Gone Series Complete Collection (213 page)

“The book?”

“It don’t say blessed are the weaselly little guys.”

Oh, that book. She had nothing to say and now she was regretting starting things with Orc. Her cot was suddenly seeming attractive. And she had to pee.

“Howard was . . . unique, I guess,” she said, wondering what she meant even as she spoke the words.

“He liked me,” Orc said. “Took care of me.”

Yeah, Diana thought, made sure you stayed drunk. Used you. But she kept that to herself.

As if Orc had read her thoughts he said, “Not saying he wasn’t a bad person a lot of times. But so am I. We all do bad stuff. Me worse than most.” Diana flashed on memories of her own. Things she’d done and now couldn’t bear to think about. “Well, maybe like people say, he’s in a better place.”

That sounded stupid to her. But wasn’t that what people said? Anyway, where exactly was a place worse than this? Howard had been choked to death and then had the flesh gnawed from his bones.

“I worry because maybe he’s in hell,” Orc said. The words sounded tortured.

Diana cursed softly, under her breath. How had she gotten herself into this? Really: had to pee. “Orc, God is supposed to be forgiving, right? So probably he forgave Howard. I mean, that’s his job, right? Forgiving?”

“If you do bad stuff and don’t repent, you go to hell,” Orc said, like he was begging for a refutation.

“Yeah, well, you know what? If Howard’s in hell, I guess we can all have a big get-together soon enough.” She turned to go.

“He liked me,” Orc said.

“I’m sure he did,” Diana snapped, wearying of the conversation. “You’re a big, lovable teddy bear, Orc.” Plus a thug and a murderer, she added silently.

“I don’t want to start up drinking again,” Orc said.

“Then don’t,” Diana said.

“But I ain’t ever killed anyone sober.”

Diana had run out of time. She raced down the stairs, found the pot they were all sharing, squatted, and sighed with relief.

The boat rocked wildly. One of the kids yelled a sleepy, “Hey!”

Diana went back up on deck and saw that Orc was gone. The small rowboat that had been tied to one of the boat’s cleats was thirty yards away, moving swiftly toward shore, driven by superhumanly powerful thrusts of the oars.

Caine was still asleep. Penny wasn’t sure how long it would take him to wake up. But she was in no hurry.

No hurry at all. Not now.

She sat watching him. He was in a very uncomfortable position, really. He sat slumped forward on the couch. His hands were wrist-deep in the bowl. The cement had dried pretty quickly.

King Caine.

He wouldn’t be clawing at his eyes, at least. Not with five gallons—the content of the bowl—of cement on his hands. He would barely be able to stand up.

She considered him. The big-deal four bar. The most powerful freak in Perdido Beach, one of just two four bars.

Helpless.

Brought down, all the way down, by bony, unattractive little Penny.

She fetched scissors from the kitchen. He shifted a little and moaned something as she cut the shirt apart and removed it.

Much better. A much more vulnerable look. After all he had been through, he still had a very nice chest. The muscles stood out in his flat stomach.

But before she could show him off, he needed one more thing. The idea she had in mind made her laugh with delight.

There was a roll of aluminum foil in the kitchen. She found it, rolled it out, and set to work by candlelight.

Drake had watched everything from the high ground out past Sinder’s garden. It made him happy to see that Sam and all his little charges were cowering in boats. It was a testament to Drake’s power.

But unfortunately it made it very hard to get to Diana. There was no way even to know where she was. She could be on any of dozens of boats.

All during the evening he had cowered up here as every half an hour or so a whirlwind blew past. Brianna.

Each time Drake would sink back against the rocks. The coyotes would turn their ears toward the sound and lie perfectly still. They feared Swift Girl.

But Brianna had not seen them. And now it was deepest night, and Swift Girl wasn’t so swift in the dark.

And then Drake had had some luck. Diana herself, wrapped in a shawl or something, had stepped into view on one of the boats. The one with Orc sitting in the bow.

Even by dim starlight he knew her. No one else moved like Diana.

Of course. He should have thought of that. Sam would make sure she had a strong protector, so of course she would be on the boat with Orc.

The sight of her made his whip twitch. He unwrapped it from encircling his waist. He wanted to feel the power in it as he gazed down at her.

