Plague (21 page)

SAM
HAD RUN the boat all the way up the lake and all the way back. They had found two small campgrounds in all, but had not explored them carefully. Maybe a dozen big campers, a few ragged tents in various states of collapse. No doubt some camp food, soda, beer, coffee, all the things people brought camping.

And gas in some of those tanks. Lovely, lovely gasoline.

He was already imagining the steps they’d have to take. They would drive the campers to the marina area and form them up in a rough circle or maybe two concentric circles. They would have to dig some serious septic tanks well away from the lake so there wasn’t any seepage into drinking water.

They would need to ration the gas carefully, carefully, saving it for moving produce from the fields and fish from the ocean. They would still need Quinn’s steady supply of blue bats to pacify the zekes. Besides, they would need to be cautious about overfishing the lake.

No more stupid mistakes. This time they would have to get it right.

That was a job for Albert, Sam had to concede. No doubt Albert would get richer still, but he was the only one with the organizational skills for the job.

Yes, it would work. They would build it and organize it and this time they would get it right.

For his part he had to find a way to destroy the flying greenies. But surely with Jack’s strength and Dekka’s powers and maybe Brianna—who could probably run through a cloud of greenies without getting hit—they could seal up that cave and crush or burn whatever survived.

They were heading back toward the marina now, chugging along slowly, taking their time. It was getting late in the day and Sam was trying to decide whether they should try to start one of the vehicles parked at the marina and drive back tonight, or plan a little more carefully and go in the morning.

The last thing anyone needed was three hundred or so kids tearing off in mad search for sweets. Half would end up lost in the desert or the hills and end up being coyote food.

The news needed to be handled the right way. Edilio and the rest of the council would have to plan a little.

To Dekka he said, “I think maybe we should load as much water as we can carry in an SUV and drive back tonight.”

“I guess you’ve noticed there’s no road that goes straight back.”

“According to the map the road that follows the lake curves up around, hits the barrier. Right? But there has to then be a road that goes down through the Stefano Rey and hits the highway, right?”

Dekka shrugged. Her mind was elsewhere.

He couldn’t blame her. But he had convinced himself she was worrying for nothing.

He indulged himself with a moment of fantasy. They would be heroes, showing up in town with water, even if it wasn’t that much water. That would be one very welcome sight, an SUV full of water bottles. Maybe a few jars of Nutella, too, if they drove east to the train before cutting south.

Then, a meeting with the council. They could start trucking water right away. That would keep everybody calm until a plan was worked out.

“We’ll go in . . .” His words died as his gaze traveled to the marina. “Dekka. Jack. Look.”

They looked.

Creatures, like giant silvery cockroaches, cockroaches the size of minivans, clustered on the shore. Maybe a dozen.

It had to be an illusion. A trick. They were impossible. Like a nightmare out of some ancient science fiction movie.

Sam reached for the binoculars he’d found in a locked case on board. He raised them, focused.

“It’s Hunter’s bugs,” he said. He couldn’t keep the awe out of his voice. “But they’re huge.”

He traversed his binoculars and then saw a human standing atop one of the creatures. He could not see the face well enough to identify it. But there was no mistaking the long, jauntily waving tentacle.

Drake. No longer locked in his basement prison.

Sam’s Garden of Eden had its own snake.

Howard’s first impulse had been to go to the so-called hospital and find Lana. But what profit would be in it for Howard?

Orc was off somewhere, freaking out, hammered, faced, blasted. He’d come back when he ran out of alcohol, but for now, Orc was gone, and Drake’s escape was a sort of black eye for Howard.

In the back of his calculating mind, Howard wondered if Orc was just determined to pull a Mary and off himself. He was nowhere near the deadly fifteenth birthday, but Orc might one of these days pick a fight that would get him killed.

Or he might just drink himself to death. And then what? What did Howard have if he didn’t have Orc?

On a level still deeper was a genuine sadness that Orc would abandon him. They were friends, after all. Amigos. They’d been through everything together. Orc wasn’t just Howard’s main asset, he was Howard’s only friend.

He cared for Orc. Genuinely cared for him. Obviously Orc didn’t care much about him.

