THIRTY-EIGHT
74 HOURS, 10 MINUTES
“ASTRID,” EDILIO SAID. “I’m so sorry about your house.”
Astrid squeezed Edilio’s hand. “Yeah. I have to admit, it was hard for me to see.”
“You could stay over at the firehouse with me and Sam and Quinn,” Edilio offered.
“It’s okay. Petey and I are going to room with Mother Mary and Brother John for a while. They’re hardly ever home. And when they are, well, you know, it’s good to have people around.”
The three of them, Edilio, Astrid, and Little Pete, were in the office that had once belonged to the mayor of Perdido Beach and most recently had been occupied by Caine Soren. Sam had resisted the idea of taking the office, feeling it made him seem self-important. But Astrid had argued that symbols were important and kids wanted to think that someone was in charge.
She settled Little Pete into a chair and handed him a Baggie full of Rice Chex. Little Pete liked to eat them plain, no milk.
“Where’s Sam?” Astrid asked. “And why are we here?”
Edilio looked uncomfortable. “We have something to show you.”
Sam opened the door. He did not smile at Astrid. He looked warily at Little Pete. He said hello, then, “Astrid, there’s something you need to see. And I’m thinking Little Pete shouldn’t see.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sam flopped into the chair last occupied by Caine. Astrid was struck by how alike the two boys looked superficially. And by how different a reaction she had to their similar features. Where Caine hid his arrogance and cruelty beneath a smooth, controlled surface, Sam let his emotions play out on his face. Right now he was sad and weary and concerned.
“I wonder if L. P. could sit with Edilio in the other room.”
“That sounds ominous,” Astrid said. The expression on Sam’s face did not contradict her.
She managed to get Little Pete to move, though not without a struggle. Edilio stayed with him.
Sam had a DVD in his hand. He said, “Yesterday I sent Edilio to the power plant to get two things. First, a cache of automatic weapons from the guardhouse.”
“Machine guns?”
“Yeah. Not just for us to have, but to make sure the other side doesn’t get them.”
“Now we have an arms race,” Astrid said.
Her tone seemed to irritate Sam. “You want me to leave them for Caine?”
“I wasn’t criticizing, just…you know. Ninth graders with machine guns: it’s hard to make that a happy story.”
Sam relented. He even grinned. “Yeah. The phrase ‘ninth graders with machine guns’ isn’t exactly followed by ‘have a nice day.’”
“No wonder you looked so grim.” As soon as she said it, she knew she was wrong. He had something else to tell her. Something worse. The DVD.
“I’ve been wondering, like you, why the FAYZ seems to be centered on the power plant. Ten miles in every direction. Why? So Edilio went through some of the security video at the plant.”
Astrid stood up so suddenly, she surprised herself. “I really shouldn’t leave Petey alone.”
“You know what this DVD will show, don’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “You guessed it that first night. I remember, we were looking at the video map. You put your arm around Little Pete and you gave me a very weird look. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of that look.”
“I didn’t know you then,” Astrid said. “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
Sam slid the DVD into the player and switched on the TV. “The sound quality is pretty bad.”
Astrid saw the control room of the power plant from a high vantage point with a wide angle.
The camera showed the control room. Five adults, three men and two women. One of them was Astrid’s father. The image brought a lump to her throat. There he was, her father, rocking in his chair, joking with the woman at the next station, leaning forward to fill out some paperwork.
And sitting in a chair against the far wall, his face lit by the glow of his omnipresent Game Boy, was Little Pete.
The only sound was muddy, unintelligible conversation.
“Here it comes,” Sam said.
Suddenly a Klaxon sounded, harsh and distorted on the audio.
Everyone in the control room jumped. People rushed to the monitors, to the instrument readouts. Astrid’s father shot a worried glance at his son, but then leaned into his monitor, staring.
Other people swept into the room and moved with practiced efficiency to the untended monitors.
Panicky instructions were shouted back and forth.
