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She climbed heavily from the water, dragging herself up over the wet pebbles and into the sand. Dekka was already on the shore, and Diana was just behind Astrid.

Other survivors were swimming ashore or had just climbed out of the water. No one was talking. Many were crying.

The water of the lake rose suddenly, a massive waterspout that seemed to carry Dekka and Orc in its flow. Astrid saw Orc move. He was alive.

Computer Jack was on his knees, sobbing, hands over his face. Astrid had no time for that. “Jack, get a dinghy, go pick up survivors.”

“Everyone’s dead,” he moaned.

“No, they aren’t. If you don’t want to fight, then you get ambulance duty. Go! Put that strength to some use.”

Brianna was hobbling toward them, cursing loudly with every step. Half her hair was gone. One side of her face was cherry red.

“Brianna!” Dekka cried. She reached land, dropped Orc unceremoniously on the shore, and ran to Brianna.

Brianna sagged into her arms, showing weakness in a way Astrid had never before witnessed. But then Brianna had never had to fight someone like herself.

“She’s hurt! She’s hurt bad!” Dekka cried.

Other kids were gravitating toward the three, now four, girls on the beach. Orc got slowly to his feet and looked around in confusion.

Astrid gave orders with a calm she did not feel. See what cars or trucks we have that will still run. Look for survivors. If anyone’s too hurt to move, come tell me where they are. See what food you can round up.

Brianna’s left ear was gone, and the skin around it and all the way down to her neck looked like melted wax.

“Orc,” Astrid said. “This is a terrible thing to ask, but we need someone on the perimeter—the edge out there—to see if Gaia is heading back. Or maybe she’s injured and—”

Suddenly she felt weak and her head spun. Shock. She recognized it. It was Diana who steadied her.

Astrid sank into the mud, head between her hands, trying to think, trying to not think.
Big picture, Astrid: what do we do?

I won’t be meeting Sam’s mother, she thought. The endgame is not yet ended. The after is a million years away.

The game is to stay alive. The game is survival. For the next minute, hour . . .

Facts. The van they sometimes used was intact, and it had a quarter tank of gas. The Winnebago they sometimes ran as a charging station had an eighth of a tank. That would still leave a couple of dozen people by the look of it. So most people would have to walk, but the severely wounded would be able to ride—assuming that anyone could be found who could drive a motor home without running it into a ditch.

She would have to stay with the ones on foot.

They would die.

The noise level was rising as the shock slowly wore off. Kids were crying more now, sobbing, yelling for lost friends or relatives. People shook with fear. No one was foolish enough to believe Gaia was done or that they were safe.

Jack was rowing out in the lake while someone with him played a flashlight around and shouted, “Is anyone alive?”

Diana, haunted, stood looking after Orc as he trotted in the direction Gaia had taken. “She’s going to kill everyone. She’s going to kill us all.”

“I’m getting Breeze in the van,” Dekka said. She had her friend in her arms, was holding Brianna like a child. “Her and another kid who is in real bad shape.”

Astrid nodded, understanding there was no way to stop Dekka from going with Brianna. She looked into Brianna’s bleary eyes and tried not to stare at the awful burn. “You saved a lot of lives, Breeze,” Astrid said. “You’re a hero.”

“Damn right she is,” Dekka said, her voice rough with emotion.

“Lana will fix her up,” Astrid said. “Get everyone you can in that van. If you run into Sam . . .”

Ten minutes later the van pulled away.

Computer Jack rowed three shocked survivors—just three—back to shore. “There’s more kids floating,” he said.

“Then go get them!” Astrid said.

Jack shook his head. “There’s no hurry,” he said, and Astrid understood what he was saying. She sent him to help carry the injured to the Winnebago.

Orc came back to report a blood trail heading almost due west, in the general direction, if Gaia followed the barrier, of the tall trees of the Stefano Rey.

Oily smoke billowed from some of the vehicles as the fire burned out the last of the gasoline and plush interiors and plastic dashboards and now down to the tires. On the lake the boats had sunk except for bits and pieces of debris. Everything smelled of fire and charred meat.

