Plague (18 page)

BRITTNEY
SAW THE huge, blue-eyed bugs. She saw the cave. And she understood none of it.

Then she saw Jamal’s gun. Shreds of his clothing. The blood that soaked them.

Nothing left but his clothing, his shoes, and his gun.

The bugs skittered madly past her carrying rocks eight, nine, ten times their own size. Like busy ants. But ants the size of wolves or Shetland ponies.

Coyotes watched. They were anxious, skittish, scared of the massive insects.

She wished she could ask Jamal what was happening. But Jamal would not be answering any more questions.

She wondered if she could flee. She wondered if she should flee. But what difference would it make?

The bugs had piled up a small mountain of rocks. Bigger and bigger stones were being hauled out.

She stepped in front of one of the insects. It was carrying a rock that could easily crush her. It would be nothing for these bugs to attack her, tear her apart as they’d apparently done to poor scared Jamal.

But the bug just scuttled around her.

Why? Why would they eat Jamal and not her? Because they ate only truly living flesh? Or because they knew that she was Drake and Drake was she and they could not harm Drake?

What was stopping them?

Who was stopping them?

But Brittney already knew the answer. She knew that something, someone, some mind was touching hers. It was as if she’d always known it. As if that cold consciousness had always been there in the background watching her even as she averted her eyes and looked to heaven.

When she was still in her grave, clawing at the dirt, she had felt it.

When she looked deep into the eyes of her brother, Tanner, she could sometimes catch glimpses of it, in layers down beneath his disguise as an angel.

She had known but had not wanted to know that Drake was its creature, the creature of this devil, just as she was God’s creature.

She looked at the mine shaft, stood there as the insects cleared the rocks. Like a rock herself in the midst of rushing waters.

They were freeing the evil one. She could do nothing to stop them. She would do nothing to stop Drake from going to be with it. The devil would win this battle.

The dark mind teased at the edges of her own muddled thoughts. In faint, wordless whispers it made promises.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

To give you what you want.

“I want to die,” Brittney said. “To go to heaven.”

When she closed her eyes she felt, rather than saw, something very like a glowing smile from a deep pool of darkness.

She had begged God to free her. Maybe this was His way. Maybe it wasn’t Sam who would free her, but this devil inside the mountain.

Brittney walked into the mine shaft, lifted a small rock, and carried it away.

“Can you make any sense out of that?” Sam asked Jack.

They were in the marina’s office. Two dozen boats sat placidly in the water. Several dozen more were raised out of the water in a long boathouse. There were papers on a desk, books in gray steel shelves, two broken-down rolling office chairs. The out-of-date calendars were reminders that no one had been here in a very long time.

The computers were useless, of course, without electricity. But Jack had insisted on carrying three of the half-exhausted laptops from the train. And a search had turned up a flash drive.

“It’s some kind of proprietary software. I had to open it in Preview and it’s hard to make sense of.”

Toto was rummaging through cupboards, finding nothing much. Dekka was sitting in one of the chairs with her feet up, gazing gloomily out at the lake. From time to time she surreptitiously ran her hands over her stomach, shoulders, thighs, checking for any sign of infestation.

And from time to time she would pull her shirt back to check the cauterized wound from Sam’s fire.

“Hah!” Jack said. “I think I’ve got it. They had a truck deliver marine gas just a week before the FAYZ. A thousand gallons in round numbers. That should have brought them up to about twelve hundred gallons total. And they have diesel, too. I just can’t find those. . . .”

He trailed off, lost in the numbers again.

This, thought Sam, is why I brought Jack.

Sam was feeling amazingly contented. He’d had a sudden flood of good news. They had found food. They had found soda. They would undoubtedly find beer and more soda and maybe a few bags of ancient chips once they searched the boats, the kind of stuff people took for a day on the lake.

Best of all, the lake was huge and filled with fresh water. More fresh water than they could ever use in a thousand years.

They’d also found a clipboard with scrawled figures indicating that the lake had recently been restocked with trout and bass.

It was like stumbling into the Garden of Eden. They could move the whole population up here. Use the boats as housing. Fish the lake. Drink the water. Use the gas to haul the crops from the fields up here.

It wasn’t perfect. But for the FAYZ it was heaven.

If only Astrid were here.

He tried to push that thought aside. He was mad at Astrid. He was sick of Astrid. And yet, all he could think of was her face when he handed her a jar of Nutella and a can of Pepsi.

“Why didn’t they do something?” Dekka wondered aloud.

“Who?” Sam asked.

“The people who were studying crazy boy over there.” She jerked her head toward Toto.

“What were they going to do?” Sam asked with a shrug.

“How about warn people what was happening?” Dekka said. “Like, ‘Hey, people of Perdido Beach, something very weird is happening’?”

