too hard. “You listen to me. I’m not losing you because you played fair. You’re not getting killed. You’re not dying. This isn’t some doomed last mission. Do you understand me? This does not end with me crying and missing you every day for the rest of my life. This ends with us walking out of this nightmare together. You and me, Sam.”
There was silence between them for a long moment. Sam didn’t know what to say.
Astrid found the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head. She unbuckled his belt and shoved his jeans to the deck. She pushed him, gently but insistently, onto the bed. Then she undressed herself and stood in the faint light, looking down at him as he gazed up at her.
“You’re giving me a reason to live,” he said, half joking.
“I’m just recapturing the mood,” she said, trying to make it sound light and sexy.
“You captured me a long time ago.”
She climbed atop him. “We walk out of this together, Sam. Whatever it takes. You and me.”
“You and me,” he said.
She would not yet let him have her. “Whatever it takes,” she insisted. “Say it.”
“You and me,” he said at last. “Whatever it takes.”
“Swear it.”
“Astrid . . .”
“Swear it. Say the words. Say ‘I swear.’”
“I swear,” he said, saying it too easily. Saying it even though he didn’t feel it. Saying it because he wanted her and wanted to be happy right here and right at this moment.
He rolled a condom into place and she gasped as he entered her. “This is not the last time, Sam,” she said.
“This is not the last time,” he said, knowing that neither of them believed it.
Lana Arwen Lazar woke suddenly, and as she often did when startled, she grabbed for the big pistol beneath her pillow. She sat up and leveled the automatic, all in one easy motion.
Sanjit Brattle-Chance dropped to his belly and, in a surprisingly reasonable tone of voice, considering his face was in the ragged carpet, said, “If you shoot me, I can’t tell you where I hid your cigarettes.”
“You what?” Lana snapped. It was still fairly dark in the room. Clifftop Resort, where she had lived since the coming of the FAYZ, had excellent, thick curtains that blocked out the sun. The only light getting in came from a hole that had been burned in the curtains by one of said cigarettes.
“I think you need to cut back,” Sanjit said, bravely getting back to his feet despite the fact that Lana had not dropped the gun.
Patrick, Lana’s faithful dog, had an instinct for dangerous situations and took the opportunity to jump off the end of the bed and crawl behind the sofa.
“Cut back?”
“Quit, actually. But cut down for now.”
“Give me my cigarettes.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Do you see this gun?”
“I noticed it, yes.”
“Give me my cigarettes.”
“I don’t want you getting lung cancer. You’re very good at healing injuries, but you know as well as I do you aren’t much use against disease.”
Lana stared hard at him. “See this bed? Do you ever expect to be back in this bed? With me?”
Sanjit sighed unhappily. He was thin, not very tall, dark-skinned with dark hair and darker eyes, all of it generally lit up by a devil-may-care smile. However, he knew better than to smile at this particular moment. “I’m not going to even respond to that, because the day will come when you’ll be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting—”
“Give me my cigarettes.”
Sanjit reached into his pocket. He handed something to Lana.
“What is this?”
“It’s half a cigarette.”
Without putting down the gun she reached for her lighter. She lit the half cigarette and filled her lungs. “Where’s the other half?”
“On a completely different topic,” Sanji
t said, “there’s something kind of disturbing going on.”
“This is the FAYZ, there’s always something disturbing going on, and right now it’s the fact that I’m calculating whether I can shoot you in the eyeball.”
Sanjit ignored her and opened the curtains.
“Yes, daylight is disturbing,” Lana said, blinking. She had smoked the half cigarette down to a length of about five millimeters and was still determined to get another puff, even if it burned her fingers.
Finally curiosity got the better of her, and she swung her feet out of bed, stood up with a groan, and walked to the sliding glass door. Sanjit opened the door and stood aside. Lana stepped out and froze.
The balcony provided an amazing view of the ocean. But since moving into Clifftop the left side had been nothing but the pearly-gray FAYZ wall. Two days earlier that wall had gone transparent, so she’d been able to see the rest of the ocean, and of course the rest of the hotel. But there had been no one in sight, and that was how Lana liked it.
