Fear (Gone 5)

It was wearying work, but Quinn was used to it, and he handled the oar and rudder on automatic. He gazed off to see the other boats take up their own positions.

Then, hearing a splash, he turned toward the barrier to see a flying fish—not great eating, but not inedible—take a short hop.

But that wasn’t what made him narrow his eyes and squint in the faint morning light.

Elise and Annie were getting ready to cast again.

“Hold up,” Quinn said.

“What?” Elise demanded. She was cranky in the morning. Crankier still on this morning.

“Jonas, grab an oar,” Quinn said.

While Elise neatened her net, pulling out bits of seaweed, the boat crept toward the barrier. Twenty feet away they shipped oars.

“What is that?” Jonas asked.

The four of them stared at the barrier. Up above it became an illusion of sky. But straight ahead it was pearly gray. As always. As it had been since the coming of the FAYZ.

But just above the waterline the barrier was not gray but black. The black shadow rose in an irregular pattern. Like a roller coaster’s curves.

Quinn glanced away to see the sun just peeking over the mountains. The whole sea went from dark to light in a few swift minutes. He waited until the sunlight touched the water between him and the barrier.

“It’s changed,” Quinn said.

He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it onto the bench. He fumbled in the locker for a face mask, spit into it, wiped the spit around with his fingers, slipped it on his head, and without another word dived off the side. The water was cold and instantly blew the last of the morning cobwebs out of his head.

He swam gingerly to the barrier, careful not to touch it. Six feet down the barrier was black.

Quinn surfaced, took a deep breath, and went down again. He wished he had fins; it wasn’t easy pushing his buoyant body downward. He reached maybe twenty feet before letting himself float back up.

He climbed back into the boat with an assist from Jonas.

“It’s like that all the way down as far as I can tell,” Quinn said.

The four of them looked at one another.

“So?” Elise asked. “We have work to do. The fish won’t catch themselves.”

Quinn considered. He should tell someone. Caine? Albert? He didn’t really want to have to deal with either of them. And they had blue bats right under the boat just waiting to be caught.

Either Caine or Albert might easily tear into him for sloughing off on work just to report something that might be meaningless.

Not for the first time he wished it was still Sam he had to report to, not the other two. In fact, if there was anyone he really wished he could tell, it was Astrid. Too bad no one had seen her. She might well be dead. But Astrid was the only one who would look at this and actually try to figure out what it meant.

“Okay, let’s get back to work,” Quinn said. “We’ll keep an eye on it, see if it changes by the end of the day.”

FOUR

50 HOURS

FOR ALL OF his five years Pete Ellison had lived inside a twisted, distorted brain. No longer.

He had destroyed his dying, diseased, fever-racked body.

Poof.

All gone.