Lies (Gone 3)

He rolled over fast, hand raised, palm out, ready for trouble.

Taylor was not too worried. She’d done this many times before. At least half the time Sam woke up ready to fire.

“Chill, big boy,” Taylor said.

Sam sighed and rubbed his hand over his face, trying to banish sleep. Definitely nice chest and shoulders. And arms. A little skinnier than he used to be, and not as tan as he’d been back when he was a serious beach rat.

But, oh yeah, Taylor thought: he’d do.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“Oh, nothing too big,” Taylor said. She examined her nails, having fun with the moment. “I was just out spreading the word. You know, talking to kids who were heading out to see Orsay. It’s all way nocturnal, you know?”

“And?”

“Oh, a little something came up that I thought might be more important than trashing Orsay for Astrid.”

“You mind just telling me what’s going on?” Sam grated.

So much, Sam, Taylor thought. Sooo much. But there was no point complicating things by recounting some crazy kid’s story about Drake. It could only distract from the excellence of her main piece of news.

“Remember Brittney?”

His head snapped up. “What about her?”

“She’s sitting in Howard and Orc’s living room.”

THIRTEEN

45 HOURS, 16 MINUTES

ORC HAD ENDED up crushing every couch or bed Howard had ever found for him. Not immediately, not as soon as he sat down, but within a few days.

That had never stopped Howard. He just kept on trying. The current arrangement was more bed than couch or chair. Three king-size mattresses piled one atop the other and pushed into a corner so that Orc could sit up if he chose by leaning against the walls. A plastic tarp went over the top of the mattress pile. Orc liked to drink. And sometimes when Orc had enough to drink, he might wet the bed. Sometimes he vomited all over it. And then Howard would gather the corners of the tarp and drag it into the backyard to join the pile of similar fouled sheets, broken furniture, puke-reeking mattress pads, and so on that covered most of the yard.

No one had any real idea how much Orc weighed, but he was not light, that was for sure. But not fat, either.

Orc had suffered one of the strangest and most disturbing of mutations. He’d been attacked and very badly hurt by coyotes. Very badly. Large portions of him had been eaten by the ravenous wild beasts.

But he had not died. The torn, mangled, massacred portions of his body had been replaced by a substance that looked like damp gravel. It made a soft slurry sound when he moved.

All that was left of Orc’s own skin was a patch around his mouth and one cheek. It seemed unbearably delicate to Howard. Howard could see it, pink flesh turned putty-colored in the unnatural green light.

Orc was awake but just barely. And only because Howard had lied to him and told him he was out of booze.

Orc watched balefully from his perch in the corner as the girl sat in the chair Howard had dragged in from the kitchen.

“You want some water?” Howard asked her.

“Yes, please,” the girl said.

Howard, hands shaking, filled a glass from the gallon jug. He handed it to her. She took it with both dirt-caked hands and raised it to her puffy lips.

She drank it all.

Normal. Perfectly normal except for the fact that there was absolutely nothing normal about this.

“You want more?” Howard asked her.