Plague Read online

  Yes, yes, she wanted him. She wanted to be in his arms. She wanted to kiss him. And maybe more. Maybe a lot more.

  All of it, all the things he wanted she wanted, too.

  Stupid jerk, didn’t he get that? Was he so clueless he didn’t know that she wanted it all, too?

  But she wasn’t Sam. Astrid didn’t act on impulse. Astrid thought things through. Astrid the Genius, always so irritatingly in control. That was the word he’d thrown at her: control.

  How could Sam not realize that if they crossed that line it would be one more sin? One more abandonment of her faith. One more surrender to weakness.

  There had been too many of those. It was like little pieces of Astrid’s soul were flaking off, falling away. Some pieces not so small.

  Her self-control had crumbled so swiftly it was almost comic. After all the temptations and provocations, the calm, civilized, rational girl had evaporated like a bead of water on a hot skillet, sizzle, sizzle, all gone. And what had emerged then had been pure violence.

  She had tried to kill Nerezza. In screaming, out-of-control rage. The memory of it made her sick.

  And that wasn’t all of it. She had wanted Sam to burn Drake to ashes even if it meant murdering Brittney as well.

  Astrid couldn’t be that person. She had to put herself back together. She had to take time to rebuild herself. She was afraid she would shatter. Like a glass sculpture, chip chip chip away and all at once it would shatter into a thousand pieces.

  And yet, a cool, calculating part of her knew she could not alienate Sam too much. Because it was only a matter of time before everyone else figured out that there was a way out of the FAYZ.

  The exit door was right in front of them. Lying just a few feet from Astrid.

  A simple act of murder . . .

  Others had seen what Astrid had seen on that cliff, when Little Pete’s mind had blanked out, overwhelmed by the loss of his stupid toy game.

  A simple act of murder . . .

  She sat beside her motionless brother. She ought to brush his teeth. Ought to change his pajamas. Ought to . . .

  His forehead was damp.

  Astrid put her hand to his head. He’d been hot all night, but this was worse. She pushed the button on the thermometer by the bed, waited for it to zero out, and stuck it under Little Pete’s tongue.

  She felt a cool breeze in the room. Her eyes went instantly to the window. It was open wide. Pushed all the way up.

  There was no question: it had been closed. She’d been sitting beside it. It had been locked. And now it was open.

  And for the first time since the coming of the FAYZ, a cool breeze blew into the room and wafted over the damp forehead of the most powerful person in this little universe.

  Drake felt the Darkness touch his mind. He shivered with pleasure.

  It was still out there, Drake was sure of it. Still calling to him, to Drake, the faithful one, the one who would never turn against the Darkness.

  Drake cracked his whip hand just to hear the sonic-boom snap of it. And to let Orc hear it, too.

  “Hey, Orc! Come down here so I can whip that little patch of skin off you!” Drake demanded.

  Drake Merwin could see a little by the light of the tiny, dim Sammy sun. He hated that light—he knew where it had come from, and what it represented: Sam’s power, that dangerous light of his.

  Drake remembered the pain of that light. He’d been on his back, helpless. And Sam, his face a mask of rage, glorying in his moment of revenge, had burned off Drake’s legs and was working his way methodically up Drake’s torso.

  Then that stupid little pig Brittney had emerged.

  Drake didn’t know what happened next, he couldn’t see or hear when Brittney was in control. All he knew was that Sam hadn’t vaporized him. And here he was, trapped. Locked in this basement listening to Orc’s heavy tread upstairs.

  Drake didn’t know what had happened to make him this way, to cause him to share a body with Brittney. Much of recent life was a mystery. He remembered Caine turning on him. He remembered the massive uranium rod flying straight toward him.

  And the next thing he knew, he was in a nightmare that went on and on and on forever. There was a girl in the nightmare, the little piggy, the stupid little metal-mouth moron, Brittney.

  Hadn’t they killed her? Long ago? He remembered a crumpled, bleeding form on a polished floor.

  Brittney had died. Drake had died. And then, neither of them was dead, and both somehow were connected in a nightmare world where dirt filled their mouths and ears and held them pinned.

