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“There’s no doctor,” Diana said. “Where do you think you are?”

“She . . . oh, my God!” the man cried.

“You’ll be better off if you don’t spend too much time thinking about it,” Diana said. “The wound isn’t bleeding any—”

“She’s eating my arm!”

Diana spotted a long stick, an umbrella pole, she thought, part of the wicker mess from the train, perhaps. She hefted it experimentally. It was about six feet long and not too heavy, broken jagged and sharp at one end, brass-bound at the other. A very nice walking stick.

“Stab her with it!” the man hissed.

Diana almost laughed. “You don’t want to attack her.”

“She’s a monster!”

“Yeah. We have monsters here. She’s one. The worst. But you won’t kill her with a stick.”

His face was gray, the look of a man in terrible pain and shock. The look of a man who had lost a lot of blood. But the wound had been cauterized, if not really healed. Gaia didn’t care much about cosmetic things; she hadn’t even completely healed her own face. He would live long enough to feed her again. That’s all Gaia cared about.

“I have a knife in my pack.”

This time, Diana did laugh. “Go ahead: give it a try.”

That hard, cynical laugh brought him up short.

“Are you . . . like her?”

“I’m her mother,” Diana said.

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, we haven’t seen
him
around here much.” Diana liked the stick. It helped her plow ahead through the sand, following in Gaia’s footsteps.

“Who are you people?” It was like he’d been in too much shock to ask these basic questions before now.

“My name is Diana. She’s Gaia. She’s . . .” How to explain Gaia? “Well, not exactly what she looks like. Less girly. More Satan-like. What’s your name?”

“Alex. Alex Mayle. I feel like I’m going crazy. I don’t know what—”

“What were you doing out there?”

“Just trying to get some cool video. You know. YouTubes.”

“Still have your camera?”

“My phone! I have my phone.” With his one hand he managed to draw his iPhone from his pocket. He dialed a number.

“911? Seriously?” Diana laughed.

“There’s no signal.”

“Hmmm. That’s a surprise. Because none of us ever thought of making a phone call to 911 and saying ‘get us out of here.’ Should have thought of that.” It wasn’t that Diana was enjoying this, exactly. But it was a reminder of just how much she had endured, how much she had survived.

Still here, she thought. Still alive. Still sane, mostly.

He opened his camera app and aimed it at Gaia’s back. Then he slid the phone back in his pack. He had to use his knees to hold the pack.

“I’m going to die,” Alex moaned.

“Not yet,” Diana said darkly. “Not until she finds another food source.”

The implication stopped him in his tracks. He hung back, and then Diana heard the sound of his footsteps scrambling away.

Without even looking back Gaia simply raised a hand, and Alex flew through the air to land hard at her feet.

“Leave me alone!” Alex cried up at Gaia.

“I could kill you and carry the nutritious parts with me,” Gaia said. “But that would be harder, carrying all that meat. So you’ll carry yourself until I find better food. If you try to run away, I’ll do something very painful to you. It won’t kill you, but you’ll wish you were dead.”

“What are you?” he begged, rising to his knees. “What are you?”

“I am the gaiaphage,” Gaia said proudly. “I am your . . . your master. Obey me.”

Gaia found that amusing, obviously, as her young face broke out in a grin that she shared with Diana, as though the two of them were coconspirators in dismembering Alex. As though Diana would see the humor in it all.

Gaia walked on, and Diana helped Alex to his feet.

It was strange. The first adult she had spoken to in almost a year. Sometimes she had pictured this moment. The fantasy had usually involved firemen and cops rushing in, offering help and food and comfort. Safety.

But this adult wasn’t here to rescue her. He was just another lost, desperate fool, more scared than she was.

“I just want to go home,” he moaned. He started crying again.

Diana’s stomach clenched with a hunger pain. That familiar pain reached into her memory and dragged out images she could not stand to look at. It was a terrible feeling. So was the fact that she was eyeing the cooked arm and salivating.

No,
she told herself.
Not again. I’ll die first
. She thought of Alex’s knife, supposedly in his backpack. Not the wrist—that could be too easily fixed by Gaia if she chose to. It would have to be an artery in her throat. A quick, deep, assured, stabbing thrust. And death before the evil creature, her daughter, could stop her.