Howard took his time making the decision. Took his time and a fully clothed shower, too. But finally he made his decision and sauntered away from the cloud, soggy but moderately clean, unnoticed by frolicking kids.

It wasn’t far to Albert’s place. He found the door open, and quickly located Albert. The young mogul’s eyes were closed. He definitely looked dead. Very definitely dead.

He advanced cautiously, as though Albert might suddenly rise up and start yelling at him for intruding. He pressed two fingers against Albert’s neck. He didn’t feel a pulse.

But he did feel warmth. The body should be colder.

He squatted in front of Albert and with his finger pushed up one eyelid. The dark iris contracted.

“Yaaah!” Howard said, and fell backward. “Are you alive, man?”

No answer. Nothing.

Howard was frustrated because he’d hoped—if Albert was still alive—to negotiate a deal. After all, if Howard saved Albert’s life then it stood to reason that he owed Howard a little somethin’ somethin’.

Howard hesitated. He could do nothing and sooner or later Albert would be a hundred percent, stone-cold dead. Or he could try to find Lana. And maybe there would be some reward. Albert was tight with his money, but surely if Howard saved his actual life . . .

“Okay, I don’t know if you can hear this or not, Donald Trump, but if I save your butt, you owe me.” He frowned and decided he’d better add, “And oh, by the way, this is Howard talking. So it’ll be Howard you owe.”

Howard arrived at the so-called hospital to see a very disturbing sight: Edilio, shivering and muttering on the stone steps, ignored. He was just one of dozens of sick kids with various degrees of illness. Coughing, hacking, shivering.

The last thing Howard wanted to do was get any closer.

“Hey!” Howard yelled up the steps.

No one answered. He winced, turned away, turned back, doing a little dance of indecision. Without even knowing what his reward might be, it was hard for Howard to decide to risk his life. A man needed to know what he was getting paid, after all.

Kkkrrraaalff!

A kid at the top of the steps suddenly coughed with a force Howard had never seen or heard or imagined. The cough blew the boy backward. He landed hard, head smacking granite with the sound of a melon dropped on a floor.

The boy rolled over, got to his knees, then coughed a spray of blood all over a girl nearby.

“No way,” Howard said. “No way.”

The new kid, Sanjit, Helicopter Boy, appeared at the top of the steps. He rushed down to the coughing kid and grabbed his shoulders from behind.

He spotted Howard standing there. “Give me a hand, I need to get him off these steps.”

“I’m not touching that little dude,” Howard said.

Sanjit shot him an angry look. But then softened, like he understood.

Sanjit tried to walk the boy back up the stairs, but then the kid started coughing again with such violence that he threw Sanjit off and went flailing back again.

This time he rolled down the stairs to stop at Howard’s feet. He lay there, shivering and moaning. A fountain of blood flowed at once from his ears and nose and mouth.

Sanjit came down and stood over him. “Get out of the way,” Sanjit said to Howard. “I have to drag him across the street.”

“Is he dead?”

“No, he’s in perfect shape,” Sanjit snapped. He grabbed both of the boy’s wrists and started to haul him toward the plaza.

“You see Edilio there?” Howard demanded.

“Yes, I saw Edilio there,” Sanjit said.

“Shouldn’t you . . .” Howard motioned vaguely.

“Yeah, I should call for a stretcher and get him straight to the intensive care unit,” Sanjit said with contained fury. “I’ll get him on an oxygen machine and pump him full of antibiotics. Or maybe I’ll just see if he lives or dies because that’s really all I can do. All right?”

Howard took a step back in the face of the slender boy’s anger.

“Didn’t mean to . . . ,” he said, and followed at a safe distance as Sanjit dragged the body off the curb and onto the blacktop.

Sanjit stopped halfway across and stared at the sky.

“What’s that? Is that a cloud?”

“Oh, that? Yeah, it’s raining. More weirdness,” Howard said.

“What? It’s raining? Like, water?”

“Yeah, water. It was a shock to me, too,” Howard said. “This being the FAYZ you’d expect it to be raining fire or dog turds or something.”

