Fear (44 page)

What she noticed was the light.

And then Cigar’s screams.

But Cigar screamed a lot, so Astrid kept walking and ignored his mad shrieks that something was in his feet.

Then it all came together and Astrid knew. She felt something pushing at the leather of her boot.

“Zekes!” she cried, and stumbled back, fell down, jumped up like the ground was electrified, crawled, stood, ran back, back until the ground was hard and flat again.

She fumbled in the dark, fingers searching for and then finding the whipping worm, its head already through the leather and touching her flesh, and she got her hands around it even though it fought, and she pulled at it with all her strength and it came free and whipped around, quick as a cobra, and sank its nasty, tooth-ringed mouth into her arm, but she had the tail and yelled,
“No! No!”
and then it was away from her.

She had thrown it. Somewhere.

Cigar cried pitiably.

And then, so much more terrible, laughed and laughed in the dark.

Astrid with shaking hands grabbed the shotgun and fired it once.

She saw the edge of the field.

She saw Cigar frozen in a twisting fall.

He was in the field.

She heard the greedy mouths burrowing into him. A sound like hungry dogs eating.

“Petey!
Petey!
Help him!”

Cigar said, “Oh,” in a small, disappointed voice.

And the only sound in the darkness was the relentless feeding of the worms.

She sat there listening, no choice but to hear. Tears flowed. She sat with her knees together, head in twisting hands, crying.

How much time passed until the worm sounds were finished she couldn’t know. The stink … that remained.

She was alone now. Completely and absolutely alone in a darkness that seemed almost like a living thing, as if she had been swallowed whole and was now in the belly of some indifferent beast.

“All right, Petey,” Astrid said at last. “No choice, huh, brother? The crazy behind door number one or the crazy behind door number two. Show me what you have to show me, Peter.”

She saw him. Not him, not like there was light, but something, like the darkness had warped around itself. A suggestion of a shape. A little boy.

“Are you there?” she asked.

Something cold, like someone had slid an icicle through her scalp and through her skull and pushed it deep inside her brain. No pain. Just a terrible cold.

“Petey?” she whispered.

Peter Ellison did not move. He stayed very, very still. His hand touched her on the head, but only just, just barely, and he stayed very still.

The avatar that was his sister had within it an amazing complexity of lines and designs, signs inside of mazes inside of maps that were part of planets and…

He pulled himself back. Inside her was a game of such beautiful complexity.

This was what it was to be the girl with the yellow hair and the stabbing blue eyes. It took his breath away. Or would have if he had breath and body.

He mustn’t play with those complex swirls and patterns. Each time he had tried he’d broken the avatar and it had come apart. He couldn’t break this one.

It’s me, Petey
, he said.

The avatar shuddered. Patterns twisted around his touch, feeling for him like tiny light-snakes.

“Can you fix it, Petey? The FAYZ. Can you make it stop?”

He could hear her voice. It came straight up through the avatar, words of light floating to him.

He wondered. Could he fix it? Could he undo the great and terrible thing he had done?

He felt the answer as a sort of regret. He reached for the power, the thing that had made him able to create this place. But there was nothing there.

It was in my body
, he said.
The power
.

“You can’t end it?”

No
.

No, sister Astrid, I can’t
.

I’m sorry
.

“Can you bring the light back?”

He pulled away. Her questions made him feel bad inside.

“No. Don’t go away,” she said.

He had memories of how much her voice had hurt when he was the old Pete. When he had a body, with a brain all wired crazily so that things were always too loud, even colors.

He stopped moving away. He resisted an urge to reach inside that mesmerizing avatar and take its sadness away. But no, his fingers were too clumsy. He knew that now. The girl named Taylor, he had tried to make her better, and he had torn the avatar to shreds.

“Petey. What is the Darkness doing?”

Pete considered. He hadn’t looked at that thing lately. He could see him, a green glow, tendrils like a writhing octopus reaching out through the placeless place where Pete now lived.

The Darkness was weak. His power, spread all through the barrier, was weakening. He was the thing Pete had used to create the barrier. In that panic moment with the terrible loud sounds and the fear on all the faces, when Pete had screamed inside his own head and reached out with his power he’d stretched the Darkness into that barrier.

Now it was weakening. Soon it would break and crack.

Dying.

“The Darkness, the gaiaphage, it’s dying?”

It wants to be reborn
.

“Petey. What happens if it is reborn?”

He didn’t know. He was out of words. He opened his mind to her. He showed sister Astrid images of the great sphere he had built, the barrier that had pushed all the rules and laws away, the barrier made of the gaiaphage, that had become the egg for its rebirth, the numbers all twisted together, fourteen, and the twisting, screaming distortion when anything passed through from one universe to the other, and now sister Astrid was screaming and holding her head; he could see it in the avatar, funny screaming, like words that popped and exploded around him and—

He pulled away.

He was hurting her.

He’d done it. With his clumsy fingers and his stupid, stupid stupidness, he had hurt her.

Her avatar twirled away like a snowflake in a storm.

Petey turned and ran.

“Oh, God, it’s coming!” Diana screamed.

She was sweating, straining, on her back with her legs spread wide, knees up. The contractions were just minutes apart now, but they lasted so long it was as if she had no rest in between, just a chance to gasp some super-heated fetid air.

She had no more energy for crying. Her body had taken control. It was doing what it was supposed to do five months from now. She was not ready. The baby was not ready. But the enormous swell of her belly said different. It said the time was now.

Now!

