Was he gone, the gaiaphage?
He would never be gone. Not from her.
Lana lay on her side, sobbing. Patrick came over and licked her face.
NINE
ZIL SPERRY WAS feeling very good. He’d spent the day waiting for the blow to fall. Waiting for Sam and Edilio to show up at his compound. If they had, he could have made a fight out of it, but he wasn’t crazy enough to think he would have won. Edilio’s soldiers had machine guns. Zil’s Human Crew had baseball bats.
He had more serious weapons, too, but those were not in the compound. Not with that freak Taylor able to pop in anywhere, anytime and see whatever she wanted.
And then, there were the other freaks: that glowering lesbian thug Dekka, the brat Brianna. And Sam himself.
Always Sam.
The compound was four houses at the end of Fourth Avenue, past Golding. The street dead-ended there in a sort of cul-de-sac. Four not-very-big, not-very-fancy houses. They’d set up a roadblock of cars to form a wall across Fourth Avenue. The cars had to be pushed into place-the batteries were all dead, all except the few vehicles Sam’s people kept in running condition.
At the center of the roadblock was a narrow gap, an opening. A square and blocky once-white Scion was in position to one side of the opening. It was light enough that four kids could push it across the opening to block the gate.
Dekka could of course simply lift the thing into the air. That and the rest of Zil’s defenses.
But they had not come after him. And Zil knew why. The town council was too gutless. Sam? He would have come after him. Dekka? She would love to come after him. Brianna had zipped through the compound a few times already, using her freak speed to blow past sentries almost unseen.
Zil had strung wire after that. Let Brianna come through again, she’d get the surprise of her life.
Sam was the key. Kill Sam, and Zil might be able to handle the rest.
At noon, when everyone would be scrounging lunch, Zil led Hank, Turk, Antoine, and Lance out of the compound, across the highway, and north to the foothills of the ridge.
The farmhouse. That freak Emily and her moron brother. At first Turk had mentioned it as a place he knew from back, before. He’d attended a birthday party there for the boy named Brother. Brother and Emily were homeschooled, and Turk knew them from church.
Turk had been surprised to find Brother and Emily still there. And they’d all been surprised to find that Emily was a seriously powerful freak.
But they had agreed to let Human Crew hide things there.
So Zil had put up with them, made them promises, given them games they couldn’t really play in order to have the farm as a safe house. But when the time came…well, a freak was still a freak, even if she was useful.
Reaching the farmhouse meant getting past the heavily guarded gas station first. Fortunately there was a deep ditch, an open storm drain running parallel to the highway and behind the gas station. There were no more storms, so it was dry and choked with weeds. But there was a path there, and as long as they kept quiet, Edilio’s soldiers at the gas station wouldn’t hear them.
Once past town they walked down the highway for a while. All the pickers would be in the fields having lunch. No one would be hauling produce to town.
The highway was eerily empty. Weeds grew tall on the shoulders of the road. Cars that had crashed there during the first few seconds of the FAYZ still sat empty, dusty, useless. Relics of a dead era. Their doors were ajar, trunk lids raised, windows often shattered. Every glove compartment and trunk had been searched by Sam’s people or by scavengers for food, weapons, drugs…
One of those cars had been the source of Zil’s small arsenal. They’d found the guns, along with two bricks of compressed marijuana and a couple of fat Baggies stuffed with meth. Antoine had probably snorted half the powder already, stupid tweeker.
He was a problem, Zil realized. Drunks and drug addicts were always a problem. On the other hand, he could be counted on to do what he was told. And if someday Antoine just lost it totally, Zil would find someone else to take his place.
“Keep your eyes sharp,” Hank said. “We don’t want to be seen.”
Hank was the enforcer. Weird, with him being a runty little kid. But he had a vicious streak, Hank did. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Zil. Nothing.
Lance, as usual, walked a little apart. Even now it amazed Zil that Lance was part of his core team. Lance was everything the others were not: smart, handsome, athletic, likable.
And Turk? Well, Turk gimped along on his bad leg and talked. “In the end we’re going to have to be totally freak-free,” he was saying. “The big ones, the dangerous freaks, we’re going to have to take them out.
“Terminate them. With extreme prejudice. That’s what they used to say when they meant ‘assassinate.’ Terminate with extreme prejudice.”
Sometimes Zil wished he’d just shut up. He reminded Zil in some ways of Zil’s older brother, Zane. Always talking, never shutting up.
Of course what Zane talked about was different. Mostly what Zane talked about was Zane. He had an opinion on everything. He knew everything, or thought he did.
His whole life Zil had barely gotten a word in edgewise around Zane. And when he did manage to contribute to the endless family discussions, Zil mostly earned condescending, even pitying, looks.
His parents hadn’t meant it to be that way, probably. But what could they do, really? Zane was the star. So smart, so cool, so good looking. As good looking as Lance.
Zil had realized very early on that he would never, ever, ever be the star. Zane owned that role. He was charming, handsome, and ever-so-smart.
And he was so so so nice to little Zil. “You need some help with that math homework there, Zilly?”
Zilly. Rhyming with silly. Silly Zilly. And Zane the Brain.
Well, where are you now, Zane? Zil wondered. Not here, that’s for sure. Zane was sixteen. He had poofed on that first day, that first minute.
Good riddance, big brother, Zil thought.
“So we take out the dangerous freaks,” Turk prattled on. “Take them out. A few we keep around basically as slaves. Like Lana. Yeah, we keep Lana. Only maybe keep her tied up or whatever so she doesn’t get away. And then the others, man, they have to find some other place to go. Simple as that. Out of Sperry Beach.”
Zil sighed. That was Turk’s latest idea: to rename the town Sperry Beach. Make it clear for everyone that Perdido Beach now belonged to the Human Crew.
“Humans only. Freaks out,” Turk said. “We’re going to rule. Can you believe Sam didn’t come after us? They’re all scared.”
Turk could carry on like this forever, talking to himself. It was like he had to go over everything ten times. Like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t answering back.
The last part of the trip was the long trudge across the rutted fields. When they reached it there would be nice, clear, clean water, at least, even if there wasn’t any food. Emily and Brother had their own well. Not enough water to take a shower or anything because the power was off to the pump, so everything had to be pumped up by hand. But you could drink all you wanted. That was rare in dry and hungry Perdido Beach.
Sperry Beach.
Maybe. Why not?
Zil led the way up the stairs. “Emily,” he called out. “It’s us.”
He knocked on the door. This was surprising because every other time Emily had seen them coming she’d pulled her usual pop-up-behind-you freak trick. Sometimes she played with them, disappearing the house and letting them wander around like fools.
Freak. She’d get hers eventually. When Zil was done with her.
Emily opened the door.
Zil’s instincts screamed danger.
He backed away, but something stopped him. Like some invisible giant had wrapped a hand around him.