Gone Series Complete Collection (240 page)

Pete could listen to the gaiaphage’s mind sometimes. Pete knew the Darkness was watching him. Laughing at him as he weakened, but nervous, too.

So many times the Darkness had reached to him with its tendrils, sneaking up behind him, trying to find him, trying to make him believe things, do things.

The Darkness wanted Pete to dim. When Pete was all the way gone, all his power would be gone, too.

The Darkness whispered to him.
It won’t hurt, my little Nemesis. It will just be the end, like the end of the stories your sister used to read to you. Remember how you always wanted them to end because her voice and her eyes and her yellow hair hurt you?

Don’t fight it, Nemesis.

The end is the best part of any story. The end.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

Orc had memorized the verse. In his head he said it “yeah” instead of “yea,” but that didn’t change the meaning. What it meant was, if you’re scared, don’t be, because God is there. That much was clear. But the next bit about a rod and a staff . . . as far as Orc knew, a rod was maybe a stick and a staff was, like, all the guys who worked for you. My staff.

My staff will comfort you. Which made sense because if you were God you’d need a staff of, like, angels or whatever to take care of comforting people and so on.

He had walked up Trotter’s Ridge at sundown, up above the town of Perdido Beach. But as he’d reached the top of the hill where the barrier sliced it in two, he’d crouched lower and lower, afraid even to be outlined against the stars. He’d finished the last hundred feet on his belly.

You still couldn’t touch the barrier, that hadn’t changed; it would still zap you. But now you could see right through it. Like it was just plain old glass. Which meant people out there could see in.

That thought made him sick to his stomach.

He peered through a crispy, dead stand of tall yellow grass, and there it was. The other side. The out there.

No one was on the hill right where he was; they were all down on the highway and around there. It was so amazingly bright out there. The hamburger place was lit up like light cost nothing. The motels, so many lights. Like Christmas or something. He could see the lights of cars and vans and campers backed up in the world’s biggest traffic jam. It went on as far as he could see. There were police lights flashing all over the place, near and far, the Highway Patrol trying to get things organized. Problem was, the highway just hit the barrier and stopped. Someone had bulldozed a turnaround, but with cars lining both sides of the highway as well as jamming the highway itself, that whole turnaround thing wasn’t working. There was a slow-moving stream of red taillights.

Up against the barrier in the out there were a few big news trucks all covered in antennas and satellite dishes and crazy bright lights. A little past them it looked like some kind of army base, because earlier he had seen green uniforms and Humvees.

Above all there was the neon, red and gold and a little green—a Carl’s Jr. His mouth watered. Fries. He would do just about anything for some fries and a chocolate shake.

From this angle he couldn’t see the kids up against the inside of the barrier, but he knew they were there, because unlike the stuff outside he could hear the things inside. He heard voices, some yelling like they didn’t believe no one could hear through the barrier.

A girl with a high-pitched voice was yelling, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Everyone seemed to think it was all going to end. They all thought the barrier had to come down now—sooner, not later. Caine, who called himself King Caine, had told Orc to help him get people back from the barrier, get them back to work, because here in the FAYZ every day was hungry, and starvation was never more than a couple days off.

But of course Orc had said no. No way. If he went down there, every camera would point toward him. People would scream: he wouldn’t be able to hear them, but he’d see them, see their mouths making big Os and see them point at him.

Orc had always been a big kid, but he was more than big now. He was probably more than six feet tall and almost that wide just standing with his arms down at his side. And he was made of something that looked a lot like wet gravel, or maybe concrete that hadn’t set yet.

He was a monster.

He wanted a drink of booze so bad. If he got really rip-roaring crazy drunk, then maybe he could go down there, down into the valley of the shadow. But not sober, no, he couldn’t take that.

His mom might be there, if his dad hadn’t killed her yet.

He tried to picture her and succeeded. Then Orc tried to picture his mother without a bruise on the side of her head or a cast on her wrist and he couldn’t.

