Plague

  One bug dead, one trying to get ashore, and the third still very dangerous.

  “Jack!” Sam shouted. “The mast! On that boat!”

  Jack frowned in confusion, then he nodded. He leaped onto a nearby sailboat, grabbed the aluminum mast, planted his feet, and, with a Herculean effort and a sound like a slow-motion chainsaw, ripped the mast out.

  Dekka raised her hands and the rushing bug motored its legs helplessly in the air. It would only hold for a few seconds, but that’s all Jack needed.

  “Okay, Dekka, drop him!” Jack cried.

  Dekka dropped the creature.

  Jack lifted the mast—a thirty-foot-long spear—over his head and stabbed it straight at the bug’s mouth.

  The first thrust missed but gouged out one of the bug’s blue eyes.

  Jack backed up to the end of the dock and ran at the creature. “Yaaaahhhh!”

  He slammed the mast into its mouth and pushed madly, frantically, feet snapping deck planks, until the top of the mast suddenly burst through the creature’s side in a squishy explosion of guts and goo.

  Sam started to push himself back up onto the dock but his hands were blistered. Jack had to heft him up by his armpits.

  “Where’s Brittney?” Sam demanded.

  Dekka shook her head.

  “She ran away,” Toto said. “But she seemed to be changing. One arm was . . .” He didn’t seem to have words for it.

  “Like a snake. A whip hand,” Dekka supplied.

  “Yes,” Toto said. Then, “I’m ready to go back home now.”

  “I can barely walk,” Sam said. He had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out in pain. The skin of his heel was gone, a chunk sliced out of it. He was bleeding all over the dock.

  Sam slipped off his wet shirt and wrapped it awkwardly around his foot, making a very poor bandage.

  “Let’s get out of here while we can. Drake will be back, with the rest of his army, and then we’re bug food for sure.”

  Sam started hobbling but Jack grabbed him and hefted him up onto his shoulders. It was ludicrous: Sam was a head taller and quite a bit broader than Jack. But for Jack it was as easy as carrying a baby.

  “You rocked, Jack,” Sam said.

  Dekka slapped Jack on the back. “Got that right.”

  Jack beamed although he tried not to show it. Then his face went green and he set Sam down and vomited onto a bush.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess it made me sick.”

  “Nerves, dude,” Sam said. “Been there. Let’s get out of here. Back the way we came. Drake will expect us to take the most direct route back to town and if he catches us out in the open we’re done for.”

  “What happens when he gets to town with those creatures?” Dekka asked.

  “Edilio’s got Orc—I hope. Plus Brianna. Taylor. He’s got his soldiers, although I doubt guns will work too well unless they can shoot through the mouths.” Sam shook his head.

  His imagination went to Astrid. Too many awful pictures of what could happen to her crowded his head.

  Could they reach town quickly enough to help in the fight? Maybe with him and Jack and Dekka joining the others they could stop Drake. Maybe.

  Did Edilio even guess what was coming his way? Was he preparing? Had he found a way? Sam had not. Again and again he tried to find the way to win. Tried to imagine the scenario that would defeat this enemy.

  Again and again he came back to the realization that there were only two people with the power to stop the creatures.

  One: Caine. And Caine was far off on the island.

  The other: Little Pete. He was far off on a different sort of island inside his own damaged mind.

  Caine and Little Pete.

  “Listen, guys,” Sam said, “I don’t see a winning move here. Not from me, anyway. It’s going to be on Edilio and the people back in town. I don’t even know if they know what’s coming. So we have to warn them.”

  “How?” Dekka asked.

  “Jack.”

  Jack had been leaning forward. He stood back suddenly.

  “Jack can move faster without us. With his strength comes a certain amount of speed. And he won’t tire as fast as we will. Hills don’t bother him, so he can go right over the hills, a straight line.”

  “Yeah,” Dekka admitted. “That makes sense. And don’t get me wrong, Jack’s become a hero and all. But is that enough? I’ve done the math, same as you have. Orc and Jack and Brianna?”