“Choooooo!” Sanjit yelled at the top of his lungs. “Chooooo!”

A few seconds later, his chubby African brother came running down the stairs, looking alarmed.

“Water!” Sanjit said.

“Where?” Virtue demanded.

Sanjit pointed with his chin. “Get a bucket. Get every bucket you can find!”

Virtue gaped, then ran.

Sanjit resumed dragging the corpse.

“Listen, dude,” Howard said. “I need Lana. You know who I mean? The Healer.”

“You have a boo-boo?” Sanjit snarked. “She’s kind of busy trying to save a couple of creeps Edilio shot.”

“Where?”

“Astrid’s house. I don’t know where it is. How about you either help me or get lost?”

“I’ll choose B.”

Astrid’s house. Okay. That would be . . . pretty much right directly under the cloud.

Well, well, Howard thought as the truth dawned on him.

“Little Pete,” he said. “So that’s out there, then. Well, buckle up, Howard, buckle up.”

Quinn and his crew were pulling toward shore, far later than usual. They’d had a tough day of it. After a miserable night in camp, they’d had trouble getting one of the boats floating again. They had unknowingly run it ashore and scraped a hidden rock. A gash had been gouged in the bottom, which meant hours of finding a way to patch it.

Fortunately it was one of the wooden hulls, not one of the metal or fiberglass ones; those would have been impossible to patch without going back to town for equipment.

Still, they’d had to use just their Swiss Army knives to whittle some driftwood into fairly flat, fairly smooth planks. Then they’d found they had no screws, so they had to remove bolts from other boats, drill through the repair patch and the hull, and use the bolts to attach the patch. They had scraped and then melted some paint to use as a sealant.

When they were all done the boat was surprisingly sea-worthy. They’d all felt pretty well pleased with their work, but a day of fishing was still to be done.

Harder later in the day. As the sun heated the top layer of seawater, some of their most reliable catch went deeper or stopped feeding.

So there were none of the jokes or laughs or bits of song that often accompanied their homeward row.

“They still haven’t picked up yesterday’s catch!” Quinn yelled when they drew close enough to see.

And sure enough, most of the fish they’d worked so hard to land the day before were still on the dock, rotting in the heat.

This revelation set off a round of angry curses from the crews, followed by a more disquieting worry. It was hard to imagine how Albert could have let this happen.

“Something’s deeply wrong,” Quinn said. “I mean even more wrong than we knew.”

They were still two hundred yards out when Quinn saw a blur that froze and became Brianna. She was at the end of the dock.

There was something in her hand.

“You guys hang back,” Quinn yelled to the other boats. “We’ll go in and see what’s up.”

Quinn’s boat touched the dock and he tossed a loop over one of the cleats.

“About time,” Brianna said.

“Hey, sorry, we were kind of busy,” Quinn snapped. “And I didn’t exactly realize I was on a schedule.”

“I don’t like what I have to do here,” Brianna said. She handed Quinn the note.

He read it. Read it again.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he demanded.

“Albert’s dead,” Brianna said. “Murdered.”

“What?”

“He’s dead. Sam and Dekka are off in the wilderness somewhere. Edilio’s got the flu, he might die, a lot of kids have. A lot. And there are these, these monsters, these kind of bugs . . . no one knows what to call them . . . heading toward town.” Her face contorted in a mix of rage and sorrow and fear. She blurted, “And I can’t stop them!”

Quinn stared at her. Then back at the note.

He felt his contented little universe tilt and go sliding away.

There were just two words on the paper: “Get Caine.”

SAM
PULLED THE boat to within thirty yards of the shore.

“I guess you wish you’d burned me all up, huh?” Drake called to him.

“I do,” Dekka growled.

“That’s true,” Toto said. “She does wish it.”

Sam had to master a furious anger that burned within him. How had Drake escaped? Had he found a way to bribe Howard?

“He wouldn’t be standing there taunting us unless he thought he could beat us,” Sam said quietly. “Those bugs: I couldn’t kill them when they were a lot smaller.” He looked at Toto. “All you’ve got is the truth-telling thing, right? You don’t have some other power?”

