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“Caine? She can hurt Caine?” Dekka asked.

Diana nodded. “Probably, yes. And me. Everyone but Lana.”

“Lana?” Astrid pressed.

“Gaia hates Lana. Somehow Lana was able to shut her out. Another thing,” Diana said, carefully avoiding Astrid. “Gaia’s powers are borrowed, or derived, or whatever big Astrid word you’d like to use. They aren’t hers. She said if she kills Sam she won’t have his power anymore. Or maybe it’s just that it’s easier if . . . if Sam is alive; I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“That’s why she didn’t kill him, or Caine, when she might have,” Astrid said. If she could shut Diana down now, she might still be able to manage the conversation. “So, suggestions? Ideas?”

“Astrid,” Diana said. “Little Pete.”

“What about him?” Albert asked.

Diana started to stand up, obviously felt the pain in her battered body, and remained seated. “He’s Nemesis. That’s what Gaia calls him. He’s the one the gaiaphage really fears. That’s why she’s killing everyone: to keep him from being able to take a host body, like she did.”

“Well, I don’t know how helpful that is,” Astrid snapped. “I don’t know how we’d . . . I mean, that’s useless information.” She sounded shrill, even to herself.

Dekka said, “What is Little Pete? Are we sure he still exists? Maybe Gaia’s just nuts.”

Again, every eye was on Astrid. She could feel it. “What about Gaia’s feelings for you, Diana?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Dekka broke it. “Astrid, this isn’t the time for you to be Pete’s protective big sister.”

“I want to know what Gaia feels about Diana,” Astrid shot back. “It might be a vulnerability we can exploit.”

Edilio had said nothing. Now he spoke. “That creature murdered dozens of kids, including Roger. We need to know everything. No secrets, no evasions, no lies.”

Astrid glared at him, but she couldn’t make it work. She ended up turning away.

“Diana’s told us what she knows,” Albert said coolly. “Your turn, Astrid.”

“I threw Petey to his death,” Astrid said quietly. “I did what I had to do; it was the only way to force his hand, to make him destroy the bugs. I killed him once. Now you’re asking me to . . . to . . .”

“We’ve all lost people,” Quinn said softly. “We’ve all been through hell. And we’ve all failed at times. Everyone in this room has scars on their body and worse ones in their . . . well, souls, I guess.”

“We’re a bunch of sheep waiting for the tiger,” Albert snapped. “There’s only one question: are any of us going to walk out of here alive?”

“Maybe you should run back to your island,” Astrid said with a vicious edge. She glanced up to see something she’d never seen before: Edilio, his face transformed by dark anger. She took a step back.

He said, “Talk, Astrid. Now.”

Astrid swallowed hard. She tried to think of something to say and failed. She was not strong enough to say no to him. She felt her resistance crumble. She felt her own surrender. The coolly logical part of her mind noted almost sardonically that Edilio had a superpower after all: being Edilio.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Okay. Little Pete is alive. I can’t explain it; believe me, I wish I could. When I was with Cigar, in the dark, waiting for the end, hearing Cigar scream from what Penny had done to him, Petey talked to me.”

“Your imagination?” Albert suggested.

Astrid shook her head. “I can feel him sometimes. Poor Cigar could see him, a little, at least.”

“Gaia sure thinks he’s alive,” Diana said. “She says he’s weaker being separated from a physical self.”

“So we need Little Pete to pull a Gaia, take a body,” Albert said. “Fine. How do we do that?”

Now it was Edilio’s turn to flinch. Astrid had already followed that line of reasoning to its obvious conclusion; he had not. And now that he understood it, he didn’t like it any more than she did.

Not surprisingly it was Diana, with some of her old snark back, who clarified. “So we’re saying Astrid should tell her little brother to go all exorcist on some sacrificial lamb, then get him or her to kill the kid I gave birth to.”

This was followed by another long silence.

Astrid almost didn’t dare to think, lest someone somehow read her thoughts. Because there was another way. If Caine and Sam should die . . .

