Lies: A Gone Novel (5 page)

Francis slipped off his watch and held it out to her. “It's all I have to give you.”

“Francis, no.”

But she was holding air. Yelling at air.

The watch lay in the grass.

Francis was gone.

“
WHAT ELSE HAVEN'T
you been telling us, Sam?”

Astrid had immediately called a meeting of the town council. She hadn't even yelled at him privately. She'd just nailed him with a poisonous look and said, “I'm calling a meeting.”

Now they sat in the former mayor's conference room. It was gloomy, the only light coming through a window that was itself in shade. The table was heavy wood, the chairs deep and luxurious. The walls were decorated—if that was the right word—with large, framed photos of past mayors of Perdido Beach.

Sam always felt like a fool in this room. He sat in a too-big chair at one end of the table. Astrid was at the other. Her hands were on the table, slender fingers flat on the surface.

Dekka sat scowling, irritated, though Sam wasn't sure at whom she was directing her dark mood. A piece of something blue was stuck in one of her tight cornrows—not that anyone was foolish enough to point it out or laugh.

Dekka was a freak, the only one besides Sam in this room. She had the power to temporarily cancel gravity in small areas. Sam counted her as an ally. Dekka was not about talking without end and getting nothing done.

Albert was the best-dressed person in the room, wearing an amazingly clean and seemingly un-salty polo shirt and relatively unwrinkled slacks. He looked like a very young businessman who had stopped by on his way to a round of golf.

Albert was a normal, though he seemed nevertheless to have an almost supernatural ability to organize, to make things happen, to do business. Looking at the group through hooded eyes, Sam knew Albert was probably the most powerful person in the room. Albert, more than any other person, had kept Perdido Beach from starving.

Edilio slumped, holding his head with both hands and not making eye contact with anyone. He had a submachine gun propped against his chair, a sight that had become all too normal.

Edilio was officially town marshal. Probably the mildest, most modest and least-assuming person in the council, he was in charge of enforcing whatever rules the council created. If they ever got around to actually creating any.

Howard was the wild card in the group. Sam still wasn't sure how he had managed to talk his way onto the council. No one doubted that Howard was smart. But no one thought he had an honest or ethical bone in his body. Howard was chief toady to Orc, the glowering, drunken-boy-turned-monster who had fought on the right side a couple of times
when it had really counted.

The youngest member was a sweet-faced boy named John Terrafino. He was a normal, too—Mary's little brother. He seldom had much to say and mostly listened. Everyone assumed he voted however Mary told him to. Mary would have been there, but she was simultaneously indispensable and fragile.

Seven council members. Astrid as chairperson. Five normals, two freaks.

“A few different things happened last night,” Sam said as calmly as he could. He didn't want a fight. He especially didn't want a fight with Astrid. He loved Astrid. He was desperate for Astrid. She was the sum total of all the good he had in his life, he reminded himself.

And now she was furious.

“We know about Jill,” Astrid said.

“Zil's punks. Who wouldn't still be doing stuff like that if we'd shut them down,” Dekka muttered.

“We've voted on that,” Astrid said.

“Yeah, I know. Four to three in favor of letting the sick little creep and his sick little friends terrorize the whole town,” Dekka snapped.

“Four to three in favor of having some kind of system of laws and not just fighting fire with fire,” Astrid said.

“We can't just go around arresting people without some kind of system,” Albert said.

“Yeah, Sammy,” Howard said with a smirk. “You can't just go all laser-hands whenever you decide you don't like someone.”

Dekka shifted in her seat, hunching her strong shoulders forward. “No, so instead we let little girls be kicked out of their own homes and terrorized.”

“Look, once and for all, we can't have a system where Sam is judge, jury, and executioner,” Astrid said. She softened it a bit by adding, “Although if there's one person I would trust, it's him. Sam's a hero. But we need everyone in the FAYZ to know what's okay and what's not. We need rules, not just one person deciding who is out of line and who isn't.”

“He was a really good worker,” John whispered. “Francis. He was a really good worker. The prees are totally going to miss him. They loved him.”

“I only found out about this last night. Actually, early this morning,” Sam said. He gave a brief description of what he'd seen and heard at Orsay's gathering.

“Could it be true?” Albert asked. He seemed worried. Sam understood his ambivalence. Albert had gone from being just another kid in the old days, a person no one even really noticed, to being the person who in many ways ran Perdido Beach.

“I don't think there's any way for us to know,” Astrid said.