But then hope, that cruel thing, came to taunt her. Caine would come for her, wouldn’t he? He would know she needed rescue. Because deep down he cared for her, didn’t he?

But when he did come, if he did come, Gaia would kill him, wouldn’t she?

And then I’ll do it, Diana told herself. Then the quick, deep, assured thrust. Not before.

Albert had taken three people to the island with him. Leslie-Ann was his maid, a mousy little thing. She was mostly useless, but she had saved his life once upon a time.

Pug—she had an actual name, but Albert didn’t recall what it was—was a big girl, strong and not very bright, and loyal to Albert, though he wasn’t quite sure why. She was not clever enough to make trouble.

And finally, Alicia. Alicia had been trained by Edilio to handle a gun. She’d been part of his security force until he’d caught her extorting bribes. At which point Albert had hired her, informally, as a spy. She was clever, a good observer, and had done a good job of keeping him aware of everything.

She was also tall, about five inches taller than Albert, which he liked, and she had large breasts, which Albert also liked. But she was not loyal like Leslie-Ann or Pug; she was too unstable for loyalty. She had been one of the first Coates kids to abandon Caine and come over to the Perdido Beach side. Later she had rejoined Caine for a time, and later still had lurked at the edges of Zil’s Human Crew.

She was on the island because Albert had lately begun to develop an interest in girls. When it had seemed that the FAYZ would be plunged into permanent darkness, Albert had thought that under the circumstances . . . well . . . But, no. None of that had happened.

And now he was stuck with her.

At present, she was shining a flashlight down, watching Quinn come up the rope hand over hand, climbing the cliff with the agility and ease of an ape.

“He’s strong,” Alicia said.

“He rows a boat all day long.”

“Huh.” Pause. “You know, you should work out, Albert. We have a gym. You and those stick arms of yours.”

Albert was looking for a suitably cutting retort when Quinn came up over the side of the cliff, stood up, brushed himself off, and said, “Albert.”

“Who sent you, Quinn?” He was not interested in small talk. Alicia had a gun, and so did Pug, who was standing a few dozen feet away, watchful, ready.

“Yeah, good to see you, too, Albert,” Quinn said.

Albert hesitated, nodded, and said, “I guess come inside and we can talk.” He turned on his heel and stalked up to the house, not waiting for Quinn. Alicia fell back so she could walk just behind Quinn.

There was an electric light on inside, something no one had seen for months in Perdido Beach. But just a single bulb: fuel was in very short supply, and Albert’s priority was keeping the water pump running and having enough energy to at least take some of the chill out of his showers.

They went inside and to the living room with vast bowed windows that provided a horizon-to-horizon view. Perdido Beach was a silhouette now, a dark space against the bright lights of out there.

Leslie-Ann brought in a pitcher of iced tea and glasses. Glasses filled with actual ice. Quinn stared at the ice like he was seeing the gates of heaven.

“So?” Albert pressed as Quinn poured himself some tea, added sugar—a second impossible luxury—and took a drink.

“So, Albert, I noticed you didn’t fire a missile at me.”

“No.”

“Which means you want to know what’s going on. So maybe stop acting all high and mighty. I don’t work for you anymore, Albert. I’m only here because Edilio asked me to come.”

“Edilio?” Albert frowned. “Not Caine?”

“Well, you wouldn’t know this, Albert, since you ran off when things looked bad, but with the barrier transparent things have changed.”

“Yes. It’s lighter during the day,” Albert said dryly.

“Lookers—people, adults, people out there, I mean—are all up against the barrier where the highway goes. TV cameras, parents, nuts. It’s a mess because—”

“I can see them,” Albert cut in. “Let me guess: no one’s working, they’re all waving at their family members, and pretty soon everyone will be very, very hungry.”

Quinn didn’t bother to confirm.

“Caine?” Albert asked.

“Caine is off with Sam looking for Gaia. Edilio is running things now, thankfully.”

Albert drank some tea and thought it over. He could work with Edilio. Edilio was much more sensible than Caine. For one thing he wouldn’t go around proclaiming himself king and then let his psycho allies terrorize everyone.

