Gone Series Complete Collection (39 page)

“Nah,” Drake said. “Jack’s like a screwdriver or a pair of pliers. He’s just a tool. He does what we tell him to do.”

Little Pete and Lana shared the middle bench with Astrid. Edilio and Sam were in the back row. Drake pressed the gun to the back of Edilio’s head.

“Your problem’s with me, Drake,” Sam said.

“You might take a chance if it’s only your own life on the line,” Drake said. “But you won’t risk me shooting your pet Mexican here, or your girlfriend.”

They drove in jerks and starts, Jack frequently weaving off the road onto the shoulder. But they didn’t crash, which was Sam’s only hope. They pulled up outside Coates Academy.

Sam had been once before, brought there to see where his mother worked. The gloomy old building looked like it had been shelled. One entire room upstairs was exposed. The main door had been blown apart.

“Looks like a war zone,” Edilio commented.

“The FAYZ
is
a war zone,” Drake said darkly.

The sight of the place brought Sam a wave of sad memories. His mother had done her best to portray her job as something she was excited about, and Coates as a place where she was going to love working. But even then Sam had known that she was only here because he had broken up his mother’s marriage.

He felt within him the residue of his rage at his mother. It was childish. Shameful, really. Wrong. And it was the wrong time to be thinking about all that, now, where he was, with what was happening, what was likely to happen.

What was that phrase of Edilio’s?
Cabeza de turco?
Scapegoat? He needed someone to blame, and his anger had been building at his mother since long before the FAYZ.

But as mad as I am, Sam thought, it must be worse for Caine. I was the son she kept. He was the one she gave away.

When they pulled up, Panda and a couple of kids Sam didn’t know were waiting. They were armed with baseball bats.

“I want to see Caine,” Sam said as they climbed out.

“No doubt,” Drake said. “But first we have things to take care of. Line up. Walk single file around the building.”

“Tell Caine his brother is here,” Sam insisted.

“You’re not dealing with Caine, Sammy, you’re dealing with me,” Drake said. “I’d just as soon shoot you. I’d just as soon shoot all of you. So don’t piss me off.”

They did as ordered. They turned the corner and came to the commons area behind the main building. There was a small performance stage made to look like a gazebo.

More than two dozen kids lined a low railing around the gazebo. They were all tied to it by a rope leash that gave them no more than a few feet of movement. Neck to rail, like tethered horses. Each of the kids was weighed down by a concrete block that encased their hands. Their eyes were hollow, their cheeks caved in.

Astrid used a word that Sam had never imagined coming from her.

“Nice language,” Drake said with a smirk. “And in front of the Pe-tard, too.”

A cafeteria tray had been placed in front of each of the prisoners. It must have been a very recent delivery because some were still licking their trays, hunched over, faces down, tongues out, licking like dogs.

“It’s the circle of freaks,” Drake said proudly, waving a hand like a showman.

In a crusty old wheelbarrow to one side, three kids were using a short-handled shovel to mix cement. It made a heavy sloshing sound. They dumped a shovelful of gravel into the mix and stirred it like lumpy gravy.

“Oh, no,” Lana said, backing away, but one of the Coates kids smashed her behind the knee with his baseball bat, and she crumpled.

“Gotta do something with unhelpful freaks,” Drake said. “Can’t have you people running around loose.” He must have seen Sam start to react because he stuck his gun against Astrid’s head. “Your call, Sam. You so much as flinch and we’ll get to see what a genius brain really looks like.”

“Hey, I got no powers, man,” Quinn said.

“This is sick, Drake. Like you’re sick,” Astrid said. “I can’t even reason with you because you’re just too damaged, too hopelessly messed up.”

“Shut up,” Drake snapped. “Okay, Sam. You first. It’s easy to do. You just stick your hands in and then, presto, no more powers.”

Quinn pleaded. “Sam’s a freak, I’m not, man, I have no powers. I am just a normal person.”

Sam walked with shaky steps to the wheelbarrow. The kids mixing the concrete looked very unhappy about what they were doing, but Sam didn’t kid himself: they would do what they were told.

There was a hole dug in the dirt, about a foot long, half as wide, and maybe eight inches deep.

The cement mixers sloshed a shovelful of concrete into the hole, filling it a third of the way.

“Stick your hands in, Sam,” Drake ordered. “Do it or pop-goes-the-genius.”

