Gone Series Complete Collection (42 page)

Elwood guided her and Patrick to his house. It was half a mile from the plaza and Lana was practically sleepwalking by the time they reached it.

“Come on in,” Elwood said. “You want something to eat?”

Lana shook her head. “Just a place to . . . that couch.”

“You could use one of the bedrooms upstairs.”

Lana was already facedown on the couch. And a split second later, she was asleep.

Night had fallen by the time she woke. It took a while to figure out where she was.

Elwood had thoughtfully fed Patrick. There was a clean-licked plate on the kitchen tile. Patrick was curled up before a gas fireplace, though there was no fire.

Lana was ravenously hungry. She searched the kitchen, feeling like a burglar. The refrigerator had been emptied of everything but lemon juice, soy sauce, a carton of very expired half-and-half, and some very, very old lettuce.

The freezer was better. There were frozen buffalo wings, something in a Tupperware container, and a microwavable pepperoni pizza.

“Oh, yes,” Lana said. “Oh, definitely.”

She popped the pizza in the microwave and punched the numbers. It was fascinating watching it rotate. Her mouth watered. It was all she could do to wait till the microwave dinged.

She ate the pizza by ripping it with her bare hands, folding up the gooey slices and scooping up whatever dripped on the counter.

“Oh, you want some, too?” she asked when Patrick showed up wagging his tail and looking eager. She tossed him a piece, which he caught in the air.

“Well. We’ve been through it, huh, boy?”

Lana found the master bedroom shower upstairs and spent half an hour in the stream of hot water. The water ran red and black down the drain.

Then she invited Patrick in, shampooed him up, rinsed him off, and kicked him out to shake like crazy and spray dog water all over the bathroom.

She wrapped herself in a towel and went exploring through the house for clothing. Elwood didn’t seem to have any sisters, but his mother was petite, so with some cinching and tying-off Lana managed to put together an outfit.

She picked her old clothes up and almost fainted from the stench.

“Oh, my God, Patrick: that’s what I’ve been smelling like? I have to burn these things.”

But she contented herself with stuffing the bloodstained, dirt-crusted, sweat-stinking, torn, and shredded clothing into a trash bag. Unfortunately she was stuck with her old shoes: Elwood’s mother’s shoes were two sizes too large.

She trotted down the stairs, feeling better than she had in a very long time. Then she spotted the phone and could not resist the urge to pick it up. Call her mom. Tell her mom . . . well, something. She knew what everyone had told her about the FAYZ. But, still . . .

“No dial tone, Patrick.”

Patrick was not interested.

“You know what, Patrick? I’m just going to sit down and cry for a while.”

But the tears wouldn’t come. So after a while she sighed and carried a warm Diet Pepsi out onto the porch.

It was the middle of the night. The street was quiet. She was in a town she had grown up in but had been away from for years. She’d run into some kids she’d known back in the day, but most of them hadn’t recognized her beneath her coating of filth. Now maybe at least people would know her. Although it occurred to her that Sam and Astrid and Edilio probably wouldn’t recognize her now that she was clean.

“I feel like going somewhere, Patrick,” she said. “But I don’t know where.”

A car turned onto the street. It was moving slowly. Whoever was behind the wheel was clearly not an experienced driver.

Lana stiffened, preparing to rush back inside and lock the door. She raised a cautious wave, but she couldn’t see the driver and the driver didn’t seem to want to stop and chat. The car continued on down the street and turned off.

“Some kind of patrol,” Lana said to Patrick.

She stayed a while longer on the porch before heading back inside.

She instantly recognized the boy standing in the kitchen.

Patrick growled and raised his hackles.

“Hello, freak,” Drake said.

Lana backed away, but too late. Drake leveled his gun at her.

“I’m right-handed. ’Least I used to be. But I can still hit you from this distance.”

“What do you want?”

Drake motioned toward the stump of his right arm. It was gone from just above the elbow. “What do you think I want?”

The one time she’d seen Drake Merwin, he had made her think of Pack Leader: strong, hyper alert, dangerous. Now, the lean physique looked gaunt, the shark’s grin was a tight grimace, his eyes were red-rimmed. His stare, once languidly menacing, was now intense, burning hot. He looked like someone who had been tortured beyond endurance.

