The control room, too, as Caine and he had left it. The door ripped from its hinges by Jack. Dried blood-Brittney’s, most of it-formed a flaky brown crust on the polished floor.
The ancient computers were blank. The warning lights and indicator lights were all dead, except for a fading pool of illumination cast by a single functioning emergency beam. The battery would be exhausted soon.
No wonder Jack had refused to come back to this place. It wasn’t fear of radiation. It was fear of ghosts. It hurt Jack deep down inside, Sam thought, to see machines rendered useless.
Sam’s steps echoed softly as he walked. He knew where he was going, where he had to go.
There was a badge on a desk, one of the warning badges that turned color when radiation levels were high. Sam picked it up, looked at it, not sure whether he cared.
Safe or not, he was going to the reactor.
Sunlight shone through the hole Caine had blown in the concrete containment vessel. But it was faint: sunset reflected off the mountains.
Sam raised his hand and formed a ball of light. It didn’t reveal anything but shadows.
He reached the spot. Right here Drake had shown Sam that he could cause a chain reaction and kill every living thing in the FAYZ.
Right here Drake had named the price.
This was the floor where Sam had laid down and taken the beating.
Sam saw the wrapper of the morphine syringe that Brianna had stuck into him. Here, too, the floor was coated in a flaky brown scum.
A noise! He spun, raised his hands and shot brilliant beams of light.
Something cracked. He fired again and swept the killing beam from left to right, slowly around the room, burning anything it touched.
A catwalk ladder crashed to the floor. A computer monitor exploded like a burned-out lightbulb.
Sam crouched, ready. Listening.
“If someone’s there you’d better tell me,” he said to the shadows. “Because I’ll kill you.”
No voice spoke.
Sam formed a second light and tossed it high overhead. Now shadows crossed each other, cast by two competing lights.
Another light and another and another. He formed them with his will and hung them in the air like Japanese lanterns. He saw no one.
His beams had cut cables and melted instrument panels. But there were no bodies lying on the floor.
“A rat, probably,” he said.
He was shaking. The lights were still not enough, it was still too dark. And even if it were light, something could be hiding anywhere. Too many nooks and crannies, too many awkward machines providing possible concealment.
“A rat,” he said, without any conviction. “Something.”
But not Drake.
No, Drake was in Perdido Beach, if in fact he was anywhere outside of Sam’s overworked imagination.
The reactor chamber was only fractionally lighter than when he’d come in. He’d found nothing. He’d learned nothing.
“I blew the crap out of the place though,” he said.
And accomplished? Nothing.
Sam stuck one hand in the neck of his T-shirt. He touched the skin of his shoulder. He reached under his shirt and touched his chest and stomach. Reached around with both hands to run his fingers along his sides and back. New wounds, the still-fresh marks of Drake’s whip. But worse was the memory of old wounds.
He was here. He was alive. He was hurt, yes, but his skin was not hanging in tatters.
And he was very definitely alive.
“Well,” Sam said. “There’s that.”
He had needed to come back to this place because this place filled him with terror. He had needed to take possession of this place. This very place where he had begged to die.
But had not died.
One by one he extinguished the Sammy Suns, until only the faint, indirect rays of sunset lit the room.
He stood for a moment, hoping he was saying good-bye to this place.
Sam turned and walked away, heading toward home.
Brittney woke up facedown in the sand. For a terrible moment she thought she was underground again.
The Lord might ask anything of her, but please God, not that. Not that.
She rolled over, blinked her eyes and was surprised to see that the sun was still in the sky.
She was above the tide line, several body lengths from the thin lace of surf. Something, a soggy lump the size of a person, was between her and the water. Half in the surf, legs stretched onto dry land, like he’d been running into the ocean, tripped, and had drowned.
Brittney stood up. She brushed damp sand from her arms, but it stuck to the gray mud that coated her from head to toe.
“Tanner?”
Her brother was not near. She was alone. And now fear began to make her shake. Fear for the first time since she had emerged from the ground. It was a dark, soul-eating monster, this fear.
“What am I?” she asked.
She could not tear her gaze away from the body. She could not stop her feet from moving her closer. She had to see, even though she knew, deep inside knew, that what she would see would destroy her.
Brittney stood over the body. Looked down at it. Shirt torn to ribbons. Puffy lacerated flesh. The marks of a whip.
A terrible animal noise strangled Brittney’s throat. She had been there, on the sand, unconscious when it happened. She’d been right there, just a few feet away when the demon had struck this poor boy.
“The demon,” Tanner said, appearing beside her.
“I have not stopped him, Tanner. I failed.”
Tanner said nothing and Brittney looked at him, pleading. “What is happening to me, Tanner? What am I?”
“You are Brittney. An angel of the Lord.”
“What aren’t you telling me? I know there’s something. I can feel it. I know you’re not telling me everything.”
Tanner did not smile. He did not answer.
“You’re not real, Tanner. You’re dead and buried. I’m imagining you.”
She looked at the damp sand. Two sets of footprints came to this place. Hers. And the poor boy in the surf. But there was a third set as well, not hers, not the boy’s. And this set of footprints did not stretch back across the beach. It was only here. As if it belonged to someone who had materialized out of thin air and then disappeared.
When Tanner still said nothing, Brittney pleaded with him. “Tell me the truth, Tanner. Tell me the truth.” Then, in a trembling whisper, “Did I do this?”
“You are here to fight the demon,” Tanner said.
“How can I fight a demon when I don’t know who or what he is, and when I don’t even know what I am?”
“Be Brittney,” Tanner said. “Brittney was good and brave and faithful. Brittney called on her savior when she felt herself weaken.”
“Brittney was…You said Brittney was,” Brittney said.
“You asked for the truth.”
“I’m still dead, aren’t I?” Brittney said.
“Brittney’s soul is in heaven,” Tanner said. “But you are here. And you will resist the demon.”
“I’m talking to an echo of my own mind,” Brittney said, not to Tanner, to herself. She knelt and put her hand on the wet, tousled head. “Bless you, poor boy.”
She stood up. Faced the town. She would go there. She knew the demon would go there too.
Mary worked on the next week’s schedule in her cramped little office. John stood in the doorway.
In the plaza they were starting to cook food. Mary smelled it, even through the omnipresent stink of pee and poop and finger paint and paste and filth.
Charred, crisping meat. She would need to gag some of it down and do it publicly. Or everyone would look at her and point and whisper “anorexic.”
Crazy. Unstable.
Mary’s losing it.
No longer Mother Mary. Crazy Mary. Off-her-meds Mary. Or on-too-many-meds Mary. Everyone knew now, thanks to Astrid. They all knew. They all could picture it in their heads, Mary searching for Prozac and Zoloft like Gollum chasing the ring. Mary sticking her finger down her throat to vomit up food even while normal people were reduced to eating bugs.