And his father . . . he didn’t want to picture his father, but he couldn’t help it, the pictures came: pictures of his father in a cold and evil drunk, sizing up his son, making sure that Charles Merriman, who had long been known as Orc, was hanging his head and looking away. Making sure his son was afraid.

His dad liked that part, the part where Orc was desperately trying to stay out of his way but was forced to sit down and do his homework while his father drank beer after beer and dropped the cans beside his chair, waiting until he had an excuse—almost anything would do.

His father sober was distant and indifferent. His father drunk was a monster.

Like Orc, but not as ugly.

He wondered if his father knew he could come here and glare at his son again through the dome. And what would he say if he saw Orc now? Make that snorting sound of his, that sound that said,
You’re worthless.

If that happened . . .

His father was a big man. But Orc was bigger and had strength to match. Orc could snap him like a dry stick.

With one thick, stony finger Orc delicately touched the tiny patch of human skin near his mouth. It tickled.

If the barrier came down, everyone would see him in the bright TV lights. And sooner or later his father would, too. Orc was sure if he ever saw his father again, he would kill the man.

That was the death that shadowed the valley. That was the evil. And God’s staff would have to move pretty quick to stop it happening.

“Don’t let it come down, Lord,” he prayed. “I know all them kids want to see their moms and all. But please, God, don’t let that barrier come down.”

Sam was asleep, finally, facedown, uncovered, naked, and turned slightly away from Astrid.

There was a light. Sam Temple, the hero of most of the kids in the FAYZ, had always been a little afraid of the dark. So he had created a night-light for this dark space.

It was not a normal light: a tiny ball, no bigger than a marble. It floated in a corner above the bunk. Astrid had taped a sheet of red paper in front of it so that its green, unnatural glow would be softened. The tape had come loose, so the imperfect lampshade blocked the light only intermittently as the paper twirled in the slightest breeze, drifted as the boat gently rocked.

When the light brightened, Sam would appear as bits and pieces—a broad back, a flicker of round, pale bottom, a length of muscular thigh in harsh shadow. When the light softened, he would be almost invisible just sounds of breathing, and a scent, and a warmth.

She should cover him. Really, she should. He’d get cold after a while and wake up and realize she wasn’t sleeping and that would worry him.

But not just yet, she thought.

She was trying to read by the uncertain light. The book was on law, and Astrid had become convinced by the book that she would never be a lawyer, or even try. She could read most anything, but this was a very dull book, and it did very little to distract her from the view.

My God: she was
happy.

The very idea that she should be happy was absurd. It was almost a crime. Things were desperate, but then they had been for a long time. Desperate had long since become the new normal.

If the barrier really did come down . . . if this really was the endgame . . . They were fifteen. Out there, out in the world, they had no legal right to be together.

They’d been through hell. They’d been through a whole series of hells, and they were still together. But none of that would mean anything in the eyes of the law. Her parents, or his mother, could snap their fingers and break what Sam and Astrid had built.

It was not the first time Astrid had had the thought that maybe liberation from the FAYZ would be no such thing.

TWO

78
HOURS
, 26
MINUTES

THE BREEZE
WAS
famous.

She had been interviewed on the
Today
show.

The interview had been a bit unusual, because there was no way for Matt Lauer to actually speak to Brianna, and no way for Brianna to speak back. Communications with the outside world were purely visual. The world could see in. The kids in the FAYZ could see out. That was it.

Which meant that an interview was done with what amounted to a sort of primitive Twitter. The interviewer would write a question on a pad, or in the case of the
Today
show, since they were a little more high-tech, light it up on an HD monitor that had been set up to be visible within the dome. Then whoever was inside the dome could write the answer and hold it up to the cameras outside.

This made for extraordinarily tedious interviews. The interviewer could have a bunch of questions preloaded, but the kid on the inside would have to write his or her answer out, and that was slow. Very. Very. Slow.

For anyone except the Breeze.