Toto gave his answer to the missing Spidey head. “No weapons.”

“Can those things swim?” Jack wondered.

“If they could they’d already be after us,” Sam said.

“Do you think Drake can control those things, make them do what he wants?” Jack wondered.

“I guess we’ll find out sooner or later,” Sam said.

They all fell silent, gazing at him expectantly.

For the moment they were probably safe, Sam reasoned. Otherwise Drake would have come after them. If they went ashore it would mean a fight. And Drake was pretty cocky, swaggering around and taunting them from shore.

He could head the boat back up the lake. He could land and get around Drake’s insect army. They could make it to someplace where they could fight without destroying the marina.

“We need to get away from here,” Sam said.

“Hey, Sam,” Drake shouted. “I thought you’d like to know this isn’t my whole army.”

Sam didn’t doubt it.

“Your girl Brianna tried to stop us.” Drake waved a bowie knife in the air. “I took this from her. I whipped her, Sam.” He snapped his whip hand. The crack was like a pistol shot. “I broke her legs so she couldn’t run. Then . . .”

Dekka was halfway over the side, ready to swim ashore. Jack grabbed her and held her.

“Let me go!” Dekka yelled.

“Hold her,” Sam ordered Jack. “Don’t be stupid, Dekka. He wants us to come rushing at him.”

“I can beat him,” Jack said. “Dekka and me together, we can kill him.”

Sam registered the fact that Jack was actually making a physical threat. He didn’t remember ever hearing that kind of thing from Jack. But Dekka was Sam’s greater concern.

“I’m going to kill him,” Dekka said in a voice so deep in her throat she sounded like an animal. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.” Then she shouted, “I’m going to kill you, Drake. I’m going to kill you!”

Drake grinned. “I think she liked it. She was screaming, but she liked it.”

“He’s lying,” Toto said.

“Who?” Sam snapped.

“Him.” He pointed at Drake. “He hasn’t killed that girl or hurt her.”

Dekka relaxed and Sam and Jack let go of her.

“Truth-teller Toto,” Sam whispered. “He can tell when people are lying.”

“I just decided I like you,” Dekka said to Toto. “You might be useful.”

Toto frowned. “It’s true: you just decided you like me.”

“Keep listening, Toto,” Sam said. He thought for a minute. Then he yelled, “Brianna may be dead, but we still have more than enough muscle to deal with you.”

Drake threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, the rest of my army is finishing off the last few kids in Perdido Beach. It was a beautiful massacre, Sam, you should have been there.”

Sam made a motion to Dekka not to answer. The more Drake talked the better.

“But I still have Astrid alive, Sam,” Drake shouted. “I have her somewhere safe. I want to take my time with her.”

Sam waited, held his breath.

“Those are lies,” Toto said.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

Sam breathed.

“Well, Drake,” Sam shouted across the water. “I’m sorry to hear about that. I guess there’s nothing left but for you to come and get me.”

His tone was so casual, it left Drake gaping openmouthed. It took the psychopath a few moments to regroup.

“What’s the matter, Sammy? Scared? Chicken?”

“No, actually we were thinking we might catch some fish,” Sam yelled. “I hear the trout from this lake are delicious. Would you like to join us? You can swim with that whip hand, can’t you?”

Drake stared. He looked at the knife in his hand as if it had somehow betrayed him. Then, eyes narrowed, he glared at Toto.

“Come on, Drake. Don’t be a baby. Come and get us.”

All the while Sam had been letting the boat edge closer, closer while not grounding. He was within ten yards of Drake. He didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard.

Without turning toward her, and speaking in a whisper, he said, “Dekka, can you reach him from here?”

“Barely,” she said. “The sharper the angle, the less I can do. But yeah.”

“On one,” Sam said. “Three . . . two . . .”

Dekka raised her hands and Drake rose feebly from the ground. He felt it immediately, knew what was happening, and kicked against the air like a marionette.

Sam raised his hands. Twin beams of green light fired. They hit one of the creatures, two feet to the left, but Sam swung right and caught Drake’s leg.

The leg turned bright and smoke swirled.