Who was there to help her in this? No one. Drake stared in horrified fascination. Penny curled her lip with contempt. Neither of them interfered or spoke, because it was clear, clear to anyone with a heart or brain, that the only other thing in the room that cared about the baby was the pulsing green monster.

Diana felt its hungry will.

Doom for her baby.

She had known there would be pain. And while it was bad, it was not as bad as the stroke of Drake’s whip.

It was not the pain that made her cry out, but the despair, the certain knowledge that she would never be the baby’s mother. That she would fail even at this. The deadening reality that she was unforgiven, still an exile from the human race, that she still bore the mark of her evil deeds.

The taste of human flesh.

She had been so hungry. So close to death.

I’ve said I’m sorry, I repented, I begged for forgiveness; what do you want from me? Why won’t you help this baby?

Penny moved closer, careful of her damaged, bloody feet. She leaned down to look at Diana’s straining face.

“She’s praying,” Penny said. Penny laughed. “Should I give her a god to pray to? I can make her see whatever—”

Through a veil of bloody tears Diana saw Penny reel back. Like a marionette she slammed hard, face-first into a wall.

Drake laughed. “Stupid chick. If the gaiaphage wants something, he’ll let you know. Otherwise it’s best not to spend a lot of time down here thinking about how powerful you are. There’s only one god down here, and it’s not Diana’s, and it sure isn’t you, Penny.”

Diana tried to remember what she had read in the pregnancy books. But she’d barely glanced at the sections having to do with birth. Birth was months away, not now!

Contraction. Oh, oh, a hard one. On and on.

Breathe. Breathe.

Another.

“Ahhhh!” she cried out, earning a jeer from Drake. But even as he laughed he was changing. Bright metal wire crossed his exposed teeth.

Hold on, hold on, Diana told herself. Don’t think. Just wait for—

Another contraction, like her guts were being squeezed hard by a gigantic fist.

And then Brittney was there, kneeling between Diana’s legs.

“I see its head. The top of its head.”

“I have to—have to—have to—” Diana gasped. Then, “Push!” she yelled, urging herself on.

A sudden motion. Something very fast. Brittney’s head rolled off her neck. It landed on Diana’s belly and then rolled heavily to one side.

BLAM!

Penny’s left arm took a partial hit. A chunk the size of a small steak was vaporized, leaving a divot in her shoulder, a divot that sprayed blood.

Brianna’s face appeared, looking down at Diana. “We’re out of here!”

“I can’t … can’t … oh, oh, aaaaahhhhhh!”

“You’re doing this right now?” Brianna asked, incredulous and offended. “It has to be right now?”

Diana grabbed Brianna’s shirt in an iron grip. “Save my baby. Forget about me. Save my baby!”

Sam found her, not by sight but by sound. By her weeping and her giggling.

He hung lights, more than one, illuminating a patch the size of a suburban lawn. He saw Astrid, crumpled and unaware.

He saw a skeleton just a dozen feet away, still seething with zekes.

Sam sat down wordlessly beside Astrid. He put his arm around her shoulder.

At first it was as if he wasn’t there. Like she didn’t notice him. Then, with a sudden, loud sob, she buried her face in his neck.

The tenor of her sounds changed. The wild flights of giggling stopped. So did the keening, heartbroken wail. Now she just cried.

Sam sat there perfectly still, saying nothing, and let her tears run down his neck.

The warrior who had gone out from the lake to save his people by slaying the evil one was now just a boy sitting in the dirt with his fingers in a mane of blond hair.

He stared at nothing. Expected nothing. Planned nothing.

Just sat.

Brianna picked up Brittney’s head. It was surprisingly heavy. She threw it as hard as she could down the tunnel.

Brittney’s body got up, swayed a little, and seemed as if it was ready to go after its head, so Brianna shot it in the leg at close range. The loss of one bloodless leg caused the whole body to topple over.

Penny was obviously in shock, staring at the terrible wound that was draining her life away, squirt, squirt, squirt.

Got to finish her off, Brianna told herself. But she hesitated. Penny was a human being. Not much of one, but an actual human being. Whereas the Drake/Brittney thing, well, whatever it was, it wasn’t human, because humans pretty much never stood up and tried to walk away after their heads were chopped off.

Brianna jacked a round into the chamber and aimed at Penny.

Then the gun blew apart in her hands. Exploded!

Brianna dropped it, but even as she let go she realized it was a trick. An illusion of Penny’s making.

The girl was spraying blood like a Super Soaker and still able to mess with Brianna’s head.

Brianna bent down to get the shotgun, determined to ignore any further interference, but Diana gave a huge cry of pain, and suddenly there was a head sticking almost all the way out of a place on Diana that Brianna had never wanted to see.

“Yaa-aahh-ah!” Brianna said. “Oh, this is wrong.”

But it just kept coming out as Diana grunted like an animal, and if Brianna didn’t get down there and do the right thing, the baby was going to land on the floor, on a rock.

Brianna snatched up her shotgun, snapped off a quick, poorly aimed, one-handed shot in the general direction of Penny—
BLAM!—
and cupped her hands beneath the emerging head.

“It’s got a snake around its neck!” Brianna cried.

Diana sat up—amazing that she could even think about sitting up—and yelled, “It’s the umbilical cord. It’s around the neck. It’ll choke!”

“Oh, man, I hate slimy stuff,” Brianna moaned. She pushed the baby’s head back a little, which wasn’t easy, because it was really ready to come out, and yelled, “Ewww!” a couple of times as she stretched and wrestled the umbilical cord over the baby’s head, freeing it.