  Digging like worms. That was the nightmare reality. Drake and the piggy digging in a nightmare, digging dirt, pushing it aside, compressing it to buy half an inch of clearance.

  Dark, that dream. Utterly dark. No Sammy sun. No light.

  He remembered thinking in the nightmare, thinking, “There’s no air.”

  Buried alive, there couldn’t be any air. No light and no air, no water, no food, forever and forever.

  It had taken a long time before his mind had cleared enough for him to realize the wonderful truth: he was dead . . . but alive.

  Unkillable. Buried in the damp earth and yet somehow alive.

  And then, hard-won freedom of a sort. The nightmare was no longer one of being buried in the earth but of walking the earth. He would be in one place, and then quite suddenly, in another. It took him a while to realize what had happened. The piggy was a part of him. They were joined, connected. Melded into one creature with two minds and two bodies.

  Sometimes Drake and sometimes Brittney Pig.

  Sometimes himself, and other times that little idiot with her lunatic visions of her dead brother.

  Then the fight with Sam, the burning, and yet he had survived.

  Unkillable.

  “You’re a monster, Orc! You know that, right?” Drake shouted the taunt. “People look at you and they throw up. You make them all sick.”

  Trapped. For now. In this dank, gloomy basement. Nothing down here but a wooden work table. They had cleaned the place out, Sam and Edilio and the rest. Barely a nail left behind on the concrete floor.

  A roomier grave than the one he’d shared with Brittney Pig before. Here there was air. But Drake no longer needed air.

  They shoved food in, and Drake ate it but he didn’t need it.

  Unkillable.

  What could not be killed could not be imprisoned forever. Just a matter of time. Orc was a stupid drunk. Howard was a clown. Drake would have already dug his way out—he had loosened a section of cinderblock wall, working at the mortar with a piece of broken glass.

  But he had to be careful not to leave any clues for Brittney to find when she emerged.

  That meant working slowly. Putting the piece of glass back in the sweepings right where she would expect to see it.

  In the meantime as he worked and waited he howled threats up at Orc. There were two ways out of this trap: working on the wall, and working on Orc’s mind.

  “Hey!” Drake shouted. “Orc! If I whip that last bit of skin off you, what do you think will happen? Might as well get rid of it and be all gravel. Why pretend you’re still human?”

  Orc stomped the floor, which was Drake’s ceiling. But he did not come down to do battle.

  Not yet. But he would eventually. Orc would snap. Then Drake would have his chance.

  Through the wall or through Orc: one way or the other, Drake would escape.

  He would go then to the Darkness. The gaiaphage would know how to kill the Brittney Pig and let Drake live free.

  “I’m going to kill you!” Drake screamed.

  He whipped at the walls, whipped at the ceiling, screamed and kicked and whipped in a lunatic frenzy.

  Until at last, exhausted, his whip hand bleeding, he fell to his knees and became Brittney.

  “Brittney Pig,” Drake slurred as his cruel mouth melted and twisted and became the braces-toothed mouth of his most intimate enemy.

  Lana, too
, felt the dark distant mind of the gaiaphage reach out for her.

  She woke, eyes open quite suddenly. Patrick was beside the bed, panting, worried, wagging his tail uncertainly. He could tell, somehow.

  “It’s okay, boy, go back to sleep,” Lana said.

  Patrick whimpered, but then went back to his bed, turning around a couple of times before settling himself in.

  The gaiaphage could no longer trick her into believing it had a voice. Those days were gone. But it could still touch her with a tendril of consciousness. It could still remind her of its presence, and of her connection to it.

  This must be what it was like to be a victim of some awful crime, and to know that the person who did it to you was still alive, still looking for a way to do it again.

  The gaiaphage lusted after Lana’s power. Using her power it could do miraculous things. Like replace an amputated arm with a snakelike whip.

  But she was no longer quite so weak.

  “Anxious, are you?” she asked the cool night air. “Down under the ground nibbling on your uranium snack?”

  The Darkness did not answer. But Lana felt her instinct was right: the creature was anxious.