Everyone fell silent at that. The idea that it might be possible to contact parents, friends, family outside of the FAYZ was mind-boggling. The idea that those outside could know what was happening inside the FAYZ…

Even now, with some time to digest it, Sam felt powerful and not necessarily pleasant emotions. He had long been plagued by the fear that when the FAYZ wall somehow, some
day, came down, he would be held responsible. For lives he had taken. For lives he had not saved. The idea that the whole world might be watching, dissecting his actions, questioning every panicky move, every desperate moment, was disturbing, to say the least.

So many things he didn't want to have to ever talk about. So many things that could be made to look awful.

Young master Temple, can you explain how you sat by while kids wasted most of the food supply and ended up starving?

Are you telling us, Mr. Temple, that children were cooking and eating their own pets?

Mr. Temple, can you explain the graves in the plaza?

Sam clenched his fists and steadied his breathing.

“What Francis did was commit suicide,” Dekka said.

“I think that's a little harsh,” Howard said. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the table, and interlaced his fingers over his skinny belly. He knew this would irritate Astrid. In fact, Sam guessed, he did it for just that reason. “He wanted to go running home to Mommy, what can I say? Of course, it's hard for me to believe that anyone would choose to step out of the FAYZ. I mean, where else do you get to eat rats, use your backyard for a toilet, and live in fear of nineteen different kinds of scary?”

No one laughed.

“We can't let kids do this,” Astrid said. She sounded quite sure.

“How do we stop them?” Edilio asked. He raised his head, and Sam saw the distress on his face. “How do you think we
stop them? When your fifteenth birthday rolls around, the easy thing is to take the poof. You gotta fight to resist it. We know that. So how are we going to tell kids this isn't real, this Orsay thing?”

“We just tell them,” Astrid said.

“But we don't
know
if it's real or not,” Edilio argued.

Astrid shrugged. She stared at nothing and kept her features very still. “We tell them it's all fake. Kids hate this place, but they don't want to die.”

“How do we tell them if we don't know?” Edilio seemed genuinely puzzled.

Howard laughed. “Deely-O, Deely-O, you are such a doof sometimes.” He put his feet down and leaned toward Edilio as if sharing a secret with him. “She means: We
lie
. Astrid means that we lie to everyone and tell them we do know for sure.”

Edilio stared at Astrid like he was expecting her to deny it.

“It's for people's own good,” Astrid said in a low voice, still looking at nothing.

“You know what's funny?” Howard said, grinning. “I was pretty sure we were coming to this meeting so Astrid could rank on Sam for not telling us the whole truth. And now, it turns out we're really here so Astrid can talk us all into becoming liars.”

“Becoming?” Dekka snarked with a cynical look at Howard. “Wouldn't exactly be a transformation for you, Howard.”

Astrid said, “Look, if we let Orsay go on with this craziness, we could not only have kids stepping out on their fifteenth.
We could have kids not wanting to wait that long. Kids deciding to end it right away and thinking they'd wake up on the other side with their parents.”

Everyone at the table leaned back at once, taking that in.

“I can't lie,” John said simply. He shook his head, and his red curls shook, too.

“You're a member of the council,” Astrid snapped. “You have to abide by our decisions. That's the deal. That's the only way it works.” Then, in a calmer voice, she said, “John, isn't Mary coming up on her fifteenth before long?”

Sam saw the jab hit home. Mary was perhaps the single most necessary person in Perdido Beach. From the start she had stepped up and run the day care. She'd become a mother to the littles.

But Mary had her own problems. She was anorexic and bulimic. She ate antidepressants by the handful, but the supply was rapidly running out.

Dahra Baidoo, who controlled the medicines in Perdido Beach, came to Sam secretly and told him that Mary was in every couple of days, asking for whatever Dahra might have. “She's taking Prozac and Zoloft and Lexapro, and these aren't just nothing little meds, Sam. People have to go on and off these things carefully, according to the book. You don't just grab whatever and mix them all up.”

Sam hadn't told anyone but Astrid about it. And he'd warned Dahra to keep it to herself. Then he'd made a mental note to talk to Mary, and had forgotten to ever follow up.

Now, from John's stricken expression, Sam could guess
that he was far from certain that Mary wouldn't give in to the poof and step out.

They took a vote. Astrid, Alberto, and Howard shot their hands up immediately.

“No, man,” Edilio said, shaking his head. “I'd have to lie to my own people, my soldiers. Kids who trust me.”

“No,” John voted. “I…I'm just a kid and all, but I would have to lie to Mary.”

Dekka looked at Sam. “What do you say, Sam?”

