The barrier was gone!
Drake cried out in a sort of ecstatic fear. He ran straight at the barrier, his whip swishing at his side.
Caine, groggy, injured, stood up.
But something was wrong about it. Caine was leaning on something, propping himself up, then pulling his hand sharply away.
From the barrier.
Drake hit the wall. He ran with his whip hand lashing straight into something unyielding but invisible.
The adults, the women, the soldiers, all stared, mouths open.
They were seeing!
Seeing Diana screaming.
Seeing Drake lashing viciously in every direction with his whip.
Seeing the brutally pulverized head and face of a young girl named Penny driven half into the pavement.
Seeing a little girl, a toddler, untouched, unharmed by Sam’s now-extinguished light.
Faces everywhere. They pressed closer; they tried to walk, but Sam could see them touching, then jumping back from the barrier.
The barrier was still there. But now it was transparent.
Sam’s heart seemed to stop. One face suddenly came into focus.
His mother.
His mother mouthing some unhearable words and looking at him as Sam aimed his palms toward the defenseless little girl.
He couldn’t stop. He had stopped once before. No: he couldn’t stop.
Sam’s light burned.
His mother’s face, all the faces, all of them screaming soundlessly. No! Noooo!
The little girl’s hair caught fire. It flamed magnificently, for she had her mother’s lush dark hair.
Sam fired again and the little girl’s flesh burned at last.
But all the while the girl, the gaiaphage, its face turned away from onlookers, stared at Sam in undiminished fury. The blue eyes never looked away. Her angelic mouth leered in a knowing grin even as it burned.
Until at last, the gaiaphage was a pillar of flame, all features obscured.
Sam stopped firing.
The baby, the child, the monster, the devil, turned and ran back down the highway.
Diana, her face a twisted mask, ran after her.
Drake, eyes hollow and vacant, horrified, turned and ran, lashing impotently at nothing.
Sam and Caine were left standing side by side, bruised and battered, to stare over Penny’s sickening corpse, at the face of their mother.
LATER