Drake lashed with his whip and caught one of the creatures. He yanked himself out of Dekka’s field and tumbled among the creatures, blocked from Sam’s beams.

“Will he die?” Toto asked.

“Sadly, no,” Dekka said.

From shore they heard Drake bellowing in outrage, then: “Get them! Go!”

The creatures responded instantly. They rushed to the water’s edge. It was almost impossible for Sam to see them as living creatures, they seemed more like robots. Insects simply were not that big. Couldn’t be that big.

They rushed in a swarm to the water. And kept running straight in.

“They float,” Jack said. “That’s bad.”

“Yeah, but they can’t swim very well,” Sam pointed out. He threw the engine into reverse and chug-chugged slowly back to a safer distance. The creatures had stopped rushing into the water. Those that could reach bottom scurried ignominiously back to dry land. Two of the creatures floated like unmoored rafts, or like trailers caught in a flood, twisting slowly, helpless.

Then one of the creatures on shore opened its wings. Beneath the hard carapace were wings like a dragonfly’s.

“They can’t actually fly, can they?” Dekka wondered.

The creature lifted off. It was awkward and slow. But it flew.

It flew toward the boat.

“Go back to camp after you off-load the catch,” Quinn instructed his crews. “I’ll catch up with you later. And if I don’t . . . well, keep up the routine.”

He felt worried eyes following him as he walked down the dock. There was one motorboat that still had a few gallons of fuel. They had designated it for emergency use only. He supposed this was emergency enough.

“You coming?” Quinn asked Brianna.

She shook her head. “I can’t beat these things, but I can at least fight them.”

“What if he won’t come?” Quinn asked.

“He’ll come. It will be his big moment.”

“Will he be able to stop these creatures?”

“How would I know?” Brianna demanded. “It wasn’t my idea. I’m not the one saying we should bring him back. Maybe he and Drake will go back to being best buddies. How would I know?”

“Well, I guess Edilio thinks Caine can save us.”

Neither of them spoke for a while, both thinking of Edilio, wondering if he would survive. Right from the start Edilio had been one of the good guys. Probably the best of them.

He and Mary: two selfless, loyal, decent people. One dead after betraying everything and everyone. The other maybe dying right now, ignored and alone.

“One more question for you, Brianna. It’s serious. So don’t just give me your automatic tough-chick answer, okay? Because I want the truth.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you beat Caine? If he starts in with his usual, starts pushing people around, hurting them . . . Can you take him?”

He saw the beginnings of a cocky smile. But then she dropped the act, sighed, and said, “I don’t know, Quinn.”

Still he hesitated. He didn’t want to go. And he knew why. “Everybody kind of likes me now because I fish. I have this thing I do, right, and it’s necessary and so people respect me.” He sighed and unwound the motorboat’s rope from its cleat. “Now I’ll be the guy who brought Caine back.”

Brianna nodded. “Sucks to be you. Sucks worse to be me.”

Impulsively, Quinn hugged her. Like a brother. She didn’t return the gesture, but she didn’t blur away either.

“Hang in there, Breeze.”

“You too, Fisherman.”

Quinn stepped down into the boat. Brianna was out of sight before he could fire the engine.

He headed out of the marina, chugging along slowly until he was away. Then he pushed the throttle to full speed and pointed the bow toward the distant island.

Astrid looked around, wondering where they were and where they were going. Orc seemed to have someplace in mind. But he also seemed confused. They were in an area of tangled woods and sharp, sudden, brush-choked valleys.

“Are you taking us to Coates?” Astrid asked.

“Yeah,” Orc answered.

“Why there?”

“You wanted to get away, right?”

“I want my brother to be somewhere safe,” Astrid said, conscious of the hypocrisy.

“It’s safe there,” Orc said.

“How do you know?”

“It’s a secret,” Orc grumbled. “I mean, there’s no one there. None of those kids anyway. Caine and all them guys.”

“What if Drake goes there?”

Orc shrugged, which caused Little Pete’s head to fall from his shoulder and loll back. “If Drake’s there, I’ll take care of him.”

Astrid stepped quickly to catch up with Orc. She put her hand on his shoulder. He slowed down and moved aside so she could walk beside him.