She focused to see Edilio making eye contact with her. He gave the slightest of nods.

Yes. He had seen the other path.

The silence in the room was profound. The choices were sinking in. Find a sacrifice for Little Pete. Or kill Sam and Caine.

Still looking at Astrid, Edilio said, “Dekka, Quinn, come with me. I’m getting anyone who can shoot. I’ll put everyone who has a gun into a window or doorway around the town square. We’ll fight her here.”

“Without Sam and Caine and Brianna, too, you won’t win,” Diana said.

“Yeah.” Edilio nodded.

“Listen to me,” Albert said, placating, knowing he was speaking the unspeakable. “None of us likes these choices, but that’s what we have. Right? We have what we have.”

“Maybe,” Edilio said. “But there are things I’ll do, and things I won’t do. I’ll die trying to keep people alive. But I won’t do murder.”

He slung his rifle and marched from the room with Dekka and Quinn in his wake.

SAM AND
CAINE
saw the school bus. It wasn’t a particularly unusual thing, really: the last of the gas was occasionally parceled out to get kids to this, the farthest out of the farming areas.

But there was something too silent about the bus and the field. If the bus had brought kids out here, then they should be seeing them.

They found the first body lying facedown, leg stretched out into the dirt, face on blacktop. Something very, very powerful had smashed the body and then ripped off one leg. The remaining leg wore a red sneaker.

“She’s not that far ahead of us,” Caine said. “She’s probably going straight down the highway.”

“If we run . . .,” Sam said, though he felt too tired to last long running.

“You go right ahead and run. I’ll take the bus,” Caine said.

“Ah. Yeah, that would be better. Have you ever driven a bus?”

Caine shook his head. “No, I have not.”

“Strangely enough,” Sam said, remembering the long-ago moment of terror and competence that had earned him the nickname School Bus Sam, “I have.”

Lana heard the sound of the door opening and someone clearing their throat. Without looking up she said, “I can’t take any more messed-up kids!” She had been running in a sort of desperate relay race, going from person to person in the room, out in the hall, in the room next door, laying on hands, trying to keep the worst hurt from dying, parceling out a minute here, five minutes there. It was working. Except for the two who had died because she hadn’t gotten to them in time. No one else had died. Yet.

The throat clearer at the door turned out to be Astrid. Lana looked sourly at her. “You want something?”

“Do you have a minute?”

“Do I have a minute? Sure, who do you want to have die while we chat?”

Patrick came padding up to Lana and nuzzled her, as though sensing that his master was on the edge.

Lana had a hand each on a boy, maybe twelve, and a three-year-old girl. The boy was burned over half his body, the clothing melted into the bubbled and cooled flesh. The girl had lacerations on her face that would ensure she would never be a pretty girl again unless Lana healed those wounds.

Astrid squatted down in front of Lana, who was herself cross-legged on a big cushion she dragged from casualty to casualty.

Lana had great respect for Astrid’s loyalty to Sam. She had great respect for her intelligence. And she had even come to respect her toughness. She had never quite decided that she liked Astrid.

“The gaiaphage,” Astrid said.

“What about it?”

“Diana says—”

“Is that witch in town? Great. Are you trusting her?”

“She brought us useful information. She’s been with Gaia. Her
daughter
.”

Lana snorted derisively. “There is no Gaia; there’s only the same Darkness there’s been since day one.”

“Diana says she—okay, it—hates you.”

Lana barked out a laugh. “Yeah? The feeling’s mutual.”

Astrid was wearing her patient face as she said, “The gaiaphage can’t reach you anymore. That’s why it hates you.”

“Whatever. Not really my problem right now.”

“The question is, can you reach it if you need to?”

Lana’s face was hard as stone. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because it’s coming. And I’m looking for any weapon we can use.”

“I’m the weapon,” a voice said. Brianna sat up on the couch. Her face was still burned, though was no longer blood red. There were patches that looked almost normal. But one eye was swollen shut.

“You’re half blind, you idiot,” Lana said, but not angrily, affectionately.