“They were scientists,” Jack mumbled, no longer deciphering boring documents but searching the laptop’s hard drive, reveling in the sheer visceral pleasure of opening applications.

“So they were scientists,” Dekka snapped. “So what?”

“So they were studying, right?” Jack said. “They had to understand it first. Can’t just run around . . . Hey, look, there’s this cool Easter Egg if you press—”

“Means people on the outside know what’s happening,” Dekka said.

“What do you think happens when the barrier comes down?” Sam wondered aloud. “I mean, to all of us?”

Jack said, “Most likely all our powers go away.”

“Most likely,” Sam agreed.

“But not for sure,” Jack said.

“No.”

Dekka said, “They don’t even let you carry a Swiss Army knife at school, what are they going to do with you, Sam? You’re like a guy carrying two massive lasers.”

“Like Jack said, most likely our powers will be gone. That will be a relief.”

“Not true,” Toto said. “He says it will be a relief, but that’s not what he believes.”

Sam glared at Toto. “Okay. I would probably miss it.”

“Truth,” Toto said. Then, communing once more with his imaginary Spider-Man head, he added, “It’s the truth.”

“Look what they did with Toto and subject number two,” Dekka said.

“Locked us up,” Toto said. “No family. Stole us away and locked us up.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Sam said. “Everyone in the world probably knows about us. We’d be too well-known.”

“He believes it,” Toto said.

“But he’s not sure,” Dekka said dryly. “Sam, you’ve never been a freak out in the real world. Me? To a lot of people I was a freak before I ever got here. If my parents would send me away to Coates just for being a lesbian, imagine how happy they would be to see that I can also cancel gravity.”

She laughed to take the edge off it. But Sam did not join in.

“I still want the barrier to come down,” Sam said.

“Not the truth,” Toto said.

“Yes it is,” Sam protested. “You think I like things like this?”

Toto started to answer, but Dekka cut him off. “Sam, maybe you haven’t spent much time thinking about this, but I have. And trust me, lots of kids have, and not just freaks with powers. I mean, you think Albert wants this all to end so he can go back to school and to being some little nerd?”

“Astrid wants it to end,” Sam said.

Dekka nodded. “No doubt. And Jack here wants it to end so he can get back to his computers and all because half the time he doesn’t even remember he has superstrength. Edilio wants it to end, too, I guess, unless he starts thinking about getting deported back to Honduras. But do you honestly think Brianna wants to stop being the Breeze?”

“Brianna would hate it,” Sam admitted.

“There’s kids who pray every night for all this to be over. There’s other kids who pray every night that the barrier stays right where it is. And now that we’re going to show them all this lovely fresh water, this nice place up here . . .”

“You believe that,” Toto confirmed.

“Thanks,” Dekka said sarcastically.

Sam gazed out at the lake with a very different feeling now. If they had water, if they had food, if peace could be kept between him and Caine, and especially if they could get power flowing somehow, how many kids would stop hoping for an end to the FAYZ?

“You need to think about all that, Sam,” Dekka said. “You’re the leader, after all.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

Dekka laughed. She stood up and stretched. “Sam: you’re still the leader. You’re always going to be the leader. It’s not something you choose: it’s something you are.”

She took his arm and guided him out of the building, out onto the dock.

Her mood was different now. Sam was shocked by the suddenness of the change. She’d been putting on an act. But now her eyes were dull and her mouth turned down at the edges. She stood close to him, took his hand, and pressed it to her shirt over the top of her abdomen. “Feel that? That lump?”

He nodded.

“My mom had a benign cyst once, so maybe that’s all it is,” Dekka said gravely.

“You think it’s . . .”

“Maybe I just noticed it because I’m looking for it, but maybe it’s one of them,” Dekka said.

“Don’t jump to—”

“I’m not,” Dekka said. “But if that’s what it is, if it’s those things, I’m going to ask you to take care of me.”

“We’ve been over this,” Sam said, pulling his hand away.

“If I tell you it’s time, you do it, okay, Sam?”

He couldn’t answer.

“I’m not afraid to die,” Dekka said.

Sam was glad Toto wasn’t there to hear.

“And you have to promise me something,” Dekka said.

“What?”

“Don’t you ever tell Brianna what you know about how I feel. It would only bring her pain. I love her and I wouldn’t want to make her hurt.”

“Dekka . . .”

“No,” she said briskly. “Don’t argue, okay? Maybe I’m wrong and this is nothing. So let’s not argue about it.”

“Yeah,” he said. They stood awkwardly for a while, then Sam said, “I don’t want to sound weird, but you know I love you, right?”

“Love you, too, Sam.”

Sam made a move as if to hug her, but stopped himself.

She smiled. “Yeah, we’re not the huggy type, are we?”

Sam said, “Let’s go see what we can find down in the boats.”

