Astrid steeled herself for a necessary experiment. She stuck out one finger and touched the black portion of the barrier.
“Ahhh!” She cursed under her breath. It still hurt to touch. That hadn’t changed.
As she threaded her way through dense bushes and emerged into a blessed clearing, she considered the problem of measuring the advance of the stain. Here, too, she saw rising fingers of darkness, not as high as the others she’d seen, and thinner. She watched one of the stains closely for half an hour, anxious at wasting time but wanting to have some kind of observation. The scientifically inclined part of her brain had survived intact where other aspects had diminished or disappeared.
It was growing. At first she missed it because she’d been waiting for the stain to rise higher and instead it had thickened.
“Still remember how to calculate the surface area of a sphere?” Astrid asked herself. “Four pi r squared.”
She did the math in her head as she walked. The diameter of the barrier was twenty miles, which made r half that. Ten miles.
“Four times pi is roughly twelve point six; r squared is a hundred. So the surface area is twelve point six times a hundred. One thousand two hundred and sixty square miles. Of course, half that is underground or underwater, so six hundred and thirty square miles of dome.
“It’s all a question of how fast the stain is spreading,” Astrid told herself, taking pleasure from the precision of numbers.
How long until the dome was dark? Astrid wondered.
Because Astrid had very little doubt that the stain would continue spreading.
Into her head came a memory from long ago: Sam admitting to her that he was afraid of the dark. It was in his room, in his former home, the place he’d shared with his mother. It was perhaps the reason that in a sudden panic he had created the first of what would come to be known as Sammy suns.
Sam had many more terrible things to be scared of now. Surely he was over that ancient terror.
She hoped so. Because she had a terrible feeling that a very long night was coming.
The baby would not look at her. Diana looked at him even though doing so filled her with sick dread.
He could already walk. But this was a dream, so of course things didn’t have to make sense. It was a dream; she knew that for sure because she knew the baby was not able to walk.
It was inside of her. A living thing inside of her own body. A body within a body. She could picture it in there with its eyes closed, all twisted so that its tiny legs were drawn up to its barrel chest.
Inside her body.
But now in her head, too. In her dream. Refusing to look at her.
You don’t want to show me your eyes, she said.
He was holding something now. Tiny, webbed fetus fingers clutched a doll.
The doll was black and white.
No, Diana begged.
The doll had a pouting, dissatisfied mouth. A small red mouth.
No, Diana begged again, and she was afraid.
The baby seemed to hear her voice and it held the doll out to her. Like it wanted her to take it. But Diana couldn’t take it, because her arms were like lead and so terribly heavy.
Noooo, she moaned. I don’t want to see it.
But the baby wanted her to look; it insisted she look, and she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t look away, could not move or turn or run, and oh, God, she wanted to run.
What is it, Mommy? The voice had no character, just words, not a voice, not a sound, like someone was typing them onto a keyboard so that she could kind of hear but also see the words in letters, bam, bam, bam, each letter thudding in her brain.
What is it, Mommy?
The baby held the black-and-white plush toy in her face and asked again, What is it, Mommy?
She had to answer. No choice now. She had to answer.
Panda, she said, and with that word the full deluge of sadness and self-loathing burst in her mind.
Panda, the baby said, and smiled without teeth, smiled with the panda’s own red mouth.
Diana woke. Opened her eyes.
Tears blurred her vision. She rolled out of the bed. The trailer was tiny, but she kept it clean and neat. She was lucky: the only person other than Sam at the lake to have a place without a roommate.
Panda.
The baby knew. It knew she had eaten part of a boy with the nickname Panda. Her soul was bare to the baby. It could see inside her.
Oh, God, how was she going to be a mother carrying that terrible crime in her soul?
She deserved hell. And she had the terrible suspicion that the baby inside her was the demon sent to conduct her there.
“I don’t like the idea of leaving those missiles just lying there,” Sam said.
