Fear Read online

  Justify every failure.

  Justify every mistake.

  Justify every body buried in the town plaza in Perdido Beach.

  These last few months he had begun to have those imaginary conversations less frequently. He’d started thinking maybe, on balance, they would see that he had done some things right.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Sam cautioned Diana. Then he said, “Have you thought about… Well, I guess we don’t know what the baby’s powers might be.”

  Diana showed her ironic smirk. “You mean have I thought about what might happen if the baby can burn things like you can, Sam? Or has his father’s telekinetic power? Or any number of other abilities? No, Sam, no, I haven’t even thought about what happens when he, she, or it has a bad day and burns a hole in me from the inside out.”

  Sam sighed. “He or she, Diana. Not it.”

  He expected a wisecrack answer. Instead Diana’s carefully controlled expression collapsed. “Its father is evil. So is its mother,” she whispered. She twisted her fingers together, too hard, so hard it must be painful. “How can it not be the same?”

  “Before I pass judgment,” Caine said, “does anyone have anything to say for Cigar?”

  Caine did not refer to his chair as a throne. That would have been too laughable, even though he styled himself “King Caine.”

  It was a heavy wooden chair of dark wood grabbed from an empty house. He believed the style was called Moorish. It sat a few feet back from the top stair of stone steps that led up to the ruined church.

  Not a throne in name, but a throne in fact. He sat upright, not stiff but regal. He wore a purple polo shirt, jeans, and square-toed black cowboy boots. One boot rested on a low, upholstered footstool.

  On Caine’s left stood Penny. Lana, the Healer, had fixed her shattered legs. Penny wore a sundress that hung limply from her narrow shoulders. She was barefoot. For some reason she refused to ever wear shoes since regaining use of her legs.

  On his left stood Turk, supposedly Caine’s security, though it was impossible to imagine a situation Caine couldn’t deal with on his own. The truth was that Caine could levitate Turk and use him as a club if he chose. But it was important for a king to have people who served him. It made one look more kingly.

  Turk was a sullen, stupid punk with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun over his shoulder and a big pipe wrench hanging from a loop on his straining belt.

  Turk was guarding Cigar, a sweet-faced thirteen-year-old with the hard hands, strong back, and tanned face of a fisherman.

  About twenty-five kids stood at the foot of the stairs. In theory everyone was supposed to show up for court, but Albert had suggested—a suggestion that had the force of a decree—that those who had work to do could blow it off. Work came first in Albert’s world, and Caine knew that he was king only so long as Albert kept everyone fed and watered.

  At some time in the night a fight had broken out between a boy named Jaden and the boy everyone called Cigar because he had once smoked a cigar and gotten spectacularly sick.

  Both Jaden and Cigar had been drinking some of Howard’s illegal booze, and no one was exactly clear what the fight had been about. But what was clear—witnessed by three kids—was that a fight had started and gone from angry words to fists to weapons in a heartbeat.

  Jaden had swung a lead pipe at Cigar and missed. Cigar had swung a heavy oak table leg studded with big nails and he had not missed.

  No one believed Cigar—who was a good kid, one of Quinn’s hardworking fishermen—had meant to kill Jaden. But Jaden’s brains had ended up on the sidewalk just the same.

  There were four punishments in King Caine’s Perdido Beach: fine, lockup, Penny, or death.

  A small infraction—for example, failing to show proper respect to the king, or blowing off work, or cheating someone in a deal—merited a fine. It could be a day’s food, two days’ unpaid labor, or the surrender of some valuable object.

  Lockup was a room in town hall that had last imprisoned a boy named Roscoe until the bugs had eaten him from the inside out. Lockup meant two or more days with just water in that room. Fighting or vandalism would get you lockup.

  Caine had handed out many fines and several lockups.

  Only once had he imposed a sentence of Penny.

  Penny was a mutant with the power to create illusions so real it was impossible not to believe them. She had a terrifyingly gruesome imagination. A sick, disturbed imagination. The girl who had earned thirty minutes of Penny had lost control of her bodily functions and ended up screaming and beating at her own flesh. Two days later she had still not been able to work.

