“The little boy is looking at you,” Cigar said.
Astrid felt a chill.
“Is he talking?”
“No. He likes quiet.”
“Yes. He always did,” Astrid said. “And darkness. He liked the dark. It soothed him.”
Had Petey made all of this happen? Just to get his blessed silence and peace?
“Petey?” she said.
It felt ridiculous. She was talking to someone she couldn’t see. Someone who probably wasn’t there. Someone who, if he existed at all, was not human, not anything physical or tangible.
The irony made her laugh out loud. She’d just given up talking to one perhaps unreal spiritual entity. Now here she was doing it again.
“He doesn’t like when you laugh,” Cigar said, shushing her.
“Too bad,” Astrid said.
That brought silence. She could hear Cigar breathing, so she knew he was still there. She didn’t know whether he was still looking at Petey. Or something that was supposed to be Petey.
“He was in my head,” Cigar whispered. “I felt him. He went inside me. But he left.”
“Are you saying he took you over?”
“I let him,” Cigar said. “I wanted him to make me be like I used to be. But he couldn’t.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s gone now,” Cigar said sadly.
Astrid sighed. “Yeah. Just like a god, never there when you need one.”
She listened hard. And smelled the air. She had an impression, barely an impression, that she could tell in which direction the ocean lay.
But she also knew that the land between where she was and the ocean was largely fertile fields seething with zekes. Zekes that had probably not been fed in some time.
There were fields between her and the highway, but once she got to the highway she would be able to follow it toward town. Even in the dark she could stay on a concrete highway.
Sam wanted to follow the road from the lake down to the highway, because that was where Astrid would be. Most likely. Despite none of the refugees having seen her on their way from Perdido Beach to the lake.
But finding Astrid was not the right move. Not yet. She would slow him down, even if he found her. And she wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t Dekka or Brianna or even Orc. They could help him win a fight; Astrid could not.
But oh, Lord, how he wanted her now. Not to make love but just to have her there in the darkness beside him. To hear her voice. That above all. The sound of her voice was the sound of sanity, and he was entering the valley of shadow. Walking into pure, absolute darkness.
He walked until he was out of the faint circle of light cast by the numerous Sammy suns of the lake. Then he hung a new light, taking solace from the sphere as it grew in his hands.
But the light reached only a few feet. Turning back as he walked on, he could see it. But it cast only a faint light, a light whose photons seemed to tire easily.
Into the darkness. Step. Step.
Something was squeezing his heart.
His teeth would fragment if he bit down any harder.
“It’s just the same as it was,” he told himself. “Same but darker.”