  “There are two who could do it,” Sam said. “Caine. He might be able to do it.”

  Dekka snarled. “Caine?”

  “Either him or Little Pete,” Sam said.

  “Little Pete?” Jack looked puzzled.

  Sam sighed. “Little Pete. He’s not exactly just Astrid’s autistic brother.” He explained briefly while Toto added a chorus of “Sam believes that’s true” remarks.

  “How do we get Little Pete to do anything?” Dekka asked.

  “The last time Little Pete felt mortal danger he made the FAYZ,” Sam said. “He needs to be in mortal danger again.”

  Jack and Dekka exchanged a wary look, each wondering what the other had known or guessed about Little Pete.

  “Little Pete?” Jack asked. “That little kid has that kind of power?”

  “Yes,” Sam said simply. “Next to Pete, me, Caine, all of us, we’re like . . . like popguns compared to a cannon. We don’t even know what the limits of his powers are,” Sam said. “What we do know is we can’t communicate with him very well. We can’t even guess what he’s thinking.”

  “Little Pete,” Dekka muttered and shook her head. “I knew he was important, I got that a long time ago. But he can do that? He has that kind of power?” She pondered for a moment, nodded, and said, “I see why you kept it secret. It’s like having a nuclear weapon in the hands of, well, a little autistic kid.”

  Sam stood up, winced as he rested his weight on his hurt heel. He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Tell Edilio to get Caine, if they can do it in time. If not, Jack, you go and get Little Pete.”

  “And do what with Little Pete?” Jack asked, obviously horrified at the entire idea and still getting his head around the fact that the little boy was the most powerful being in their universe.

  Sam knew the answer. He knew what might be the only winning move. He had told Brittney he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He wasn’t. And this wasn’t even his job anymore, was it?

  And yet . . . And yet he could see a possible solution.

  “You pick him up, Jack. Carry him to the closest one of those bugs you can find.”

  “Yeah?” Jack asked in a quavering voice.

  “Toss him to the bug,” Sam said.

  • • •

  Drake’s whip was curled around the mandible of the largest of the creatures, now racing toward the south, away from the lake. He had to lean almost flat forward to stay on, legs spread behind him.

  Where was Sam Temple? They should have caught him by now if he had come this way.

  Bring me Nemesis.

  The voice in Drake’s head was louder, more insistent than it had ever been.

  With his free hand he pounded the side of his head, trying to knock it away, trying to silence that insistent demand.

  Bring him to me.

  In his mind’s eye he saw Coates, his old school, his former home. The grim, Gothic main building, the gloomy vale around it, the iron gate. The picture was his own memory but it was the Darkness demanding he look at it, see it, and understand.

  Nemesis was there. There!

  Bring him!

  But Drake had other needs. His overlord might need this Nemesis, whatever that was, but he, Drake, had an equally powerful need: to kill Sam Temple.

  Sam Temple had cost him his arm. He had destroyed his old life, left him trapped in this disgusting union with Brittney Pig.

  Sam, who had kept him caged like an animal.

  And now Sam had escaped death again. Beaten Drake again. And he was nowhere
in sight, gone!

  “Sam!” Drake howled in frustration. “Sam!”

  The bug moved quickly and the wind snatched Drake’s cry away, but he howled at the night again. “Sam! I’m coming to kill you!”

  No answer. And no sight of Sam or the others. Surely they would be rushing back to Perdido Beach, and yet they were nowhere in view and with each passing second Drake could be moving farther from them.

  Bring me Nemesis!

  No. Nemesis could wait. Drake served the Darkness but he was not just some errand boy. He had his own needs.

  If he couldn’t catch Sam out here in the open, then he would beat him to Perdido Beach. He would be waiting when Sam got there. Waiting with whip wrapped around Astrid.

  His mind flooded with pictures, lovely pictures of Sam helpless under his whip. And yet he would not kill Sam Temple, no, not until Sam had watched him reduce Astrid to a hideous skinless monster.

  The vision was so clear in his head, so wonderful, it filled him with light and joy and a pleasure he could not even describe.

