Sam’s killing light died.
Brianna stood still completely still.
Astrid froze in mid-cry.
The kids of Perdido Beach, all within sound of the Siren’s voice, stopped, and turned toward the little girl.
All but three.
Little Pete stumbled toward his game player.
Nerezza laughed and reached down to give a hand to Drake, who was swiftly regrowing what he had lost.
“Sing on, Siren!” Nerezza cried, giddy, triumphant.
Sam knew in a distant, far-off way what was happening. His mind still worked, though at a tenth of its normal speed, gears turning like a windmill in the faintest breeze.
Drake could almost stand. In a moment he would come for Sam. He would finish what he had started.
The memory of pain bubbled slowly up within Sam. But he lacked the power to move, to act, to do. He could only watch helplessly. Just like before. Helpless.
But then, out of a corner of his eye, Sam saw something very strange. Something was flying very fast over the ocean.
He heard a distant thwap thwap thwap.
The sound grew louder, as the helicopter roared across the ocean.
Loud.
Louder.
Loud enough.
Sam tried to move and found that he could.
“No!” Nerezza cried.
Sam fired once. The beams hit Nerezza in the chest. It was enough to kill anyone. To burn a hole through any living thing.
But Nerezza did not burn. She simply looked at Sam with a look of cold hatred. Her eyes glowed green, a light so bright it almost rivaled Sam’s fire for brightness. And then, she was gone.
Drake watched as his feet grew back. But not quickly enough.
“Now, Drake,” Sam said. “Where were we?”
He felt Astrid at his side. “Do it,” she said grimly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.
Sanjit had mastered the art of flying straight ahead.
He had almost mastered the art of aiming in one particular direction. You could do it with the pedals. So long as you were very, very gentle and very, very careful.
But he wasn’t exactly sure he knew how to stop.
Now he was rushing toward land at amazing speed. And he supposed he might as well keep going a while longer. Especially since he didn’t quite know how to stop. Exactly.
But then Virtue yelled, “Stop!”
“What?”
Virtue reached over, grabbed the cyclic, and pushed it hard to the left.
The helicopter banked suddenly, wildly, just as Sanjit noticed the fact that the sky directly ahead of them wasn’t exactly sky. In fact, when you looked at it from the right angle it looked an awful lot like a wall.
The helicopter screamed over the heads of a bunch of kids who looked like they were watching the sunset from the cliff.
The helicopter went fully sideways and the skids screeched along something that was very definitely not sky.
Then it was free again but still sideways and sinking fast toward the ground. An empty pool, tennis courts, rooftops flashed by in a split second.
Sanjit eased the cyclic back to the right but completely forgot about the pedals. The helicopter spun a 360 in the air, slowed, fought its way up, and then hovered in midair.
“I think I’m going to land,” Sanjit said.
The helicopter came down with a crash. The plastic of the canopy cracked and starred. Sanjit felt as if his spine had been jackhammered.
He switched off the engine.
Virtue was staring and shaking and maybe mumbling something.
Sanjit twisted in his seat.
“You guys okay? Bowie? Pixie? Peace?”
He got three shaky nods in response.
Sanjit laughed and tried to high-five Virtue but their hands missed. Sanjit laughed again.
“So,” Sanjit said. “You guys want to go up again?”
Drake bellowed in fear and pain as the green light ate its way relentlessly up his body.
Drake was smoke from the waist down when from his mouth came Brittney’s voice.
Drake’s teeth flashed metal.
The lean, cruel face of the psychopath melted from its own internal fire. Brittney’s full, pimpled face emerged.
“Don’t stop, Sam!” Brittney cried. “You have to destroy all of it, every bit.”
“I can’t,” Sam said.
“You must!” Brittney said through her screams. “Kill it! Kill the evil one!”
“Brittney…,” Sam said, helpless.
“Kill it! Kill it!” Brittney cried.
Sam shook his head. He looked at Astrid. Her face was a mirror of his own.
“Breeze,” Sam said. “Rope. Chains. A lot of it. Whatever you can find. Now!”
Astrid spotted Little Pete. He was safe. Looking for his game. Searching, but not near the edge of the cliff, thankfully.
She forced herself to go to the cliff. She had to see.
She leaned out over the side.
Dekka lay on her back in a mud of bloody sand. Her arms were both outstretched toward the cliff.
The little boy named Justin was limping up out of the surf, holding his stomach. Brianna had saved him. Dekka had saved the rest.
And where Astrid had expected to see small, crumpled bodies, children huddled together on the rocks.
Astrid, tears in her eyes, gave Dekka a small wave.
Dekka did not notice her and did not wave back. She slowly lowered her arms and lay there, a picture of exhaustion.
Mary was nowhere to be seen. Her fifteenth birthday had come, and she had gone. Astrid made the sign of the cross and prayed wordlessly that somehow Mary was right and that she was in her mother’s arms.
“Petey?” she called.
“He’s over there,” someone answered.
Little Pete had come to a stop near the FAYZ wall. He was just bending down.
“Petey,” Astrid called.
Little Pete stood up with his game player, shattered screen dribbling fragments of glass from his hand.
His eyes found Astrid.
Little Pete howled like an animal. Howled like a mad thing, howled in a voice impossibly large.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” A cry of loss, a mad tragic cry.
He bent into a backward “C” and howled like an animal.
Suddenly, the FAYZ wall was gone.
Astrid gaped in amazement at a landscape of satellite trucks and cars, a motel, a crowd of people, regular people, adults, behind a security rope, staring.
Little Pete fell on his back.
And in a flash it was all gone.
The wall was back.
And Little Pete was silent.
FORTY-FOUR
“HOW IS IT going?” Sam asked Howard.
Howard looked at Orc to answer.
Orc shrugged. “Good. I guess.”
Howard and Orc had been relocated, given a new home. It was one of the few houses in Perdido Beach that had a basement. There were no windows in the basement. No electricity of course, so Sam had left a small light of his own burning there.
The only way in or out of the basement was down a flight of steps from the kitchen. There, at the bottom of the steps, they had nailed two-by-fours across and up and down, forming a thick grid work. The spaces between the two-by-fours was just three inches.
At the top of the stairs the door had been strengthened by having Orc shove a massive armoire against it.
Twice a day Orc would shove the armoire aside. Then he would stump down the stairs and peek inside. Then he would come back up and replace the barricade.
“Was it Brittney or Drake when you went down last?” Sam asked.
“The girl,” Orc said.
“Did she say anything?”
Orc shrugged. “Same thing she always says. Kill it. Kill me.”
“Yeah,” Sam said.
“How long you think we can keep this up?” Howard asked Sam.
It was not a great solution, keeping the undead thing locked in this basement to be guarded by Orc. But the alternative was destroying it. Him. Her. And that felt a little too much like murder for Sam.
Astrid and Edilio had worked for a couple of long days to try and make sense of the disaster that had come to the FAYZ. All the individuals who’d had direct contact with the Darkness, had touched the mind of the gaiaphage, had been used like pawns in a chess match.