Gone Series Complete Collection (227 page)

Edilio didn’t answer. And Sam had the feeling maybe Edilio knew more than he did on the subject. He let it go.

“I gotta tell you the truth, man,” Sam said, shaking his head slowly, side to side, as he spoke. “I don’t see a way out of this. I don’t even see the starting point for a way out of this. I don’t expect us to survive this.”

Edilio nodded. Like he knew this. Like he was ready for it to be said.

“So in case this is it, Edilio, in case I go out there and don’t come back, I want to say thank you. You’ve been a brother to me. My true brother.” Sam carefully avoided looking at Edilio.

“Yeah, well, we’re not done for yet,” Edilio said gruffly. Then, more pointedly, “So you’re going?”

“Everything you said before is right,” Sam said. “We can’t afford me getting killed. Not in the short run. But once I turn on some lights we’re still done for if we don’t find a way to turn this around. We can’t grow crops or fish or survive living in the dark. Next thing that happens is people will start setting fires. Perdido Beach will burn all the way down next time. The forest will burn. Everything. Kids won’t live in the dark.”

He was interrupted by the loud ringing of the bell. When it was finished he said, “I’m not the only one scared of the dark, Edilio. Anyway, this is just part of something bigger. Something is happening. I don’t know what, but something big and . . . and final. So, yeah, short-term I’m important. But if I want to be important long-term, I need to go out there and find a way.”

“You going to talk to everyone?” Edilio asked.

“Yeah.”

Barely visible in the darkness, mere shadows on the water, the boats rocked and drifted lazily. The Sammy suns shining through portholes were the only light. Bodies could be seen only when they passed before one of those lights.

“Then make sure you tell them the truth.”

“Toto!” Sam yelled down. “Get up here.”

When Toto was on deck Sam lit a Sammy sun just over his head. Like a gloomy spotlight. It revealed him, Edilio, and Toto.

“Toto’s here so you know I’m telling you what I believe is true.” Sam shouted to be heard across the water. “First: I don’t think we have to worry about Drake here at the lake. He’s gone—for now, at least.”

Toto said, “He believes it,” but in a whisper.

“Speak up,” Edilio said.

“He believes it!”

“So you’re all coming back ashore. We have kids who’ve come here from Perdido Beach. They’ve lost people on the way here, and we’re going to take them in and care for them.”

Some grumbling and a couple of defiant, shouted questions came out of the dark.

“Because good people help people who need to be helped. That’s why,” Sam yelled back. “Listen. Things are bad in Perdido Beach. It seems Caine is out of business. And so is Albert.”

“He believes it!”

“So that’s bad. Astrid is . . .” Emotion clenched his throat but he pushed forward. He had nothing to hide, he realized. It wasn’t like anyone didn’t know he was worried about her. “She’s out there in the dark somewhere. And so are Brianna and Dekka and Orc. Jack, well, we don’t know if he’ll make it.”

“True,” Toto said. Then, louder, “True!”

“Drake has Diana and Justin, who is just a little kid, and we don’t know for sure what Drake is up to. Whatever it is, I believe it’s connected to this stain that is blotting out the light.”

Toto just nodded and no one seemed to care.

Sam looked up. The stain was no longer blotting out the light. It had finished its work. The small circle of darkening blue had turned flat black.

“So, I don’t have some big plan. I just don’t.” He repeated it, feeling amazed that it was true. “I have a reputation as the guy who comes up with a way out of trouble. Well, I don’t have that now.”

Someone was crying, loudly enough to be heard. Someone else shushed him.

“That’s okay. Cry if you want to cry, because I feel like crying with you.”

“Yes,” Toto said.

“You can be sad and you can be scared. But we built this place and kept ourselves going by hanging in there together. Right?”

No one answered.

“Right?” Sam demanded more insistently.

“Damn right,” a voice called back.

“So we hang together still. Edilio is here. You listen to Edilio.”

“But you’re the leader!” a different voice cried, and others seconded it. “We need you! Sam!”

Sam looked down, not pleased, really, but maybe a little gratified. At the same time, though, he was beginning to realize something. It took a few moments to form coherently in his mind. He had to check it against what he knew, because at first it seemed wrong.

