The kid looked pale. “I have to shoot her?”
“No, you have a choice,” Drake said. “You can shoot her or not. It’s up to you.”
The kid breathed a sigh.
“Of course, if you don’t shoot her?” Drake snapped his whip arm. The tentacle wrapped around the boy’s throat. “If you don’t shoot her? If you forget, or get distracted, or miss? I’ll whip you till I see bone.”
Drake laughed happily and unwrapped his arm. “I believe we are ready,” he announced. “Taylor has a load of buckshot waiting for her. And if little Brianna decides to breeze on in at a hundred miles an hour, she’ll hit the wires.”
“And set off an alarm?” Jack asked.
Drake laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Slice and dice,” Drake said. “Slice and dice.”
Jack didn’t look at Drake. He looked at Diana. Her eyes were windows on darkness.
“Get back to work, Jack,” Caine said.
The McClub was closed down. There was a sign on the door that said, “Sorry, We Are Closed. Will Reopen Tomorrow.”
Duck didn’t know why he had been drawn there. Of course it was closed—it was after midnight. He had just craved company. Hoped someone was hanging around. Pretty much anyone.
In the three days—well, technically four, since it was tomorrow already—since Duck had fallen through the bottom of the swimming pool, his life had actually managed to get worse. First off, he had lost his private oasis of calm. The pool was obviously unfixable. He had spent some effort looking for another pool, but no other spot had been nearly as great as the one he had lost.
In the second place, no one believed him. He had become a joke. Kids didn’t bother to go and check out the pool to see if the hole was really there. And of course Zil and his punk friends didn’t exactly step up to validate Duck’s story.
When he’d tell people about this weird, un-asked-for power, they’d demand he demonstrate. But Duck didn’t want to demonstrate. It meant getting mad, for one thing, and he wasn’t naturally an angry person.
More importantly, it meant falling into the ground. And Duck had not enjoyed that the first time around. It had been sheer luck that he had passed out before he fell right on past the cave. He could have kept falling until he reached the molten core of the earth. That was the image in his head, anyway. Falling through the ground, down through the crust and the mantle and the whatever other layers there were that he had probably learned about in school but couldn’t recall now, all the way down to the big melted metal and rock core.
In his mind’s eye that would look like the scene at the end of The Lord of the Rings. He would be like Gollum, swimming for a few seconds in all that lava, then incinerated.
But that image was almost a relief compared to the other possibility: that he would simply be buried alive. That he would fall a hundred feet into the ground and have no way of extricating himself. He would slowly suffocate as the dirt walls of the hole filled in, clods falling onto his upturned face, dirt filling his eyes, his mouth, his nose…
He grabbed the handle of the McClub door to steady himself. The images were waking nightmares. They were in his thoughts more and more often.
It didn’t help that no one else took the problem seriously. Kids laughed at his story. They thought the whole thing was funny. The part about falling through the bottom of the pool. The part about the cave. The radioactive side cave. The blue bats. The emergence from the waves, half naked and shivering. The way he’d had to climb the cliff up from the beach, forcing himself to grin happily lest anger cause him to fall and keep on falling. Climbing had been the easiest part. He’d felt light with relief.
He had told the story and kids roared with laughter. The first day or so he’d played along. He enjoyed making people laugh. But he’d gone very quickly from being a funny storyteller to being an object of ridicule.
“Your power is the power to gain so much weight, you actually sink into the ground?” That had been Hunter, who thought himself a real comedian. “So, you’re basically Fat- man?”
After that it was open season: Fatman led to Fall-through Boy, the Spelunker, the Sinker, the Miner, and the one he heard most often, the Human Drill.
Kids didn’t get it: It wasn’t funny. Not really. Not if you thought about it. Not if you spent the night tossing and turning, barely able to sleep because you worried that you might get angry in some dream and fall to a slow, agonizing death.
