Gone Series Complete Collection (150 page)

Sam had seen the effects of her anorexia and bulimia. But he hadn’t realized what was happening to her, or hadn’t wanted to.

He’d heard nervous gossip that Mary was grabbing whatever meds she could find, anything she thought would ease her depression.

He hadn’t wanted to know about that, either.

Most of all he should have seen what Nerezza was up to, should have questioned, should have pushed.

Should have.

Should have.

Should have . . .

Another deep swallow of liquid fire. The burning made him laugh. He laughed down at the beach where Orsay, the false prophet, had died.

“Good-bye, Mary.” He slurred, raising his bottle in a mock toast. “Least you got outta here.”

For a split second on the day that Mary poofed, the barrier had been clear. They had seen the world outside: the observation platform, the TV satellite truck, the construction underway on fast food places and cheap hotels.

It had seemed very, very real.

But had it been? Astrid said no: just another illusion. But Astrid was not exactly addicted to the truth.

Sam swayed at the edge of the cliff. He ached for Astrid, the booze had not dulled that. He ached for the sound of her voice, the warmth of her breath on his neck, her lips. She was all that had kept him from going crazy. But now she was the source of the crazy because his body was demanding what she wouldn’t give. Now being with her was just pain and hollowness and need.

The barrier was there, just a few feet away. Impenetrable. Opaque. Painful to touch. The faintly shimmering gray dome that enclosed twenty miles of Southern California coastline in a giant terrarium. Or zoo. Or universe.

Or prison.

Sam tried to focus on it, but his eyes weren’t working very well.

With the exaggerated care of a drunk he set his bottle down.

He straightened up. He looked at the palms of his hands. Then he stretched out his arms, palms facing the barrier.

“I really hate you,” he said to the barrier.

Twin beams of searing green light shot from his palms. A torrent of focused light.

“Aaaaahhhh!” Sam shouted as he aimed and fired.

He shouted a loud curse. And again, as he fired again and still fired.

The light hit the barrier and did nothing. Nothing burned. Nothing smoked or charred.

“Burn!” Sam howled. “Burn!”

He played the beams upward, tracing the curve of the barrier. He raged and howled and blazed.

To no effect.

Sam sat down suddenly. The bright fire went out. He fumbled clumsily for the bottle.

“I have it,” a voice said.

Sam twisted sideways, looking for the source. He couldn’t find her. It was a her, he was pretty sure of that, a female voice.

She stepped around to where he could see her. Taylor.

Taylor was a pretty Asian girl who had never made a secret of her attraction to Sam. She was also a freak, a three bar with the power of teleportation. She could instantly go any place she’d ever seen or been before. She called it “bouncing.”

She wore a T-shirt and shorts. Sneakers. Unlaced, no socks. No one dressed well, not anymore. People wore whatever was halfway clean.

And no one traveled unarmed. Taylor had a large knife in a nice leather sheath.

She was not beautiful like Astrid. But not cold and remote and looking at him with defensive, accusing eyes, either. Looking at Taylor did not fill his brain to overflowing with memories of love and rage.

She was not the girl who had been the center of his life for all these months. Not the girl who had left him frustrated, humiliated, feeling like a fool. Feeling more alone than ever.

“Hey, Taylor. Bouncy bouncy Taylor. T’sup?”

“I saw the light,” Taylor said.

“Yeah. I am all about light,” Sam slurred.

She held out the bottle tentatively, not sure what she should do with it.

“Nah.” He waved it off. “I think I’ve had quite enough. Don’t you?” He spoke with extreme care, trying not to slur. Failing.

“Come sit with me, Taylor, Taylor, bouncy Taylor.”

She hesitated.

“Come on. I won’t bite. Good to talk with someone . . . normal.”

Taylor rewarded him with a brief smile. “I don’t know how normal I am.”

“More normal than some. I was just checking on Brittney,” Sam said. “You have a monster inside of you, Taylor? Do you have to be locked in a basement because inside you is some psycho with a whip arm? No? See? You are so normal, Taylor.”

He glared at the barrier, the untouched, unfazed barrier. “Do you ever beg to be burned into ashes so you can be free to go to Jesus, Taylor? Nah. See, that’s what Brittney does. No, you’re pretty normal, bouncy Taylor.”

