Gone (Gone 1)

“Okay, then. That’s what we’ll do, Orc. We’ll get some more beer.”

Stars filled the sky.

The moon glinted off the steeple.

A coyote howled, a wild ululation, a ghostly cry of despair.

In his mind Sam saw the mutants in the church. He saw Edilio concealed with a handful of trusted kids in the smoked-out ruins of the apartment building. He saw Quinn on the roof with the machine gun he might use or not. He saw the kids milling and lost and scared at the south end of the plaza. And Mary and the little kids still in the day care. And Dahra in the church basement awaiting casualties.

Drake had retreated. For now.

What would Orc do?

Where was Caine?

And what would happen in one hour when the clock

ticked and marked exactly fifteen years since Sam had been born, linked though he hadn’t known it to a brother named Caine?

Could he beat Caine?

He had to beat Caine.

And somehow he had to destroy Drake as well. If—when—Sam stepped outside, took the big jump, poofed, he didn’t want to leave Astrid to Drake’s mercy.

He knew he should be scared of the end. Scared of the mysterious process that would, it seemed, simply subtract Sam Temple from the FAYZ. But he wasn’t as worried for himself as he was for Astrid.

Less than two weeks ago she had been an abstraction, an ideal, a girl he could check out furtively, but without ever revealing his own interest. And now she was almost all he thought about as his own personal clock ticked down toward a sudden and possibly fatal disappearance.

How would Caine play it, that’s what the rest of his mind turned over and over. Would Caine walk into town like a gunslinger in some ancient cowboy movie?

Would they stand at thirty paces and draw?

Which would be more powerful? The twin with the power of light, or the twin with the power to move matter?

It was dark.

Sam hated the dark. He had always known that when the end came for him it would be in the dark.

Dark and alone.

Where was Caine?

Was Bug watching him even now?

Would Edilio do what Quinn could not?

What surprise would Caine have up his sleeve?

Taylor appeared standing a few feet away. She looked like she’d just come from an interview with a demon. Her face was white, her eyes wide, glittering in the light of streetlamps. “They’re coming,” she said.

Sam nodded, braced his shoulders, consciously slowed the sudden sprint of his heart. “Good,” he said.

“No, not him,” Taylor said. “The coyotes.”

“What? Where?”

Taylor pointed over his shoulder.