Now, however, there were six people standing together on the balcony just to the left of hers. They were no more than six feet away.
Cameras—ranging from cell phones to full-on Canons with huge lenses—rose in unison and aimed at her.
Lana’s hair was sticking out in multiple directions, she was wearing a ragged purple T-shirt that read “FCKH8” over boys’ boxer shorts, and she was sucking a cigarette butt down to the ash.
And then there was the automatic pistol in her right hand.
Lana went back inside and said, “Okay: now where are my cigarettes?”
“How did that happen?” the red-haired man demanded. He looked at his friend, still on the other side. He reached over and banged on the barrier and got zapped in payment.
His friend was miming the same look: How did that happen? Then he whipped out his own phone and began to shoot video.
“How did that happen?” a stunned Diana asked Gaia.
Gaia did not look surprised. She did look troubled. “I hit Nemesis,” Gaia answered, as though it was obvious. “But it wasn’t good, really.” She suddenly bit at the cuticle of her thumb, a nervous gesture Diana recognized: Caine.
“He was stronger than I expected,” Gaia said. “I think I just made him realize . . . Never mind. I may have to move faster than I’d thought.” She sighed and seemed surprised to have made the sound. Then she said, “But at least I have food to feed this body you made for me. Diana.”
“I can’t believe this happened,” the red-haired man said. He stood up and extended his hand to Diana. “Amazing, right? Am I the first guy in?”
Gaia stepped in, grabbed the man’s hand, then shifted her grip to his wrist, put her other hand on his bicep, and with one swift, sudden movement tore his arm off at the shoulder like she was ripping a drumstick from an overcooked turkey.
“Gaia!” Diana cried.
The man screamed, an eerie, awful sound.
“Ahhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh!”
Blood sprayed from both the arm and the shoulder. The man fell onto his back, screaming, screaming, screaming as blood sprayed like water from a cut garden hose.
Diana dropped beside him, crying, “Oh God, oh God!”
Gaia casually slung the arm onto a flat rock. She raised one hand and played a terrible, burning light—just like Sam’s light—up and down the arm.
She wasn’t destroying, though: she was cooking.
“No, no, no!” the man screamed. “Ahhh! Ahhh!”
“He’s going to die, Gaia!”
“Possibly,” Gaia said, evaluating the cooked arm. “A lot of blood—”
“Gaia!”
Outside the dome the other man was screaming silently, his eyes wide, his mouth a horrified O. The phone in his hand tilted crazily.
Diana tore the man’s small backpack open, found a T-shirt, and tried to stuff it into the gruesome, shredded wound that had been his shoulder. The man’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he passed out as blood continued gushing, making mud of the dirt.
“Gaia! Save him!” Diana begged, and looked up to see Gaia ripping with her child’s teeth at the charred and smoking bicep.
“Yes, I should save him,” Gaia said through her chewing. “He’ll be easier to move if he’s alive.” She ripped another chunk, a long, stringy piece of muscle, and while she chewed and sucked it into her mouth, she knelt beside the unconscious man and put her hand on the bloody mess of shoulder.
Diana scooted backward, pushing violently away.
Gaia held the cooked arm out toward her carelessly as she focused on the wound. “You should also eat. There is enough for both of us now.”
Diana rolled to her knees and retched. There was nothing in her stomach to come up. But she retched, tears flooding her eyes.
The man’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up at Gaia and screamed again, but more weakly. The one outside was banging on the dome with a piece of the ladder, yelling and threatening without making any sound.
Diana started crawling away. Her mind was spinning crazily: images, memories. Hunger and the smell of Panda’s flesh, and the memory of the taste of it, and the memory of the sickening way it had flooded her with relief at the time, the way it had filled her stomach.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she cried, over and over again, scraping scabbed knees over sharp rock.
Diana stood, so weak she could barely stay up, and tried to run away, but with a flick of Gaia’s finger she was yanked back to land beside the brutalized man.
He screamed, but weakly.
His eyes focused on hers, confused, afraid. Betrayed.
Diana felt herself spinning down a long tunnel, wishing to hit bottom, wishing for death. And, mercifully, she fell unconscious.