Taylor sat beside him. Not too close. Friend close, conversation close.

Sam said nothing. Two different urges were battling in his head.

His body was saying go for it. And his mind . . . well, it was confused and not exactly in control.

He reached over and took Taylor’s hand. She did not pull her hand away.

He moved his hand up her arm. She stiffened a little and glanced around, making sure they weren’t seen. Or, maybe, hoping they were.

His hand reached her neck. He leaned toward her and pulled her to him.

He kissed her.

She kissed him back.

He kissed her harder. And she slid her hand under his shirt, fingers stroking his bare flesh.

Then he pulled away, fast.

“Sorry, I . . .” He hesitated, his wallowing brain arguing against a body that was suddenly aflame.

Sam stood up very suddenly and walked away.

Taylor laughed gaily at his back. “Come see me when you get tired of mooning over the ice princess, Sam.”

He walked into a sudden, stiff breeze. And any other time, in any other condition, he might have noticed that the wind never blew in the FAYZ.

TWO

72
HOURS
, 4
MINUTES

IT WAS
AMAZING
what decent food could do for a starving girl’s looks.

Diana looked at herself in the big mirror. She was wearing clean panties and a clean bra. Skinny, very skinny. Her legs were knobby, with knees and feet looking weirdly big. She could count every rib. Her belly was concave. Her periods had stopped and her breasts were smaller than they’d been since she was twelve. Her collarbones looked like clothes hangers. Her face was almost unrecognizable. She looked like a heroin addict.

But her hair was starting to look better, darker. The rusty color and the brittleness that came from starvation, they were disappearing.

Her eyes were no longer dead, empty shadows sunk into her skull.

Now her eyes sparkled in the soft lamplight. She looked alive.

Her gums weren’t bleeding as much. They were pink, not red, not so swollen. Maybe her teeth wouldn’t fall out after all.

Starvation. It had driven her to eat human flesh. She was a cannibal.

Starvation had deprived her of her humanity.

“Not quite,” Diana said to her reflection. “Not quite.”

When she had seen that Caine would destroy the helicopter with Sanjit and his brothers and sisters she had sacrificed her own life. She had toppled from the cliff to force Caine to make the choice: save Diana or kill the children.

Surely that act of self-sacrifice balanced out the fact that she had bitten and chewed and swallowed a cooked chunk of Panda’s chest.

Surely she was redeemed? At least a little?

Please? Please, if there is a God watching, please see that I have redeemed myself.

But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. She had to do more. For as long as she lived she would have to do more.

Starting with Caine.

He had shown just a glimmer of humanity, saving her and letting his intended victims go free. It wasn’t much. But it was something. And if she could find a way to change him . . .

A sound. Very slight. Just a scrape of foot on rug.

“I know you’re there, Bug,” Diana said calmly, not looking back. Not giving the little creep the satisfaction. “What do you think Caine would do to you if I told him you were spying on me in my underwear?”

No answer from Bug.

“Aren’t you a little young to be a pervert?”

“Caine won’t kill me,” a disembodied voice said. “He needs me.”

Diana crossed to the California king–sized bed. She slipped on the robe she’d chosen from among the many in the closet. They belonged to the woman whose bedroom this had been. A famous actress with very expensive taste who was only one size bigger than Diana.

And her shoes fit almost perfectly. Close to seventy pairs of designer shoes. Diana slipped her feet into a pair of fleece-lined slippers.

“All I have to do to get rid of you, Bug, is to tell Caine your powers are increasing. I’ll tell him you’re becoming a four bar. How do you think he’ll react to having a four bar sharing this island with him?”

Bug faded slowly into view. He was a snotty little brat of a kid. He’d just turned ten.

For a moment Diana felt something like compassion for him: Bug was a damaged, messed-up little creep. Like all of them, he was scared and lonely and maybe even haunted by some of the things he’d done.

Or not. Bug had never shown any evidence of a conscience.

“If you want to see naked girls, Bug, why don’t you creep up on Penny?”

“She’s not pretty,” Bug said. “Her legs are all . . .” He twisted his fingers around to demonstrate. “And she smells bad.”

