Gone Series Complete Collection (271 page)

Between them the lizard’s tail whipped madly.

He swung his own whip, lashed the air, but blindly. He caught the chandelier, ripping loose some of the Barbies hung there.

He wasn’t dead. She didn’t have the power to kill him. He would regenerate: he would come for her again.

And then, there was Taylor.

The appearance of the golden-skinned girl, the anomaly-amongst-anomalies, just froze Astrid. It was utterly incongruous.

Taylor looked down at the lashing, screaming, losing-it Drake and said to Astrid, “Peter. He sent me. To save you.”

“Thanks,” Astrid gasped, and picked bits of Drake’s nose out of her teeth.

“He’s very weak. I think he only has minutes—”

“Little Pete? I asked him to take me,” Astrid said.

Taylor shook her head, a too-slow, reptilian move. She seemed to be enjoying the way her hair flowed across her neck and forehead. “Not you. He is scared of you. Peter is scared of you. But he likes you.”

“I get that sometimes,” Astrid said. “Tell him thanks.”

Taylor disappeared from the room. Astrid turned to flee, hesitated, picked up a chair, and slammed it down on Drake’s head as hard as she could, breaking one of the heavy legs in the process.

Then she fled.

Somewhere close by, guns were firing.

The plan, such as it was, had worked.

Gaia was in the church. The idea had been that she would be drawn to the only debris she could use as weapons. The hope would be that she’d go all the way in.

And now Dekka sprang her trap.

Gaia stood, bleeding, visible now as she relinquished Bug’s power of invisibility. She stood gasping from the pain, seething in rage, frustrated again, and surrounded, literally surrounded, by all the heavy, hard, sharp-edged debris of the semi-collapsed church.

Dekka was at the altar.

“You murdered someone I love,” Dekka said, and raised her hands high. Thousands of pounds of wood and steel, plaster and glass, pews, roof tiles, and accumulated filth rose in a rush, a pillar of swirling junk.

Up and up, and Gaia rose with it.

Forty feet up and Gaia had recovered her wits well enough to take aim at Dekka, and then, just as Gaia began to fire, Dekka dropped it all.

WHOOOOMPF!

It fell and bounced and crashed and splintered with a noise like the end of the world.

Dekka jumped back to avoid being hit, but she still took a dozen small impacts from flying debris. She couldn’t see Gaia, but she wasn’t taking chances. She raised high the debris and dropped it again.

And raised it and dropped it again. Hammer blows.

On the fourth attempt Dekka saw Gaia floating above it all, bloodied, bruised, her clothing torn, her hair filthy, but not dead, very much not dead.

Gaia looked down at her, aimed, held Dekka directly in her line of fire, and laughed. “Very clever,” Gaia said. “It almost worked. But I won’t kill you. Not yet.”

Gaia floated calmly down as the mess settled around her, slowly, under her control now.

Dekka drew a pistol. Gaia flicked it easily from her grip and sent it flying away.

“Anything else?” Gaia asked.

“You’re getting weaker,” Dekka blustered.

“Mmmm. So are all of you.”

“You can’t afford to kill me.”

“No. But I can do this.” Gaia used her father’s power to raise a pew, a long, heavy oak bench, and blast it into Dekka’s chest, pinning her against the altar.

Dekka lay still.

Gaia turned away, limping and in pain. Why was this proving so hard? She’d lost speed, now she’d lost Jack’s strength, and worst of all, most dangerous of all, she’d lost control of Sam. He had gotten away, and he might come for her again. Or he might take his own life. Either way . . .

She had to heal herself and quickly.

Little Pete was doing something . . . something . . . she could feel it. She could feel his resolution. She could feel his anticipation. But she could also feel his ebbing strength.

So many left to kill. She would have to hurry.

The firing had stopped.

Edilio couldn’t see much of anything, blinded by smoke tears, trying to make sense of a battlefield. All he knew was that the firing had stopped when Gaia disappeared into the church.

Then he saw Jack and Sam. Sam had rolled Jack over so that instead of the small hole in his back what was visible was the exit wound, an explosion of viscera poking out through his shirt.