Edilio said nothing. He just shifted uneasily and glanced back at the dock to make sure no one was standing around listening for gossip.
Sam, Edilio, Dekka, and Mohamed Kadeer were on the top deck of the houseboat everyone called the White Houseboat. It wasn’t white, exactly, more of a dirty pink, actually. And it looked nothing like the real White House. But it was where the leaders met, up on the open top deck. So White Houseboat it was.
It was also Sam’s home, a home he shared with Dekka, Sinder, Jezzie, and Mohamed.
Mohamed was a nonvoting member of the Lake Tramonto Council. But more important, he was Albert’s liaison at Lake Tramonto.
Some said “liaison.” Some said “spy.” There wasn’t much difference. Sam had decided early on not to try to keep secrets from Albert. Albert had to know what was going on. In any case he would find out: Albert was the FAYZ’s closest thing to a billionaire, although his wealth was measured in the FAYZ currency called ’Bertos, McDonald’s game pieces, food, and jobs.
On the White Houseboat there were two cabins aft, each with a single bunk above a double bed. Sinder and Jezzie shared one of those cabins; Mohamed and Dekka shared the other. Sam had the relatively roomy bow cabin to himself.
“If Caine’s people find out…,” Dekka said.
“Then we may have a problem,” Sam said, nodding. “But we won’t ever use the things. We’ll just be making sure Caine doesn’t use them, either.”
“Yeah, and Caine will buy that explanation because he’s so trusting,” Dekka said mordantly.
The missiles had been part of a desperate ploy to get from the Evanston Air National Guard base to the coast. Dekka had been able to use the crate as a platform that, cut off from gravity by Dekka’s power, would scrape along the barrier.
The plan was decidedly imperfect. It had almost worked. Kind of worked. Worked just well enough. But it had also moved the weapons into a place where they might be found.
Found and used.
The fifth person on the deck was not a part of the council. He was a boy called Toto. Toto had been found in a desert facility—or part of a facility with the rest beyond the barrier—that had kept him imprisoned in order to study the mutations occurring in the Perdido Beach area.
The facility had been set up before the coming of the FAYZ. The government had known of, or at least suspected, the very odd things beginning to occur in the months before the barrier.
Toto was probably close to being clinically insane. He’d been alone—all alone—for seven months. He still had a tendency to talk to Spider-Man. No longer his old Styrofoam Spider-Man bust—which Sam had incinerated in a moment of irritation—but the ghost of that former bust. Which was decidedly crazy. But crazy or not, he had the power to instantly determine truth from lie.
Even when it was inconvenient.
Now Toto said, “Sam is not telling the truth.”
“I have no intention of using the missiles,” Sam said heatedly.
“True,” Toto said blandly. “But not true when you said you won’t ever use them.” Then, in a furtive aside, he added, “Sam thinks he may have to use them.”
Sam gritted his teeth. Toto was extremely useful. Except when he wasn’t.
“I think w
e might have all guessed that, Toto,” Dekka said.
Dekka had recovered her strength after the shocking ordeal she’d endured from the infestation of bugs. She had not entirely recovered from what she’d thought was her deathbed confession to Brianna. Even now the two girls could barely be in the same room together without awkwardness.
Dekka had never told Sam exactly what she’d whispered into Brianna’s ear. But he was pretty sure he knew. Dekka was in love with Brianna. And Brianna had evidently not felt the same way.
“Yes, she might have guessed it,” Toto said, speaking now to his sleeve.
“Mohamed, what is Albert’s feeling about this?”
Mohamed had a habit of taking a long pause before answering any question. Even “How are you?” It was probably one of the things that endeared him to Albert, who had grown suspicious, some might even say paranoid, about secrecy.
“Albert has never spoken to me about this. I don’t know whether he knows about these missiles or not.”
“Uh-huh,” Dekka said, and rolled her eyes. She held her palm out to Toto. “Don’t even bother, Toto; we all know that’s baloney.”
But Toto said, “He’s telling the truth.”
