Light (18 page)

She was not quite a vegetable, which would have made Sinder’s powers sufficient. And she was not quite an animal, which would have allowed Lana to heal her alone.

She was . . . she was a bloodless, gold-skinned, lizard-tongued, rubber-haired, dead-eyed freak, and she pretty obviously gave Sinder a case of the unholy willies.

Lana had to admit that even in a place where there was a kid named Whip Hand and a kid made of wet gravel, Taylor was weird.

“Can you stand?” Lana asked Taylor.

It had not been established that Taylor could understand what they said. Or that she really had control over her body. Whatever awful thing Little Pete had inadvertently done to her, it was quite a job.

Taylor did not stand. She flicked out her long tongue and sat, no different from before.

“I don’t know what to make of her,” Sinder said.

“How’s Taylor?” Sanjit asked, coming in from taking Patrick on his evening potty run.

“Well, she’s been put back together,” Sinder answered when Lana refused to do anything but glare at Sanjit. The truth was, she was craving the smokes just a little less than earlier. And yet she still wanted one.

Suddenly the bed was empty. Taylor was gone.

The three of them stared at the spot where she had been.

“Okay,” Sanjit said. “That was unexpected.”

Then, just as suddenly, Taylor reappeared.

She flicked out her reptilian tongue, slowly moved her head from side to side, and then disappeared again.

“She’s got her bounce back,” Lana said.

Taylor did not return in the next five minutes, and they were about to give up and go about their other business when she popped back, this time standing in a corner of the room. In her left hand she had an irregularly shaped, pale-yellow chunk. She threw this on the bed.

Sinder picked it up gingerly. It was the size of half a loaf of bread.

“It’s cheese,” Sinder said.

The object in Taylor’s other hand was a half pack of Marlboros.

Lana grinned and accepted it, ignoring Sanjit’s despairing cry.

“Finally,” Lana said. “All this healing stuff finally pays off.”

Taylor bounced away and did not bounce back.

A minute later the door was literally kicked in by Dekka with an unconscious Brianna in her arms.

Alex remembered waking up in his bed, in his room in his grandmother’s house in Atascadero. He had turned on the Cartoon Network and started the day with a Coors Light and a couple hits off a very stale bong. He had called in sick to his job at Best Buy and texted Charlie Rand to see when he’d be coming by.

Then he’d updated his iPhone to make sure he had plenty of free memory for the taping, and grabbed rope, the ladder, his pitons, and a granola bar.

He’d told his grandmother he was heading out to do some rock climbing, which was close to the truth. She’d asked him to take her to Costco on Saturday. He had groaned inwardly but agreed.

Life had been not spectacular, maybe, but okay. Normal, anyway. Then, with a suddenness that he never would have believed possible, everything had changed. Now he was broken in body, and even more broken in mind. Last week he had been a lapsed Methodist; now he worshipped a cannibalistic girl monster. He was self-aware enough to know that this was madness. There was no way to put a good spin on that fact.

Alex wandered the shores of the lake. It was an eerie place as the sun rose. It smelled terrible, and yet his mouth watered from the same scent that had come from his burned arm.

“Food of the gods,” he said, and almost laughed and instead sobbed.

Not what he’d expected when he’d headed out to climb the barrier wall and get some cool video.

“But hey, life, man.”

This was a whole new experience. Pain surged from his shoulder. It did that. It came and went. Mostly it was just there, but every now and then it would rise up like a demon and he would feel a terrible rage at his mutilation.

He looked at it, at the stump. It was horrifying and awesome all at once. She had eaten his tattoo, the one that he’d gotten in San Diego, the one that showed a guy hanging from a rock face.

With it she had eaten his soul, he was pretty sure of that. He could feel that his soul was no longer with him. It made him cry. Also, who would take Gran to Costco? And she had an appointment at . . . Well, wherever, it didn’t matter now. He was a broken toy, and he’d been so easy to break: that’s what would be sad for him. If he’d still had a soul.

“Gaia!” he cried. “Gaia!”

No answer. He himself was hungry now. His body had suffered and he was desperate. But at least he could drink. The lake was freshwater. He waded in a couple of feet and bent to cup water to his mouth. It tasted of ashes and oil.

