But love wasn’t rational. Love didn’t have to make sense. Neither did hope. So Dekka held on to her love and to her hope.
Did she dream about Brianna? She didn’t know. Probably didn’t want to know.
She rolled out of bed and stood up. It was pitch-black. She found her way to the window and pushed back the blinds. Dawn was still an hour off, at least. She had no clock. What was the point?
She looked toward the beach. She could just make out the sand and the faint phosphorescence of the water’s edge.
Dekka found the book she was reading, The Unknown Shore. It was one of a series of seafaring books she’d found in the house. It was an unusual choice, but she found it strangely reassuring to inhabit a very different world for a while each day.
She carried it downstairs to the one light in the house. That light was a small ball that floated in midair in her “family room.” A Sammy Sun, kids called them. Sam had made it for her, using the weird power he had. It burned night and day. It was not hot to the touch, had no wire or other source of energy. It simply burned like a weightless lightbulb. Magic. But magic was old news in the FAYZ. Dekka had her own.
Dekka rummaged in her cupboard and found a cold, boiled artichoke. There were a lot of artichokes to be had in the FAYZ. Not exactly bacon and eggs and hash browns, but better than the alternative, which was starving. The food supply in the FAYZ—the mordantly named Fallout Alley Youth Zone—was tenuous, generally unpleasant, and, occasionally, literally sickening, but Dekka had endured protracted hunger in earlier months, so a breakfast artichoke was fine with her.
In any case, she’d lost some weight. She supposed that was a good thing.
She felt more than heard a rush of air. The door slammed, a sound that arrived at the same time as Brianna. Brianna came to a vibrating stop in the middle of the room.
“Jack’s hacking up a lung! I need cough medicine!”
“Hi, Brianna,” Dekka said. “It’s kind of the middle of the night.”
“Whatever. Nice pj’s, by the way. You pick those up at Gap for Truck Drivers?”
“They’re comfortable,” Dekka said mildly.
“Yeah. For you and your twelve closest friends. You’ve got curves—unlike me—you should show proud, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Jack’s sick?” Dekka reminded her, hiding a smile.
“Oh, yeah. Coughing. All achy and grumpy.”
Dekka suppressed her jealousy that Brianna was caring for a sick boy. And Computer Jack, at that. Computer Jack was a tech genius who, as far as Dekka could tell, had absolutely zero moral center. Wave a keyboard under his nose and he’d do whatever you wanted.
“Sounds like the flu,” Dekka opined.
“Well, duh,” Brianna said. “I didn’t say he had anthrax or black plague or whatever. But you don’t get it: Jack coughs, he doubles up, right? Maybe stomps his foot or smacks the bed, right?”
“Ah.” Jack, much to his own dismay, had developed a mutant power. He was as strong as ten grown men.
“He broke my bed!”
“He’s in your bed?”
“He didn’t want to smash any of his stupid computers at his stupid place. So he came over to my place. And now he’s smashing my place. So here’s my plan: You come over, right? And you levitate him, right? If he’s in the air, he can’t do any damage.”
Dekka peered at Brianna. “You’re loony, you know that? If there’s one thing we have plenty of, it’s houses. Stick him somewhere unoccupied.”
“Huh,” Brianna said, sounding a bit deflated. “Yeah.”
“Unless you just want me to come over and keep you company,” Dekka said, hating the hopeful tone in her own voice.
“Nah, that’s cool. Go back to bed.”
“You want to check upstairs for cough medicine?”
Brianna held up a half-empty bottle of some red liquid. “I already did. You were talking. Saying something. Thanks.”
“Okay,” Dekka said, unable to entirely conceal her disappointment that Brianna had refused her offer of help. Not that Brianna would notice. “Flu usually goes away on its own after a week or so. Unless it’s a twenty-four-hour flu. Either way, Jack won’t die of it.”
“Yeah, okay. Later,” Brianna said. And she was gone. The door slammed.
