Fear (Gone 5)

Then, when she was sure Sam had at least a couple of minutes to think clearly, Astrid told him what they had found

in the desert. “Edilio’s bringing it in so we can take a look at it. I came straight back. When they get it here I’ll see what I can learn.”

Sam seemed barely to pay attention. His eyes were drawn toward the barrier. He wasn’t alone. The stain was clearly visible to kids as they worked. The kids out in the fields probably wouldn’t notice, but the ones still here in the town around the marina couldn’t avoid seeing it.

They came in ones or twos or threes to ask Sam what it meant. And he would say, “Get back to work. If you need to worry, I’ll let you know.”

Each time he said it—and it must have been two dozen times—he used the same gruff but ultimately reassuring voice.

But Astrid knew better. She could feel the tension bleeding from his every pore. She saw the way the corners of his mouth tugged downward, the way his forehead formed twin vertical worry lines between his eyes.

He didn’t need some new thing to worry about. So the awful freak monster thing she and Edilio had found, that would have to wait. Because all Sam had time for right now was the mesmerizing advance of the stain. His imagination was torturing him. She could see it in the way his hands would form into fists, tighten and then release, but the release was forced, conscious, and accompanied each time by a deliberate exhalation.

He was seeing a world of total darkness.

So was Astrid. And though it made no sense she worried about her tents. The ropes needed tightening periodically or they would start to sag. And the fabric of the tent itself needed checking, because small tears got bigger fast, and beetles and ants were very good at finding such openings.

She recalled once waking up in the tent to find a steady stream of ants crossing right over her face and picking at a morsel of food she’d let fall. She had jumped up and run for the water, but not before the ants panicked at her panic and bit her a dozen times.

She could smile at the memory now. At the time it had made her cry at the weirdness and sadness of her stupid life.

But she had learned from that. And there had never again been so much as a crumb of anything edible in her tent.

And what about the time she found a snake in her boot? Lesson learned there, too.

If no one picked her blackberries, the birds would get them.

She went on this way for a while, fully aware of the fact that she was nostalgic over things that had usually been pretty miserable, realizing that she was as trapped as Sam in waiting, waiting, waiting for doom.

The image of the coyote with the human face and legs came suddenly to mind. It knocked the breath out of her.

BANG. BANG. She could hear the sound of the gun better in memory than she had at the time. At the time she’d been numb. Now she recalled, too, the way the gun bucked. The way the abomination bled out in the sand.

The way the little girl’s face relaxed in death and the blind eyes filmed over.

What terrible thing was happening? Why couldn’t she figure it out? Why couldn’t she help Sam to pull off one more impossible victory?

One of the great reliefs about living on her own had been the fact that she had no expectations to meet. She didn’t have to be Astrid the Genius, or Astrid the Mayor, or Astrid Sam’s girlfriend, or Why-won’t-she-shut-up Astrid.

All she’d had to do was get enough food to eat each day. A huge accomplishment that was all hers.

Sam had binoculars to his eyes. He checked the barrier. Then swung them inland.

“Mo’s on his way,” he said. He shifted slightly. “So is Howard, out in front of him by a quarter mile. He’s just… Okay, now I can’t see him.” He lowered the binoculars. “Figures. Howard’s heading to his still to bring back one more shipment of booze.”

Astrid made a wry smile. “Life goes on, I guess.”

Sam frowned. “You were telling me something. Earlier.”

“Get back to work. If I need you to worry, I’ll let you know.”

“Very funny.” He almost smiled.

He looked suddenly very young. Well, he was, Astrid supposed. So was she. But they’d forgotten about all that in this world where they were the elders. He looked like a kid, a teenager, a boy who ought to be yelling happily as he ran into the surf with his board.

That image made her hurt. A tear welled. She pretended to have a speck of dust in her eye and wiped it away.

He wasn’t fooled. He put his arms around her and drew her close. She couldn’t look at him for fear of crying. She couldn’t see the fear in him and not want to just hold him like he was a little boy.