Light (Gone 6)

“I don’t know what to make of her,” Sinder said.

“How’s Taylor?” Sanjit asked, coming in from taking Patrick on his evening potty run.

“Well, she’s been put back together,” Sinder answered when Lana refused to do anything but glare at Sanjit. The truth was, she was craving the smokes just a little less than earlier. And yet she still wanted one.

Suddenly the bed was empty. Taylor was gone.

The three of them stared at the spot where she had been.

“Okay,” Sanjit said. “That was unexpected.”

Then, just as suddenly, Taylor reappeared.

She flicked out her reptilian tongue, slowly moved her head from side to side, and then disappeared again.

“She’s got her bounce back,” Lana said.

Taylor did not return in the next five minutes, and they were about to give up and go about their other business when she popped back, this time standing in a corner of the room. In her left hand she had an irregularly shaped, pale-yellow chunk. She threw this on the bed.

Sinder picked it up gingerly. It was the size of half a loaf of bread.

“It’s cheese,” Sinder said.

The object in Taylor’s other hand was a half pack of Marlboros.

Lana grinned and accepted it, ignoring Sanjit’s despairing cry.

“Finally,” Lana said. “All this healing stuff finally pays off.”

Taylor bounced away and did not bounce back.

A minute later the door was literally kicked in by Dekka with an unconscious Brianna in her arms.

Alex remembered waking up in his bed, in his room in his grandmother’s house in Atascadero. He had turned on the Cartoon Network and started the day with a Coors Light and a couple hits off a very stale bong. He had called in sick to his job at Best Buy and texted Charlie Rand to see when he’d be coming by.

Then he’d updated his iPhone to make sure he had plenty of free memory for the taping, and grabbed rope, the ladder, his pitons, and a granola bar.

He’d told his grandmother he was heading out to do some rock climbing, which was close to the truth. She’d asked him to take her to Costco on Saturday. He had groaned inwardly but agreed.

Life had been not spectacular, maybe, but okay. Normal, anyway. Then, with a suddenness that he never would have believed possible, everything had changed. Now he was broken in body, and even more broken in mind. Last week he had been a lapsed Methodist; now he worshipped a cannibalistic girl monster. He was self-aware enough to know that this was madness. There was no way to put a good spin on that fact.

Alex wandered the shores of the lake. It was an eerie place as the sun rose. It smelled terrible, and yet his mouth watered from the same scent that had come from his burned arm.

“Food of the gods,” he said, and almost laughed and instead sobbed.

Not what he’d expected when he’d headed out to climb the barrier wall and get some cool video.

“But hey, life, man.”

This was a whole new experience. Pain surged from his shoulder. It did that. It came and went. Mostly it was just there, but every now and then it would rise up like a demon and he would feel a terrible rage at his mutilation.

He looked at it, at the stump. It was horrifying and awesome all at once. She had eaten his tattoo, the one that he’d gotten in San Diego, the one that showed a guy hanging from a rock face.

With it she had eaten his soul, he was pretty sure of that. He could feel that his soul was no longer with him. It made him cry. Also, who would take Gran to Costco? And she had an appointment at . . . Well, wherever, it didn’t matter now. He was a broken toy, and he’d been so easy to break: that’s what would be sad for him. If he’d still had a soul.

“Gaia!” he cried. “Gaia!”

No answer. He himself was hungry now. His body had suffered and he was desperate. But at least he could drink. The lake was freshwater. He waded in a couple of feet and bent to cup water to his mouth. It tasted of ashes and oil.