  But not afraid.

  Lana frowned, thinking about the distinction. Anxious but not afraid. Anticipating? Waiting for something?

  She was torn between getting up and smoking a cigarette— she was hooked, she accepted that now—and lying there with her eyes closed and failing to fall asleep. Sleep, even if it came, would now be invaded by nightmares.

  So she sat up, fumbled for and found the pack of Lucky Strikes and her lighter. The lighter sparked, the cigarette glowed, and the smell of smoke filled her nostrils.

  “What are you up to?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  But of course there was no answer. And she could sense the Darkness turning its attention away.

  Lana got up and padded over to her balcony. The moon was high overhead. It was either very late or very early.

  The barrier was so close, she felt as if she could almost touch it.

  Was it true that the world was just on the other side of that barrier? Was it really so close that she’d have been able to smell the french fries at the Carl’s Jr. they built for gawkers who came to see the dome?

  Or was that just another lie in this small universe of deceptions?

  What if it came down? Right now, just pop: no more barrier? Or what if it cracked, like a gigantic egg?

  Her mom and dad . . .

  She closed her eyes and bit her lip. The pain of memory had snuck up on her, hit her when she wasn’t ready.

  Tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away impatiently.

  Suddenly, just down on the cliff above the beach, an eruption of blazing green-white light. Sam stood silhouetted by his own light show. She heard him yelling, roaring in frustration.

  He was trying to burn his way out of the FAYZ.

  It went on for a while and then stopped. Darkness returned. Sam was invisible to her now.

  Lana turned away.

  So, she was not the only one fantasizing about cracking the shell and emerging like a newborn chick.

  Strange, Lana thought as she stubbed out the end of her cigarette, I’ve never thought of it as an egg before.

  A gust of breeze blew her smoke before her.

  Chapter Four

  63 HOURS, 41 MINUTES

  SAM WOKE UP in the last place he’d have expected: his bedroom.

  He hadn’t been to his former house in ages.

  He’d hated it when he lived here with his mother. Connie Temple. Nurse Temple.

  He barely remembered her. She was from another world.

  He sat up on the bed and smelled the sick. He’d thrown up on the bed. “Nice,” he said with thick tongue.

  His head exploded in supernovas of pain.

  He wiped his mouth on the blanket. This was one house no one had raided or vandalized or moved into. It was still his, he supposed. There might still be drugs in the bathroom.

  He staggered there. Leaned against the sink and threw up again. Not much came up.

  In the medicine cabinet nothing but a small bottle of generic ibuprofen.

  “Oh,” Sam moaned. “Why do people drink?”

  Then he remembered. Taylor.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  No, no, he hadn’t made a grab for Taylor, had he? He hadn’t kissed her, surely? The memory was so hazy it could almost have been a dream. But pieces of it were too immediate and real. Especially the memory of her fingertips on his chest.

  “Oh, no,” he moaned.

  He swallowed two ibuprofen dry. They didn’t go down easily.

  Holding his head, he went to the kitchen. Sat down at the little table. He’d had meals here with his mom. Not a lot of days, because she’d be up at Coates, working.

  And keeping a worried eye on her other son.

  Caine.

  Caine Soren, not Temple. She had given him up for adoption. They had been born just a few minutes apart, fraternal twins, him and Caine. And their mother had given Caine away and kept Sam.

  No explanation. She’d never told either of them. That truth hadn’t come out until after the coming of the FAYZ.

  And no real explanation for what had become of their father. He was out of the picture before Sam and Caine were born.

  Had it just been too much for their mother? Had she decided she could handle one fatherless boy but not two? Eeny meeny miny moe?

  He had a new family now. Astrid and Little Pete. Only now he didn’t have them, either. And now he had to ask himself what he had done to deserve it, his father’s disappearance, his mother’s lies, Astrid’s rejection.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Time for self-pity. Poor me. Poor Sam.”

  He meant it to sound ironic, but it came out bitter.

  Caine probably had a pretty good case of resentment, too. He’d been rejected by both birth parents: two for two.