“I’ll try,” Lana said.

“You’ll do more than try,” he said. He convulsed in pain, face scrunched. A low, eerie moan escaped his throat.

“I don’t know if I can grow a whole arm back,” Lana said. “Let me touch it.”

“Not here,” he hissed. He motioned with his gun. “Through the back door.”

“If you shoot me, I can’t help you,” Lana argued.

“Can you heal dogs? How about if I blow his brains out? Can you heal that, freak?”

The car Lana had seen driving by was parked, engine running, in the alley behind the house. The boy called Panda was at the wheel.

“Don’t make me do this,” Lana pleaded. “I would help you no matter what. You don’t have to do this.”

But there was no point in arguing. If Drake had ever owned a conscience, it had died along with his arm.

They drove off through the sleeping town.

Out into the night.

Howard had seen with his own eyes the small army Sam had assembled. He’d seen them descending on Ralph’s. The grocery store was unguarded, which meant the other sheriffs had decided to get out of the way and make themselves scarce.

“There’s too many,” Howard had concluded.

So he and Orc had stolen a car and made their way toward Coates Academy. But they had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the road and ended up on a dirt track leading into the desert as night fell.

They had turned around, retracing their way to the main road, but that hadn’t worked, either. Finally, they ran out of gas.

“This was your stupid idea,” Orc muttered.

“What did you want to do? Stay in town with Sam? He had, like, twenty kids with him.”

“I could kick his butt.”

“Orc, don’t be a moron,” Howard snapped in frustration. “If Caine’s not there, and Drake’s not there, and Sammy is marching back into town like a big deal, what do you think that means? I mean, come on, Orc, do the math.”

Orc’s pig eyes had narrowed to slits. “Don’t call me stupid. If I have to, I’ll kick your teeth in.”

Howard wasted twenty minutes ameliorating Orc’s hurt feelings. Which still left them sitting in a dead car in the middle of nowhere.

“I see a light,” Orc said.

“Hey, yeah.” Howard jumped from the car and started running. Orc lumbered after him.

The twin beams of a car moved at an intercept angle to them. If they slowed down, the car would miss them, never see them.

“Hurry up,” Howard yelled.

“Catch them.” Orc urged Howard on as he gave up the race and slowed to a heavy-footed slog.

“Okay,” Howard yelled. His foot caught on something, and he sprawled into the dirt. He picked himself up and only then felt the sharp pain in his ankle.

“What the—?” He froze. There was something there in the darkness. Not Orc, something that smelled rank and panted like a dog.

Howard was up and running in a heartbeat. “Something is after me,” he yelled.

The car lights were vectoring toward him. He could make it. He could make it. If he didn’t fall again. If the monster didn’t get him first.

Howard’s feet hit blacktop and he was illuminated, brilliant white. The car screeched. It came to a stop.

The monster was nowhere in sight.

“Howard?”

Howard recognized the voice. Panda was leaning out of the window.

“Panda? Man, am I glad to see you. We’ve been—”

Something dark and swift leaped and caught Panda’s arm. He let out a shriek.

From inside the car, a dog barked frantically.

Something hit Howard in the back and he hit the pavement on his hands and knees.

The car lurched forward. The bumper stopped six inches from Howard’s head.

There came a scream, a male voice. Orc. Orc back in the darkness somewhere.

There were dogs everywhere, swarming around Howard. No, not dogs, he thought, wolves. Coyotes.

The car door opened, and Panda fell out, wrapped half around a coyote.

A loud bang and a stab of orange light.

But the coyotes didn’t stop.

Another shot, and one of the coyotes yelped in pain. Drake staggered into view, looking like a scarecrow in the headlights.

The coyotes retreated, out of the light but by no means gone. Howard got slowly to his feet.

Drake pointed the gun at Howard’s face. “Did you set these dogs on me?”

“They chewed on me too, man,” Howard protested. Then he yelled out at the desert, “Orc. Orc, man. Orc.”

A voice like wet gravel, but with an eerie high-pitched tone, said, “Give us female.”

Howard peered into the night trying to make sense of it. It wasn’t Orc. Where was Orc?

“What female?” Drake demanded. “Who are you?”

Slowly, on every side, all around the car the desert moved. Shadows crept closer. Howard shrank back, but Drake stood firm.

