Fear (Gone 5)

She couldn’t breathe, but she realized, too, that she wasn’t dying. Her heart still beat. She was covered and filled with the white stuff, and she should be dying but she wasn’t.

Then she felt the white stuff harden. It wasn’t putty anymore but fast-drying clay. Already her teeth bit on something as hard as porcelain.

Then the bugs were inside of her.

The bugs.

Not real—she knew that in some tiny, cowering corner of her mind—couldn’t be real; the bugs had been eliminated. They’d been made nonexistent. So there was no way they could be inside her again, no way they could be swarming through her guts and no Sam to cut them out and let them out; she was trapped inside this porcelain tomb and they were inside her again.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.

Suddenly, all of it was gone.

She was on dirt. Air was in her nose. Her eyes opened.

A girl had stood there and said, “That’s a new one for me. Did you like it?”

And Dekka, trembling like a leaf ready to fall, said nothing. Just breathed. Breathed.

“Don’t come after me,” Penny had said.

And Dekka had not.

THIRTY

10 HOURS, 4 MINUTES

“RING THE BELL,??? Sam said.

Edilio nodded at Roger, who ran off to ring the bell atop the marina office.

“What are you going to do?” Edilio asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were gay?” Sam demanded.

Edilio looked like he’d been punched. But he recovered quickly, to go to an expression that was half-wary, half-embarrassed. “You got enough stuff to deal with.”

“That’s not something I have to ‘deal with,’ Edilio. My girlfriend lost, the world ending, having to go out there after Drake, that’s stuff I have to deal with. Me finding out you’ve got someone to care about like that? How is that something I have to deal with?”

“I don’t know, I just… I mean, it took me a while to kind of figure it out. You know.”

“Does everyone except me know?” Sam asked. He realized this was a stupid concern; this was hardly the time to worry about seeming out of touch. But no one had been closer to him than Edilio, almost from the first day. It bothered him to think everyone knew something he didn’t. It hurt his feelings.

“No, man,” Edilio reassured him. “No. And it’s not about me being, you know, ashamed or whatever. It’s that … look, I have a lot of responsibility. I have to have people trust me. And some kids are still going to call me a faggot or whatever.”

“Seriously? We’re about to be plunged into eternal darkness and you think those kids out there are going to worry about who you like?”

Edilio didn’t answer. And Sam had the feeling maybe Edilio knew more than he did on the subject. He let it go.

“I gotta tell you the truth, man,” Sam said, shaking his head slowly, side to side, as he spoke. “I don’t see a way out of this. I don’t even see the starting point for a way out of this. I don’t expect us to survive this.”

Edilio nodded. Like he knew this. Like he was ready for it to be said.

“So in case this is it, Edilio, in case I go out there and don’t come back, I want to say thank you. You’ve been a brother to me. My true brother.” Sam carefully avoided looking at Edilio.

“Yeah, well, we’re not done for yet,” Edilio said gruffly. Then, more pointedly, “So you’re going?”

“Everything you said before is right,” Sam said. “We can’t afford me getting killed. Not in the short run. But once I turn on some lights we’re still done for if we don’t find a way to turn this around. We can’t grow crops or fish or survive living in the dark. Next thing that happens is people will start setting fires. Perdido Beach will burn all the way down next time. The forest will burn. Everything. Kids won’t live in the dark.”