A second alarm went off, more shrill than the first.
A strobe warning light was flashing.
Fear on every face.
And Little Pete was rocking frantically, his hands pressed over his ears. He had a look of pain on his innocent face.
The ten adults now in the room were a terrifying pantomime of controlled desperation. Keyboards were punched, switches thrown. Her father grabbed a thick manual and began snapping through the pages, and all the while people shouted and the alarms blared and Little Pete was screaming, screaming, hands over his ears.
“I don’t want to see this,” Astrid said, but she couldn’t look away.
Little Pete jumped to his feet.
He ran to his father, but his father, frantic, pushed him away. Little Pete went sprawling against a chair. He ended up flung against the long table, staring at a monitor that flashed, flashed, flashed a warning in bright red.
The number fourteen.
“Code one-four,” Astrid said dully. “I heard my dad say that one time. It’s the code for a core meltdown. He would make a joke out of it. Code one-one, that was minor trouble, code one-two, you worry, code one-three, you call the governor, code one-four, you pray. The next stage, code one-five, is…obliteration.”
On the tape, Little Pete pulled his hands from his ears.
The Klaxon was relentless.
There was a flash that blanked out the tape. Several seconds of static.
When the picture stabilized, the warning alarm was silent.
And Little Pete was alone.
“Astrid, you’ll notice that the time signature on the tape says November tenth, ten eighteen A.M. The exact time when every person over the age of fourteen disappeared.”
On the tape, Little Pete stopped crying.
He didn’t even look around, he just walked back to the chair where he had been sitting, retrieved his game, and resumed play.
“Little Pete caused the FAYZ,” Sam said flatly.
Astrid covered her face with her hands. She was surprised by the tears she felt rising, and their force. She struggled to keep from sobbing. It was a few minutes before she could speak. Sam waited patiently.
“He didn’t know he was doing it,” Astrid said in a low, unsteady voice. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Not the way we do. Not like, if I do ‘this,’ then ‘that’ will happen.”
“I know that.”
“You can’t blame him.” Astrid looked up, eyes blazing defiantly.
“Blame him?” Sam moved to sit beside her on the couch. Close enough that their legs were touching. “Astrid, I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, but I think you overlooked something.”
She turned her tear-stained face to him, searching.
“Astrid, they were having a meltdown. They didn’t seem to be getting it under control. They all looked pretty scared.”
Astrid gasped. Sam was right: she had missed it. “He stopped the meltdown. A meltdown might have killed everyone in Perdido Beach.”
“Yeah. I’m not crazy about the way he did it, but he may have saved everyone’s life.”
“He stopped the meltdown,” Astrid said, still not grasping it fully.
Sam grinned. He even laughed.
“What’s funny?” she demanded.
“I figured something out before Astrid the Genius. I am totally enjoying that. I’m just g
oing to gloat here for a minute.”
“Enjoy it, it may never happen again,” Astrid said.
“Oh, believe me, I know that.” He took her hand, and she was very glad to feel his touch. “He saved us. But he also created this whole weird thing.”
“Not the whole thing,” Astrid said, shaking her head. “The mutations prefigure the FAYZ. Indeed, the mutations were the sine qua non of the FAYZ. The thing without which the FAYZ could not have occurred.”
Sam refused to be impressed. “You can hammer me all you want with your ‘indeeds’ and your ‘prefigures’ and your ‘sine qua nons,’ I am still gloating here.”
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed his fingers.
Then she released him, stood up, paced across the room and back, stopped, and said, “Diana. She talks about it being like cell phone bars. Two bars, three bars. Caine is a four bar. You are, too, I would guess. Petey…I guess he’s a five or a seven.”
“Or a ten,” Sam agreed.
“But Diana thinks it’s like reception. Like some of us can get better reception. If that’s true, then we aren’t generating the power, just using it, focusing it.”
“So?”