Astrid interrupted. “Look, we could do this temporarily. Just until we find out if Orsay is making this all up. If she came out later and admitted it was all fake, well, we'd have our answer.”

“Maybe we should torture her,” Howard said, only half kidding.

“We can't just sit by if we think kids are going to be dying,” Astrid pleaded. “Suicide is a mortal sin. These kids won't be getting out of the FAYZ, they'll be going to hell.”

“Wow,” Howard said. “Hell? And we know this, how exactly? You don't know any more than any of us do about what happens after a poof.”

“So that's what this is about?” Dekka asked. “Your religion?”

“Everyone's religion is against suicide,” Astrid snapped.

“I'm against it, too,” Dekka said defensively. “I just don't want to be getting dragged into the middle of some kind of religious thing.”

“Whatever Orsay represents, it's not a religion,” Astrid said icily.

Sam heard Orsay's voice in his head.
Let them go, Sam. Let them go and get out of the way.

His mother's words, if Orsay was telling the truth.

“Let's give it a week,” Sam said.

Dekka took a deep breath and blew it out all at once. “Okay. I'll go with Sam on this. We lie. For a week.”

The meeting broke up. Sam was the first out of the room, suddenly desperate for fresh air. Edilio caught up to him as he was running down the steps of town hall.

“Hey. Hey! We never told them about what you and me saw last night.”

Sam stopped, looked toward the plaza, toward the hole they had refilled.

“Yeah? What did we see last night, Edilio? Me, I just saw a hole in the ground.”

Sam didn't give Edilio the chance to argue. He didn't want to hear what Edilio would say. He walked quickly away.

CAINE HATED DEALING
with Bug. The kid creeped him out. For one thing, Bug had become less and less visible. It used to be that Bug would do his disappearing act only when necessary. Then he started doing it whenever he wanted to spy on someone, which was pretty frequently.

Now he would become visible only when Caine ordered him to.

Caine was betting everything on Bug's story. A story of a magical island. It was insane, of course. But when reality was hopeless, fantasy became more and more necessary.

“How much farther to this farmhouse of yours, Bug?” Caine asked.

“Not far. Stop worrying.”

“You stop worrying,” Caine muttered. Bug was walking invisible through open fields. Nothing but depressions in the dirt where he stepped. Caine was all-too-visible. Broad daylight. Across a dusty, plowed field under a bright, hot sun.
Bug said no one was in these fields. Bug said these fields had nothing growing and that none of Sam's people knew about the farmhouse, which was practically unnoticeable, off a dirt road and looked abandoned.

Caine's first question had been, “Then how do you know about them?”

“I know lots of stuff,” Bug answered. “Besides, a long time ago you said to keep an eye on Zil.”

“So how does Zil know about this farmhouse?”

The voice above the impressions of invisible feet said, “I think one of Zil's guys used to know these kids. Back in the day.”

Caine's next question: “Do they have food there?”

“Yeah. Some. But they also have shotguns. And the girl, the sister Emily? She's some kind of freak, I think. I don't know what she does, I ain't seen her do anything freaky, but her brother is scared of her. So is Zil, kind of, only he doesn't show it.”

“Great,” Caine muttered. He noted that Zil was a kid who wouldn't let himself show fear. Maybe useful.

Caine shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned around, looking for telltale dust plumes from a truck or car. Bug said the Perdido Beach people were low on gas, too, but still drove when they needed to.

He was confident that he could take on and defeat any one freak from Sam's group. With the sole exception of Sam himself. But if it was Brianna and Dekka together? Or even that little preppy nitwit Taylor and a few of Edilio's soldiers?

But right now the real problem was simply that Caine was weak. Walking this distance—miles—was hard. Very hard when his stomach was stabbing him again, and his navel was scraping his spine. His legs were wobbly. His eyes sometimes became unfocused.

One good meal…well, not really a good meal…was not enough. But it was keeping him alive. Digesting Panda. Panda energy flowing from his stomach through his blood.

The farmhouse was hidden by a stand of trees, but otherwise right out in the open. A long way from the road, yes, but Caine couldn't believe Sam's people had never found it and searched it for food.

Very strange.

“No closer,” a young male voice called from the front porch of the house.

Bug and Caine froze.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

Caine couldn't see anyone through the dirty screen.

Bug answered, “We're just—”

“Not you,” the voice interrupted. “We know all about you, little invisible boy. We're talking about him.”

“My name is Caine. I want to meet the kids who hang out here.”

“Oh? You do, huh?” the unseen boy said. “Why should I let you do that?”