“Jesus, Mary,” Edilio said.

From the church came the loud crash of debris falling.

Edilio dropped down beside Sam. Sam was alive but looked almost as bad as Jack. There were burns on his body and arms. His shirt was tatters, a filthy, bloody rag.

Edilio began pulling at the chains.

“Edilio,” Sam gasped.

“I got you, man,” Edilio said.

“Do it, Edilio.”

Edilio shook off the request, pretending not to know what Sam was asking.

From the church a second loud crash.

Voices above called out, “Edilio! What should we do?”

“Do it, man. I tried. I don’t think I have the strength to try again, man: do it for me,” Sam begged.

“Dekka’s got her,” Edilio stalled as he pulled the last chains away. The links tore at burned flesh as he pulled them free.

“She’ll come out of there and—”

“Damn it, I can’t kill you! You’re asking me to commit murder!” Edilio exploded.

Sam stared. Nodded. “Yeah. Give me your gun, Edilio. I think I can do it with a gun. The other thing, though . . . It’ll be easier with—”

“I can’t do it,” Edilio said, shaking his head, weeping.

“She’s going to kill everyone—”

A third crash from the church.

“I’m going to go shoot her myself,” Edilio said.

“Edilio!” Sam called after him.

Edilio spun around, stabbed a finger at Sam, and said, “I’ll kill. I’ll kill. That’s enough. It’s enough! I won’t murder!”

“It’s all the same,” Sam muttered weakly, as Quinn appeared out of the smoke.

Edilio took two steps back, grabbed Quinn by the shoulder, and said, “He’s not in charge. Don’t listen to him. You understand? You listen to me.”

Whether Quinn understood what was going on or not, he knew the power of conviction when he saw it. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Tell you what, Sanjit,” Lana said.

“What, Lana?” he asked.

“See this?” She held up her cigarette. “This will be my last one. I promise.”

Sanjit shook his head slowly. “What are you talking about?”

Lana looked around the shambles of a room. There were twenty-one victims: Some were dead and hadn’t been cleared away. Others would live, for now, at least. There were more in the room next door. More still in the hallway.

Lana felt hollowed out. The endless hurry to save this one or that one, the sleeplessness, the soul sickness that came from seeing death and disfigurement, it was all finally too much.

And still she felt it. She felt its mind, its will, its glee as it killed.

She took a long drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out, savoring it. “Last one.”

“What are you doing?”

Lana put her hand on Sanjit’s face. He made a tentative reach for the pistol at her waist. She was surprised. She pulled it out and handed it to him.

“No, not that,” she said, smiling. “I don’t think that’s in me. Different fight I have in mind. The time has come. Listen to me, Sanjit. I’m going outside. Don’t follow me.”

She left then, walked down the hall, ignoring the pleas of the desperate, down the stairs, and out onto the lawn.

She took another drag, squared her shoulders, closed her eyes, and said, “This is going to hurt.”

Gaia’s goal was not a fight. Her goal was slaughter.

Kill them all. Kill every last one of them.

Gaia did not rush out to meet the guns in the town plaza. She blew out the remains of the back wall of the church and stormed onto Golding Street.

Time. She felt it slipping away, and it would take too long to hunt down the shooters right now, too inefficient. Kill more sooner, that was the right move. Kill more now.

Seconds and seconds and she couldn’t run because there was a bullet in her leg and that leg did not want to run; it wanted to fold up under her.

Never mind, she would heal herself when they were all dead, and then, yes, there would be time, but her body, the body she had stolen, filthy weak sack of blood that kept leaking out, it was weakening, wasn’t it? She could feel it. The blood leaking out of her. Had to stop and heal that, at least, had to stanch the bleeding.

She bent over and pressed her hand against the wound, hobbling down the street as she did, an awkward, laughable-looking creature.

And Nemesis was doing something, moving, preparing, wasn’t he? She could feel him. He was a shadow of himself, weak, a ghost. Just die!

Just finally die, you stupid little boy!

The blood still leaked between her fingers. Why wasn’t the healing working?

She reached the highway and there were people, kids, running in panic toward the brilliant lights of the barrier.

A burned-out gas station.