“So where’s it coming from? To extend the analogy: Where’s the cell phone tower? What is generating the power?”
Sam rose with a sigh. “One thing for sure: This never gets out. Edilio knows, I know, and you know. No one else can ever know.”
Astrid nodded. “People would hate him. Or try to use him.”
Sam nodded. “I wish…”
“No,” Astrid said, and shrugged helplessly. “There’s no way to get him to undo it.”
“That’s a pity,” Sam said, making a wry smile that did not reach his eyes. “Because tick-tock, tick-tock.”
Lana stumbled through the night.
Back with the coyotes. A nightmare revisited.
And now, adding to the misery, Drake and Howard stumbled along with her.
Drake with his gun. Drake cursing his pain.
And Howard calling, “Orc, Orc,” into the night.
Greater than any misery, the dread of that mine shaft and what lay at the bottom.
She had disobeyed the Darkness.
What would the seething monster do to her?
“Let’s stop and I’ll try to fix Drake’s arm, okay?” she pleaded.
“No stop,” Pack Leader snarled.
“Let me try, at least.”
Pack Leader ignored her, and they ran and tripped and picked themselves up and ran some more.
No escape now. No possibility of escape.
Unless.
She maneuvered closer to Drake. “What if he won’t let me heal you?”
“Don’t try to play me,” Drake said tersely. “Anyway, now I want to see this thing that has you so terrified.”
“No, you don’t,” Lana promised.
“What is it?” Howard asked, nervous, almost as scared as Lana herself.
Lana had no answer to that question.
Each step was harder than the one before, and several times Pack Leader nipped at her to move her along. When he didn’t, Drake did, waving his gun at her, threatening her with word and gesture and look.
They reached the abandoned mining camp after the moon had set and as the stars were just fading before the promise of dawn.
She had never felt such dread. It was as if her blood had all been drained and replaced with a cold sludge. She could barely move. Her heart beat in loud, shuddering thumps in her chest. She wanted to pet Patrick, to take some tiny measure of comfort from him, but she couldn’t make herself bend, couldn’t bring herself to speak. She held herself tightly contained, silent, rigid.
I’m going to die here, Lana thought.
“Human light,” Pack Leader slurred. He indicated a flashlight lying wedged between the rocks. Howard leaped at it and switched it on. His hand shook so badly, the light danced across rock walls sending shadows flying like swift-moving ghosts.
Now even Drake seemed leery, frightened of something he couldn’t quite explain. He was asking questions, ever more agitated as they stepped into the icebox chill of the mine.
“Someone needs to tell me what we’re going to see,” Drake insisted.
“I need to know what we’re up to,” Drake said.
“Maybe we better talk about our deal,” Drake said.
“How much farther?” Drake said.
But all the while, they moved down the shaft.
Lana had to force each breath. Had to remind herself: Breathe. Breathe.
Patrick was gone. He’d abandoned them at the mouth of the mine.
“Man, I…I can’t do this,” Howard said. “I gotta…I…” He was gasping for breath.
“Shut up,” Drake snapped, glad to have someone to take out his frustrations on.
Howard turned suddenly and bolted, taking the flashlight with him.
Pack Leader yipped a command and two coyotes went in pursuit.
With the flashlight gone, Lana could see the faint green glow from the walls. Darkness behind. The Darkness ahead.
“Let him go,” Drake said.
“Howard’s not important,” Drake said.
“I’m important,” Drake said. His voice was small.
Lana closed her eyes tight, but somehow the green glow penetrated her eyelids, as though it could shine right through her flesh, right through the bone of her skull.
She could go no farther. She sank to her knees.
Close enough. It was there, just ahead, just around that last bend, a moving, sliding, grinding pile of glowing rock.
The soundless voice was a cudgel slamming her head. The Darkness thrust invisible fingers of ice into her mind, and Lana knew that she herself was speaking its words.
“The healer,” she cried in a tortured, manic parody of her own voice.
