Astrid was taken aback by the venom in Lana’s voice, the pale fury on her face. Lana had aged in just the short time since Astrid had seen her last. Astrid knew she was seeing the face of some kind of suffering that she couldn’t really understand. But the fear, the fear on the face of this tough girl . . . that she understood.
“Lana, we can kill Gaia,” Astrid said.
“And Little Pete can kill the gaiaphage,” Lana said. “Little Pete is the power: you know it, I know it. The gaiaphage is desperately afraid; that’s why it’s attacking. It’s afraid of Pete. It’s slaughtering people out of fear of Little Pete.”
“You know what Little Pete needs?” Astrid demanded. “Do you know what you’d be asking?”
Lana fell silent. She looked at the child she’d been touching. With her free hand she felt his neck, searching for a pulse. Then she laid her head on his chest, ear to his heart. Finally, she sat back. “I didn’t realize how damaged . . . I should have started sooner.”
It took Astrid a moment to realize what she had just seen. She stumbled back, stopped herself, met Lana’s haunted gaze.
“Yeah. That’s my life now,” Lana said. She raised a trembling finger to touch her own temple. “And now with it. With it back in my head. Extra fun.”
Lana stood up, nearly lost her balance, stretched to crack her back. “Well, now I have time for Sam. Plenty of time for Sam.” She accepted a glass of water from Peace and dropped down beside Sam.
“See those scissors?” Lana pointed to a pair of heavy shears on a table. “Bring them here and cut away his shirt. We have to start with his back.”
Astrid did as she was asked. She gasped seeing the bone protruding stark and white through Sam’s shoulder. But when they rolled him tenderly onto his side she saw the twisted jumble of his spine and almost lost hope.
“Yeah, that’s not good,” Lana said. “You’re going to have to help me. We need to straighten him out a bit, get the spine lined up. It goes a whole lot quicker if you at least get all the pieces back in place first. Where is Dahra? I could really use . . .” Then she remembered. “Two down, both hurt on lonely roads,” she said softly. “One dies. One lives, at least for now. The God you don’t believe in anymore rolls the dice.”
Sam groaned in his sleep when Astrid cut the last of the fabric away.
“She was a good person, Dahra,” Lana said. Her lip trembled. “She was a good person, that girl.” She looked around the room, at kids softly crying, moaning, asking for water. “Bunch of good dead people.” Then, shaking her head as if trying to throw something off, she yelled, “Sanjit! Send Peace to find some kind of a board. Like a shelf would do.”
Lana lit a cigarette, sucked in deep, and blew it out in Astrid’s direction. “You ever notice something, Astrid? No two moofs have the same power. There’s not two kids with super-speed, just one. Not two or three or five or ten with Sam’s laser thing, just him. One Jack, one Dekka.”
“Yes,” Astrid acknowledged cautiously.
“One healer.”
“Yeah, we all noticed that,” Astrid said, making no secret of the fact that she wished someone less volatile was that one healer.
“But this Gaia monstrosity seems to be able to heal itself, and to shoot light beams, and to do the whole telekinesis thing. Interesting, isn’t it? Kids have been telling me stories while I lay my little magic hands on them. Okay, now take Sam by the waist. Grab on, because this is going to be really bad.”
Astrid did as Lana directed. Don’t start crying, she told herself. But it hurt seeing the body she loved broken this way.
“You’re going to pull, see, so I can try to push the bones back into line. And you’re going to keep pulling until I tell you different. Got that?”
“I do,” Astrid said.
“Pull.”
Astrid pulled and Sam thrashed and Lana yelled at Astrid for loosening her grip so Astrid tightened her grip and pulled hard and Sam opened his eyes and yelled and flailed with his hands so Sanjit ran over and grabbed his hands, fast, because Sam’s hands could be very dangerous, and Quinn came around to help Astrid pull.
Lana pushed vertebrae back into place with a sickening wet crunch, then slid a wooden shelf beneath him and let Quinn and Sanjit work together to wrap strips of sheet around and around, locking Sam into place.