“I'm not looking for trouble,” Caine said. “But I guess it's only fair to tell you that I can knock your little house down in about ten seconds.”

Click click.

Something cold touched the back of Caine's neck.

“Can you? That must be something to see.” A girl's voice. Not two steps behind him.

Caine had no doubt that the cold object laid against the nape of his neck was a gun barrel. How had the girl gotten so close? How had she snuck up on them?

“Like I said, I'm not looking for trouble,” Caine said.

“That's good,” the girl said. “You wouldn't like the kind of trouble I can bring.”

“We just want to…” Caine couldn't actually think of precisely what it was he just wanted to do.

“Well, come on inside,” the girl said.

There was no movement. No walking, no climbing the steps. The farmhouse seemed to warp for a second, and then it was suddenly around them. Caine was standing in a gloomy living room. There were plastic slipcovers on the sagging couch and on a corduroy La-Z-Boy.

Emily was maybe twelve. Dressed in jean shorts and a pink Las Vegas sweatshirt. As Caine had expected, she was holding a huge, double-barreled shotgun.

The boy came in from outside. He seemed completely unsurprised to see that Caine and Bug were standing in his living room. As though this kind of thing happened all the time.

Caine wondered if he was hallucinating.

“Have a seat,” Emily said, indicating the couch. Caine sat gratefully. He was exhausted.

“That's a pretty good trick,” Caine said.

“It's useful,” Emily said. “Makes it hard for people to find us if we don't want to be found.”

“You have any electricity?” the brother asked Caine.

“What?” Caine peered at him. “In my pocket? How would I have electricity?”

The boy pointed mournfully at the TV. A Wii and an Xbox were attached. All indicator lights off, of course. Game cartridges were stacked high.

“That's a lot of games.”

“The other ones bring them to us,” Emily said. “Brother likes the games.”

“But we can't play them,” the boy said.

Caine looked at him closely. He did not strike Caine as any sort of genius. Emily, on the other hand, seemed shrewd and focused. She was the one in charge.

“What's your name?” Caine asked the boy.

“Brother. His name is Brother,” Emily supplied.

“Brother,” Caine said. “Okay. Well, Brother, those games aren't much fun if you don't have electricity. Are they?”

“Those others told me they'd get some of that.”

“Yeah? Well, only one person can bring electricity back,” Caine said.

“You?”

“Nope. A kid named Computer Jack.”

“We met him,” Brother interjected. “He fixed my Wii, long time back. Games still worked back then.”

“Jack works for me,” Caine said. He sat back and let that
sink in. It was a lie, of course. But he doubted Emily would know that. She wouldn't know that Jack was in Perdido Beach. And that according to Bug he was sitting in a squalid room reading comic books and refusing to do anything.

“You can get the lights on?” Emily asked with a glance at her anxious brother.

“I can,” Caine lied smoothly. “It would take about a week.”

Emily laughed. “Kid, you look like you can't even feed yourself. Look at you. You look like a scarecrow. Dirty, hair falling out. And lying like a rug. What
can
you do?”

“This,” Caine said. He raised one hand and the shotgun flew out of Emily's hand. It hit the wall so hard, the barrel stuck in the plaster like a crossbow bolt. The wood stock quivered.

Brother leaped up, but it was like he hit a brick wall. Caine threw him casually through the window. Glass shattered. There was a loud crash as the boy landed on the screened porch.

Emily was up in a heartbeat and suddenly the house disappeared around Caine. He found himself with Bug, standing in the yard.

“That's definitely a neat trick,” Caine yelled. “Here's an even better one.”

With hands outstretched he yanked Brother straight through the porch screen. The mesh wrapped around the boy's body like a shroud. And he began to rise into the air, struggling feebly, calling out to his sister to save him.

Emily was instantly a foot from Caine, face-to-face.

“Try something,” Caine snarled. “It'll be a long drop for your idiot brother.”

Emily looked up, and Caine saw the fight go out of her. Brother was still rising, higher and higher. The fall would maybe kill him. It would at the very least cripple him.

“See, I haven't been spending my days and nights here on the farm,” Caine said. “I've been in a few fights. Experience. It's kind of useful.”

“What is it you want?” Emily asked.

“When the others get here, you let them walk on in. I have to have a little conversation with them. Your shotgun has had it. And your little tricks won't save you or him.”

“I guess you really want to talk to those boys.”

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

 

Lana heard the knock at the door and sighed. She'd been reading a book. Meg Cabot. A book from a million lifetimes ago. A girl who became a real-life princess.