She kept her eyes shut but could feel Drake kneeling beside her.
“Why do you come to me?” Lana cried, a puppet, nothing but a tool for the Darkness to use.
“The coyote…,” Drake managed.
“Faithful Pack Leader,” the Darkness said through Lana. “Obedient, but not yet equal to a human.”
Open your eyes, Lana told herself. Be brave. Be brave. See it, face it, fight it. But the darkness was in her skull, pushing and prodding, peeking inside her secrets, laughing at her pathetic resistance.
And yet, she opened her eyes. A lifelong habit of defiance gave her the strength. But she kept her eyes cast down, strong enough to force them open, too terrified to look on the face of the thing itself.
The rocks under her knees glowed.
She was touching it, touching the hem of it.
Pack Leader groveled, lowering himself to the floor of the cave beside Lana, crawling on his belly.
Suddenly, Lana felt an electric shock of terrifying force. Her back arched, her head went back, her arms flew wide.
A pain like an icicle stabbing her eye and searing her brain.
She tried to scream, but no sound would come out.
Then it was gone and she fell onto her back, legs folded beneath her. She gasped like a landed fish, unable to fill her lungs.
“Defiance,” she croaked in a voice not her own.
“She’s supposed to fix my arm,” Drake said. “If you kill her, she can’t help me.”
“You are bold to make demands,” the Darkness said through Lana.
“I’m not…it’s…I want my arm back,” Drake shouted raggedly.
Lana found she could breathe again. She sucked in oxygen. She pushed out against the floor, scooted inch by inch away from the Darkness.
Drake shrieked in agony. Lana saw him as she had been, like he’d grabbed a power line. His body jerked like a marionette.
The Darkness released him.
“Ah,” the Darkness said, and twisted Lana’s mouth into a rictus. “I have found a much better teacher for you, Pack Leader.”
Pack Leader had dared to stand up. He kept
his tail and head aligned in a submissive posture. He glanced at Drake, who had now been released and was doubled over, clutching his arm in pain.
“This human will teach you to kill humans,” Lana said.
Drake spoke as though each syllable was an effort. “Yes. But…my arm.”
“Give me the arm,” Lana said and, unwilling, crawled to Drake.
Drake stood up, shaky but determined. He extended the burned, sawed-off stump.
“I will give you an arm such as no human ever had,” the Darkness said through Lana. “You have no magic within you, human, but the girl will serve.”
Drake moved with surprising speed. He pivoted and yanked Lana up by her hair. “Take my arm,” he hissed.
She placed her trembling hand against the melted flesh, feeling the fresh-cut bone beneath it, wanting to throw up.
The glow deepened. Lana felt her entire body filled with it, not hot but cold, as cold as ice.
Drake’s flesh was growing.
She could feel it moving beneath her fingers. But it wasn’t human flesh.
Not human flesh at all.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Drake breathed. “Yes.”
THIRTY-NINE
36 HOURS, 37 MINUTES
“And sometimes when you lie to me
Sometimes I’ll lie to you
And there isn’t a thing you could possibly do
All these half-destroyed lives
Aren’t as bad as they seem
But now I see blood and I hear people scream
Then I wake up
And it’s just another bad dream…”
SAM SANG ALONG to the Agent Orange tune on his iPod, feeling as if the familiar lyrics had crossed the line from being just another self-consciously disturbing song to being too close to describing his life.
He was in the fire station not exactly enjoying a lonely lunch. Quinn was…well, he never seemed to know where Quinn was anymore. His friend—was that word even appropriate? His friend Quinn was a shadow who came and went, sometimes joking like his old self, sometimes sitting sullen and watching DVDs he’d seen a million times before.
In any case, he wasn’t there for lunch at the fire station, despite the fact that Sam had made enough soup for extra mouths.
Edilio materialized silently in the doorway. He looked discouraged. Sam realized he’d been singing aloud and, embarrassed, dialed down the music and pulled out the earbuds.