Hunter had also ridiculed his tale of the blue bats. “Dude—or should I call you the Human Drill? Dude, bats sleep during the day and fly at night. Your blue bats? According to you, they woke up when it got light. How do you figure? Plus, no one but you has ever seen them.”
“They’re blue, like the sky, so you wouldn’t see them flying overhead or through the water,” Duck had pointed out to no avail.
He let go of the club door. Probably better that it was closed. He was lonely, but maybe loneliness wasn’t as bad as the ridicule.
Duck looked around, feeling lost. It was late. No one was out. In the old days his parents would have grounded him for a year if they’d found out he was wandering the streets at night.
No one was in the plaza. It was a creepy place at night. The graves were there. The shattered outline of the church dark against the stars. The burned remains of the apartment building. There were a couple of lights on in town hall—no one bothered going around and turning out lights. The street-lights were still on, although some had burned out and others, especially the ones in the plaza, had been broken either by the battle or by vandals.
The plaza was a place of ghosts now. Ghosts and long shadows.
Duck headed wearily toward home. So-called home. It meant passing by the church. It at least was dark. It was lit nowadays only on meeting nights because the original lighting system had not survived. Lights were strung from the town hall on an extension cord. Someone usually remembered to yank the cord out of the socket when they were done.
Rubble, some of it massive chunks of masonry, blocked the sidewalk on the church side. No one had ever cleaned it up. Probably no one ever would. Duck walked down the middle of the street, mistrusting the shadows on either side.
He heard a scuffling sound in the church. A dog, probably. Or rats.
But then, an urgent whisper, “Hey! Hey, Duck!”
Duck stopped. The voice was coming from the direction of the church.
“Dude!” the whisper, louder now.
“What? Who is that?” Duck asked.
“It’s me, man. Hunter. Keep it down. They’ll kill me if they find me.”
“What? Who?”
“Duck, man, come here, I can’t be yelling back and forth.”
Reluctantly—very reluctantly because he expected some trick—Duck crossed the street.
Hunter was crouched behind a piece of rubble that still held a portion of stained-glass window. He stood up when Duck approached, which brought his face into the light. He didn’t look as if he was planning a prank. He looked scared.
“What’s up?” Duck asked.
“Come back here, man, so no one can see us.”
Duck climbed over the rubble, skinning his shin in the process.
“Okay,” Duck said, once he was in Hunter’s rubble hideaway. “What?”
“Can you hook me up, dude? I didn’t catch any dinner.”
“Uh…what?”
“I’m hungry,” Hunter said.
“Everybody’s hungry,” Duck pointed out. “I drank a jar of gravy for dinner.”
Hunter sighed. “I’m starving here. I didn’t get dinner. I barely got any lunch. I was trying to save up.”
“Why are you here?”
“Zil. He and the normals are after me.”
Duck had the definite feeling he was either being elaborately punked, or had wandered into someone else’s crazy dream. “Man, if you’re here to bust on me, just get it over with.”
“No, man. No way. I?
??m sorry about all that, you know, teasing you and all. I was just trying to get along with them, you know?”
“No. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hunter.”
Hunter hesitated, looking like he might try to bluster. But then he collapsed. He sat down hard on the ground. Duck knelt awkwardly beside him. The awkwardness was compounded when he heard the telltale sniffle. Hunter was crying.
“What happened, man?” Duck asked.
“Zil. You know Zil, right? We were having an argument. He goes totally nuts. He tries to kill me with a fireplace poker. So what am I supposed to do?”
“What did you do?”
“I was totally in the right,” Hunter said. “I was totally in the right. Only I didn’t get Zil because Harry came rushing in. He got in between us.”
“Okay.”
Hunter sniffled again. “No, man. Not okay. Harry goes down. He hits the floor. I wasn’t even aiming at him, he didn’t do anything. You have to help me, Duck,” Hunter pleaded.
“Me? Why me? All you ever do is pick on me.”
“Okay, okay, that’s true,” Hunter admitted. He had stopped crying. But his voice was, if anything, even more urgent. “But, look, we’re on the same side, here.”