Lana read a lot now. There were still plenty of books in the FAYZ. Almost no music, no TV or movies. Plenty of books. She read everything from fun chick lit to heavy, boring books.

The point was to keep reading. In Lana's world there was awake time. And there was nightmare time. And the only thing keeping her sane was reading. Not that she was at all sure she was sane.

Not sure of that at all.

Patrick heard the knock, too, and barked loudly.

Lana assumed it was someone needing healing. That was the only reason anyone came to see her. But from long habit and deeply ingrained fear, she lifted the heavy handgun from the desk and carried it to the door with her.

She knew how to use the weapon. She was very accustomed to the feel of the grip in her hand.

“Who is it?”

“Sam.”

She leaned in to look through the peephole. Maybe Sam's face, maybe not: there were no windows in the hallway outside, and so, no light. She threw the dead bolt and opened the door.

“Don't shoot me,” Sam said. “You'd only have to heal me.”

“Come on in,” Lana said. “Pull up a chair. Grab a soda from the fridge and I'll get the chips.”

“Well, you still have a sense of humor,” Sam said.

He chose the easy chair in the corner. Lana took the chair she had turned around to face the balcony. She had one of the better rooms in the hotel. In the old days it must have cost hundreds of dollars a day with this great view looking out over the ocean.

“So, what's the emergency?” Lana asked. “You wouldn't be here if there wasn't some kind of problem.”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe I'm just here to say hi.”

It had been a while since she had seen him. She remembered
the awful damage that had been done to him by Drake. She remembered all too well placing her hands on his flayed skin.

She had healed his body. Not his mind. He was no more completely healed than she was. She could see it in his eyes. It should have created some sympathy between them, but Lana hated seeing that shadow over him. If Sam couldn't get past it, how could she?

“No one ever comes just to say hi,” Lana said. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bathrobe pocket and lit one expertly. She inhaled deeply.

She noticed his disapproving look. “Like any of us are going to live long enough to get cancer,” she said.

Sam said nothing, but the disapproval was gone.

Lana looked at him through a cloud of smoke. “You look tired, Sam. Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Well, you really can't get enough boiled mystery fish and grilled raccoon,” Sam said.

Lana laughed. Then she sobered. “I had some venison last week. Hunter brought it to me. He wondered if I could cure him.”

“Did you?”

“I tried. I don't think I helped much. Brain damage. I guess it's more complicated than a broken arm or a bullet hole.”

“Are you doing okay?” Sam asked.

Lana fidgeted and began stroking Patrick's neck. “Honestly? And you don't talk to Astrid about it so she comes rushing over here trying to help?”

“Between you and me.”

“Okay. Then, no, I guess I'm not doing okay. Nightmares. Memories. It's hard to tell which is which, really.”

“Maybe you should try going out more,” Sam said.

“But none of that is happening to you, right? Nightmares and all?”

He didn't answer, just dropped his head and looked down at the floor.

“Yeah,” she said.

Lana stood up abruptly and went to the balcony door. She stood there, arms crossed over her chest, cigarette burning forgotten in her hand. “I can't seem to stand being around people. I get madder and madder. It's not like they're doing anything to me, but the more they talk or look at me or just stand there, the angrier I get.”

“Been there,” he said. “Still am there, I guess.”

“See, you're different, Sam.”

“I don't make you angry?”

She laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Yeah, actually you do. I'm standing here right now and a part of me wants to grab anything I can put my hands on and smash it against your head.”

Sam got up and went to her. He stood just behind her. “You can punch me, if it helps.”

“Quinn used to come see me,” Lana said, as though she hadn't heard him. “Then he dropped a glass and I…I almost killed him. Did he tell you? I grabbed the gun and I had it pointed right at his face, Sam. And I really, really wanted to pull the trigger.”

“You didn't, though.”

“I shot Edilio,” Lana said, still looking down toward the water.

“That wasn't you,” he said.

Lana said nothing, and Sam let the silence stretch. Finally, she said, “I thought maybe Quinn and I…But I guess that was enough for him to decide to move on.”

“Quinn is working a lot,” Sam said, sounding lame. “He's out there at, like, four in the morning, every day.”

She slid open the balcony door and flicked the cigarette butt over the rail. “Why did you come, Sam?”

“I have to ask you something, Lana. Something's going on with Orsay.”

“Yeah.” She pointed toward the beach below. “I've seen her down there. It's been a couple times. Her and some kids. I can't hear what they're saying. But they look at her like she's their salvation.”