“Okay, everyone, listen, please,” Astrid said, but her voice wasn’t loud enough against the rising babble of cries and complaints and the chattering of teeth. There were only about thirty healthy kids left. Another twenty or so were either in the van or in the Winnebago, which was now making its shaky, lumbering way toward the road with Jack at the wheel.

At least seventy kids had been killed. A quarter of the population of the FAYZ. Later she would be filled with rage, but for now just sadness and defeat. These kids had endured so much. . . . To die with the end perhaps in sight . . .

Astrid realized that she and they were now almost completely defenseless. They had Orc, some guns, and some bladed weapons and baseball bats. Two dozen kids with an average age of nine, against a monster with all the powers of the FAYZ.

“Listen!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Listen!”

Most quieted. They turned terrified faces to her, faces lit by the fires of their homes.

“We’re going to Perdido Beach.”

“It’s dark!”

“Coyotes!”

“It’s too far!”

“Listen,” she repeated. “That thing, the gaiaphage, Gaia, she’s hurt but she’s not dead, at least I don’t think so. We have to join up with the others in town. We have to have all of our people together.”

“Is Sam there?”

“I hope so,” Astrid said fervently. “But anyway, Dekka and Brianna are there, or will be soon, and Lana will heal Brianna.” It struck Astrid that just yesterday she’d snarked to Sam about Brianna being their difficult child. Without that child they would all be dead now.

“Orc is coming with us to protect us on the way. If we walk fast, and we help each other out, we’ll be there by morning.”

“We have to bury the people who got killed,” a little boy said.

“Yes, we do,” Astrid said softly. “But not tonight.”

“My sister’s dead,” the boy said. “She’s burned up.”

“Your brothers and sisters and friends want you to live,” Astrid said, her voice quivering with emotion. “We have to live. Later we can bury people, but right now, tonight, we have to live.”

In the end, three kids stayed behind. Astrid didn’t have the energy or the certainty to compel them. And she was fairly sure that she herself, and her little band of wanderers, would also be dead before they ever reached Perdido Beach.

There would be no meeting with Connie Temple. It seemed Astrid had been wrong: it was not time to plan for after. It was still time to run, to cower, to beg for life.

To fight.

A tent pole stood stark, its surrounding nylon all burned away. Astrid looked for something, anything, and found nothing. So she bit the hem of her shirt, ripped at the small tear, and with some difficulty tore off a six-inch-wide swatch of fabric.

She yanked out several strands of her hair, twisted them into a knot with the fabric, and jammed it onto the tent pole like a pathetic flag.

It would have to do.

Sam and Caine reached the lake, their lungs screaming for air, muscles twanging with exhaustion. Neither was fit for what had turned out to be an hour-long run punctuated by pratfalls and scrapes.

As they pelted down the slope they could see that it was too late. The devastation was total.

Sam fell to his knees. “Astrid! Astrid!”

There was no answer.

“Give us some light, Sam,” Caine said grimly.

“Astrid!”

“Hey, keep it together, surfer dude, you’re no good to her freaking out.”

Sam got to his feet again, but it was all he could do to stand up. The houseboat was a hull, improbably still floating, but burned down to the waterline. She was dead.

She was dead. The monster had killed her.

“Hey: I said, turn on some light!” Caine yelled, and shook Sam by both shoulders. “Light!”

Sam dragged himself back to reality. The smell of cooked grease and smoking tires was in the air. The fires burned low, consuming the last of their grisly fuels. The lake itself was black. Sam focused and formed a ball of light.

He moved the light up in the air, ten, twelve feet, then sent it drifting across the settlement, like a weak searchlight. Burned cars, burned tents. Burned bodies.

Sam rushed to the nearest body. No, too short to be Astrid.

“You don’t want to do that, man. Because if it is her you don’t want to see it.”

It bordered on compassionate. At another time Sam might have appreciated it. Now he stared down at a kid who looked like a plastic toy soldier that had been put in the microwave.

Caine directed him to move the light out over the water. A sailboat—no, half a sailboat—rocked crazily in the gentle swell.

Suddenly, there was movement. Sam and Caine both spun toward the sound. A person, walking.

“Who’s that?” Caine demanded.

No answer.

“I count to three and if I reach three you die,” Caine said tersely.

“Don’t!”

There was something odd about the voice. It sounded too deep. Caine grabbed Sam’s floating light and brought it closer.