She would be brave at first. Say what he might about Diana, she was not soft or weak. But the whip would change her attitude. Nothing that would harm the baby. But that still left Drake plenty of possibilities.

If he could just figure out how to get to her. And past Brianna. And Orc.

He glanced at the big houseboat, the only thing still attached to the dock. It was farther away, and the angle was bad for seeing anything other than the top deck. Dekka had been on watch there. Now she was gone. But Drake knew perfectly well the houseboat had been left there as a lure for him. They wanted him to be stupid enough to attack.

He felt a sudden flash of rage. Sam, oh, so very clever, moving all his vulnerable people out onto the boats. He hadn’t seemed so clever when Drake had whipped the flesh from him and Sam had cried out in pain and tears had streamed from his eyes. . . .

A low growl of pleasure came from Drake’s lips. It made the coyotes nervous.

Then two things happened: Orc climbed heavily down into a comically small rowboat.

Perfect! Let Orc bring the boat in. Drake would wait until the behemoth was clear and then he could take the boat out to collect Diana.

The only problem was the second thing that was happening: Drake was feeling the queasy sensation he got when Brittney emerged.

He snapped his whip in frustration. But that whip had already shriveled to a third of its usual length.

Drake quickly bit his index finger, drawing blood. He found a flat surface of rock and in the few seconds he had left he scrawled the word “sailbo—”

TWENTY

17
HOURS
, 20
MINUTES

SAM WOKE
SUDDENLY
and knew something had happened.

He lay amid the twisted blanket for a few seconds trying to gather together the threads of unconscious perception. Movements, sounds, hazy notions of murmured conversation.

Then he got quickly to his feet. He pulled on his clothing and stepped out into the main hallway. He was heading for the stairs when he stopped, turned, and saw confirmation: Astrid’s backpack was gone.

He pushed back a sliding closet door. Her shotgun was gone as well.

At that moment Dekka came down the stairs. She was startled to see him up. He was sure he saw a guilty look cross her face before being suppressed.

“She took the letters,” Sam said flatly.

“She knocked me out,” Dekka said. She pointed at the bruise on the side of her head and turned her face so he could see it by the light of the small Sammy sun.

Sam’s lips curled into a feral snarl. “Right. Astrid. Knocked you out.”

“She popped me with the butt of her shotgun.”

“I can see that. I also know what it takes to beat you down, Dekka.”

She flared angrily, but he knew it was the truth, and she knew that he knew.

“I’m sending Brianna after her.”

“Astrid’s right: we need PB to know what’s happening, and we need to work together with them. Someone needs to take that letter to Albert and Caine.”

“Not Astrid,” Sam snapped. He started to push past her to where Brianna lay snoring, blissfully unaware.

Dekka stepped in front of him. “No, Sam.”

Sam stepped up to her, so close they almost touched. “You don’t tell me no, Dekka.”

“If you send Brianna after her, one of two things: Breeze finds her and drags her back. And Astrid will hate you for it. Or Breeze hits a rock at seventy miles an hour and ends up dead or busted up.”

Sam started to say something angry. Instead his voice broke. “Drake’s out there!” He tried to say more but the words couldn’t get past the lump in his throat, so he pointed, jabbing his finger furiously toward the land.

“She’s doing the right thing,” Dekka said. “And you can’t send the girl I love to die in order to rescue the girl you love.”

Sam felt his lip quiver. He wanted to be furious, but raw emotion was making him weak. He swallowed hard and shook his head once, angrily shaking off the upwelling fear and loss. “I’ll go after her. I’ll bring her back.”

“No, boss.” It was Edilio. He stepped out from behind Dekka. “Kids wake up tomorrow morning and see you gone without even an explanation, that’s it, man. You gotta look strong and stay strong. You have the light, Sam, and that’s all that will keep people together.”

“You don’t understand,” Sam pleaded. “Drake is sick. He hates Astrid. You don’t know what he can do.”

“Drake hates everyone,” Edilio said.

Suddenly Sam found his anger. “You don’t understand a damned thing, Edilio; you don’t have anyone, you don’t have anyone you need or love or care about, it’s just you.”