Then he saw the rope. It floated on the surface, curved like a water snake.

Sometimes he went boating over on Lake Isabella, waterskiing and drinking beer. They often trailed nets full of beers over the side to keep them cool. Maybe . . .

Alex began pulling on the rope. There was definitely something attached, and it was heavy, but it was coming. Hah! A cooler punched full of holes. Water drained out as he hauled it out of the lake. It was heavy, heavier than if it was just beers.

Alex had some trouble untying the rope with just one hand, but his teeth helped. The bicycle chain nearly defeated him, and he almost gave up. But a search of the camp, ignoring as best he could the dead bodies and parts of dead bodies, turned up a crowbar. The crowbar broke the chain lock.

At last he pried open the lid and gasped.

It was a head. Mostly a head. But there was something like a lizard’s tail protruding, whipping back and forth between the pale blue eyes.

The head spit water from its mouth and seemed to be whispering. Looking up at him with cold blue eyes, so like the goddess. This awesome horror had to be a sign from her.

Alex leaned close, pushing past repugnance and fear, to hear a wet, gurgling voice say, “Who the hell are you?”

Computer Jack was next to arrive at Clifftop. Jack hauled the horribly burned, mauled, broken kids with soot-stained faces and bloody clothes, one at a time, up to Lana’s room.

The motor home had broken down, too, and Jack had hauled it with sheer, brute force, pushing from behind, shoving it back onto the road with the incredible strength that had never mattered to him.

In the end they hadn’t been far ahead of the kids who had walked.

One kid had died en route. The rest had cried and wailed and shouted their pain with every lurch and jolt. And all the while Jack had been clenched, waiting for the next attack.

Sanjit ran to get his brothers and sisters to haul water and offer comfort. Sinder did a sort of rough triage, deciding who needed the most immediate help, but Brianna was first, that much was clear. There was a war on, and Brianna was a soldier.

Lana laid her hand on Brianna’s scarred, half-destroyed face, and Brianna cursed feebly.

“What happened, Breeze?” Lana asked while she stretched to also touch a four-year-old whose leg had been burned down to the white bone.

“Gaia,” she said. “The gaiaphage. Trying to kill us all. I—” And that was it for Brianna for a while as her eyes rolled up and she slipped back into the relief of unconsciousness.

Sanjit stepped behind Lana, stuck a cigarette in her mouth, and lit it.

“How many dead?” Lana asked.

Sinder answered, “One of the kids said . . . she said it was all burned down. All the boats, all the vans . . .” Sinder brushed tears from her eyes. “Like more than half the kids up there.”

“Sam?”

“He wasn’t there,” Sinder said.

“Then we’re not beaten yet,” Lana said.

Gaia had dragged herself and her parts away and into a stand of trees. It was all a terrible shock. She had felt pain, terrible pain when Sam had burned her in the battle at Perdido Beach, but she had never before felt such fear. It had never occurred to her that she really had anything to fear from anyone aside from Little Pete.

Weak humans, even mutants, should be no threat to her. The fact that she’d been very nearly destroyed by one girl—one girl!—was disturbing in the extreme. Obviously she had miscalculated. Worse: What did this mean for the outside world?

Could she be defeated? By mere human creatures?

The fear seemed to have the effect of tightening her throat, a strange aspect of having a body. Her body actually reacted in ways other than what her mind dictated. A weakness, that was. Her heart had hammered; her senses had become disoriented; her muscles had tensed. All of that was apparently beyond her control.

And the way the pain twisted her awareness, the way it forced her to pay attention to it, to the pain, and only to the pain. Weakness. There was a downside to having a body.

You see, Nemesis? Is this what you want for yourself? Are you seeing?

Now there was water leaking from her eyes. And where was the stupid Diana? She should be here. Not to mention the food. She had killed dozens and yet she was hungry, driven off before she could renew her energy. That was injustice. It was unfair!

As soon as she had healed herself she would go after them again and finish them. Had to, especially now, especially if they could actually conceivably
defeat
her.