  Nemesis!

  “I’ll get your Nemesis,” Drake muttered. “But first . . .”

  Drake’s army rushed at breakneck speed away from the lake, scampering up the long slope that led from the lake to the dry lands beyond.

  He felt a wave of fury directed at him. A wave of rage that shook him to his core. The dark tendril was wrapped around his brain, filling his thoughts, demanding, threatening. Nemesis!

  “No!” Drake shouted.

  The reaction was immediate. The swarm stopped dead in its tracks.

  “They’re my army. My army!” Drake bellowed. His own hatreds were too strong to be denied. And he might even have defied the gaiaphage. But as Drake stood agonizing, hatred contending with fear, he lost the ability to make the decision.

  The choice of whether to pursue Nemesis or terrorize Per-dido Beach would be Brittney’s to make.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  1 HOUR, 39 MINUTES

  SAM HOBBLED ALONG more quickly than he had hoped. He leaned on Toto and benefited as well from Dekka walking behind him and lessening gravity beneath them.

  He felt low. All the lower because he’d actually managed just a little bit of hope earlier. He’d actually allowed himself to believe that things might be better now that they’d found the lake and the train.

  But this was the FAYZ. And just because they were due for some good news didn’t mean any was coming. In the space of a very few hours he had gone from the heights of optimism to utter despair.

  Over and over again in his mind he played out the likely scenarios. Edilio would have his guys, plus Brianna, Taylor, hopefully Orc. If Jack reached town in time he would fight as well; Jack had really stepped up.

  But it wasn’t enough. Even if he and Dekka were there, it might not be enough. So instead of saving the town and showing them salvation in the form of water, noodles, and Nutella, Sam knew he would arrive back at a town devastated.

  Some were sure to survive. Surely, some.

  Maybe Little Pete would save Astrid. He had the power. But was he aware? Did any of this penetrate to wherever his mind was?

  “Do you think he’ll do it?” Dekka asked. “Jack, I mean.”

  “No,” Sam said.

  “No,” Dekka agreed.

  “True,” Toto said, although whether he was agreeing with them or just automatically certifying that they believed what they were saying, Sam could not say.

  “He’s not that guy,” Sam said. “He’s not ruthless. Anyway, what are the odds he could even get to town and find Little Pete? And then, who knows if even that would shock Pete into doing anything.”

  “You would do it, Sam.”

  “Yeah. I would do it,” Sam said.

  “He would,” Toto agreed.

  “It’s your gift, Sam,” Dekka said. “It has been right from the start.”

  “Ruthlessness?”

  “I guess that doesn’t sound so good,” Dekka said wearily. “But someone has to do it. We each contribute what we have.”

  Sam winced as his heel brushed a stone. “Probably wouldn’t work anyway. The Pete thing, I mean.”

  “The train,” Dekka said. “Those missiles.”

  “I thought about that,” Sam said. “But how would we get them to town? How would we even figure out how to use them?”

  Sam stopped limping.

  Dekka stopped, too, after a few steps. Toto kept walking, oblivious.

  “Dekka?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How high does your power go? I mean, you cancel gravity, right? So things float upward.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “I’ve seen you levitate yourself. I mean, you cancel gravity right beneath you and you float upward, right? Well, how high can you go?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “If I’m projecting it, you know, like I want to make it happen somewhere else, I can only reach maybe fifty feet or so. Maybe a little more.”

  “Okay, but that’s you hitting it at kind of an angle, right? I mean, you’re sort of shooting across gravity because gravity goes straight down.”

  Dekka looked at him strangely. She spread her hands by her side. Immediately she began to rise, along with dirt and rock, a pillar of it.

  Sam watched as she rose, staying well back from the swirl of debris.

  In the dark he quickly lost sight of her.

  “Dekka!” He tilted his head back, trying to make her out against the background of black velvet and pinpoint lights.

  “Where is Dekka?” Toto asked.

  “Up there.”

  “That is true,” Toto said.

  “Yeah. Watch where you step, unless you want to go floating, too.”