Penny was eating better, like Diana. But she was getting worse. She had fallen from one hundred feet onto water and rocks. Caine had levitated her back up the cliff. But her legs were broken in a dozen places.

Diana had done what she could to set the breaks, made splints out of duct tape and boards, but Penny was in constant agony. She would never walk again. Her legs would never heal.

She lived now in one of the bathrooms so that she could drag herself to the toilet when she needed to. Diana brought her food twice a day. Books. A TV with a DVD player.

There was still electricity in the house on San Francisco de Sales Island. The generator supplied a weak and faltering current. When Sanjit had lived here, he’d been worried that fuel for the generator was running out. But Caine could do things Sanjit couldn’t. Like levitate barrels of fuel from the wrecked yacht rusting at the bottom of the cliff.

Life here was very good for Diana and Caine and Bug. But life would never be good for Penny. Her power—the ability to make others see terrifying visions of monsters and flesh-eating insects and death—was of no help to her now.

“She scares you, doesn’t she, Bug?” Diana asked. She laughed. “You tried, didn’t you? You snuck in on her and she caught you.”

She saw the answer on Bug’s face. The shadow of a terrifying memory.

“Best not to make Penny mad,” she said. She pulled on slacks. Then she patted Bug on his freckled cheek. “Best not to make me mad, either, Bug. I can’t make you see monsters. But if I catch you spying on me again, I’ll tell Caine it’s either me or you. And you know who he’ll choose.”

Diana left the room.

She’d resolved to be a better person. And she would be. Unless Bug kept bothering her.

The three Jennifers. That’s what they called themselves. Jennifer B was a redhead, Jennifer H was blond, and Jennifer L had her hair in black dreadlocks. They hadn’t even known one another before the FAYZ.

Jennifer B had been a Coates kid. Jennifer H was homeschooled. Jennifer L was the only one who’d attended the regular school.

They were twelve, twelve, and thirteen, respectively. And for the last couple of months they had shared a house on a cul-de-sac away from the center of town.

It was a good choice: the big fire had come nowhere near the development.

Now, though, it seemed like a bad choice. The so-called hospital was blocks away and the three of them could all have used a Tylenol or something because they all had the same headache, the same sore muscles, and the same hacking cough.

It had started twenty-four hours ago, and they had just figured it was the flu coming back around. There’d been a mini-epidemic of flu that had left a lot of kids feeling bad. But it hadn’t been very dangerous except that it kept some kids immobilized who could have been working.

Jennifer B—Jennifer Boyles—had been asleep for no more than an hour when she was awakened by a loud, percussive sound close by, not from outside, from the room next to hers.

She sat up in bed and fought down the woozy, head-swimming feeling. She felt her forehead. Yeah, still hot. Definitely hot.

Whatever the noise was, forget it, she told herself. Too sick to get up. If something was breaking into the house to kill her, so much the better: she felt rotten.

Kkkrrraaafff!

This time the walls seemed to shake. Jennifer B was up and out of her bed before she could think about it. She coughed, paused, then veered toward the door, eyes not quite focused, head pounding.

In the hallway she found Jennifer L. Jennifer L was coughing, too, and looking as scared as Jennifer B. They were both in sweatpants and T-shirts, both miserable.

“It’s in Jennifer’s room,” Jennifer L said. She had her weapon, a lead pipe with a grip bound with black electrical tape.

Jennifer B was annoyed with herself for having forgotten her own weapon. You didn’t jump out of bed at night in the FAYZ without going armed. She staggered back to her bed and fished out the machete. It was stuck into a canvas scabbard between her mattress and box spring, handle protruding.

It wasn’t all that sharp, but it looked crazy dangerous and it was. A two-foot-long blade with a cracked wooden grip.

“Jennifer?” Jennifer B called at Jennifer H’s room.

Kkkrrraaafff!

The door rattled on its hinges. Jennifer B opened the door and stood with her machete at the ready. Jennifer L was right behind her, pipe clenched in nervous hand.

Jennifer H had always had a fear of the dark so she had a very small Sammy sun in one corner of the room, hovering beneath what had once been a hanging light fixture. The light was green and eerie, more creepy than illuminating. It showed Jennifer H. She wore a flower-print nightgown.