Finally he said, “No. No. I’m a lousy leader.”

There was a pause before Toto said, “He believes it.”

Sam laughed, amazed that he really did believe it. “No, I’m a lousy leader,” he repeated. “Look, I mean well. And I have powers. But it’s Albert who kept people fed and alive. And up here it’s Edilio who really runs things. Even Quinn, he’s a better leader than me. Me? I get pissed off when you need me, and then I pout when you don’t. No. Edilio’s a leader. I . . . I don’t know what I am, except for being the guy who can make light shoot out of his hands.”

He stepped back, out of the direct glow of the Sammy sun, baffled by the unexpected turn his speech had taken. He had meant to tell everyone to stick together and be disciplined. He had ended up feeling like a fool, taking a momentous occasion to just make an idiot of himself.

Edilio spoke up. He had a softer voice. And still had a trace of his Honduran accent. “I know what Sam is. Maybe, like he said, he’s not a great leader. But he’s a great fighter. He’s our warrior; that’s what he is. Our soldier. So what he’s going to do, Sam, what he’s going to do is go out there into the dark and fight our enemies. Try to keep us safe.”

“He believes it,” Toto said unnecessarily.

“Yeah,” Sam whispered. He looked down at his hands, palms up. “Yeah,” he said louder. Then, still to himself: “Well. I’ll be damned. I’m not the leader. I’m the soldier.” He laughed and looked at Edilio, his face nothing but shadows in the light of the Sammy sun. “It takes me a while to figure things out, doesn’t it?”

Edilio grinned. “Do me a favor. When you find Astrid, repeat that to her, word for word, the part about how it takes you a while. Then remember her exact reaction and tell me.”

Then, serious again, Edilio said, “I’ll take care of these people here, Sam. Go find our friends. And if you run into Drake, kill that son of a bitch.”

The sky closed.

Darkness. Absolute, total darkness.

Astrid heard her own breathing.

She heard Cigar’s hesitant footsteps. Slowing. Stopping.

“We aren’t far from Perdido Beach,” Astrid said.

How strange what absolute black did to the sound of words. To the sound of her own heart.

“We have to try to remember the direction. Otherwise we’ll start walking in circles.”

I will not panic, she told herself. I will not let the fear paralyze me.

She reached for Cigar. Her hand touched nothing.

“We should hold hands,” Astrid said. “So we don’t get separated.”

“You have claws,” Cigar said. “They have poison needles in them.”

“No, no, that’s not real. That’s a trick your mind is playing on you.”

“The little boy is here,” Cigar said.

“How do you know?” Astrid moved closer to the source of his voice. She thought she was quite close to him. She tried to call on other senses. Could she hear his heartbeat? Could she feel his body warmth?

“I see him. Can’t you see him?”

“I can’t see anything.”

She should have brought something to use as a torch. Something she could burn. Of course, showing light out here in the open would make her visible to people and things she didn’t want seeing her.

It was just that the pressure of the dark—and that was how it felt, like pressure, like it wasn’t an absence of light, but like it was black felt or something hung in drapes all around her—was hemming her in. Like it was a physical obstruction.

Nothing had changed except that light had been subtracted. Every object was exactly where it had been before. But that wasn’t how it felt.

“The little boy is looking at you,” Cigar said.

Astrid felt a chill.

“Is he talking?”

“No. He likes quiet.”

“Yes. He always did,” Astrid said. “And darkness. He liked the dark. It soothed him.”

Had Petey made all of this happen? Just to get his blessed silence and peace?

“Petey?” she said.

It felt ridiculous. She was talking to someone she couldn’t see. Someone who probably wasn’t there. Someone who, if he existed at all, was not human, not anything physical or tangible.

The irony made her laugh out loud. She’d just given up talking to one perhaps unreal spiritual entity. Now here she was doing it again.

“He doesn’t like when you laugh,” Cigar said, shushing her.

“Too bad,” Astrid said.

That brought silence. She could hear Cigar breathing, so she knew he was still there. She didn’t know whether he was still looking at Petey. Or something that was supposed to be Petey.