Mohamed took another long pause. He was a good-looking kid with the barest beginning of whiskers on his upper lip. “But, of course, now that I know, I’ll have to tell him.”
“If we leave them where they are, sooner or later someone’s going to find them,” Sam said.
Edilio said, “Dude, all due respect, you’re trying to talk yourself into this.”
“Why would I do that?” Sam demanded. He sat forward in his chair and widened his arms and legs, sending the message that he had nothing to hide.
Edilio smiled affectionately. “Because we’ve had four months of peace, my friend. And you’re bored.”
“That’s not—” Sam began, but with a glance at Toto fell silent.
“Still, if the missiles have to be somewhere, better with us,” Edilio said reluctantly.
Sam felt a little embarrassed by how eager he was to grab onto that rationale. Okay: so he was bored. It still made sense to secure those weapons.
“Okay,” Sam said. “We grab them. Dekka, it’ll be on you and Jack to move them. We’ll have Brianna check out the area, make sure no one’s around. They’re just inside Caine’s borders. We’ll need to get them across our line as quick as possible. Get them loaded onto a pickup.”
“Burn gas?” Mohamed asked.
“It’s worth the gas,” Sam said.
Mohamed spread his hands apologetically. “Gas is under Albert’s control.”
“Look, if Albert gives us the gas he’s supporting us,” Sam said. “So how about if this once we just do it? It won’t be more than a couple of gallons. We’ll skim from several different tanks so it won’t show on your books.”
Mohamed took an even longer pause than normal. “You never said that, and I never heard you.”
“That’s not true,” Toto said.
“Yeah,” Dekka said, rolling her eyes, “we know.”
“Okay. Tonight,” Sam said. “Breeze out front; Dekka, Jack, and me in the truck. We park the truck and the three of us head to the beach. Hopefully we’re back by morning.”
“What about me, boss?” Edilio asked.
“Deputy mayor is a heavy burden sometimes, dude.” Sam smiled. He felt a rush from the idea of a daring nighttime mission. Edilio was right: running the lake had been boring after the first frantic month. Sam basically hated handling all the little details and decisions. Most of his day was taken up dealing with stupid fights over nothing—kids fighting over ownership of a toy or some food, people slacking off on work they owed to the town, crazy ideas for getting out of the FAYZ, unhappiness over accommodations, violations of sanitary rules. Increasingly—not without a feeling of guilt—he had turned most of it over to Edilio.
It had been months since Sam had been involved in any serious craziness. And this mission had just enough craziness without any real danger.
The meeting broke up. Sam stood up, stretched, and noticed Sinder and Jezzie running along the shore from the eastern end, where they were tending a small, irrigated plot of vegetables.
Something about their body language spelled trouble.
Sam’s houseboat was tied up at the end of the surviving dock. (It had doubled as the stage for the Friday Fun Fest.) He waited until Sinder and Jezzie were below him on the dock.
“Sam!” Sinder gasped. She was in her modified Goth stage—it was hard to find makeup, but she could still manage to find black clothing.
“T’sup, Sinder? Hi, Jezzie.”
Sinder gathered her wits, took a steadying breath, and said, “This is going to sound crazy, but the wall… It’s changing.”
“We were weeding the carrots,” Jezzie said.
“And then we noticed this, like, black stain on the barrier.”
“What?”
“The barrier,” Sinder said. “It’s changing color.”
SIX
43 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
QUINN LEFT HIS crews to unload the catch at the dock. Normally he went straight to Albert to report the day’s haul, but he had a more pressing concern today. He wanted to check on Cigar.
It was still an hour or so to sundown. He wanted to at least yell some encouragement to his friend and crewman.
The plaza was empty. The town was mostly empty—the pickers were in the fields still.
Turk lounged on the steps of town hall. He was asleep with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and his rifle between his crossed legs.
A girl walked across the square with hurried steps. She glanced fearfully toward town hall. Quinn knew her a little, so he gave a small wave. But she glanced at him, shook her head, and scurried off.