A complicated problem, though. She couldn’t kill the mutants, but she needed to. If she didn’t kill them, they might kill her. If she did kill some of them, she might lose the power necessary to defeat those left.

It took hours of focused attention to grow her leg back. She stood at last, but it still felt too shaky to handle super-speed. Assuming she even had that speed. Had the girl who called herself Breeze died? Part of Gaia hoped so; part of her feared so.

The sun was rising, the sun of the outside world shining down on her, revealing the woods around her, tall trees and fallen pine needles, exposed roots and fragile saplings.

And then she saw
them
. Her distance-blurred vision did not reveal faces, but one she recognized immediately. She knew Caine, yes. She knew him without seeing his features. It had been a while since she had reached into his mind, but she could still touch him.

Can you stop me, Nemesis? Will you?

The other was probably Sam, the one who had turned his killing light on her and burned her, caused her such pain. She had not reached into him, not really, though she had brushed against his mind more than once.

So: the brothers united against her again. Well, well, old family ties.

Never mind: none of that mattered. What mattered was that one possessed the telekinetic power and the other the power of light. She couldn’t kill either of them without depriving herself of her most powerful weapons. But she could cripple them. She could terrorize them.

She could
break
them.

Gaia couldn’t tell if they had seen her. Were they looking right at her? They seemed to be moving apart, going in different directions. She squinted at the forest and flexed her fingers, ready for—

Only the swift-moving shadow alerted her. She leaped to one side, hit the ground, and rolled away as a huge section of fallen redwood dropped from the sky to smash the ground where she had stood.

Caine!

She reached for his mind, stabbed at him, and, from much nearer than she’d expected, heard a cry of pain.

“Caine!” Gaia yelled. “Yes, I can still hurt you!”

“Aaaaahhh!”

“Scream for me,
Father
!”

She heard running feet, someone crashing through bushes and brambles. There! He was running straight at her. She raised her hand to fire the killing light, aiming for his legs, but he struck first. A bolt of green light shot past her, striking a fallen tree and setting a rotted branch aflame.

She fired back, but Sam had already dropped to the ground.

Gaia hobbled toward him, closing the distance so she could see more clearly. She felt stabbing pain from her unready leg, stumbled, and felt Caine’s mind pushing back against her with surprising force.

“Aaaarrrgh!” she yelled in sheer fury.

A beam of light aimed blindly nearly cut her in half. She jumped aside and burned the hem of her pants leg.

The beam had cut most of the way through a hundred-foot-tall redwood, which now swayed too far to recover. A loud crunching, cracking sound was followed by a rush of snapped branches and torn canopy as the tree crashed down through the woods, blocking Gaia’s line of retreat.

Gaia fought down a moment’s panic. No, she was still the stronger. She was the gaiaphage.

Caine was the weak point. Gaia dropped to the ground, literally trying to dig herself into the dirt, make herself invisible, as she focused all her malevolence on Caine.

Scream!
she ordered him.
Scream!

And he screamed. Oh, yes, he screamed.

He screamed like he was being torn apart. He screamed like he was dying.

Sam would go to him, knowing he couldn’t defeat Gaia alone. Now, while Sam was trying to rescue Caine! She scrambled away through the dirt, scraping her belly like a snake, forcing her way through the branches of the fallen tree, hair tangled and torn, and filled with the hatred that can only come from humiliation.

Gaia was having a bad morning after a very bad night.

She couldn’t win a battle when she had to pull her punches. Which meant that her course was clear: She had to attack Perdido Beach and get the major killing done with. Then she could take her time torturing the defiance out of Caine and finally deal with the eternally troublesome Sam Temple.

In the meantime, she needed a game changer.

She saw a thin spiral of smoke rise from the dead tree Sam’s light had touched.

Well, why not? Fire. Yes, perfect. Fire would drive everyone toward Perdido Beach. And it might cover her rear from a sneak attack.

Gaia raised her hands above the cover provided by the fallen tree and began to fire randomly, long, sustained bursts hitting a forest that had experienced no rain since the coming of the FAYZ.

Then Gaia fled, pursued by smoke as fire took hold in the Stefano Rey National Park.