Fear (48 page)

Brittney walked beside her, peering in eagerly to see Gaia’s face. Brittney wore the expression of an ecstatic believer. Diana knew that if Gaia somehow spoke and told Brittney to leap off a cliff, Brittney would do it.

But Gaia spoke through Diana now.

She spoke through her mother.

Diana could feel her baby’s mind probing inside her own. Not the mind of a baby, true, but not quite the cold violence of the gaiaphage, either. The two were becoming one: Gaia and the Darkness. The two were growing together, and the resulting entity might be more than or less than, but definitely not equal to, either the baby or the monster.

Just one thing, though, that Diana couldn’t dismiss from her thoughts. Just one thing. The way Gaia reached into Diana’s memory and opened it up as if she was thumbing through a picture book. Like she was looking for something. Something the baby sensed must be there.

Not rustling around blindly, but looking for something.

Diana had no defenses against Gaia. She could hide nothing from her. Diana could only watch as her memories unfolded to reveal pictures of things past. And of people.

Gaia was studying the people Diana knew. Now Brianna. Now Edilio. Now Duck and Albert and Mary.

Not Panda. No.

Caine. Gaia lingered long on pictures of Caine. A first meeting at Coates. The many flirtations. The teasing. The way Diana had made him want her. The dark ambition she had seen in him. The first time he had revealed his power to her.

The terrible things they had done. Battles.

Murder.

Yes, but don’t look any further; all that I confess, Gaia, my daughter, but enough. Enough.

Please don’t.

The smell. That was what the baby found first. The aroma of roasted human flesh.

Diana’s eyes filled with tears.

“What’s the matter?” Brittney asked.

The baby tasted what Diana had tasted.

The baby felt her stomach gratefully receive the meat that had been a boy named Panda.

Yes, Diana said to the mind within her own, I’m a monster, and so are you, little Gaia. But your mommy loves you.

“There’s a string of lights up there,” Penny said. “They look like Christmas lights.”

Yes, go there
, Gaia said inside Diana’s thoughts.

“Go to the lights,” Diana said without even thinking about it. “Then follow them to the left.”

“Shut your mouth, cow,” Penny said. “You don’t give orders.”

Gaia kicked against Diana’s enfolding arms. She pushed herself up so that she could see over Diana’s shoulder. She looked at Penny.

The baby pushed her clenched fist over Diana’s shoulder, opened her hand, and Penny screamed.

Diana stopped. She watched and listened. And did it fill her with a brutal sort of joy to see Penny writhe in terror and pain? Yes. As it pleased her daughter to cause that terror.

Gaia laughed a baby’s innocent, gurgling laugh.

Penny’s scream seemed to last a very long time. Long enough that Drake merged from where Brittney had been.

When at last Penny stopped, and just sat on her meager haunches, staring, staring in horror at the baby, Drake said, “So, the baby has game.” He unwrapped his whip from around his waist and said, “Don’t think that means I can’t do what I want with you, Diana.”

Diana met his dead gaze. It occurred to her for the first time that she felt better. Much better. She had just gone through hell, but she felt … fine. She inventoried her body, checking in with her whipped back, her bruises, her murderously stretched belly, her torn parts.

She was fine.

Gaia had healed her.

“Actually, Drake,” Diana said, “I think it means you’d better watch very carefully what you do or say to me.”

Gaia, once more cradled in her mother’s arms, grinned a two-toothed grin.

“Something coming down the highway,” Sam said.

“It’s a light,” Astrid said.

“A light called Darkness,” Lana said in a faraway voice.

“It’s following the Sammy suns. Straight for us,” Caine said. He wasn’t snarking or snarling anymore. Sam saw the same look on his face and Lana’s. They both knew, deep down in their souls, what was coming.

Lana went to Caine and put a hand on his arm. Just making contact. Caine didn’t shake her off.

It was a weird bond they shared: memories of the gaiaphage. Memories of its painful touch deep inside their minds. Scars left on their souls.

“‘Fear is the mind-killer,’” Lana said, reciting from memory. “‘Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I …’ I can’t remember the rest. From a book I read a long time ago.”

To almost no one’s surprise, Astrid said,
“Dune
, by Frank Herbert. ‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.’”

She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. “‘Only I will remain.’”

There was a collective sigh that was almost a sob.

Sam pulled Astrid to him and they kissed. Then Sam pushed her away and said, “I love you. All my heart. Forever. But get the hell out of here, because I can’t be watching out for you.”

“I know,” Astrid said. “And I love you, too.”

Lana took a furious, defiant look down the highway. Sam knew what was in her heart.

“Lana. What you’ve got won’t kill him. What you’ve got may save a bunch of others. Go. Now.”

Then it was just the three of them, Sam, Caine, and Quinn, watching the dim light advance. Seeing now that it was three indistinct shapes. It was as if the one in the middle was carrying a Sammy sun of a different hue. Sam couldn’t make out faces. But he was sure he saw a tentacle twisting, twisting.

“Three of them,” Caine said. “That means most likely Penny is one of them.” Caine took a deep breath. “Get outta here, Quinn.”

Quinn said, “No. I don’t think I will.”

“Hey. I’m letting you off the hook, fisherman, okay? I’m being a good guy. You can go tell everyone the last thing I said was, ‘Just get out of here, Quinn, and try to stay alive.’”

“Quinn,” Sam said. “You’ve got nothing to prove, man.”

They had found Quinn a pistol. A revolver. It had three bullets.

“I’m in this,” Quinn said shakily.

“You have a plan, Sammy boy?” Caine asked.