Sam plunged his hands into the cement. The kid with the shovel dumped a load of wet, heavy cement into the hole and used a trowel to poke it down. Then half a shovelful and the boy used the trowel to smooth it over and return the excess to the wheelbarrow.

Sam knelt there, hands encased, his brain crazed with desperate plans and wild calculations. If he moved, Astrid would die. If he did nothing, they would be slaves.

“Okay, Astrid, your turn,” Drake said.

Another hole and the same process. Astrid was crying, saying, “It’ll be okay, Petey, it’ll be okay,” through her tears.

One of the mixers got busy digging a third hole. He did it with quick, practiced moves, slicing the turf with a trowel.

“Takes about ten minutes is all, Sam,” Drake said. “If you’re going to do something brave, you’ve got about eight minutes. Tick-tock.”

“This is how you have to deal with freaks,” Quinn said. “No choice, Drake.”

Sam could feel the concrete hardening. Already if he tried to move his fingers, he found they were imprisoned. Astrid was more upset than Sam had ever seen her. She was crying openly. Her fear fed his. He couldn’t bear it. For himself it was bad enough, but seeing her this way . . .

And yet, Astrid wasn’t returning his gaze, she was focused entirely on Little Pete. Almost as if she was crying for his benefit, communicating her terror to him.

Of course she was. But it wasn’t working. Little Pete was in his game, in another world.

“I think time’s about up for you, Sam,” Drake said with a laugh. “Try pulling your hands out. Can’t do it, can you?”

Drake stepped up behind him and swatted him on the back of his head.

“Come on, Sam. Even Caine’s scared of you, so you must be tough. Come on, show me what you’ve got.” He hit Sam again, this time with the barrel of the gun. Sam collapsed facedown in the dirt.

Sam raised himself up. He tugged as hard as he could, but his hands were imprisoned. His flesh itched. He fought against a tide of panic. He wanted to scream curses, but that would only entertain Drake.

“Yeah, take it like a man,” Drake crowed. “After all, you’re fourteen, right? So how long till you vacate? It’s all just a passing phase here in the FAYZ, right?”

The mixers dug the concrete block out of the dirt, and now, as he tried to stand, Sam felt the terrible weight of the thing. He could stand, but not without struggling.

Drake got up close to him. “So who’s the man here? Who brought you and the rest of these freaks down? Me. And me without any powers at all.”

Sam heard a door slam. He craned his head and saw Caine and Diana coming across the lawn.

Caine walked at a languid pace across the lawn, smiling more broadly the closer he got.

“Well, if it isn’t the defiant Sam Temple,” he said. “Let me shake your hand. Oh, sorry, my bad.” He laughed, a sound that seemed more a release of tension than anything else.

“I got him,” Drake announced. “I got them all.”

“Yes, you did,” Caine said. “Good work, Drake. Very good work. And I see Sam’s little friends are likewise caught.”

“Why don’t you give Drake a little scratch behind the ears, Caine, he’s been such a good dog,” Diana said.

The mixers had dug Astrid’s hands out of the dirt. She was crying hysterically, unable to stand all the way up. Little Pete went to her, walking like he was in a dream, head down over his Game Boy.

Astrid bumped her concrete block into Little Pete.

And suddenly Sam knew what she was doing. He had to provide distraction. He had to keep the focus away from Astrid and Little Pete.

“You don’t want to mess with this girl, her name is Lana,” Sam said, jerking his chin toward her. “She’s a healer.”

Caine’s eyebrows shot up. “A what? A healer?”

“She can heal anything, any kind of injury,” Sam said. Astrid, barely able to move, was slowly, rhythmically swinging her block back and forth in a narrow arc, bumping it against Little Pete’s Game Boy.

“She healed me,” Sam said. “Coyote bit me. Want to see?”

Caine said, “I have a better idea. Drake: give the girl something to heal.”

Drake laughed out loud, a gleeful sound. He pressed the muzzle of his pistol against Sam’s knee.

“No,” Diana yelled.

The explosion was shocking. The pain, at first, didn’t register, but Sam collapsed. He fell on his side like a felled tree. The leg, blown half off, buckled and twisted beneath him.

And then came the pain.

Drake smiled hugely and yelled an exultant, “Yeah!”

Astrid, startled, slammed the concrete block so hard against Little Pete that she knocked the Game Boy from his hands and knocked him back a step.