“Um…what?”
“We’re freaks, man. You aren’t getting this, are you?” Irritation helped Hunter’s self-control. The sniffling stopped. “Dude, Zil is running around getting normals to come out against us. All of us.”
Duck shook his head in confusion. “What are you talking about, man?”
Hunter grabbed his arm and held it tight. “It’s us against them. Don’t you get that? It’s freaks against normals.”
“No way,” Duck scoffed. “First of all, I didn’t hurt anyone. Second of all, Sam is a freak and Astrid’s a normal, and so is Edilio. So how is it that all of them are trying to get us?”
“You think they won’t come after you next?” Hunter said, not exactly answering. “You think you’re safe? Fine. Go on. Run away home. Play pretend. It’s us against them. You’ll see, when it’s you hiding out from them.”
Duck disengaged himself from Hunter’s grip. “I’ll see if I can bring you something to eat, dude. But I’m not getting involved in your troubles.”
Duck climbed back out of the rubble and headed down the street.
Hunter’s hissed words followed him. “It’s freaks against normals, Duck. And you’re a freak.”
Jack was sweating like he was in a sauna. His leg hurt. Hurt bad.
But more, the wires.
The wires.
Brianna would never see them. She would come rushing on, as fast as a speeding bullet. She would hit the wires at that speed and she would be sliced into pieces. Like a wire cheese cutter going through a brick of Swiss.
The image was painfully clear in Jack’s mind.
He could see Brianna hitting the wire. And being cut in half. Legs still running for another few steps before they realized they were no longer carrying a body.
“Take down the wires,” Jack said. The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. He hadn’t planned it. He’d just blurted it.
No one heard him except Diana.
He glanced at her and saw a flicker of a smile.
But Drake was busy and Caine was ranting and neither heard him.
Jack pulled his hands away from the keyboard.
“You have to cut down the wires,” Jack said, choking on the words.
And now Caine froze. And now Drake whirled.
“What?” Drake demanded.
“Take the wires down,” Jack said. “Or else I—”
The whip landed on his neck and back. Like the bullet wound, but so much worse for being on such tender skin.
Jack cried out in shock at the pain.
Drake was coiled to strike again, but Caine yelled, “No!”
Drake seemed ready to ignore the order, but contented himself with wrapping his tentacle around Jack’s throat. He squeezed, and Jack felt blood pounding in his head.
Caine walked over and in a reasonable voice said, “What’s the problem, Jack?”
“The wires,” Jack said, barely able to form sounds. “I don’t like what you’re doing.”
Caine blinked. He was honestly puzzled. He looked at Diana for an explanation.
Diana sighed. “Puppy love,” she said. “It looks like Jack’s gotten over me. There’s another girl playing the leading role in Jack’s shameful dreams.”
Caine laughed, disbelieving. “You’ve got a thing for Brianna?”
“I don’t…it’s not like…” Jack squeezed the words out.
“Oh, come on, Jack. Don’t be an idiot,” Caine cajoled him. “Let him go, Drake. Jack’s just losing focus. He’s forgetting what’s important.”
Drake withdrew his tentacle, and Jack breathed in deep. His neck and back burned so badly, he forgot the lesser wound on his thigh.
“Jack, Jack, Jack,” Caine said, sounding like a disappointed teacher. “Bad things happen sometimes, Jack, you have to accept that.”
“Not Brianna,” Jack said.
Jack saw color rising in Caine’s face, a warning sign. But he knew Caine needed him. Caine wouldn’t kill him, he was sure of that, no matter how mad he got. Drake might let his rage take over, but Caine wouldn’t.
“You think she’d defend you?” Caine asked. “She’ll come zooming in here, maybe carrying a gun, shoot anyone she sees, Jack. Now, get back to work and let me take care of making the big decisions.”
Jack turned back to the keyboard. He started to rest his hands on the keys. But he couldn’t do it. He froze there with his fingertips half an inch above the keys.