Sam quieted and lapsed again into unconsciousness.
“He may have internal injuries,” Lana said. “I can fix the back and the shoulder, maybe. We’ll see about anything else.”
“I should get back to Edilio, see if he needs . . .,” Astrid said and stood to leave.
“Yeah. You should go,” Lana agreed. “And then you better figure out which is worse, smart girl: That we give someone up as a living sacrifice to Little Pete. Or the other thing.”
Lana was smirking now, angry and challenging. Astrid didn’t want to ask, because she knew the answer. But she couldn’t not ask.
“What other thing, Lana?”
“The thing where we kill Sam, and Caine, too, if we can find him, to disarm the gaiaphage.”
Astrid stood stock-still.
Lana laughed her cynical laugh. “Yeah, you’re the genius, but that doesn’t make me an idiot.”
Astrid nodded. Her focus went to the big pair of shears, and beyond to the automatic pistol at Lana’s waist. She bit her lip hard and then said, “Sam?”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Lana said. “That’s not what I do. Remember? I’m the Healer.”
TWENTY-FOUR
14 HOURS, 22 MINUTES
“I WANT MY whip back.”
Drake’s head had melded perfectly well to Alex’s neck, although there was a definite red line, like . . . well, like surgery had been done and not quite healed.
Alex’s own head, now a fleshless, tongueless, and empty skull, lay in a ditch.
“Be glad you have a body at all,” Gaia snarled.
“I am glad,” Drake said, trying to sound obsequious. “But I can’t fight beside you like this.” He pointed with his remaining hand at the stump of his other arm. “It happened once before. It could happen again.”
Gaia seemed uncertain. It was a strange expression for the face of a goddess, Drake thought. But then Gaia herself was strange for what she was. He knew better than to take the beautiful, olive-skinned, blue-eyed face at face value. He knew he was still looking at the creature formerly represented by a seething carpet of green particles. But she was a beautiful girl now, almost his own age by all appearances.
As beautiful as Diana had been before starvation took its toll. As beautiful as Astrid and just as smug and arrogant.
It confused him. Because he instinctively wanted to hurt her. Fantasy images came to his mind and shocked him. She would kill him if she knew.
It was not a good idea to lust after a god. Even worse to imagine the whip coming down on her—
No, he ordered himself. Stop. She was not Diana or Astrid. She was nothing like them. She was still it. She was still the Darkness. Still the evil that had welcomed him, given him a place, given him a purpose.
“I need my arm,” Drake said, willing to push on this point at least because without his whip hand he was weak. Without his whip hand, what weapon did he have? Without it he was just Drake, not Drake Whip Hand.
“Why do you want it so badly?” Gaia asked. “What would you use it for?”
“To fight beside you, defend you, protect . . . To . . .”
Her face was blank, but her eyes bored into him. “Tell me the truth.”
If he lied . . . she could destroy him right here, right now. How much did she guess? He had to answer. Truth or lie. “Diana first,” Drake hissed. “Astrid more slowly.”
Gaia shook her head. “Later. If.”
“If?”
“If you bring me the Healer,” Gaia said. “She is . . . She resists me. She looks for a way to deprive me . . .” Suddenly she seemed to think better of opening her thoughts to him. “Just bring her to me. Then you c
an do what you like.”
She put her hand on the stump of an arm. “I don’t know what will grow,” she said.
“It will come back,” Drake said. “It has to.”
Astrid stood at the top of the cliff that gave Clifftop its name.
There were boats out there, out in the dark ocean. She could see the lights going by.
When she craned her neck to the left she could see the glow coming from the camp, from the Carl’s Jr., the lights of the new hotels.
It was all so desperately, terribly near. How far to cheeseburgers and fries and cars that weren’t burned out and policemen to call when danger threatened?
Not a quarter of a mile.
Electricity and freedom from fear. Food and warmth. Her mother and father, cousins and aunts and family friends, and all of them saying, So what was it like? And I bet you’re glad to be out of there.
Were you afraid?