“Of course sometimes flu can be fatal,” Dekka said to emptiness. “A girl can hope.”
FOUR
62 HOURS, 33 MINUTES
THEY BROUGHT HIM a leg. A calf, to be specific. Caine was still the leader of the dwindling tribe of Coates kids, after all. Down to fifteen of them now, with Panda gone.
Bug had found a wheelbarrow and rolled Panda to the school. He and some of the others had built a fire of fallen branches and a few desks.
The smell had kept everyone awake through the rest of the night.
And now, in the hour before dawn, their own faces smeared with grease, they’d brought him a leg. The left one, Caine guessed. A token of respect. And an unspoken desire that he join them in their crime.
As soon as Bug left, Caine began trembling.
Hunger was a very powerful force. But so were humiliation and rage.
Down in Perdido Beach the kids had food. Not much, maybe, but Caine knew that the threat of starvation had receded for them. They weren’t eating well in Perdido Beach. But they were eating much better than the kids at Coates.
Everyone who could have defected from Coates already had. Those who were left were kids with too many problems, too much blood on their hands….
It was down to Caine and Diana, really. And a dozen creeps and losers. Only one was any real help in the event of trouble—Penny. Penny, the monster bringer.
There were days when Caine almost missed Drake Merwin. He’d been an unstable mental case, but at least he’d been useful in a fight. He didn’t make people think they were seeing monsters, like Penny. Drake was the monster.
Drake wouldn’t have stared at this…this thing on the table. This all-too-recognizable object, charred and blackened. Drake wouldn’t have hesitated.
An hour later, Caine found Diana. She was sitting in a chair in her room, watching the sunlight’s first rays touch the treetops. He sat on her bed. The springs creaked. She was in shadow, almost invisible in the faint light, nothing but the glitter of her eyes and the outline of a hollow cheek.
In the dark, Caine could still pretend that she was her old self. Beautiful Diana. But he knew that her luscious dark hair was brittle and tinged with rust. Her skin was sallow and rough. Her arms sticks. Her legs unstable pins. She didn’t look fourteen anymore. She looked forty.
“We have to give it a try,” Caine said without preamble.
“You know he’s lying, Caine,” Diana whispered. “He’s never been to the island.”
“He read about it in some magazine.”
Diana managed an echo of her old snarky laugh. “Bug read a magazine? Yeah. Bug’s a big reader.”
Caine said nothing. He sat still, trying not to think, trying not to remember. Trying not to wish there had been more to eat.
“We have to go to Sam,” Diana said. “Give ourselves up. They won’t kill us. So they’ll have to feed us.”
“They will kill us if we give ourselves up. Not Sam, maybe, but the others. We’re the ones responsible for turning out the lights. Sam won’t be able to stop them. If not freaks like Dekka or Orc or Brianna, then Zil’s punks.”
The one thing they still had at Coates was a pretty good idea of what was going on in town. Bug had the ability to walk unseen. He was in and out of Perdido Beach every few days, sneaking food for himself, mostly. But also overhearing what kids were saying. And supposedly reading torn magazines he didn’t bother to sneak back to Coates.
Diana let it go. Sat quietly. Caine listened to her breathing.
Had she done it? Had she committed the sin herself? Or was she smelling it on him now and despising him for it?
Did he want to know? Would he be able to forget later that her lips ha
d eaten that meat?
“Why do we go on, Caine?” Diana asked. “Why not just lie down and die. Or you…you could…”
The way she looked at him made him sick. “No, Diana. No. I’m not going to do that.”
“You’d be doing me a favor,” Diana whispered.
“You can’t. We’re not beat yet.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to miss this party,” Diana said.
“You can’t leave me.”
“We’re all leaving, Caine. All of us. Into town to be taken out one by one. Or stay here and starve. Or step outside as soon as we get our chance.”
