Gone Series Complete Collection (110 page)

No one noticed Sam as he approached. So he had time to identify most of the half-dozen kids out there. Francis, Cigar, D-Con, a few others, and Orsay herself.

“I have seen something . . . ,” Orsay began.

“Tell me about my mom,” someone cried out.

Orsay held up her hand, a calming gesture. “Please. I will do my best to reach your loved ones.”

“She’s not a cell phone,” the dark girl beside Orsay snapped. “It is very painful for the Prophetess to make contact with the barrier. Give her some peace. And listen to her words.”

Sam squinted, not quite able to recognize the dark-haired girl in the flickering firelight. Some friend of Orsay’s? Sam thought he knew every kid in the FAYZ.

“Begin again, Prophetess,” the dark-haired girl said.

“Thank you, Nerezza,” Orsay said.

Sam shook his head in amazement. Not only had he not known that Orsay was doing this, he hadn’t known she’d acquired her own personal manager. Not someone he recognized, the girl called Nerezza.

“I have seen something . . . ,” Orsay began again, and faltered as though expecting to be interrupted. “A vision.”

That caused a murmur. Or maybe it was just the sighing sound of the water on the sand.

“In my vision I saw all of the children of the FAYZ, older kids, younger, too. I saw them standing atop the cliff.”

Every head swiveled to look up at the cliff. Sam ducked, then felt foolish: the darkness concealed him.

“The kids of the FAYZ,
prisoners
of the FAYZ, gazed out into a setting sun. Such a beautiful sunset. Redder and more vivid than anything you’ve ever seen.” She seemed to be mesmerized by that vision. “Such a red sunset.”

All attention was again focused on Orsay. Not a sound from the small crowd.

“A red sunset. The children all gazed into that red sun. But behind them, a devil. A demon.” Orsay winced as if she couldn’t look at this creature. “Then, the children realized that in that red sun were all their loved ones, arms outstretched. Mothers and fathers. And all united, all filled with longing and love. Waiting so anxiously to welcome their children home.”

“Thank you, Prophetess,” Nerezza said.

“They wait . . . ,” Orsay said. She raised one hand, waved it toward the barrier, fluttered. “Just beyond the wall. Just past the sunset.”

She sat down hard, a puppet whose strings had been cut. For a while she sat there, crumpled, hands open, palms up on her lap, head bowed.

But then, with a shaky smile she roused herself.

“I’m ready,” Orsay said.

She laid her palm against the FAYZ wall. Sam flinched. He knew from personal experience how painful that could be. It was like grabbing a bare electrical wire. It didn’t do any damage, but it sure felt like it did.

Orsay’s narrow face was scrunched up in pain. But when she spoke her voice was clear, untroubled. Like she was reading a poem.

“She dreams of you, Bradley,” Orsay said.

Bradley was Cigar’s real name.

“She dreams of you . . . you’re at Knott’s Berry Farm. You’re afraid to go on the ride. . . . She remembers how you tried to be brave. . . . Your mother misses you. . . .”

Cigar sniffled. He carried a weapon of his own devising, a toy plastic light saber with double-edged razor blades stuck into the end. His hair was tied back in a ponytail and held with a rubber band.

“She . . . she knows you are here. . . . She knows . . . she wants you to come to her. . . .”

“I can’t,” Cigar moaned, and Orsay’s helper, whoever she was, put a comforting arm around his shoulders.

“. . . when the time comes . . . ,” Orsay said.

“When?” Cigar sobbed.

“She dreams that you will be with her soon. . . . She dreams . . . just three days, she knows it, she is sure of it. . . .” Orsay’s voice had taken on an almost ecstatic tone. Giddy. “She’s seen others do it.”

“What?” Francis demanded.

“. . . the others who have reappeared,” Orsay said, dreamy now herself, as if she was falling asleep. “She saw them on TV. The twins, the two girls Anna and Emma . . . she saw them. . . . They give interviews and tell . . .”

Orsay yanked her hand back from the FAYZ wall as if she had just noticed the pain.

Sam had still not been seen. He hesitated. He should find out what this was about. But he felt strange, like he was intruding on someone else’s sacred moment. Like he would be barging into a church service.

He sank back toward the cliff’s deepest shadows, careful not to be heard over the soft
shush
. . .
shush
. . .
shush
of the water.

“That’s all for tonight,” Orsay said, and hung her head.

“But I want to know about my dad,” D-Con urged. “You said you could do me tonight. It’s my turn!”

“She’s tired,” Orsay’s helper said firmly. “Don’t you know how hard this is for her?”

“My dad is probably out there trying to talk to me,” D-Con wailed, pointing at a specific place on the FAYZ barrier, as if he could picture his father right there, trying to peer through frosted glass. “He’s probably right outside the wall. He’s probably . . .” He choked up, unable to continue, and now Nerezza gathered him to her as she had Cigar, comforting him.

“They’re all waiting,” Orsay said. “All of them out there. Just beyond the wall. So many . . . so many . . .”

“The Prophetess will try again tomorrow,” the helper said. She raised D-Con to his feet. “Go now, all of you. Go. Go!”

The group rose reluctantly, and Sam realized that they would soon be heading straight for him. The bonfire collapsed, sending up a shower of sparks.