So afraid.
I guess you saw some bad things?
So many I can’t even tell you. So many I can’t remember them all. And some that I can’t get out of my head.
I have scars. Want to see my legs and arms and back? Scars.
Want to see my soul? Scars there, too, but you can’t really see them.
I’m sure you did your best.
Did I? Are you sure I did my best? Because I’m not.
I lied. I manipulated people. I hurt people at times. I was cruel at times. I betrayed trust.
I threw my brother to his death. Yes, to save my life and other people’s lives; does that make it okay?
“In the old days I would have talked to you, God,” she said. “I would have asked for guidance. And I would have gotten nothing, but I’d have pretended, and that would have been almost like the real thing.”
Lana would heal Sam. And then he would march out to fight Gaia.
And Gaia would kill him. But only after she had killed Edilio and Sinder and Diana and Sanjit and Quinn and and and . . . Then she would kill Sam, but before that she would kill Astrid, so that Sam would see, and he would cry out in despair, and only then would Gaia kill him.
Sam would die, and he would die knowing he had failed to save Astrid.
As if summoned from her thoughts Astrid saw Sinder passing around the side of the hotel, heading perhaps to join the desperate crowd huddled down by the highway. Was Sinder’s mother there? Astrid hadn’t really ever talked to the girl about her life before the FAYZ.
A lot of them she had never come to know. A lot she would never now be able to know. She closed her eyes and saw the terrible light from Gaia’s hands. She smelled again the burning of tires and varnished plywood, canvas and flesh.
If Sam died right now, right this minute, it would weaken Gaia, and the rest of them might survive.
“I made that choice once before,” she said to the dark sky. “I did that with Petey, didn’t I?”
The sky had no answer. The sky was bright to the south with burger lights, and to the west the ships glided by, carrying cars, iPads, and oil, and old people who wanted to see whales.
To the north the red glow of fire. It was brighter each minute. It must have spread beyond the forest now. Was it racing across the dry grassland? Was it burning across the fields that had fed them?
Fire? She wanted to laugh. Well, why not? Why not fire? This was the FAYZ, after all.
Somewhere out there the monster plotted their deaths. And if Astrid was going to do anything at all to stop it, it would mean sacrificing someone, either some nameless victim or Sam.
What was the lesson? What was all this teaching her? That sometimes there were no good choices?
“I learned that a long time ago,” Astrid said.
She had told Sam—insisted on it—that he had to do whatever it took to win, even if it meant attacking Diana, even if it meant burning down the world, but only survive, only live, Sam, because I can’t do it without you.
Live.
I can’t walk out of this place without you.
Astrid closed her eyes, shutting out the ships and the stars and the burger lights and the distant fire.
“Petey . . .”
Caine made his way down to the dock. The answer was obvious: if he was going to survive, he had to get to the island. Out of here. Away from Gaia. Not that Gaia couldn’t find him there, but as he’d told Diana, the trick wasn’t to live forever, but to be the last to die.
And to never suffer that pain again. He couldn’t think about it; he couldn’t or he would feel an echo of it, and even that was agony.
There was a kid on guard, one of Quinn’s people, posted there to make sure no one tampered with any of the fishing boats.
Caine didn’t hurt him, just used his power to smack him against the wooden planks until he stopped yelling. Then he tied him up and stuffed a rag in his mouth to keep him quiet. Gaia would find him, too, and kill him in due course. But his death might come a bit later just because he was incapacitated.
Hey, that was a good thing. Right?
Caine saw the boats that had been reserved for emergency use. There should still be a little gas left. It wouldn’t be much—they’d been running on fumes just a few days ago when Caine had been king.
The memory brought a grim smile to his lips. King Caine. Things changed, didn’t they? Now he was ready to try and creep away to hang on to a another few hours of life. Run away.
King Caine to Rat Caine in a heartbeat.
Well, Penny had already knocked the crown off his head, hadn’t she? He recalled the humiliation of waking up to find his hands cemented and a crown stapled to his scalp. Pain, too. But he’d had pain, he knew pain, and while staples in your scalp were no picnic, they were nothing to compare with the agony of having that hard concrete chipped slowly away with a hammer.