Feeling worried now, Quinn headed into the building. He climbed the stairs to the detention room where Cigar would be.
He found the door easily enough. He listened and heard nothing from inside. “Cigar? You in there?”
The door opened, revealing Penny. She was still wearing a summer dress, and she was still barefoot. She blocked the door.
“It’s not time yet,” Penny said.
There was blood on her dress.
Blood on her narrow feet.
Her eyes were feverish. Lit up. Ecstatic.
Quinn took it all in at a glance. “Get out of my way,” Quinn said.
Penny looked at him. Like she was trying to see something inside his head. Considering. Measuring.
Anticipating.
“What have you done, you witch?” Quinn demanded. His breath was coming short. His heart was pounding. The skin on his sunburned arms was cracking, turning deathly white and cracking like dried mud. Deep cracks.
“You’re not threatening me, are you, Quinn?”
The eruption on Quinn’s arm stopped, reversed itself, and his skin was back to what it should be.
“I want to see Cigar,” Quinn said, swallowing his fear.
Penny nodded. “Okay. Okay, Quinn. Come on in.”
Quinn pushed past her.
Cigar was in a corner. He seemed at first to be asleep. But his shirt was soaked with blood.
“Cigar, man. You okay?”
Cigar did not move. Quinn knelt by him and raised his head. It took Quinn a few terrible seconds to make sense of what he was seeing.
Cigar’s eyes were gone. Two black-and-red holes stared from the front of Cigar’s face.
Then Cigar screamed.
Quinn jumped back.
“What have you done? What have you done?”
“I never touched him,” Penny said with a happy laugh. “Look at his fingers! Look at his wrists! He did it all himself. It was funny to watch.”
Quinn’s fist was drawn back before he knew it. Penny’s nose exploded. Her head snapped back hard and she fell on her behind.
Quinn grabbed Cigar’s bloody forearm in a strong grip. Over Cigar’s screams, Quinn said, “We’re goi
ng to Lana.”
Penny snarled and all at once Quinn’s flesh caught fire. He bellowed in terror. The flames quickly burned away his clothing and ate at his flesh.
Quinn knew it wasn’t real. He knew it. But he couldn’t believe it. He could not refuse to feel the agony of the illusion. He could not help but smell the smoke of burning, popping flesh and—
He aimed a desperate kick.
His sneaker caught Penny in the side of her head.
The fire went out instantly.
Penny rolled over, got to her feet, trying to get control of her scattered mind, but Quinn was behind her now and had his powerful arm around her neck.
“I will snap your neck, Penny. I swear to God, I will snap your neck. Nothing you can do will stop me.”
Penny went limp. “You think the king will let you get away with this, Quinn?” she hissed.
“Anyone messes with me, Penny, you or anyone else, and I go on strike. See how well you enjoy life without me and my crews. Without food.”
Quinn shoved her away and took Cigar’s arm again.
Some jobs were tougher than others. Blake and Bonnie had the worst job you could have: maintaining the septic tank. Also known as the Pit.
Dekka had used her powers to help dig the pit, although it had still taken twenty other kids to clear the levitated dirt away. The result was a hole in the ground ten feet deep, twelve feet long, and three feet across. Give or take: no one had exactly used a tape measure.
It was basically one long slit trench. The trench had been covered with an entire side of one of the Nutella train’s steel boxcars. Sam had cut it free and Dekka and Orc had hauled it the miles from the train crash site.
Sam had then burned five two-foot holes in the steel.
And that was where Blake and Bonnie came in. Alone neither of them had any special talent for building, but somehow the two of them joined had a strange sort of genius, recognized by Edilio, their direct supervisor. Together (with some help from Edilio) they had taken on the job of creating five outhouses perched above those holes. This they had done by taking shipping crates, removing the tops, and sawing out a sort of doorway. The end result was an open-topped wooden crate with a narrow door covered with a shower curtain to provide some privacy.