Diana frowned, alarmed. For the first time she really registered Little Pete’s presence.

Through a red mist of pain Sam saw her eyes fly open, her finger stab toward Little Pete.

“Drake, you idiot, the kid. The kid.”

Astrid dropped to her knees, slammed the concrete block down on the Game Boy.

There was no flash of light. No sound.

But suddenly the concrete encasing Astrid’s hands was gone. Simply gone.

So was the concrete block on Sam’s hands.

And every one of the other children.

Astrid was on her hands and knees, knuckles pressed into the soft dirt.

The concrete blocks were gone like they had never existed, though the hands of those who had been trapped longest were masses of pale, dead, sloughing skin.

Caine was quick. He backed away, turned, and ran for the building. Diana seemed torn, uncertain; then she bolted after Caine.

Little Pete picked up his game. The block had disappeared a split second before smashing down on the game. It was dirty and had a piece of grass sticking out of it now, but it still worked.

Drake stood rooted. The gun was still in his hand, smoking from the bullet he had fired into Sam’s knee.

He blinked.

He raised the gun and fired at Little Pete. But his aim was wild. His aim was off because of the blinding flash of greenish-white light.

Drake’s arm, the entire arm holding the gun, burst into flame.

Drake screamed. The gun fell from his melting fingers.

The flesh burned black. The smoke was brown.

Drake screamed and stared in stark horror as the fire ate away at his arm. He broke and ran, the wind fanning the flames.

“Good shot, Sam,” Edilio said.

“I was aiming at his head,” Sam said, gritting his teeth through the pain.

Lana knelt beside Sam and laid her hands on the bloody mess of his knee.

“We have to get out of here,” Sam managed to say. “Forget me, we have to run. Back to . . . Caine will . . .”

But that was the last of his strength. It felt as if a black hole was swallowing him up. He swirled down and down into unconsciousness.

THIRTY-FIVE

86
HOURS
, 11
MINUTES

“
WHERE ARE
WE
?” Sam woke up all at once and was embarrassed to find that he was being half dragged down the road by Edilio and a kid he didn’t know.

Edilio stopped. “Can you stand?”

Sam tested his legs. Lana’s healing of his leg had been complete. “Yeah. I’m fine. Feel okay, actually.”

He looked back and realized they had been leading a sort of ragtag parade. Astrid and Little Pete, Lana holding a boy’s hand while her dog bounded into the woods to chase a squirrel. Quinn walked by himself along the shoulder of the road, shunned and ashamed. And there were almost two dozen kids, the liberated freaks from Coates.

Edilio saw the look on his face. “You got yourself a crowd of followers, Sam.”

“Caine hasn’t come after us?”

“Not yet.”

The group of them was straggling down the road, bunched here and there, spread out elsewhere, wandering, undisciplined.

Sam winced when he saw the hands of the Coates kids. The concrete had leeched all the moisture from their skin. Their skin was white and loose, hanging in tatters in some cases, like the tattered bandages of some horror movie mummy. Their wrists revealed red circles where the concrete had rubbed the flesh bloody. They were filthy.

“Yeah,” Edilio said, knowing what he was seeing. “Lana’s going through them one at a time. Healing them. She’s amazing.”

Sam thought he heard something extra in Edilio’s voice. “She’s cute too, huh, Edilio?”

Edilio’s eyes went wide and he started blushing. “She’s just . . . you know . . .”

Sam slapped his shoulder. “Good luck with that.”

“You think she . . . I mean, you know me, I’m just . . .” Edilio stammered his way to a stop.

“Dude, let’s see if we can stay alive. Then you can ask her out or whatever.”

Sam surveyed the scene. They were on the Coates road, passing the iron gate, still many miles from Perdido Beach.

Astrid noticed that he was awake and hurried her pace. “About time you woke up,” she said.

“Well,” he played along with her bantering tone, “usually after I get shot and then fire lasers out of my hands, I like to enjoy a brief nap.” He caught Lana’s eye and mouthed the word “thanks.”

Lana shrugged as if to say “no biggie.”

“Caine won’t let this stand,” Astrid said, turning serious.

“No. He’ll come after us,” Sam said. “But not just yet. Not until he’s come up with a plan. He’s lost Drake. And he’s gotta be worried that we have all these kids with powers who hate his guts.”