  The ultimate penalty was death. And Caine had never yet had to face imposing that.

  “I’ll speak for Cigar.” Quinn, of course. Once upon a time Quinn had been Sam’s closest friend, his surfer-dude buddy. He’d been a weak, vacillating, insecure boy, one of those who had not handled the FAYZ very well.

  But Quinn had come into his own as the head of the fishing crews. Muscles bunched in his neck and shoulders and back from pulling at the oars for long hours. He was the color of mahogany now.

  “Cigar has never been any kind of trouble,” Quinn said. “He shows up for work on time and he never shirks. He’s a good guy and he’s a very good fisherman. When Alice fell in and was knocked out from hitting an oar, he was the one who jumped in and pulled her out.”

  Caine nodded thoughtfully. He was going for a look of stern wisdom. But he was deeply agitated beneath the surface. On the one hand, Cigar had killed Jaden. That wasn’t some random act of vandalism or small-bore theft. If Caine didn’t impose the death penalty in this case, when was he ever going to?

  He sort of wanted to.... In fact, yes, he definitely wanted to impose the death penalty. Maybe not on Cigar, but on someone. It would be a test of his power. It would send a message.

  On the other hand, Quinn was not someone to pick a fight with. Quinn could decide to go on strike and people would get hungry in a hurry.

  And then there was Albert. Quinn worked for Albert.

  It was fine to call yourself king, Caine thought. But not when the real power was held by some skinny, owlish black kid with a ledger book.

  “It’s murder,” Caine said, stalling.

  “No one’s saying Cigar shouldn’t be punished,” Quinn said. “He screwed up. Shouldn’t have been drinking. He knows better.”

  Cigar hung his head.

  “Jaden was a good guy, too,” a girl with the improbable name of Alpha Wong said. She sobbed. “He didn’t deserve to be killed.”

  Caine gritted his teeth. Great. A girlfriend.

  No point stalling any longer. He had to decide. It was far worse to piss off Quinn and possibly Albert than Alpha.

  Caine raised his hand. “I promised as your king to deliver justice,” he said. “If this had been deliberate murder I’d have no choice but the death penalty. But Cigar has been a good worker. And he didn’t set out to kill poor Jaden. The next penalty is Penny time. Usually it’s a half hour. But that’s just not enough for something this serious. So here is my royal verdict.”

  He turned to Penny, who was already quivering with anticipation.

  “Penny will have Cigar from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow, when the sun rises clear of the hills, it begins. And when the sun touches the horizon over the ocean, it ends.”

  Caine saw reluctant acceptance in Quinn’s eyes. The crowd murmured approvingly. Caine breathed a silent sigh. Even Cigar looked relieved. But then, Caine thought, neither Quinn nor Cigar had any idea just how far down into madness Penny had sunk since her long, pain-racked ordeal. The girl had always been a cruel creature. But pain and power had made her a monster.

  His monster, fortunately.

  For now.

  Turk hauled Cigar off to the lockup. The crowd began to disperse.

  “You can do this, Cigar,” Quinn called out.

  “Yeah,” Cigar said. “No problem.”

  Penny laughed.
/>   THREE

  53 HOURS, 52 MINUTES

  DRAKE HAD GOTTEN used to the dark, to seeing only by the faint green light of his master, the gaiaphage.

  They were ten miles belowground. The heat was intense. It probably should have killed him—intense heat, no water, not that much air. But Drake wasn’t alive in the usual way. It was hard to kill what was not quite alive.

  Time had passed. He was aware of that. But how much time? It might be days or years. There was no day or night down here.

  There was only the eternal awareness of the angry, frustrated mind of the gaiaphage. In the time he’d been down here Drake had become intimately familiar with that mind. It was a constant presence in Drake’s consciousness. A nagging hunger. A need. A pressing, constant, unwavering need.

  The gaiaphage needed Nemesis.

  Bring me Nemesis.

  And Nemesis—Peter Ellison—was nowhere to be found.