An overturned FedEx truck.

Panicked children.

“Die!” she roared, and fired after them. “Die!”

Her body woozy. And the healing . . . too slow. Why wasn’t . . .

And then Gaia knew. She felt the mind pushing against hers, fighting her. Not Nemesis.

No, the
Healer.
Wrestling her for control of the healing power. Blocking her. Wanting her to bleed to death! Trying to kill her!

Gaia struck at her, invisible tentacles through the indescribable space that connected them. She saw the Healer in her mind, saw her face, her actual human face as though she was there on the road standing between Gaia and her victims.

Lana. Something was burning in her mouth. Smoke was coming from her nose. And she was unafraid. She was ready for the pain the gaiaphage could cause her.

Well, then, I wouldn’t want to disappoint!

She saw Lana staggered by the lashings of pain, the burning thing falling from her mouth, hands pressed against the agony in her head, but fighting back, draining Gaia’s strength, delaying,
delaying.

With every last ounce of her strength Gaia struck at the Healer. She felt the Healer’s pain, felt the Healer’s weakening, and Gaia crowed, tilted her head back, and howled at the red-glowing sky in triumph.

Someone was shooting at her from behind a truck.

She rolled the truck over, crushing the shooter.

This time when she bent down to touch the bleeding hole, it sealed. The blood would no longer flow, but she could do no more; the healing power was ebbing fast as Lana pushed back again, fought Gaia for control.

How does she fight me?

Still time. Still time. Nemesis had not done it yet. Nemesis had not found his home. Not . . . just . . . yet.

And there it was finally: the barrier. It would mean showing herself. Not at all how she had planned this. Her body, her face, they would be revealed. It would make things much harder later, when Nemesis died and she walked free. But she had been stymied, attacked, burned, shot, hurt again and again, nearly killed . . . No time for half measures. No time for clever plans. Time to ensure that Nemesis died and took this trap of a place down with him.

Like spooked cattle the humans gathered there. So many of them. So easy to slaughter.

They cowered. They cried for mercy. It would be easy.

Gaia felt the peace inside her. She felt the joy of the moment. She felt victory.

I don’t need to heal if I can kill.

She raised her hands. Spread them wide apart.

And fired two beams of killing light. One to the left. One to the right. Slowly she brought the beams toward the center.

The people screamed as the beams began to slice into those on the left and right flanks.

They climbed over one another to escape.

Seconds and it would be over.

Connie Temple stood in the press of frantic parents and hangers-on and thrill seekers who spread across acres of land beside the barrier.

She had been worrying for days about what would happen if the barrier came down. She’d occupied her mind with concern for the future, and with the gnawing guilt from fearing that she might have sent her closest friend’s daughter to her death.

Now she watched the TV monitors on the satellite trucks with mounting despair. They had showed satellite footage of the spreading conflagration. They’d shown the video of a little girl ripping a man’s arm off and eating it. They’d shown endless “interviews” with terrified, starving children. There had been long-distance drone video of something that looked like a monster made of stone and, in these last hours, what was undeniably a gun battle in Perdido Beach.

The whole world was watching. And the whole world was helpless. In the end it wasn’t going to matter at all what she said or did or felt. In the end it would all come down to the kids in that awful fishbowl.

She thanked God the barrier had been opaque for so long: had she been able to see, had the world been able to see, the parents would have been driven mad.

She stood now just ten feet from the barrier. Almost within reach were children crying, screaming soundlessly, begging.

And just beyond them a lovely teenaged girl, with arms raised, who now fired bright beams of light. The dazzling green beams struck the barrier and passed through the transparent force field.

The people outside never realized their own danger until the left-hand beam burned through a National Guard Humvee.

And then, yes, everyone then knew that death was coming not just for their children, but for them, too.

Like a herd of panicked cattle they surged away from the barrier, screaming.

Connie Temple did not move. She couldn’t. She had to watch this final slaughter. A witness, even if she died for it.

On the left and on the right, the first of the children inside burned. And the first of the adults outside screamed as hair caught fire and limbs fell severed to the ground.

And something large pelted down the hill, a monstrosity, a nightmare creature.