“Edilio wants me to come back and get people working,” Albert guessed.

“Yep.”

“How about you, Quinn?”

“Me?” Quinn looked him right in the eye. “I think you’re a selfish little coward.”

The insult did not particularly bother Albert. Selfishness was a virtue, and if self-preservation was cowardice, so be it. “I’ve got everything I want right here,” Albert said, holding up the glass of ice as proof number one, then nodding at Alicia as proof number two, then sweeping a hand around the elegant room, barely visible in the meager fifteen watts.

Quinn set the glass down and ran his hand through his hair, a gesture that flexed his considerable biceps and well-defined triceps, causing Alicia to edge a little forward on her seat and thereby definitely annoying Albert.

“I’ll tell you, dude,” Quinn said, “I think the way things stand right now, you’ll go down in history as a slimy little creep who ran off and left everyone to starve.”

“History?” Albert mocked.

Quinn shrugged. “Everyone seems to think the barrier is coming down. Just before I left, we saw some TV footage outside of some guy, some adult guy, falling through.
Into
the FAYZ. Yeah. Into. Anyway, the gaiaphage obviously thinks we’re getting out; otherwise why move into a body? Right?”

Albert couldn’t argue with that.

“So, yeah: history,” Quinn said. “We’re all being watched now. And judged. Up until a few days ago you were a big hero. Now you’re dirt. The only way you fix that is by coming back and doing what you do.”

THAT NIGHT
SAM
and Caine camped out within a mile of Gaia and Diana.

Quinn slept in a bed with actual sheets while Albert walked the halls of the mansion on San Francisco de Sales Island and wondered if he had made a mistake agreeing to go back.

Astrid lay in the cabin she usually shared with Sam and tried to think about life after, about how they could be, how . . . but ended up thinking of Drake, twenty feet below her in a water-filled box. She tried then to turn her thoughts to memories of Sam, but again Drake intruded. So she gave up on sleep and read a book.

Diana curled on the ground near a pile of stones Gaia had consented to heat and prayed not to dream but did dream, a dream of an overly lit hospital room, and an incubator, and herself approaching that incubator, only to see a bloody beast inside beating violently at the Plexiglas sides. Nurses stared at her.

Edilio crashed on a ratty mattress in the corner of what had once been the town magistrate’s office. He started to try and organize his plans for the next day but fell asleep so suddenly and so completely that when he woke up in the morning he would find he had only removed one shoe.

Lana lay with Sanjit and thought of many things. Of Taylor, and what she might be, and whether Sinder—who had agreed to stop by tomorrow—would be able to make any difference. And she thought for a while of Quinn, and wondered if he would care enough to try and force her to stop smoking. This made her feel disloyal, so she veered her thoughts away and tried to imagine what she could ever do, how she could ever survive out there.

Dekka dreamed of Brianna.

Brianna dreamed of running, and she smiled in her sleep.

Little Pete didn’t notice the passage of time in the usual way. He drifted and for a while seemed almost to stop thinking, to stop being. But then he was again, focused, aware, and still repeating to himself that it was not okay to hit.

Where the highway passed through the barrier, eighty-seven hungry, traumatized, heavily armed kids wrapped in filthy sleeping bags or blankets lay bathed in the eerie light of the out there and saw that the price of a Carl’s Jr. Memphis BBQ burger was just $3.49.

BY MID-MORNING
ORC
was on the move. He had decided once and for all he would go into hiding. There was forest off to the west somewhere. Dark trees and good places to hide. Astrid had told him about being there, about wild berries but with thorns all around them—oh, he was hungry. And how she had laid traps for squirrels and things. But mostly about berries. Thorns didn’t bother Orc.

That was where she had lost God, out in the forest for four months alone. She said that, anyway, so Orc was worried a little. Since finding God he had become a better person. He didn’t drink anymore. And he didn’t hurt anyone. And he wasn’t angry inside like he’d been all his life.

Well, angry a little, still. He missed Howard. He could see now that Howard had used him. And Howard was a sinner, too, that was for sure. But Howard had still been his friend. Not his good friend, maybe, but his close friend.