Brianna had ripped a segment of chalkboard off from the school, and had found some chalk, and with her superhuman speed she could write faster than most people could talk.

Unfortunately, Brianna was not the most cautious or sensible person in the FAYZ. She was bold, fearless, very, very dangerous in a fight, and had a sort of reckless charm. But she was not a person who carefully thought out her answers.

So when Matt Lauer had asked whether kids had died in the FAYZ, Brianna’s chalked answer had been:
A bunch. Kids have been dying all over the place. This isn’t Disneyland.

Which was okay in itself, although it sent shockwaves of fear through the parent community.

It was the follow-up question that caused the problem.

Matt Lauer:
Have you taken a life?

Brianna:
Absolutely. I’m the Breeze. I am the most badass person in here except for maybe Sam and Caine.

Then before Matt could put up his next question, Brianna went on happily scribbling and holding her chalkboard up for the cameras, then rubbing it with her sleeve and scribbling some more.

There’s some more I want to kill but sometimes it’s hard. I’ve cut Drake up with wire and a machete and blown his head off with a shotgun. He’s still not dead! LOL.

And then:

What I’m thinking about doing is slicing him up and then zooming the pieces all around, like up in the mountains, out in the water. Let’s see if he can put himself back together then. LOL.

So basically Brianna had confessed to several killings—despite the fact she hadn’t actually killed anyone unless you counted bugs and coyotes—and bragged that she intended to go on killing and was in fact contemplating murder right then.

And grinning.

And striking poses for the cameras.

And adding a jaunty “LOL.”

And demonstrating just how fast she could twirl a bowie knife, a machete, and a garrote. And brandishing the sawed-off shotgun for which she had modified a runner’s backpack.

All of this got back to Sam.

Sam was not happy about it.

“Oh, my
God.
Are you out of your mind? ‘LOL’? Really?” he demanded. “I thought I told everyone: no talking to people unless it’s your parents. I told you
and
Edilio told you. And then, because I knew perfectly well that you would pay no attention to that and do whatever you wanted, I looked you right in the eyes”—he pointed at her eyes for emphasis—“right in those eyes, and I said something along the lines of, ‘Breeze, don’t go telling horror stories.’”

“He believes he said that.”

That last was from Toto, the truth teller. The boy could not restrain himself from announcing the truth or falsity of everything he heard. And he was 100 percent accurate. And 100 percent annoying.

Sam, Astrid, Brianna, and Toto were on the top deck of the houseboat at the lake. Two days had passed since the dome went transparent. Two days since they had seen the outside world for the first time in almost a year.

Two days since Sam had burned Penny to ashes while his mother watched.

And two days since the evil child, Gaia, and her mother, Diana, along with the foul Drake/Brittney creature, had retreated in pain and confusion.

“In the eyes. Me looking straight at you,” Sam said, insisting, even as Brianna adopted a transparently false
What, me?
look.

“Brianna, listen,” Astrid said. “You’re very useful at communicating with the world, but don’t go confessing to major crimes.”

“Crimes!” Brianna’s eyes narrowed and her thin lip curled. “Hey, I only do what I have to do.”

“We know that,” Sam said wearily. “We know that. The world may not.” Then he added, “LOL.”

“Yeah, well they can all drop dead,” Brianna said heatedly. “What are they doing to get us out of here? They tried to kill us all! Now they’re going to judge us?”

Sam’s face revealed his own private agreement, so he kept his eyes carefully averted from Astrid, as if that meant she wouldn’t notice.

“They didn’t try to kill us; they were trying to blow open the dome,” Astrid said.

“With a nuke?” Brianna shrilled.

“She doesn’t believe that,” Toto said. Then he clarified: “Astrid doesn’t believe what she said, Spidey.”

Toto was talking less often to his long-since-destroyed Spider-Man bust, the object he’d spent lonely months with, but there were still occasional references. No one took notice: at this point no one in the FAYZ was entirely sane.