Fear (38 page)

She’d been covered in a translucent white goo, like clay or Silly Putty. And it had coated every single inch of her body. It had pushed its way into her ears. Like invisible fingers were poking it in there, filling her right up to the eardrums.

So that she could hear nothing but the beating of her own heart.

So that she could hear the gristle in her neck as she squirmed helplessly.

The white putty was pushed into her nose. So deep, up into her sinuses. She had to breathe through her mouth, but as soon as she opened her mouth the white stuff filled her mouth and pushed its way into the space between her teeth and her cheeks, under her tongue, then down her throat. She gagged but it didn’t matter; the stuff filled her mouth and throat and she could feel it cold and dense and heavy in her lungs.

She screamed but no sound came out.

In some panic-free corner of her mind, some small remnant of Dekka knew this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. She knew it was Penny who had done this, who had filled her mind with this vision.

But she could not breathe. Could. Not.

She was buried alive in it, buried alive, and her brain screamed in a way that her body no longer could.

Had to be an illusion. Had to be a trick. But did it really? Was she so sure it wasn’t real in this nightmare world?

She couldn’t breathe, but she realized, too, that she wasn’t dying. Her heart still beat. She was covered and filled with the white stuff, and she should be dying but she wasn’t.

Then she felt the white stuff harden. It wasn’t putty anymore but fast-drying clay. Already her teeth bit on something as hard as porcelain.

Then the bugs were inside of her.

The bugs.

Not real—she knew that in some tiny, cowering corner of her mind—couldn’t be real; the bugs had been eliminated. They’d been made nonexistent. So there was no way they could be inside her again, no way they could be swarming through her guts and no Sam to cut them out and let them out; she was trapped inside this porcelain tomb and they were inside her again.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.

Suddenly, all of it was gone.

She was on dirt. Air was in her nose. Her eyes opened.

A girl had stood there and said, “That’s a new one for me. Did you like it?”

And Dekka, trembling like a leaf ready to fall, said nothing. Just breathed. Breathed.

“Don’t come after me,” Penny had said.

And Dekka had not.

“RING THE
BELL,���
Sam said.

Edilio nodded at Roger, who ran off to ring the bell atop the marina office.

“What are you going to do?” Edilio asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were gay?” Sam demanded.

Edilio looked like he’d been punched. But he recovered quickly, to go to an expression that was half-wary, half-embarrassed. “You got enough stuff to deal with.”

“That’s not something I have to ‘deal with,’ Edilio. My girlfriend lost, the world ending, having to go out there after Drake, that’s stuff I have to deal with. Me finding out you’ve got someone to care about like that? How is that something I have to deal with?”

“I don’t know, I just… I mean, it took me a while to kind of figure it out. You know.”

“Does everyone except me know?” Sam asked. He realized this was a stupid concern; this was hardly the time to worry about seeming out of touch. But no one had been closer to him than Edilio, almost from the first day. It bothered him to think everyone knew something he didn’t. It hurt his feelings.

“No, man,” Edilio reassured him. “No. And it’s not about me being, you know, ashamed or whatever. It’s that … look, I have a lot of responsibility. I have to have people trust me. And some kids are still going to call me a faggot or whatever.”

“Seriously? We’re about to be plunged into eternal darkness and you think those kids out there are going to worry about who you like?”

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.