ONE
THING WAS crystal clear to Astrid as she stood in the drenching rain: the secret she had kept for so long was no longer a secret.

She looked down at the street and saw Orc there. He was staring up at her, his stone-and-flesh jaw slack.

And coming up the street behind him were four other boys. She recognized Lance and Turk. The other two she barely knew.

All four were armed. Orc didn’t need a weapon.

She scanned in every direction, frantic, looking for some source of support. Maybe Sam had come back. Maybe Brianna. Maybe Edilio and some of his soldiers.

But no, the streets were abandoned but for a sick-looking girl, crouched and weary, moving in the general direction of the plaza, stopping to cough, staggering on.

Orc had defended Astrid once before, rescuing her from Zil and his Human Crew thugs. Now four of those thugs were pointing at her, at the amazing rain cloud, then breaking into a run, all eager malicious energy.

The cloud was growing. The rain was spreading.

Orc was standing in it, an animated gravel heap under a deluge.

The others slowed and then stepped gingerly into the rain and, like Orc, tilted their heads back and drank in the wondrous fresh water.

She had a gun. Would she use it?

“It’s the ’tard,” Turk yelled. His face broke out in a grin. He was standing beneath a tree that was decorated with a yard sale’s worth of clothing and bits of broken toys. “It’s that dumb brother of hers, Petard!”

Turk circled past Orc and hopped the fence into Astrid’s yard. His friends followed warily, eyes darting from Astrid to Orc. Orc did nothing.

Then, in a sudden rush, Turk was up the stairs and standing on the platform. The others crowded beside him.

Turk laughed loudly, gleeful. “It’s the ’tard! He’s the one making it rain.”

“Orc!” Astrid cried.

“That little kid must have some mad powers,” Lance said.

“Go away,” Astrid said.

She was aware of the fact that her drenched nightgown clung far too closely to her body. The gun in her hand weighed a ton.

“Grab the kid,” Lance said. “If we have him, we control the rain, right?”

There was blood on Turk’s shirt. Too much of it.

“What have you done?” Astrid demanded.

Turk looked down at the blood. He seemed surprised by it. “Oh, that?” He laughed savagely. “That’s nothing much. Just means we run this place now, Astrid. No Sam around, huh? Where’s mister light hands?”

“Orc!” Astrid cried out. She didn’t want to reveal the depths of her fear. But she knew what Turk would do. And she did not want to use the gun. Not even now, not even for Petey.

“What other tricks can the ’tard do?” Lance demanded. “Float in the air, make rain. What else?”

“Mutant retard. Freaktard,” one of the other kids said, and laughed tentatively like he wasn’t quite sure it was funny.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Astrid said. She was chilled now and beginning to shiver. “He was just thirsty. He has the sickness, the flu, and he was thirsty.”

On the street below, other kids were coming out of their homes, carrying bowls and buckets. They advanced with wondering eyes, edging toward the rain curtain as it edged toward them.

“The ’tard must be some kind of serious moof to do this,” Lance said. “Blow off the top of the house? Call up a rain cloud? That’s, like, at least three-bar powers there. Maybe four.”

“If you bother him, he may stop.” The threat was a sudden inspiration and it worked. Lance’s eyes narrowed even further and Turk was suddenly very still. Drinkable water was important, even to such sub-geniuses as Turk and Lance.

Then Turk shook his head and said, “Nice try, Astrid. But if the freaktard makes rain whenever he gets thirsty, all we gotta do is keep him thirsty and we own the rainmaker.”

“Wonder what he does when he gets hungry?” Watcher asked.

The rain beat on the carpet. It was already pooling around their feet. Shallow puddles in dirty carpet.

Turk made his decision. “I think we’re just going to take old Petard with us.” He motioned to the two younger boys. “Grab him.”

The pistol came up suddenly, almost as if the gun itself had made the decision. Astrid aimed it at Turk.

Despite the rain her mouth was dry as parchment. Her throat wouldn’t make sounds. Her finger was on the trigger, stroking the grooves, feeling it. Her thumb was on the safety.

She clicked it off.

All she saw now was Turk’s face, and the v-sights of the pistol.

“You aren’t going to pull that trigger, Astrid,” Turk said.

A sound from the steps. Running feet.

Edilio emerged. He had an automatic rifle aimed at Turk. “It’s over, Turk,” Edilio said.

Astrid dropped the pistol to her side. She breathed a huge, shaky sigh of relief.

“You going to let Astrid just own this freak?” Turk demanded of Edilio.

“Drop all your weapons. Right now!” Edilio yelled.

The two younger kids looked to Turk for guidance.

Lance was the one who moved. He raised his own pistol and pointed it at Little Pete. “Anyone shoots anyone, the ’tard takes one in the head.”

“Man, you don’t want to do this,” Edilio warned. “Yeah? Well, listen up, Edilio: Albert’s dead.”