“He was in my head,” Cigar whispered. “I felt him. He went inside me. But he left.”

“Are you saying he took you over?”

“I let him,” Cigar said. “I wanted him to make me be like I used to be. But he couldn’t.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s gone now,” Cigar said sadly.

Astrid sighed. “Yeah. Just like a god, never there when you need one.”

She listened hard. And smelled the air. She had an impression, barely an impression, that she could tell in which direction the ocean lay.

But she also knew that the land between where she was and the ocean was largely fertile fields seething with zekes. Zekes that had probably not been fed in some time.

There were fields between her and the highway, but once she got to the highway she would be able to follow it toward town. Even in the dark she could stay on a concrete highway.

Sam wanted to follow the road from the lake down to the highway, because that was where Astrid would be. Most likely. Despite none of the refugees having seen her on their way from Perdido Beach to the lake.

But finding Astrid was not the right move. Not yet. She would slow him down, even if he found her. And she wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t Dekka or Brianna or even Orc. They could help him win a fight; Astrid could not.

But oh, Lord, how he wanted her now. Not to make love but just to have her there in the darkness beside him. To hear her voice. That above all. The sound of her voice was the sound of sanity, and he was entering the valley of shadow. Walking into pure, absolute darkness.

He walked until he was out of the faint circle of light cast by the numerous Sammy suns of the lake. Then he hung a new light, taking solace from the sphere as it grew in his hands.

But the light reached only a few feet. Turning back as he walked on, he could see it. But it cast only a faint light, a light whose photons seemed to tire easily.

Into the darkness. Step. Step.

Something was squeezing his heart.

His teeth would fragment if he bit down any harder.

“It’s just the same as it was,” he told himself. “Same but darker.”

Nothing changes when the light goes out, Sam.
His mother had said that a thousand times.
See? Click. Light on. Click. Light off. The same bed, the same dresser, the same laundry you’ve strewn all over the floor . . .

Not the point, that younger Sam had thought. The threat knows I’m helpless in the dark. So that’s not the same.

It’s not the same if the threat can see and I can’t.

It’s not the same if the threat knows it doesn’t have to hide, but can make its move.

Useless to pretend the darkness isn’t any different.

It’s different.

Did something bad happen to you in the dark, Sam?
They always wanted to know. Because they assumed all fear must come from a thing or a place. An event. Cause and effect. Like fear was part of an algebra equation.

No, no, no, so not getting the point of fear. Because fear wasn’t about what made sense. Fear was about possibilities. Not things that happened. Things that might.

Things that might . . . Threats that might be there. Murderers. Madmen. Monsters. Standing just a few inches from him, able to see him, but his eyes useless. The threats, they could laugh silently at him. They could hold their knives, guns, claws right in his face and he wouldn’t be able to see.

The threat could be. Right. Here.

His legs already ached from tension. He glanced back at the lake. He had been climbing and it was below him now, a sad collection of stars like a dim, distant galaxy. So very far away.

He couldn’t look back for long because the possibilities were all around him now.

The light of day showed you the limits of possibility. But walk through the dark, the absolute, total darkness, and the possibilities were limitless.

He hung a Sammy sun. He didn’t want to leave it behind. It was light that revealed stones. A stick. A dried-out bush.

It was almost better not to bother. Seeing anything just made the darkness seem darker. But the lights were also a sort of bread-crumb trail, like Hansel and Gretel. He would be able to find his way home.

Hopefully as well, he’d be able to see whether he was veering left or right.

But the lights had one other effect: they would be seen by whatever else was out here.

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But in the darkness the one man holding a candle is a target.

Sam walked on into the dark.

Quinn had brought everyone into the plaza with grilled fish. The fire still burned, but lower and lower.

Lana had healed all who needed it.

For now there was quiet.

Kids had broken into Albert’s place and come back with some of his hoard of flashlights and batteries. Quinn had quickly confiscated them. They were worth far more than gold, far more even than food.

Some of Quinn’s crew were using the light of a single flashlight and a number of crowbars to tear apart the pews in the church and bring them out to keep the fire going.