Yeah, that had been bad. Change-your-whole-outlook kind of bad. Still, the humiliation of powerlessness had been worse.
But not worse than what Gaia had done to him. Nothing to what she had done.
In his arrogance he had thought he was free of the gaiaphage. But he never would be, would he? As long as that monster existed, it would have a back door into his brain and could make him crawl and cry and beg for death . . .
He made a whimpering noise. Like a scared child. Well, he was a scared child, wasn’t he?
He hopped down into the boat. There was no gauge on the tank, so he looked around for a while, wishing he had Sam’s power of light. It took him a few minutes to find what he needed, something thin enough and long enough to stick in the fuel tank and check the amount. It was a broken piece of fishing pole, a one-foot length of dark fiberglass. It came back up showing about an inch of gas sloshing in there.
Out in the ocean Caine saw something large going by—a tanker, maybe, carrying hundreds of thousands of barrels of gas.
“Must be nice,” he said.
“What must be nice?”
She had snuck up on him without his seeing or hearing her. Diana, a dark shadow above him, outlined by stars.
He started to say something to her, but nothing came. She was on the dock. He was in the boat below her.
Diana.
Finally he said, “What are you doing here?”
“Finding you,” she said. “You took off.”
“You didn’t find much,” he said bitterly, and immediately regretted it. It sounded self-pitying. Well, it was, wasn’t it?
“This is where we landed, coming from the island,” she said.
“Yes. In triumph. The conquering hero,” he said. “King Caine. I was just remembering that.”
“With that monster in my belly,” Diana said.
“Not your fault,” he said tersely. “Not mine, either.”
“I wonder.”
“We had . . . Listen, we made love, right? Isn’t that what we’re calling it? No one warned us we were conceiving a body for the gaiaphage.”
“Did we make love?” Diana asked him.
“Jesus, Diana,” he pleaded.
“Tell me, Caine. Did we make love or did we just have sex? It’s a simple question.”
“No, it isn’t,” Caine said.
He heard Diana’s sardonic laugh, and at that instant he knew the answer to her question. He heard that snarky, almost cruel laugh and he knew, and it filled him so suddenly full of emotion that he almost cried out.
“No, it’s not an easy question between us,” Diana admitted. Then: “Did we make love, Caine?”
“Okay. Okay, yes, Diana, we made love.”
“Say it to me, Caine,” she said.
“What’s the point?” he pleaded. “I’m running away. I’m saving myself and leaving you behind. I’m a rat deserting the sinking ship. I’m a coward holding on to his pathetic life for an extra hour or two. I’m scared to death; I can’t stand up to it anymore. I’m done. Why do you want me to say it?”
She didn’t answer.
She had bathed him when he was lost in madness, had spoon-fed him, had been there each time he woke to rave, to rave about the hunger in the dark.
She had backed him in all his wild plans. She had stood by him, despite, oh man, despite so much. So much.
He couldn’t see her face, just her outline, but he could picture her face in detail. In his mind he saw the full lips and the smirk and the way she sometimes pressed her lips together as if physically repressing laughter. And he saw her cheeks and the perfect line of her jaw and the neck that no male had ever seen without wanting to kiss.
And he saw her dark eyes.
And he saw her breasts.
And he saw her thighs and . . .
And somehow Diana, being Diana, knew every thought going through his mind, and she said, “I’ve had a baby. Things aren’t quite the way you left them. And it’s going to be some time before I’m ready for what’s going through your evil mind.”
“Okay,” he said.
“‘Okay,’ he lied,” she mocked.
He shook his head. She had him. Again.
“Just what are you ready for?” he asked.
“I’m a bit stiff,” she said. “Hard to climb down there.”
He raised one hand, and she rose slowly from the dock and then slowly descended, sliding down just inches from his face. He let her feet touch down in the boat, felt the weight of her as the boat rocked.