Light (Gone 6)

Quinn shrugged. “Everyone seems to think the barrier is coming down. Just before I left, we saw some TV footage outside of some guy, some adult guy, falling through. Into the FAYZ. Yeah. Into. Anyway, the gaiaphage obviously thinks we’re getting out; otherwise why move into a body? Right?”

Albert couldn’t argue with that.

“So, yeah: history,” Quinn said. “We’re all being watched now. And judged. Up until a few days ago you were a big hero. Now you’re dirt. The only way you fix that is by coming back and doing what you do.”

TEN

61 HOURS, 36 MINUTES

THAT NIGHT SAM and Caine camped out within a mile of Gaia and Diana.

Quinn slept in a bed with actual sheets while Albert walked the halls of the mansion on San Francisco de Sales Island and wondered if he had made a mistake agreeing to go back.

Astrid lay in the cabin she usually shared with Sam and tried to think about life after, about how they could be, how . . . but ended up thinking of Drake, twenty feet below her in a water-filled box. She tried then to turn her thoughts to memories of Sam, but again Drake intruded. So she gave up on sleep and read a book.

Diana curled on the ground near a pile of stones Gaia had consented to heat and prayed not to dream but did dream, a dream of an overly lit hospital room, and an incubator, and herself approaching that incubator, only to see a bloody beast inside beating violently at the Plexiglas sides. Nurses stared at her.

Edilio crashed on a ratty mattress in the corner of what had once been the town magistrate’s office. He started to try and organize his plans for the next day but fell asleep so suddenly and so completely that when he woke up in the morning he would find he had only removed one shoe.

Lana lay with Sanjit and thought of many things. Of Taylor, and what she might be, and whether Sinder—who had agreed to stop by tomorrow—would be able to make any difference. And she thought for a while of Quinn, and wondered if he would care enough to try and force her to stop smoking. This made her feel disloyal, so she veered her thoughts away and tried to imagine what she could ever do, how she could ever survive out there.

Dekka dreamed of Brianna.

Brianna dreamed of running, and she smiled in her sleep.

Little Pete didn’t notice the passage of time in the usual way. He drifted and for a while seemed almost to stop thinking, to stop being. But then he was again, focused, aware, and still repeating to himself that it was not okay to hit.

Where the highway passed through the barrier, eighty-seven hungry, traumatized, heavily armed kids wrapped in filthy sleeping bags or blankets lay bathed in the eerie light of the out there and saw that the price of a Carl’s Jr. Memphis BBQ burger was just $3.49.

ELEVEN

52 HOURS, 10 MINUTES

BY MID-MORNING ORC was on the move. He had decided once and for all he would go into hiding. There was forest off to the west somewhere. Dark trees and good places to hide. Astrid had told him about being there, about wild berries but with thorns all around them—oh, he was hungry. And how she had laid traps for squirrels and things. But mostly about berries. Thorns didn’t bother Orc.

That was where she had lost God, out in the forest for four months alone. She said that, anyway, so Orc was worried a little. Since finding God he had become a better person. He didn’t drink anymore. And he didn’t hurt anyone. And he wasn’t angry inside like he’d been all his life.

Well, angry a little, still. He missed Howard. He could see now that Howard had used him. And Howard was a sinner, too, that was for sure. But Howard had still been his friend. Not his good friend, maybe, but his close friend.

Howard had been killed by Drake. And eaten up by coyotes.

Once, he’d read a story in the Bible about a woman who was eaten by wild dogs. There was some bad stuff in that book.

But Orc was not afraid of coyotes.

He planted huge, bare, stony feet on rock and dirt and thorny brush and none of it mattered. He just wanted to find a place, like Astrid had found, where he could be alone. In the wilderness.

Once, Jesus had gone into the wilderness. He had talked to the devil there and outsmarted the devil by making the devil get behind him.

It’s a metaphor, you idiot, Howard had said once when Orc had read it to him. Or a whatever. A simile. Something like that, I forget. What it means is if someone is trying to get you to do something bad you say, “Get away. Get thee behind me, dude.”

Orc had grinned. Well, he had tried to grin, which usually scared people. And he’d said, I guess I better tell you to get behind, huh, Howard?

Howard had had a nice way, sometimes, of kind of cocking his head and looking up at Orc and smiling with just half his mouth. I’m always behind you, big guy, he had said.

It made Orc almost cry, remembering.

Anyway, his own Satan, who was also his only friend, was gone, and now Orc was alone.