  And yet, Caine still had Diana, didn’t he?

  How was it fair? Caine was a liar, a manipulator, a murderer. And Caine was probably lying in satin sheets with Diana eating actual food and watching a DVD. Clean sheets, candy bars, and a beautiful, willing girl.

  Caine who had never done a single good or decent thing was living in luxury.

  Sam, who had tried and tried and done everything he could, was sitting in his house with a raging headache, smelling vomit with a pair of ibuprofen burning a hole in his stomach lining.

  Alone.

  Hunter brought his kills to the gas station any day he had some. Today, bright and early, with the sun just warming the hills behind him, he had walked down from his hillside camp carrying four birds and a badger and two raccoons and a bag of squirrels. He forgot how many squirrels. The bag felt heavy, though.

  It was a lot to carry. If you added it up it was probably about as heavy as carrying a kid. Not as heavy as a deer though—those he had to butcher and carry down in pieces.

  No deer today. And he had not yet butchered Old Lion. That was a big job. He wanted to keep the skin in one piece, so he had to take his time.

  He would wear the lion’s skin over him when he had dried it out. It would be warm and remind him of Old Lion.

  Hunter carried the squirrel bag slung over one shoulder. He roped the other animals together and draped the rope over his other shoulder. He had to be careful about that, though, because of the thing on his shoulder.

  That kid named Roscoe was coming. He was pushing a wheelbarrow. He didn’t look very happy. Every day Hunter came it was either Roscoe or this girl named Marcie. Marcie was nice. But Hunter knew she was scared of him. Probably because he couldn’t talk well.

  “Hey, Hunter,” Roscoe said. “Dude, are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re all clawed up, man. I mean, jeez, that has to hurt.”

  Hunter followed the direction of Roscoe’s gaze. His shirt was ripped exposing his stomach. Two claw marks, deep, bloody, just begi
nning to scab a little, were plowed right across his stomach.

  He touched the wound gingerly. But it didn’t hurt. In fact he couldn’t feel it at all.

  “You’re a tough dude, Hunter,” Roscoe said. “Anyway, looks like you have a good haul today.”

  “I do, Roscoe,” Hunter said. He spoke as carefully as he could. But still the words didn’t sound like how he made words back before. He sounded as if his tongue was covered with glue.

  Hunter carefully lifted the rope off his shoulder. He was careful not to scrape the thing on his shoulder. He set the animals in the wheelbarrow. Then he upended the squirrel bag and dumped the squirrels on top. They all looked the same. Gray and bushy-tailed. Each cooked inside a little. Enough. Sometimes he cooked their heads and sometimes their body. It wasn’t that easy to aim the invisible stuff that radiated out of his hands.

  He forgot what it was called. Astrid had some name for it. But it was a long word.

  “You doing okay, Hunter?” Roscoe asked again.

  “Yes. I have food. And my sleeping bag is dry after I cleaned it in a stream.”

  “You got fresh water to wash in, huh?” Roscoe asked. “I’m jealous. Feel this shirt.” He invited Hunter to feel the stiff saltwater-washed cotton.

  “It feels okay,” Hunter said warily.

  Roscoe made a rude noise. “Yeah, right. Salt water. Feel your shirt.” And Roscoe reached out to touch Hunter’s shirt. He touched the shoulder of Hunter’s shirt.

  The wrong shoulder.

  “Aaahh!” Roscoe cried in shock and pain. “What the—”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Hunter yelled.

  “Something bit me!” He held out his finger for Hunter to examine. There were teeth marks. Blood.

  Roscoe stared hard at him. And at his shoulder. “What’s on your shoulder, man? What is that? What’s under there? Is that some kind of animal?”

  Hunter swallowed. No one had seen his shoulder. He didn’t know what would happen if anyone did.

  “Yes, Roscoe, it’s an animal,” Hunter said, seizing gratefully on the explanation.

  “Well, it bit me!”

  “Sorry,” Hunter said.

  Roscoe grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and hefted it. “I’m not doing this job anymore. Marcie can do it every day, I’m not dealing with this.”