“I saved your life,” he added, and hated himself for begging. “I…”
“You have a plan,” Diana said dryly. Mocking. One of the things he loved about her, that mean streak of mockery.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I have a plan.”
“Based on some stupid story from Bug.”
“It’s all I’ve got, Diana. That, and you.”
Sam walked the silent streets.
He felt unsettled by his encounter with Orsay. And unsettled, too, by his encounter with Astrid in his bedroom.
Why hadn’t he told her about Orsay? Because Orsay was saying the same thing Astrid was saying?
Let it go, Sam. Stop trying to be all things to all people. Stop playing the hero, Sam. We’re past all that.
He had to tell Astrid. If only to have her walk him through it, make sense of this thing with Orsay. Astrid would analyze it clearly.
But it wasn’t that simple, was it? Astrid wasn’t just his girlfriend. She was the head of the town council. He had to officially report on what he had learned. He was still getting used to that. Astrid wanted laws and systems and logical order. For months Sam had been in charge. He hadn’t wanted to be, but then he was, and he’d accepted it.
And now he was no longer in charge. It was liberating. He told himself that: it was liberating.
But frustrating, too. While Astrid and the rest of the council were busy playing Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers, Zil was running around unopposed.
The thing with Orsay at the beach had shaken him. Was it possible? Was it even slightly possible that Orsay was in contact with the outside world?
Her power—the ability to inhabit other’s dreams—was not in doubt. Sam had once seen her walking through his own dreams. And he had used her to spy on the great enemy, the gaiaphage, back before that monstrous entity had been destroyed.
But this? This claim that she could see the dreams of those outside the FAYZ?
Sam paused in the middle of the plaza and looked around him. He didn’t need the pearly light to know that weeds now choked the formerly neat little green spaces. Glass was everywhere. Windows not broken in battle had been shattered by vandals. Garbage filled the fountain. On this site the coyotes had attacked. On this site Zil had tried to hang Hunter because Hunter was a freak.
The church was half destroyed. The apartment building had burned down. The storefronts and town hall steps were covered with graffiti, some just random, some romantic, most of it messages of hate or rage.
Every window was dark. Every doorway was in shadow. The McDonald’s, once a sort of club run by Albert, was closed up. There was no electricity to play music anymore.
Could it be true? Had Orsay dreamed his mother’s dreams? Had she spoken to Sam? Had she seen something about him that he had failed to see in himself?
Why did that thought cause him such pain?
It was dangerous, Sam realized. If other kids heard Orsay talking that way, what would happen? If it was bothering him this much…
He was going to have to have a talk with Orsay. Tell her to knock it off. Her and that helper of hers. But if he told Astrid, it would all get too big. Right now he could just put a little pressure on Orsay, get her to stop.
He could just imagine what Astrid would do. Make it all about free speech or whatever. Or maybe not, maybe she’d see the threat, too, but Astrid was better with theories than she was with just walking up to people and telling them to stop.
In one corner of the plaza were the graves. The makeshift markers—wooden crosses, one inept attempt at a Star of David, a few just boards shoved upright into the dirt. Someone had knocked most of the headstones over and no one had yet had time to put them back.
Sam hated going there. Every kid buried in that ground—and there were many—was a personal failure. Someone he had not kept alive.
His feet stepped onto soft earth. He frowned. Why would there be dirt clods?
Sam raised his left hand over his head. A ball of light formed in his palm. It was a greenish light that darkened shadows. But he could see that the ground was disturbed. Dirt everywhere, not piled up, more like clods and shovels full had been thrown.
In the center, a hole. Sam brightened the light and held his hand over the hole. He peered down inside, ready to strike if something attacked. His heart was hammering in his chest.
Movement!
Sam leaped back and fired a beam of light down into the hole. The light made no sound, but the dirt hissed and popped as it melted into glass.
“No!” he cried.
He tripped, fell on his rear in the dirt, and already he knew he’d made a mistake. He’d seen something move, and when he fired the searing light he’d seen what it was.