  Drake had reported to the gaiaphage that Little Pete was dead. Gone. His sister, Astrid, had tossed him to the bugs and in a panic Little Pete had not only caused the nearest, most threatening of the huge insects to disappear: he had eliminated the entire species.

  It was a shocking demonstration of Little Pete’s inconceivable power.

  A five-year-old, severely autistic, little snot-nosed brat was the most powerful creature in this huge bubble. The only thing that limited him was his own strange, distorted brain. Little Pete was powerful but did not know it. Could not plan, could not understand, could only react.

  React with incredible, unimaginable power. Like a toddler with his finger on a nuclear bomb.

  Nemesis frightened the gaiaphage. And yet he was somehow necessary to the gaiaphage.

  Once Drake had asked. “Why, master?”

  I must be born.

  And then the gaiaphage had tortured him with shafts of bright pain, punishing Drake for having the presumption to question.

  The answer had bothered Drake more than the pain. I must be born. There was a raw, ragged edge to that. A need that went beyond simple desire and drilled down into fear.

  His god was not all-powerful. It was a shock to Drake. It meant the gaiaphage might still fail. And then what would become of Drake?

  Had he sworn allegiance to a dying god?

  Drake tried to hide the fear inside him. The gaiaphage might sense it if his attention was turned Drake’s way.

  But as the uncounted days had gone by, as he had listened night and day to the gaiaphage’s desperation and impotent rage, he had begun to doubt. What place did Drake have in a universe where there was no gaiaphage? Would he still be unkillable? Would the gaiaphage’s failure mean his own destruction?

  Drake wished he could talk about it with Brittney. But in the nature of things he could never do that. Brittney emerged from time to time, writhing from Drake’s melting flesh to take over for a while.

  During those times Drake ceased to see or hear or feel.

  During those times Drake drifted in a world even darker than the gaiaphage’s subterranean lair. It was a world so tight it smothered Drake’s soul.

  It went on like this—the pressure of the gaiaphage’s need, Drake’s inability to comprehend what he could or should do, and periods of nonexistence in the void.

  Drake filled his time with wondrous fantasies. He replayed the memories of pain he had caused. The whipping of Sam. And he worked through in elaborate detail the pain he would yet cause. To Astrid. To Diana. Those two especially, but also to Brianna, who he hated.

  The deep lair changed. Weeks ago the floor—the very bottom limit of the barrier—had changed. It was no longer pearly gray. It had turned black. He noticed that the black-stained barrier under his feet felt different, not as smooth.

  And he noticed that the parts of the gaiaphage that rested on the barrier were also becoming stained black. So far the stain had spread only a little into the gaiaphage, like the gaiaphage was some sort of spread-out, radioactive green sponge and the stain was spilled black coffee.

  Drake had wondered what it meant, but he had not asked.

  Suddenly Drake felt the gaiaphage’s mind jolt. Like someone had shocked him.

  I feel…

  “Nemesis, master?” Drake asked the green-glowing cave walls.

  Lay your arm upon me.

  Drake recoiled. He had touched the gaiaphage a few times. It was never a pleasant experience. The mind-to-mind awareness of the gaiaphage was horribly more powerful when he made physical contact.

  But Drake lacked the will to refuse. He unwrapped the ten-foot-long tentacle from around his waist. He moved to a large clump of the seething green mass, a part he couldn’t help but picture as the center, the head of that centerless, headless creature. He laid his tentacle gingerly across it.

  “Ahhh!” The pain was sharp and sudden and knocked him to his knees. His eyes flew open, strained to open wider still, until he felt like he was peeling his own face back.

  Images exploded in his mind.

  Images of a garden.

  Images of a lake with boats floating calmly.

  Images of a beautiful girl with dark hair and a wry half smile.

  Bring her to me!

  Drake had spoken little in months. His throat was dry, his tongue awkward in his mouth. The name came out in a harsh whisper.

  “Diana.”

  Quinn was not happy as he pulled at the oars, heading away from shore with his back to the dark horizon and his worried gaze on the mountains where the sun would soon appear.