  It seemed like a long time before Dekka finally appeared amid falling gravel. She floated easily down, regained her footing, and said, “Okay, more than fifty feet, that’s for sure. I don’t know how far I went, but a long way. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it works better when I’m canceling gravity straight down. But I can only fly straight up. So if you’re thinking I can go all airborne and fly to town, that’s not happening.”

  “I’m thinking,” Sam said, “that the FAYZ is a big bubble. Like a . . . what are those things with water inside and you shake them up with snow and—”

  “A snow globe,” Toto supplied.

  “Like a snow globe. And if you have a bubble inside that snow globe, what does it do? It rises to the top, right?”

  “The top of this bubble is probably directly over the power plant,” Dekka said. “I mean, if the FAYZ is a perfect sphere.”

  “Okay, tell me if this makes sense.” Sam frowned, trying to work it through as he talked. “The train is near the northern wall of the FAYZ. So if you were standing there and you canceled gravity . . .”

  “You’d go scraping along the wall—very painfully—until you reached the top. Like a bubble rising to the top of a snow globe.”

  “There are cars at the power plant. I mean, ones that have been used more recently, within the last month, cars Edilio drove there. So the batteries should still work. A lot have had their gas drained, but we wouldn’t need much.” He was thinking out loud. Not even paying attention to Toto’s repeated “He believes it, it’s true, Spidey” remarks.

  “I can’t beat the bugs,” Sam said. “My power doesn’t work on them. Not well enough, anyway. But they can be crushed. And I think maybe they can be blown up.”

  “Are you talking about those missile launchers in the train?” Dekka asked.

  “I’m talking about exactly that,” Sam said. “You raise that container of missiles. You fly it to the top of the dome. You bring it down by the power plant. We find a vehicle with a gallon of gas and we go tearing for Perdido Beach.” He shrugged. “Then we see how these bugs like the M3-MAAWS, Multi-role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapons System.”

  Caine walked the few blocks from the town hall to the highway alone. A gunslinger out of some old cowboy movie.
br />   Kids followed him, but at a safe distance. A dozen of them crowded just inside the busted-out plate glass window of an insurance company. A couple more found seats in parked cars.

  Good, let them watch as I save their butts, Caine thought.

  But now, alone, standing in the middle of the highway astride the old divider line, he was far from confident. How many of the creatures would come? How large were they? How powerful?

  Were they already watching him, out there in the dark?

  And what about Drake? Would there be a chance for him to win Drake over? Drake could still be a very useful number two guy. Unless he was determined to be number one.

  Fighting these superbugs plus Drake? Suddenly the island seemed very, very inviting.

  He could walk away right now. Diana and him, just the two of them, alone on the island. Stick the townies with Penny and Bug. Just him and Diana. Food, luxury, sex. Wasn’t that infinitely better than this battle?

  An old suspicion shadowed his thoughts: was he being played? The Darkness had used him before. Was this the gaiaphage’s will reaching into his mind again?

  He didn’t feel it. He hadn’t felt the Darkness at all while on the island. Even before that, from the point where Caine had defied the Darkness, the gaiaphage had left him alone.

  No. This was his own decision. But why? Why give up the island? For what? To be torn apart by monsters hatched in human bodies? Even if he survived, what would he face? Artichokes and fish, resentment, probably a fight with Sam, and Diana’s sullen withdrawal.

  “King Caine! Yeah!”

  He rounded quickly, angry, assuming it was a taunt. A boy in the insurance company raised a fist and yelled, “Wooooh!”

  Caine nodded in his direction.

  Sheep. So long as they had a shepherd to ward off the wolves, they were happy. Spineless, indifferent, weak, stupid: it was hard not to have complete contempt for them.

  Of course, if he failed, they’d turn on him in a heartbeat.

  Then again, if he failed, they’d be busy running for their lives.

  A sudden flash of silver down the highway.

  Caine peered into the dark. No light, of course, not even a Sammy sun up here by the main road. Just a little moonlight and a little starlight and a whole lot of dark.