Plague (Gone 4)

“Jack. Grab that boathook. And be ready.”

“What?”

“You ever see that movie where Heath Ledger was a knight?”

“Not his best movie,” Dekka said.

“True,” Toto agreed.

“Hold on,” Sam warned. He put the engine into gear, pushed the throttle all the way, and flew toward Drake.

Lana did not run, she was too tired for it, and anyway Howard was probably wrong. Turk and Lance surely did believe they’d killed Albert. As he’d laid there, shrieking in pain beneath Lana’s healing touch, Lance kept babbling something about forgiveness, praying to be saved, saying he was sorry for Albert. “It was Turk, it wasn’t me!” he’d said, his destroyed cheek flapping bloodily with each word as the drenching rain swept the blood down to the carpet beneath his head.

Lana had mostly healed Turk and Lance. They wouldn’t die, at least. She hadn’t much seen the point: they were scum and someone would only have to kill them all over again, sooner or later. But she supposed it wasn’t her decision to make. She was just a player in the madness.

She had missed her chance to be a hero by destroying the gaiaphage. And she had failed to stop the virus that now claimed nine bodies. Instead she’d saved a couple of creeps. Yay for her.

She and Howard found Albert just as he’d said: sitting with his back against the wall.

Lana noticed an awful lot of blood. A small, sticky sea of it around Albert.

“He didn’t die right away,” Lana observed. “Dead people don’t bleed as much. And see how the wall is smeared? He sat up.” She knelt and placed her fingers on his neck. “Then he just sat here and bled to death.”

No question in her mind. He had a bullet hole in his face. And a much larger exit wound out the far side. It looked as if some wild animal had taken a messy bite out of his skull.

“I don’t raise the dead,” Lana said.

“No, wait,” Howard insisted. He knelt beside her and lifted one eyelid. It was dark, there wasn’t much light for an iris to react to. So Howard fished out a lighter and flicked the flame.

Lana’s eyebrows went up. “Do it again.”

Howard lifted the other lid. That iris, too, responded.

“Huh,” Lana said.

She pressed both hands against Albert’s head. After a few minutes holding that pose she bent his head forward to see the awful exit wound. Around the jagged, ripped edges, flesh was growing.

“The brother’s not dead,” Howard said.

“About as close as you can get,” Lana said. “But no: he’s not dead. And this kind of thing, at least, I can heal.”

“Boy’s going to owe me,” Howard said.

“You’re a trip, Howard, as my dad would say,” Lana said. “You are definitely a trip.”

“You’ll tell Albert I brought you, right? You’ll tell him it was me, right?”

“Why? Are you leaving?”

Howard stood up. “Gotta go find Orc. I just figured out where he’d go.”

Lana got herself into a more comfortable position. Patrick went off to scavenge around in the house.

“You find anything, you better share,” Lana called after her dog.

The two boats raced toward each other.

Six seconds to impact.