“Yeah.” He extinguished the nearest Sammy sun, plunging them into darkness. The next one back was a hundred yards down the road. “Quinn, you start walking backward toward the last light. They won’t have any depth perception, no more than we do in this light. They’ll keep coming toward you. Caine, you drop left; I drop right; we hit them when they’re fifty feet out. Hopefully before Penny can find a target.”

“Great plan,” Caine said a little sarcastically. But he melted into the darkness on the left-hand side of the road.

“Quinn. My friend. What Caine said before. Save one bullet.” With that Sam plunged into the deep, enveloping darkness.

He watched Quinn begin to walk backward. It would mean Quinn was in darkness until he neared the next Sammy sun back. If Drake had seen them at all, he probably hadn’t been able to tell how many there were. But he would eventually be able to see Quinn. At that point he would fixate, anxious to take whoever it was standing in his way.

There might be an opportunity there. A few confused seconds where Caine and Sam could strike unexpectedly. If they were fast and lucky they could take out at least one of the three and reduce the odds.

Who was that third person?

Drake. Penny. And someone—or something—glowing like an old headlight.

Whoever it is, he told himself, first go for Penny.

Penny was the one to fear.

“Dada,” Gaia said.

Diana stared down at her bright, glowing child. She was already the size of a two-year-old. There were teeth in her mouth. There was hair—dark like her parents’—on her head. Her movements were already deliberate and controlled, no more wild lack of coordination. Diana wondered if she could already walk.

“Did you say ‘Dada’?”

Gaia was looking fixedly at the dark off to the right. Straight ahead a lone figure stood beneath the light of a Sammy sun. Beyond him at least two fires could be seen, one fairly close and dramatic.

Gaia was in her head again, not straining to use her child mouth, but reaching straight into Diana’s memories. Pictures of Caine. And suddenly it was clear.

“It’s an ambush!” Diana said.

“Shut the—” Drake said, and was hurled bodily onto his back with such sudden force that he skidded clear out of sight.

A beam of terrible green light shot from the other direction.

Penny had reacted faster to Diana’s warning. She was already moving to hide behind Diana when the light split the night. Half of Penny’s hair frizzled and burned, leaving a terrible smell.

A roar from the dark behind them and Drake was rushing forward, his terrible whip at the ready, searching for a target. Light sliced deep into his side. He spun and fell. But even as he fell the burn was healing.

Diana saw Sam rush from the darkness. He yelled, “Diana, get down!” and fired at the spot where Drake had been a split second earlier.

Suddenly, revealed by the flash of light from Sam’s palms: Caine.

It had been four months since she had seen him. Just a little longer since together they had made Gaia.

Their eyes met. Caine froze. He stared at Diana. A look of pain creased his brow.

That moment’s hesitation was too long.

Caine reeled back, slapping at his body with hands weirdly encrusted on their backs. Slapping and yelling, and then Sam was yelling, “It’s Penny, it’s just Penny, Caine!”

Caine seemed to get control of himself, though barely, and for only a moment as he raised his hands and, with a wild sweep of both hands, flung Penny into the dark.

It was a mistake. An invisible Penny was even more dangerous.

Sam saw it and swept his killing beam around in a semicircle, searching for her. A flash of Penny, running. But when the beam pursued her, burning up the shrubbery, turning sand to bubbling glass, she wasn’t there.

Penny was not there. Astrid was.

Astrid in flames. Running, screaming toward Sam. Her skin was crisping. There was a smell of burned meat. Her blond hair was like a single flame and the edges of that fire ate at her forehead and cheeks.

“Astrid!” Sam cried, and ran to her. He was already whipping off his shirt to smother the flames when she suddenly ballooned, like a marshmallow dropped into a fire. She swelled and her skin turned charcoal and her eyes were just smears and…

The vision was gone.

Sam was in the dark. Panting. Staring.

He turned and saw the glow of the child in Diana’s arms. They were marching calmly toward Quinn.

Caine? Where was he?

Sam heard the sound of a whip. He ran toward that sound, but now the darkness had closed in and he had to toss Sammy suns profligately in order to see.

“Quinn! Run! Get out of there!” Sam yelled.

He watched as Quinn started to make a brave show of it, then he realized it wasn’t so much brave as stupid.

It was several minutes before Sam found Caine. He was breathing, but just now returning to consciousness. There was a livid red mark around Caine’s throat.

He sat up, then accepted Sam’s extended hand.

“Drake?”

Caine nodded and rubbed his neck. “But it was Penny who distracted me. You?”

“Penny,” Sam confirmed.

“Okay, next time we have to take Penny out before we do anything else,” Caine said.

The little procession—Drake, Penny, and Diana, with a baby in her arms—kept walking on down the road.

“So she had the baby,” Sam said. “Congratulations?”

“We lost the element of surprise,” Caine said. “They’ll be ready.”

As if to make the point, Drake, now even with the next Sammy sun, turned to look back at them, laughed, and snapped his whip. The laugh carried. So did the crack.

“Why didn’t they finish us?” Sam wondered.

“If I tell you something crazy, will you just accept it?” Caine said.

“It’s the FAYZ.”

“It was the baby. The baby stopped Drake. I was choking and he was behind me so I couldn’t get at him. Anyway, as good a hold as he had on me, if I’d thrown him or pushed him I’d have ripped my own head off. I saw the baby. Looked right at me. And Drake let me go.”

Sam wasn’t sure if he believed it or not. But the days of doubting a story just because it sounded crazy were over.

“They’re heading for the barrier.”

“Maybe it really will open?”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “But they’re going through town. Tearing up your people, King Caine.”