“Who’s out there?” Drake demanded.

A mange-eaten coyote with a scarred muzzle that gave him a sinister grin stepped into the circle of light. Howard almost fell down when he realized it was this coyote who spoke.

“Give us female.”

“No,” Drake said, recovering quickly from the shock. “She’s mine. I need her to heal my arm. She has the power and I want my arm back.”

“You are nothing,” the coyote snarled.

“I’m the kid with the gun,” Drake said.

The two of them, two of a kind, it seemed to Howard, stared holes in each other.

“What do you want with her?” Drake demanded.

“Darkness say: bring female.”

“Darkness? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Give us female,” Pack Leader said, returning to his single-minded point. “Or we kill all.”

“I’ll kill plenty of you.”

“You die,” Pack Leader said stubbornly.

Howard felt it was time to speak up. “Guys. Guys. We have a standoff here. So why don’t we see if we can figure out an arrangement?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Okay, look, Drake, you said something about the female healing your arm?”

“She has the power. I want my arm back.”

“And Mr., um . . . coyote . . . you’re supposed to take her to some other dog called Darkness?”

Pack Leader eyed Howard in a way that suggested he was considering how to butcher and eat him.

“Okay,” Howard said shakily. “I think we can work a deal.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

74
HOURS
, 10
MINUTES

“ASTRID,” EDILIO
SAID
. “I’m so sorry about your house.”

Astrid squeezed Edilio’s hand. “Yeah. I have to admit, it was hard for me to see.”

“You could stay over at the firehouse with me and Sam and Quinn,” Edilio offered.

“It’s okay. Petey and I are going to room with Mother Mary and Brother John for a while. They’re hardly ever home. And when they are, well, you know, it’s good to have people around.”

The three of them, Edilio, Astrid, and Little Pete, were in the office that had once belonged to the mayor of Perdido Beach and most recently had been occupied by Caine Soren. Sam had resisted the idea of taking the office, feeling it made him seem self-important. But Astrid had argued that symbols were important and kids wanted to think that someone was in charge.

She settled Little Pete into a chair and handed him a Baggie full of Rice Chex. Little Pete liked to eat them plain, no milk.

“Where’s Sam?” Astrid asked. “And why are we here?”

Edilio looked uncomfortable. “We have something to show you.”

Sam opened the door. He did not smile at Astrid. He looked warily at Little Pete. He said hello, then, “Astrid, there’s something you need to see. And I’m thinking Little Pete shouldn’t see.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sam flopped into the chair last occupied by Caine. Astrid was struck by how alike the two boys looked superficially. And by how different a reaction she had to their similar features. Where Caine hid his arrogance and cruelty beneath a smooth, controlled surface, Sam let his emotions play out on his face. Right now he was sad and weary and concerned.

“I wonder if L. P. could sit with Edilio in the other room.”

“That sounds ominous,” Astrid said. The expression on Sam’s face did not contradict her.

She managed to get Little Pete to move, though not without a struggle. Edilio stayed with him.

Sam had a DVD in his hand. He said, “Yesterday I sent Edilio to the power plant to get two things. First, a cache of automatic weapons from the guardhouse.”

“Machine guns?”

“Yeah. Not just for us to have, but to make sure the other side doesn’t get them.”

“Now we have an arms race,” Astrid said.

Her tone seemed to irritate Sam. “You want me to leave them for Caine?”

“I wasn’t criticizing, just . . . you know. Ninth graders with machine guns: it’s hard to make that a happy story.”

Sam relented. He even grinned. “Yeah. The phrase ‘ninth graders with machine guns’ isn’t exactly followed by ‘have a nice day.’”

“No wonder you looked so grim.” As soon as she said it, she knew she was wrong. He had something else to tell her. Something worse. The DVD.

“I’ve been wondering, like you, why the FAYZ seems to be centered on the power plant. Ten miles in every direction. Why? So Edilio went through some of the security video at the plant.”

Astrid stood up so suddenly, she surprised herself. “I really shouldn’t leave Petey alone.”

“You know what this DVD will show, don’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “You guessed it that first night. I remember, we were looking at the video map. You put your arm around Little Pete and you gave me a very weird look. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of that look.”