He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. But it was too late.

Edilio’s usually warm, sad eyes narrowed and went cold. He pushed his way around Dekka and stood face-to-face with Sam. He stabbed his finger in Sam’s face. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Sam. There’s a lot I don’t tell you. I know who I am,” he said with a ferocity to match Sam’s own anger. “I know what I do, and what I am to this place. I know what I am to you, and how much you depend on me. You may be the symbol, and you may be the one everyone turns to when something goes bad, and you are the big badass, but I’m the guy doing the day-in, day-out work of running things. So I don’t make this about me.”

He practically spit the word “me.”

“I don’t live my life so everyone pays attention to me. I do my job without making me the story, and without people having to wonder what’s going on with me.”

Sam blinked. He felt awash in feelings, none of which made any sense together. In the tornado of fear and fury he felt shame. Everything Edilio had said was true.

Edilio wasn’t finished. It was as if he’d held way too much inside and now that the dam had burst it was going to come out. “You and Astrid, you’re making a spectacle of yourselves. Kids are scared to death and what they’re seeing is you and Astrid having a great time. I’m not judging what you’re doing, that’s not my business, but you’re putting your personal life first and you can’t do that: you are Sam Temple. All these people look to us, to you and Dekka and me—and Astrid now that she’s back—and what do they see? You and Astrid rocking the houseboat every time you get a chance, and Dekka snapping at everyone because Brianna isn’t a lesbian and doesn’t want to be her girlfriend. The only one keeping his personal business personal is me. And you’re going to get nasty about it?”

He turned away and angrily shouldered Dekka aside.

“You two get it together, because we got problems enough,” Edilio said, and stomped away.

Brianna continued to snore.

Moonlight picked Orc out of a pile of jumbled rock. Astrid wondered if Sam knew that Orc had gone ashore. She wondered if she needed to send word.

No. This was the more important mission. She had to get to Perdido Beach. Maybe Caine and Albert knew what was coming. But maybe not. If the kids in town weren’t prepared they would panic and then they would all be lost.

An image came to mind, unbidden, unwelcome: a picture of kids in absolute darkness walking lost in the desert. They would walk until a hungry zeke, or a coyote, or Drake caught them. And those would be the luckier ones. Most would die an excruciating death of hunger and thirst.

Astrid steered clear of Orc. He was searching for someone or something. It had to be Drake, which could only be a good thing from her point of view.

She tried to think of something other than the image her mind had conjured of slow death by starvation in absolute darkness.

She needed to think.

Darkness wasn’t the end state, was it? Surely something was causing the barrier to darken. The stain had a reason if not a purpose. It meant something. But what?

Most likely it was linked to the gaiaphage, that unknowable evil. The FAYZ’s own personal Satan.

No one knew much about it. Lana didn’t like to talk about it. Little Pete had been in contact with it, manipulated by it. The chimera that called itself Nerezza had been its creature. It had co-opted Caine at one point, or so the story went, but Caine had broken free.

Astrid began to jog, careful to watch the path beneath her feet. As soon as she was well away from the lake she planned to stay just off the gravel road. She wasn’t sure if that was the smart thing to do or very stupid. But she reasoned that anyone looking for her would first check the main roads.

It would take her longer this way. But no one would expect her—of all people—to go overland through rough terrain.

Well, they didn’t know her. In the last four months she had become quite comfortable with rough terrain.

She loped along, glorying in the sense of power from overcoming fear. Yes, it was dark. Yes, evil forces were on the loose. But she would outrun them or outthink them or if necessary outfight them.

If she couldn’t do any of those, then she would endure.

A pang of guilt stabbed her without warning. She should have made her case to Sam and tried to get him to agree. She shouldn’t have just run off on her own.

He would never have agreed.

She was doing the right thing. For once she was deciding to act. Not to manipulate or convince. But to act.

With luck she would reach Perdido Beach by morning.

And with a bit more luck she would be back with Sam by tomorrow night.

Brittney knew what she was to do. Mostly. The god that named itself gaiaphage had told her what she and Drake were to do. But the gaiaphage had not given her the power to keep Drake’s memories as her own. Each time she emerged it was into a situation that might be totally unexpected.