Not Brianna. Not her. Not like that.
“I could talk to her,” Jack said. “I could maybe get her to come over to your side.”
“Let me just deal with this,” Drake pleaded. “I guarantee you, he’ll get back to work.”
“That’s right, Drake,” Diana said. “Torture him into it. You’ll never know if he gets pissed off enough to maybe flood this room with radiation. Until your hair starts falling out.”
That had not occurred to Jack. But it did now. Diana was right, they wouldn’t really know what he was doing.
Caine was biting his thumb again, his habit when frustrated.
“Drake, cut the wires. Jack, figure out how to turn the lights off in Perdido Beach or I’ll tell Drake to not only put the wires back up, but whip you till he gets too tired to lift his arm.”
Jack carefully concealed his feeling of triumph.
Drake started to object, but Caine snapped, “Just do it, Drake. Just do it.”
Jack felt a wave of some warm feeling flow through him. Something unlike anything he’d ever felt before. There was still the searing pain on his neck and back, and the all-but-forgotten pain on his leg. But the pain was secondary to this feeling of…something. He didn’t know quite what to call it.
He had stepped up to protect someone else. Brianna might never know it, but he had just taken a big risk for her. In fact, he had risked his life for her.
Diana drawled, “Our little geek is growing up.”
Jack began tapping away at the keyboard.
“But still so naïve,” Diana added.
The word bothered Jack, vaguely. He kind of knew what it meant, the word “naïve.” But now he was into the directory he needed, and there were commands to be learned, sequences to be deciphered.
TWENTY-THREE
18 HOURS, 7 MINUTES
“THEY’LL HAVE SOMEONE on the gate,” Sam said. “It’s just around this bend. Stop here.”
Edilio braked, and the other two vehicles came to a stop behind them. Dekka driving Orc and Howard in a hefty SUV. A handful of Edilio’s soldiers in the third car. All the people Sam could round up. He’d tried others, but these were the ones who came when they learned they were to do battle with Caine and Drake.
Fear of Caine, and especially Drake, ran deep in Perdido Beach.
<
br /> Sam turned in his seat so he could see Brianna and Taylor in the back. “Okay, girls, here’s our problem: I need to know where Caine’s goons are. I have to figure he left at least a couple of guys on the front gate. Armed, of course. They’ll have instructions to shoot anyone who comes down this road.”
“I can pop in and out before they can shoot me,” Taylor said. She wasn’t quite eager.
“Sam, I can plow past that gate and take a little tour inside the facility and be back in thirty seconds,” Brianna argued. “They most likely won’t even see me.”
“If you’re going so fast, they don’t see you, how you going to see them?” Edilio asked.
She pointed at her face. “Fast eyes, Dillio, very fast eyes.”
Sam and Edilio both grinned. But it didn’t last long.
“Okay, listen to me, Breeze,” Sam said. “Do not go anywhere but to the gate. That’s not a suggestion, that’s me telling you.”
“I can do it all in no time,” Brianna argued.
“Breeze, I need you to hear me on this: do not go into that plant.”
Brianna pouted. “You’re the boss, boss.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Take off—” He stopped, realizing he was talking to air.
“Long gone,” Edilio commented. “Girl doesn’t hang around.”
“I can help, too,” Taylor said, a little resentful.
“You’ll get your chance,” Sam said.
Dekka was climbing out of the SUV. “Did you send Breeze?”
“Yeah. She should be back any second now,” Edilio said.
“I’m ready to do this,” Dekka said. “Driving with Orc in the back? Boy is farting something terrible.”
“Cabbage,” Taylor said.
“Any second now. You know Brianna,” Edilio said.
The four of them waited. Sam kept his eyes on the road. Not that he would see her when she got back.
“Taking a while,” Taylor said. “I mean, for her.”
No one spoke after that. Not as two minutes passed. Then three minutes. Five interminable minutes.