Edilio’s eyes opened wide.

“See, the situation has changed rapidly,” Lance said in a parody of a newscaster’s voice. “So, now, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a Mexican standoff. You squeeze one off, Edilio, chances are I can still get the kid. Bang.”

“You should understand what a Mexican standoff is,” Turk mocked. He raised his own gun and aimed it at Astrid. “See? Now it’s even more complicated. Lance is right: Albert is, uh, not feeling well. Forever. So no one is even paying you, wet-back. You need to walk away. Run before the immigration cops get here.” He laughed.

A terrible thought formed in Astrid’s brain: if Little Pete was killed it might all end.

A simple act of murder . . .

What kind of life did he have? Was Little Pete’s life worth all of this? Was it worth Edilio dying? Was it worth the many more deaths that would surely happen? Was it worth all of them dying in this violent, foul, God-forsaken FAYZ?

“Go ahead,” Astrid said flatly. She let her pistol drop to the sodden carpet. It splashed. “Go ahead. Shoot him. Kill Little Pete.”

• • •

Diana and Caine had made love several more times. In her bed. In his bed. In the big bedroom with its ego wall of the two movie star parents grinning out from photos taken with Leo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, that actress who was in
Mamma Mia!
, Steven Spielberg, Heath Ledger, and a bunch of people who were probably famous but looked more like they were businessman types.

Diana was in the kitchen, wearing a robe and slippers and heating some food for Penny. New England clam chowder. A quesadilla. A mismatched kind of meal, she supposed, but Penny wasn’t going to complain. They were all still a long, long way from complaining about food.

Diana had not intended it to be this way with Caine. Somehow she’d imagined the one time, but not an endless series of sequels. But Caine’s appetite had not been sated. He had come back to her bed in the night. And then, this morning, before the sun was even up.

Something was happening to her. She was coming to like Caine. Love? She didn’t even know for sure what that meant. Maybe she loved him. That would be strange. He wasn’t exactly lovable. And once you knew the real Caine, he wasn’t even likable.

Diana had always found Caine fascinating. And she’d always found him attractive. Hot, she would have said when she was younger. Hot in a cold sort of way, if that made any sense.

But this was different. She wasn’t using him now. That was her usual attitude toward Caine, at least that’s what she’d always told herself: he was useful. A girl like Diana, a girl who enjoyed taking risks, who enjoyed sticking a knife of wit and cruelty into other girls at school, who enjoyed taunting the panting hormonal boys and leering old men, a girl like that could use a strong male protector.

And Caine was definitely a strong protector. It would take a suicidal guy to cross him. Even before Caine had started to develop powers, he was the kind of boy other boys steered clear of. He wasn’t always the biggest or the toughest-looking, but he was always the most determined. The most ruthless. You knew if you messed with Caine, you’d suffer for it.

She supposed, if she had to be serious, that she’d long ago developed genuine emotions for him. Of some sort. Not love. Not even like. But something. Something normal people might have thought was sick, in a way.

Emotions. But not what she felt now—whatever this was.

Diana plated the quesadilla and poured the soup into a bowl. She set it all on a tray and carried it upstairs. She knocked, opened the door, and placed the tray of food in front of a sleeping Penny. It was like feeding a dog.

She found Caine out on what had once been a well-manicured lawn that covered the ground from the house to the cliff. It was now wild with weeds, some as much as head-high. He was looking toward the distant town through his telescope.

He heard her approach. Without looking back he said, “Something’s happening in town.”

“I don’t care.”

“A cloud. Like a rain cloud. In fact, I think it is raining. It’s just a small cloud. Way down low, though, not an illusion in the barrier.”

“You’re probably seeing a reflection. Or an illusion.”

Caine handed her the telescope. She wanted to refuse it, but she was curious. She looked. The town leaped closer. Not enough to see people, but enough to see that there was indeed a cloud, just one, hanging far too low, staying put in one place. The gray smudge beneath it might be falling rain.

“So?” she asked. “So some freak has developed the power to make a cloud.”

“You don’t wonder who? That’s a pretty major power.”

Diana sighed theatrically. “What do you care?”

“I don’t like the idea of there being another four bar. Two of us is already one too many.”

“It doesn’t mean it’s a four bar,” Diana said. “Brianna and Dekka and Taylor are only threes. They have greater powers than that.”

“At least a three bar, though.” He took the scope back. “You don’t think if they can find a way they’ll come after us? If Sanjit made it there alive, then Sam knows what we have here. You don’t think he’ll come after it?”

“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t think he’ll look for a fight with you. He’s not as insecure as you are.”

Caine snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that’s my problem: insecurity.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no way for us to get back even if we wanted to.”

“There’s always a way, Diana. There’s always a way.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t find a way.”