Drake’s flesh was growing.
She could feel it moving beneath her fingers. But it wasn’t human flesh.
Not human flesh at all.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Drake breathed. “Yes.”
THIRTY-NINE
36 HOURS, 37 MINUTES
“And sometimes when you lie to me
Sometimes I’ll lie to you
And there isn’t a thing you could possibly do
All these half-destroyed lives
Aren’t as bad as they seem
But now I see blood and I hear people scream
Then I wake up
And it’s just another bad dream…”
SAM SANG ALONG to the Agent Orange tune on his iPod, feeling as if the familiar lyrics had crossed the line from being just another self-consciously disturbing song to being too close to describing his life.
He was in the fire station not exactly enjoying a lonely lunch. Quinn was…well, he never seemed to know where Quinn was anymore. His friend—was that word even appropriate? His friend Quinn was a shadow who came and went, sometimes joking like his old self, sometimes sitting sullen and watching DVDs he’d seen a million times before.
In any case, he wasn’t there for lunch at the fire station, despite the fact that Sam had made enough soup for extra mouths.
Edilio materialized silently in the doorway. He looked discouraged. Sam realized he’d been singing aloud and, embarrassed, dialed down the music and pulled out the earbuds.
“What did you find, Edilio?”
“If she’s anywhere in Perdido Beach, she’s doing a good job of hiding, Sam,” Edilio said. “We’ve looked. We’ve talked to everyone. Lana’s gone. Her dog is gone. She was in Elwood’s house, then she was gone.”
Sam tossed his music player onto the table. “I have soup. Want some?”
Edilio sagged into a chair. “What’s the song?”
“What? Oh. It’s called ‘A Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad.’”
They shared a mordant laugh.
“Next I’ll dial up that old song, what’s it called?” Sam searched his memory. “Yeah. REM. ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It.’”
“It is that,” Edilio commented. “I been searching for a girl who can heal people with magic, and taking some time to learn how to shoot a machine gun.”
“How’d that go, by the way?”
“I got four boys can more or less handle it, counting Quinn. But, man, we aren’t exactly the marines, you know? Kid named Tom starts shooting and he almost shoots me. I had to dive into a pile of dog poop.”
Sam tried not to laugh, but neither of them could stop once it started.