Sam and Caine both stared.

“You’re an adult!” Sam said.

“Who are you?” Caine demanded. “How did you get here? Is the barrier down?”

The man was a wreck, that much was clear. He had a stump of an arm with dangling bits of meat half healed. No surgeon had done that.

“What’s your name?” Sam asked.

“Alex.”

“Where did you come from, Alex?”

“I . . . I fell through.”

Both stared. It was weird. Both still felt some automatic deference to adults, but at the same time it was clear that they were the ones in charge here. This particular adult was not exactly ready to take charge.

“Hey, Alex, you need to start talking,” Caine said. “What do you mean you fell through?”

“The goddess . . . she drew me through the barrier so that I might feed her.” He clenched his remaining fist, but the expression on his face was almost reverential.

Sam and Caine exchanged a glance. They’d both seen their share of kids in shock, kids deranged by trauma. This was their first adult. Their first adult of any kind in a very long time, and he was crazy.

“What happened here? Did you see?” Sam asked.

The man pointed to the bluff overlooking the east end of the lake and the settlement. “She came from there. The goddess of light. She swept down upon them . . .”

“Gaia?” Caine asked.

“You know her?” Alex asked eagerly. “Do you have food?”

“Did anyone survive?” Sam asked, his voice catching, afraid to hear the answer.

“Yes, some. Children. They went off . . .” He searched around, then nodded. “That way. I saw some trying to get a body from the lake. I think maybe they drowned. Judgment day. Hey? Like judgment day.”

“They’re heading toward Perdido Beach,” Sam breathed.

“There was a big RV. Maybe a truck,” Alex said. “I don’t remember. Others walked. I don’t think it will matter. She’s going to kill them all, you know. She’s going to melt their brains. Hah! It’s the seventh seal, it’s the opening of the book, the judgment, you know, like . . . like in . . .”

“Gaia just let them walk away?” Sam asked. The man was crazy, but he was still responding.

Alex seemed suddenly very uncomfortable. “She was . . . While she was about her killing and burning, what do they call it? A reaping? While she . . . there came a whirlwind and hurt her. I saw it. Like a devil whirlwind!”

“A whirlwind?” Caine demanded.

“Brianna,” Sam said.

“The goddess was hurt. Oh, she’ll be hungry,” Alex said, his voice an odd mix of fear and anticipation. “I . . . She’s a goddess, the gaiaphage. Her name is Gaia. But shhh. Don’t speak it.”

“She’s not a she; she’s an it,” Sam snapped. “And it is no one’s god.”

“If she’s hurt, that may be her blood trail we saw going toward the southwest,” Caine said. “Which leaves us a choice. Perdido Beach to see if your girlfriend is alive, or go and hunt down this lunatic’s so-called goddess?”

Sam peered at Alex. He had a moment of sickening insight. “She took your arm, didn’t she?”

Alex closed his eyes. “She was very hungry. She must grow and . . . very hungry.”

Sam asked, “Was anyone else with you? A girl? A guy with an arm like a kind of snake? Like a whip?”

“A girl, yes. She was the goddess’s mother, so she said.”

“Diana?” Caine frowned, then bit angrily at his thumb.

“She betrayed us and came to warn the people here.” He grinned. “But she was too late! You should have seen it! Hah! Light show, man, like a heavy metal concert.”

Sam saw something then that was out of place. He peered into the darkness, formed a ball of light in his hand, and walked over to the stick with its pathetic flag.

He drew the blond hairs out, looked at them, and put them in his back pocket. That moment was the worst of it. Feeling that she had been so close. That he had not been there when she needed him. The tears came, and he extinguished his light so that Caine would not see.

But she was alive. Astrid was alive and most likely on her way with the other survivors to Perdido Beach.

Sam steadied his voice and without turning around said, “Mister? Alex? I’m sorry all this has happened to you. This is a very . . . terrible place, sometimes. But we can’t help you. You’re going to have to fend for yourself.”

“So we’re going after Gaia?” Caine asked.

Sam nodded. “We’re going after Gaia.”

SINDER HAD
SPENT
the afternoon, evening, and now into the night with Lana working on Taylor. It seemed to take both of them, together, to reattach the missing bits of Taylor.