  None of his crews were happy. Normally there was good-natured grumbling, old jokes, and teasing. Usually the boats would call out cheerful insults to one another, denigrating one another’s rowing technique or prospects or looks.

  Today there was no teasing. The only sounds were the grunts of effort, the creak of oars in the oarlocks, the musical trickle of water along the sides and the lap, lap, lap of tiny wavelets slapping the bow.

  Quinn knew the crews were angry about Cigar. All agreed that Cigar had screwed up in a monumental way. But what was Quinn supposed to do? The other kid had swung first. If Cigar hadn’t struck back, Jaden might well have killed him.

  They were prepared to see Cigar pay a fine, endure some lockup, maybe even a few minutes of Penny to teach the boy to take it easy in the future.

  But a whole day under mental assault from that creepy girl… That was too much. Cigar had all the fears any normal kid had, and given a whole day to work her evil Penny would find them all.

  Quinn wondered if he should say something. It distressed him, this sullenness, this worry. But what could he say? What words of his were going to make these kids stop worrying for poor Cigar?

  He was worried, too. And he shared some of their anger at himself and at Albert. He had hoped Albert would step in. Albert could have if he’d chosen to. Everyone knew that Caine could call himself king but Albert was the emperor.

  The boats moved away from one another as the pole fishers went one way and the net casters went toward the barrier. A school of blue bats had been seen there the day before, skimming along a hundred yards from the barrier.

  Quinn signaled a halt and motioned to Elise to ready the nets. His boat crew today was Elise, Jonas, and Annie. Elise and Annie were weaker on the oars than Quinn and Jonas, but they were nimble with the nets, casting them out in perfect circles, and sensing when the weights had dragged the net down before closing the trap.

  Quinn sat at the stern now, using an oar and the rudder to keep the boat stable while the girls and Jonas hauled in two blue bats and a nondescript seven-inch fish.

  It was wearying work, but Quinn was used to it, and he handled the oar and rudder on automatic. He gazed off to see the other boats take up their own positions.

  Then, hearing a splash, he turned toward the barrier to see a flying fish—not great eating, but not inedible—take a short hop.

  But that wasn’t what made him narrow his eyes and squint in the faint morning light.

 
Elise and Annie were getting ready to cast again.

  “Hold up,” Quinn said.

  “What?” Elise demanded. She was cranky in the morning. Crankier still on this morning.

  “Jonas, grab an oar,” Quinn said.

  While Elise neatened her net, pulling out bits of seaweed, the boat crept toward the barrier. Twenty feet away they shipped oars.

  “What is that?” Jonas asked.

  The four of them stared at the barrier. Up above it became an illusion of sky. But straight ahead it was pearly gray. As always. As it had been since the coming of the FAYZ.

  But just above the waterline the barrier was not gray but black. The black shadow rose in an irregular pattern. Like a roller coaster’s curves.

  Quinn glanced away to see the sun just peeking over the mountains. The whole sea went from dark to light in a few swift minutes. He waited until the sunlight touched the water between him and the barrier.

  “It’s changed,” Quinn said.

  He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it onto the bench. He fumbled in the locker for a face mask, spit into it, wiped the spit around with his fingers, slipped it on his head, and without another word dived off the side. The water was cold and instantly blew the last of the morning cobwebs out of his head.

  He swam gingerly to the barrier, careful not to touch it. Six feet down the barrier was black.

  Quinn surfaced, took a deep breath, and went down again. He wished he had fins; it wasn’t easy pushing his buoyant body downward. He reached maybe twenty feet before letting himself float back up.

  He climbed back into the boat with an assist from Jonas.

  “It’s like that all the way down as far as I can tell,” Quinn said.

  The four of them looked at one another.

  “So?” Elise asked. “We have work to do. The fish won’t catch themselves.”

  Quinn considered. He should tell someone. Caine? Albert? He didn’t really want to have to deal with either of them. And they had blue bats right under the boat just waiting to be caught.

  Either Caine or Albert might easily tear into him for sloughing off on work just to report something that might be meaningless.