FIVE
74 HOURS, 41 MINUTES
“WHERE THE HELL is everyone?” Caine demanded. But he was demanding it of no one in particular. He was king in Perdido Beach, but he was a king without a court. Literally the only person with him at that moment was Virtue Brattle-Chance, an African kid—not African American, but literally from Africa.
And literally a kid, though he was strangely solemn. In fact he was downright gloomy. He and his brothers and sisters, the adopted children of very famous, very rich movie-star parents, had once inhabited San Francisco de Sales Island. But when Caine had found his way to the island, they had found their way off it.
There was, to put it mildly, some history between Caine and the Brattle-Chance kids. Some violent, disturbing history.
But Virtue was efficient in his own morose way. Tell Choo, as everyone called him, to deliver a message, and it got delivered. Tell Choo to go see if anyone was working the cabbage fields, and you got a thorough and accurate answer.
But he was no Drake. He wasn’t even a Turk. There was no chance of Choo beating someone up, let alone killing them for you. He wasn’t a henchman; he was an administrative assistant.
Caine missed henchmen.
More, he missed Diana.
It was sad to think that he now looked back on the early days of the FAYZ as the good old days. Once, he had ruled Coates Academy. Once, he had ridden in a blaze of glory—well, an unsteady convoy of inexpertly driven cars—into Perdido Beach. Once, Orc and his bullies, and Drake, and Pack Leader, and even Penny had been his right arms.
Well, Penny had turned out to be a treacherous lunatic. Pack Leader had been killed, and the replacement Pack Leader, too. Drake had gone to serve the gaiaphage. And Orc had cleaned himself up and gotten religion.
If there was one thing worse than a bellowing, roaring-drunk Orc, it was Orc quoting—misquoting, usually—scripture.
The hangers-on like Turk and that sniveling little creep Bug had ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Bug still crept around using his invisibility power to spy on people—yet without ever bringing Caine any useful intelligence—and when he wasn’t watching people pick their noses, he was stealing food and causing pointless conflicts.
Slowly, inexorabl
y, Caine’s control had been diminished. His great ambitions had died. Now he had far more responsibility than power. Some kids still called him king, but it wasn’t the same when they did it ironically rather than fearfully.
Oh, he could still use his telekinetic power to toss kids around randomly, throwing them through walls or out into the ocean, but what was the point? He didn’t need dead kids; he needed someone to go and pick the lousy cabbages. Albert had always taken care of that, but Albert had jumped ship and sailed off to the island with a load of missiles.
Caine missed Albert.
Caine missed henchmen.
But most of all he missed Diana. He could see her if he closed his eyes. He could remember every detail of her body and face. Lips? Yes, he remembered her mouth. The smoothness of her skin? Yes, definitely, yes, he remembered.
“When kids get hungry enough they’ll pick vegetables,” Virtue said.
“Choo, you don’t know people, do you? What they’ll do is panic and freak out. Start robbing each other and most likely burn down whatever is left of town. People are idiots, Choo. Always remember that: people are faithless, backstabbing, weak, creepy, stupid, lazy idiots.”
Virtue blinked and said nothing.
Caine looked around at his current lair—a desk Caine had levitated out onto the landing at the top of the church steps that looked down onto the town plaza. He had a rolling chair. And a desk.
He missed his previous lairs. This lair sucked.
He never should have left the island. He’d been there with Diana and Penny. He could have tossed Penny off a cliff and been fine on the island. Decent food, a beautiful mansion, electricity, and a soft bed with Diana in it.
What had he been thinking, leaving the island?
He missed Diana busting him. He missed her snarky voice. He missed her eye rolls and that skeptical look she had where she’d half close her eyes and look at him like he was too dumb to merit her full attention. He’d have killed, or at least injured, anyone else who treated him like that. But she wasn’t anyone else.
He missed her hair. Her neck. Her breasts.
She understood him. She loved him, in her own way. And if he had listened to her, he’d still be on the island. Somehow he would have found some fuel to keep the lights on there. Probably. And the food would have run out and then they’d have starved, but hey, this was the FAYZ, where all you could really hope to do was delay the pain.