Fear (Gone 5)

“No,” he whispered. “You have to open your eyes, Astrid. I don’t know how many more times I’ll see them.”

Her cheek was wet when she pressed it to his.

“I want to make love to you again,” he said.

“I want to make love to you, Sam,” she answered. “We’re scared.”

He nodded and she saw his jaw clench. “Inappropriate, I guess.”

“Human,” she said. “Most of human history people huddled, scared in the dark. Living in little huts with their animals. Believing the woods around them were haunted by spirits. Wolves and werewolves. Terrors. People would hold on to each other. So that they wouldn’t be so afraid.”

“I have to ask you to do something dangerous soon,” Sam said.

“You want me to go out and check the measurements again.”

“I know we were thinking tomorrow morning....”

She nodded. “I think it’s growing faster than that. I think you’re right. I think we need to know whether we’ll have a sunrise tomorrow.”

His face was bleak. He wasn’t looking at her, but past her. He looked like he wanted to cry but knew it was futile.

Once again she saw him as he must have been once upon a time, long, long ago. A big, good-looking boy out in the waves, trading jokes with Quinn, giddy that they were skipping school. Happy and carefree.

She imagined him drawing strength from the sun beating down on his brown shoulders.

The FAYZ had finally found the way to beat Sam Temple. Without light he would not survive. When the final night came with no prospect of dawn, he would be done.

She kissed him. He did not kiss her back, just gazed at the growing stain.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, Sinder had been very fond of black. She had painted her fingernails black. Dyed her brown hair jet-black. Donned clothing that was either black or some secondary color chosen to accentuate the black.

Now her color was green. She loved green. Carrots were orange and tomatoes were red, but each lived within green. The green turned light into food.

“How cool is photosynthesis?” Sinder called to Jezzie, who was a half dozen rows away, down on her knees, searching with deadly focus for weeds, bugs, or disease that might endanger her beloved plants. An overprotective mother had nothing on Jezzie. The girl hated weeds with a burning passion.

Jezzie didn’t answer—she frequently didn’t when Sinder turned loquacious. “I mean, I remember learning about it in school, but, man, who cared? Right? Photo-wuh? But I mean, it turns light into food. Light becomes energy becomes food and becomes energy again when we eat it. It’s like… You know…”

“It’s a miracle,” Orc rumbled.

“No,” Jezzie said, “it would be a miracle if it didn’t also work for weeds. Then it would be a miracle.” She’d found a root of something she didn’t like and was pulling on it, grunting with the effort.

“I could pull that for you,” Orc said.

“No, no, no!” both girls cried. “But thanks, Orc.”

Orc did not wear shoes, but if he had they’d probably have been size twenty. Extra, extra, extra wide. When he stepped into the garden things had a tendency to be crushed.

Sinder liked to get down low and look at her plants from close up. From one side she would see the miraculous leaves outlined against the backdrop of the lake and the marina area. From the other side she would see them almost like mounted specimens against the pearly gray blankness of the barrier.

Now she was looking at the feathery structure of a carrot top against the blank black of the stain. It had the odd effect of making the leaf seem like a work of abstract art.

She looked up from the plant and saw the stain suddenly shoot upward. What had been a ragged, undulating wave of black extending only a dozen or so feet above her head blossomed like one of her charges to become a terrible black bloom thirty, fifty, a hundred feet high before it slowed and stopped.

She hoped Jezzie hadn’t seen it. But when her friend stood up there were tears running down her cheeks.

“I feel bad inside,” Jezzie said simply.

Sinder nodded. She glanced at Orc, but he was absorbed in reading. “Me, too, Jez. Like…” She didn’t have the words for what it was like. So she just shook her head.