He wanted a drink of booze so bad. If he got really rip-roaring crazy drunk, then maybe he could go down there, down into the valley of the shadow. But not sober, no, he couldn’t take that.
His mom might be there, if his dad hadn’t killed her yet.
He tried to picture her and succeeded. Then Orc tried to picture his mother without a bruise on the side of her head or a cast on her wrist and he couldn’t.
And his father . . . he didn’t want to picture his father, but he couldn’t help it, the pictures came: pictures of his father in a cold and evil drunk, sizing up his son, making sure that Charles Merriman, who had long been known as Orc, was hanging his head and looking away. Making sure his son was afraid.
His dad liked that part, the part where Orc was desperately trying to stay out of his way but was forced to sit down and do his homework while his father drank beer after beer and dropped the cans beside his chair, waiting until he had an excuse—almost anything would do.
His father sober was distant and indifferent. His father drunk was a monster.
Like Orc, but not as ugly.
He wondered if his father knew he could come here and glare at his son again through the dome. And what would he say if he saw Orc now? Make that snorting sound of his, that sound that said, You’re worthless.
If that happened . . .
His father was a big man. But Orc was bigger and had strength to match. Orc could snap him like a dry stick.
With one thick, stony finger Orc delicately touched the tiny patch of human skin near his mouth. It tickled.
If the barrier came down, everyone would see him in the bright TV lights. And sooner or later his father would, too. Orc was sure if he ever saw his father again, he would kill the man.
That was the death that shadowed the valley. That was the evil. And God’s staff would have to move pretty quick to stop it happening.
“Don’t let it come down, Lord,” he prayed. “I know all them kids want to see their moms and all. But please, God, don’t let that barrier come down.”
Sam was asleep, finally, facedown, uncovered, naked, and turned slightly away from Astrid.
There was a light. Sam Temple, the hero of most of the kids in the FAYZ, had always been a little afraid of the dark. So he had created a night-light for this dark space.
It was not a normal light: a tiny ball, no bigger than a marble. It floated in a corner above the bunk. Astrid had taped a sheet of red paper in front of it so that its green, unnatural glow would be softened. The tape had come loose, so the imperfect lampshade blocked the light only intermittently as the paper twirled in the slightest breeze, drifted as the boat gently rocked.
When the light brightened, Sam would appear as bits and pieces—a broad back, a flicker of round, pale bottom, a length of muscular thigh in harsh shadow. When the light softened, he would be almost invisible just sounds of breathing, and a scent, and a warmth.
She should cover him. Really, she should. He’d get cold after a while and wake up and realize she wasn’t sleeping and that would worry him.
But not jus
t yet, she thought.
She was trying to read by the uncertain light. The book was on law, and Astrid had become convinced by the book that she would never be a lawyer, or even try. She could read most anything, but this was a very dull book, and it did very little to distract her from the view.
My God: she was happy.
The very idea that she should be happy was absurd. It was almost a crime. Things were desperate, but then they had been for a long time. Desperate had long since become the new normal.
If the barrier really did come down . . . if this really was the endgame . . . They were fifteen. Out there, out in the world, they had no legal right to be together.
They’d been through hell. They’d been through a whole series of hells, and they were still together. But none of that would mean anything in the eyes of the law. Her parents, or his mother, could snap their fingers and break what Sam and Astrid had built.
It was not the first time Astrid had had the thought that maybe liberation from the FAYZ would be no such thing.
TWO
78 HOURS, 26 MINUTES
THE BREEZE WAS famous.