He crawled back to the edge of the hole. He looked over the edge, illuminating the scene with one cautious hand.
The little girl looked up at him, terrified. Her hair was dirty. Her clothes were muddy. But she was alive. Not burned. Alive.
There was tape over her mouth. She was struggling to breathe. She had a doll clutched tight. Her blue eyes pleaded.
Sam lay flat, reached down, and took her outstretched hand.
He wasn’t strong enough to lift her cleanly up. He had to drag and haul, reposition, haul some more. And by the time she made it up out of the hole she was covered in dirt from head to toe. Sam was almost as dirty, and panting from the effort.
He pulled the tape from her face. It wasn’t easily done. Someone had wound it around and around. The little girl cried when he pulled the tape from her hair.
“Who are you?” Sam asked.
He noticed something strange. He raised the level of light. Someone had written in magic marker on the girl’s forehead.
The word was “Freak.”
Sam’s palm went dark. Slowly, careful not to scare her, he put his arm around the girl’s heaving shoulders.
“It will be okay,” he lied.
“They…they said…why…” She couldn’t finish. She collapsed against him, weeping onto his shirt.
“You’re Jill. Sorry, I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“Jill,” she said, and nodded and cried some more. “They don’t want me to sing.”
Job one, Sam told himself: take care of Zil. Enough. Whether Astrid and the council liked it or not, it was time to take care of Zil.
Or not.
Sam stared at the hole from which he’d pulled Jill, really seeing it for the first time. A hole in the ground where none should be. Something about it…something terribly wrong.
Sam gasped, sucked air sharply. A chill ran up his spine.
The horror here was not that a little girl had fallen into a hole. The horror was the hole itself.
FIVE
62 HOURS, 6 MINUTES
SAM TOOK JILL to Mary Terrafino at the day care. Then he found Edilio, woke him up, and walked him to the town plaza. To the hole in the ground.
Edilio stared at it.
“So the girl fell in, walking around in the night,” Edilio said. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and shook his head vigorously.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “She didn’t make the hole. She just fell in.”
“So what made the hole?” Edilio asked.
“You tell me.”
Edilio peered more closely at the hole. From the first need, Edilio had taken on the grim duty of digging the graves. He kn
ew each one, knew who was where.
“Madre de Dios,” Edilio whispered. He made the sign of the cross on his chest. His eyes were wide as he turned to Sam. “You know what this looks like, right?”
“What do you think it looks like?”
“It’s too deep for being so narrow. No way someone did this with a shovel. Man, this hole wasn’t dug down. It was dug up.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah.”
“You’re pretty calm,” Edilio said shakily.
“Not really,” Sam said. “It’s been a strange night. What…who…was buried here?”
“Brittney,” Edilio said.
“So we buried her when she was still alive?”
“You’re not thinking straight, man. It’s been more than a month. Nothing stays alive that’s in the dirt for that long.”
The two of them stood side by side, staring down into the hole. The too-narrow, too-deep hole.
“She had that thing on her,” Edilio said. “We couldn’t get it off her. We figured she’s dead, so what’s it matter, right?”
“That thing,” Sam said dully. “We never figured out what it was.”
“Sam, we both know what it was.”
Sam hung his head. “We have to keep this quiet, Edilio. If we put this out there, the whole town will go nuts. People have enough to deal with.”
Edilio looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Sam, this isn’t the old days. We have a town council now. They’re supposed to know whatever’s going on.”
“If they know, everyone will know,” Sam said.
Edilio said nothing. He knew it was true.
“You know that girl Orsay?” Sam asked.
“Of course I know her,” Edilio said. “We almost got killed together.”
“Do me a favor and kind of keep an eye on her.”
“What’s up with Orsay?”
Sam shrugged. “She thinks she’s some kind of prophet, I guess.”
“A prophet? You mean like those old dudes in the Bible?”
“She’s acting like she can contact people on the other side. Parents and all.”