“Are you looking for Drake?” Astrid asked. “Because I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t care about Drake,” Orc said angrily. “I had enough of him. But I have to be away from town. Where else am I going to go?”

Astrid felt sure that was part of the truth. But not all of it.

“Thanks for helping us,” she said. “But you don’t have to stay away from town. It’s not your fault Drake escaped.”

“Didn’t say it was.”

“Then why?”

Orc said nothing, just walked on heavily, stone feet trampling the undergrowth like some undersized Godzilla. Then, “This kid,” he said.

“What kid?”

“This kid, this little kid, was all sick or whatever, and I was . . . I guess I was drunk.”

“What happened with the kid?”

“Got in my way,” Orc said.

It was hard to read Orc’s expression. But she heard anguish in his voice.

“Oh,” Astrid said.

“Gotta leave town. Like Hunter. That’s the law. You oughta know, you made up that law.”

“I didn’t come up with ‘thou shalt not kill,’” Astrid said defensively. The sanctimony in her own voice made her sick. The same Bible that said “thou shalt not kill” also said “he who hateth his brother is a murderer.”

Didn’t she hate her brother? Hadn’t she contemplated murder? Hadn’t she dared Turk and Lance to do it for her? If Orc had to go into exile, then didn’t she as well?

Would she wish her brother dead and live with that mortal sin, and yet draw the line at sleeping with Sam? How absurd was that? Murder, sure, but fornication? No way.

Astrid had never felt so low. She dropped back so Orc wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. Oh, God, how had she become this person? How had she failed so utterly?

Hypocrite. Murderer in her heart. A cold, manipulative witch. That’s what she was. Astrid the Genius? Astrid the Fraud.

And now she slogged through darkening woods to find a cold shelter with a drunken killer and her brother. One who killed from rage and stupidity; the other who killed from what? Ignorance? Indifference? From the simple fact of too much power for anyone to handle, let alone an autistic child? She laughed, but it was not a happy sound.

“What’s funny?” Orc demanded suspiciously.

“Me,” Astrid said.

They spotted the dark gabled roofs of Coates through the trees and then struck the road that led up to the front gate.

It was a gloomy place, a haunted place. Pale whitewashed stone that showed evidence of violence. A massive hole in the facade was like a fatal bullet wound. The door had been ripped apart, shredded.

Orc stomped steadily forward, climbed the steps, and yelled, “Anyone here?”

His voice echoed in the arched entryway. “There’re beds upstairs. Gotta take the back stairs.”

He led the way, obviously familiar with the layout. Astrid wondered how he had come to know the place so well. Orc was not a Coates kid.

They found a dorm room that hadn’t been burned or shredded or used as a toilet.

Orc tossed Little Pete negligently onto a bare mattress. Astrid searched for and found a tattered blanket, which she spread over him.

She felt his forehead. Still feverish, but perhaps no worse than before. She had no thermometer. He was coughing in fits and starts. Not worse, not better.

“What’s next, Petey?” she asked him.

If Lance had squeezed the trigger, would the bullet have killed Little Pete? Would he have had the power to stop it? Surely. But would he have known what was happening?

“How much do you know, Petey? How much do you understand?”

He would need clean bedding after he wet himself. And she herself needed clothing, she was still in just a nightgown. And although there would be no food left in this place, surely there might be a few drops of water.

Astrid called to Orc, but he didn’t hear. She heard his heavy footsteps reverberate in the eerie silence.

Best to leave him be. In another room she found clothing that was close to her size. Close enough. It wasn’t clean, but at least it had not been worn recently. Coates had been abandoned for a while. She wondered if it belonged to Diana.

She went in search of water. What she found was Orc. He was in the dining hall. His massive legs were propped on a heavy wooden table. He had pushed two chairs together to bear his weight and spread.

In his hand he held a clear glass bottle full of clear liquid.

The room smelled of charcoal and something sickly sweet. The source was obvious: in the corner, next to a window, was a contraption that could only be a still. Copper tubing probably salvaged from the chemistry lab looped from a steel washtub that rested on an iron trestle over the cold remains of a fire.