He stepped back into a crevice. There wasn’t a square inch of this beach and this cliff that he didn’t know. He waited and watched as Francis, Cigar, D-Con, and the others climbed up the trail and away into the night.

An obviously exhausted Orsay climbed down from the rock. As they passed, arm in arm, the helper bearing Orsay’s weight, Orsay stopped. She looked straight at Sam, though he knew he could not be visible.

“I dreamed her, Sam,” Orsay said. “I dreamed her.”

Sam’s mouth was dry. He swallowed hard. He didn’t want to ask. But he couldn’t stop himself.

“My mom?”

“She dreams of you . . . and she says . . . she says . . .” Orsay sagged, almost fell to her knees, and her helper caught her.

“She says . . . let them go, Sam. Let them go when their time comes.”

“What?”

“Sam, there comes a time when the world no longer needs heroes. And then the true hero knows to walk away.”

TWO

66
HOURS
, 47
MINUTES

Hushaby, don’t you cry,

go to sleep little baby.

When you wake, you shall have

All the pretty little ponies . . .

IT
WAS
PROBABLY
always a beautiful lullaby, Derek thought. Probably even when normal people sang it, it was beautiful. Maybe even brought tears to people’s eyes.

But Derek’s sister, Jill, was not a normal person.

Beautiful songs could sometimes take a person out of themselves and carry them away to a place of magic. But when Jill sang, it was not about the song, really. She could sing the phone book. She could sing a shopping list. Whatever she sang, whatever the words or the tune, it was so beautiful, so achingly lovely, that no one could listen and be untouched.

He wanted to go to sleep.

He wanted to have all the pretty little ponies.

While she sang, that was all he wanted. All he had ever wanted.

Derek had made sure the windows were shut. Because when Jill sang, every person within hearing came to listen. They couldn’t help it.

At first neither of them had understood what was happening. Jill was just nine years old, not a trained singer or anything. But one day, about a week ago, she’d started singing. Something stupid, Derek recalled. The theme song to
The Fairly OddParents
.

Derek had stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been unable to move. Unable to stop listening. Grinning at the rapid-fire list of Timmy’s wishes, wanting each of those things himself. Wanting his own fairy godparents. And when at last Jill had fallen silent, it was like he was waking up from the most perfect dream to find himself in a gray and awful reality.

It took only a day or so before Derek figured out that this was no ordinary talent. He’d had to face the fact that his little sister was a freak.

It was a terrifying discovery. Derek was a normal. The freaks—people like Dekka, Brianna, Orc, and especially Sam Temple—scared him. Their powers meant they could do whatever they wanted. No one could stop them.

Mostly the freaks acted okay. Mostly they used their powers to do things that needed doing. But Derek had seen Sam Temple in the middle of a fight. Sam against that other mega-freak, Caine Soren. They had destroyed a big part of the town plaza trying to kill each other. Derek had curled up in a ball and hidden as best he could while that battle raged.

Everyone knew the freaks thought they were special. Everyone knew they got the best food. You never saw a freak reduced to eating rat meat. You never saw a freak eating bugs. A few weeks earlier, when the hunger was at its worst, Derek and Jill had done that. They’d caught and eaten some grasshoppers.

Freaks? They never had to sink that low. Everyone knew that. At least that’s what Zil said.

And why would Zil lie?

And now Derek’s own little sister was one of
them
. A mutant. A freak.

But when she sang . . . when she sang, Derek was no longer in the dark and desperate FAYZ. When Jill sang, the sun was bright and the grass was green and a cool breeze blew. When Jill sang, their mother and father were there, along with everyone else who had disappeared.

When Jill sang, the nightmare reality of life in the FAYZ faded away to be replaced by the song, the song, the song.

Derek was in that place now, soaring on magical wings toward Heaven.

When I die, hallelujah by and by . . .

A song about death, Derek knew. But so beautiful when Jill sang it. It pierced his heart.

Oh how glad and happy when we meet . . .

Oh how happy, even though they sat in the dark in a house full of sad memories.

The beam of light was startling.

Jill stopped singing. It was devastating, that silence.

The beam of light shone through the gauzy curtains. It played around the room. Found Derek’s face. Then swiveled until it had lit up Jill’s freckled face and turned her blue eyes glassy.

The front door of the house flew open with a crash. The strike plate shattered.

The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks.

But Derek knew who they were.

“No! No!” he cried.

All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill.

One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank.

One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat.

Derek dropped to his knees.

Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape.

Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down.

“Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.”

The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her.

When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs.

Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.”

“Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit.

“She’s a freak,” Hank said.

“She’s my little sister. This is our home.”

“She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.”

“Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.”

“It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.”

“All she does is—”

Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?”

“Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.”

He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?”

Derek’s resistance died.

“The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or . . .” He let the threat hang there.

Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon.

“Let me at least get her doll,” Derek said.

“It’s Panda.”

Caine rose through layers of dream and nightmare, like pushing his way through thick curtains that draped his arms and legs and made his every move tiring.

He blinked. Still dark. Night.

The voice had no obvious source, but he recognized it, anyway. Even if there had been light he might not have seen the boy with the power to fade away and almost disappear. “Bug. Why are you bothering me?”