Brianna jumped up, wiggled her legs like the world’s fastest tap dancer, shook her arms fast enough to create a breeze.

“Sit!”
Lana roared. To Lana’s amazement, Brianna sat. So did Patrick. “Listen to me, Brianna: that burn is bad, and if I don’t heal it now you may be stuck with a half-melted face and no hair. Do you understand that? After a while it’s a chronic condition, not an injury, and I won’t be able to heal it any more than I can make someone not be ugly.”

“Ugly may be the least of our worries,” Astrid said. “You have any idea how dangerous a creature we’re talking about? It’s Sam, Caine, Dekka, Brianna . . . all rolled into one.”

Lana felt as if the ground was opening beneath her. But also like she had known it would. Like she’d been expecting it for a long time.

She had fended off the evil; she had not defeated it. She couldn’t. She knew that. It had taken all her strength to shut her mind to the Darkness. It felt almost as if the gaiaphage had infected some physical part of her brain and Lana had healed that damaged bit. But the scar tissue remained and was still sensitive to the slightest touch.

She could feel it reaching for her. It had been out there probing for a moment of weakness for a long time. The gaiaphage did not like defiance. It especially did not like successful resistance. It demanded submission.

Now it had at last brought total war to the FAYZ, and Lana couldn’t sit on the sidelines.

Could she? Could she? Please?

In a dull, lifeless voice Lana said, “Help Sanjit give these kids water.”

“I’m not here to—”

“I’m taking five, Astrid,” Lana said, glaring up at her, and Astrid nodded.

Lana’s knees cracked as she stood up, and it was a few steps before she could straighten all the way. She went out into the hallway, past the crying, scared, and traumatized kids lying under blankets on the floor, past Sanjit’s little brothers and sisters, each trying to offer comfort or prayers.

Down the stairs and out onto the long-dead lawn. Here she was shielded from the eyes of lookers, but she could see the ocean. She soaked in the air, which should have been fresh but tasted of fire.

Then she closed her eyes and turned her thoughts to the Darkness.

Hello, Darkness, my old friend
. The words of an old song.
Hello, Darkness
.

The effort was through a space Lana could not see but could feel, manipulating limbs she didn’t have, listening for soundlessness, looking for an object she could only see by looking away.

But then: the contact. The gaiaphage felt her touch. It reacted violently, lashing out, trying to push her away. Sensing a trap.

Lana cried out in pain. No one heard her.

She wept a little—memories, mostly—then wiped the tears away.

She went back inside, felt rather than really saw Astrid’s expectant gaze.

“It’s coming. But it’s hurt. It’s trying to heal. It’s coming straight down the highway.”

“How soon?” Astrid asked.

“It can be killed, I think. It thinks so, anyway,” Lana said, in a wondering whisper. Her hand moved reflexively to the automatic pistol still stuck in her belt. “It’s afraid.”

“Edilio’s setting up an ambush.”

“No!” Lana said furiously. “Do it now. Now! Kill it now while it’s weak. If it heals that body, we’re all dead.”

Lana grabbed Astrid by both shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Listen to me. I had a chance to kill it once and it beat me. This is a second chance. There won’t be a third. Kill it. Kill it! Tell them all, whatever it takes, Astrid. Kill it!”

“There she is!” Caine said. He was in the front seat of the bus, which Sam was driving with painstaking care, weaving across the highway.

Gaia was a quarter mile away, just passing a pair of burned-out cars. She was dragging what looked a lot like a human leg. The foot wore a tattered red sneaker.

“Floor it!” Caine said.

“She’ll hear us,” Sam countered.

“Look again. She has earbuds in. We’re only about two miles from town. Now or never, surfer dude. Floor it! Floor it!”

Sam did. The engine didn’t exactly leap to respond. It accelerated at a slow, stately pace, only gradually picking up speed. Caine watched the speedometer needle.

Twenty.

Twenty-five.

Thirty.

Sam weaved madly around an overturned van, and the bus squealed on two wheels.

Thirty-five.

“She doesn’t know we’re here; hit her,
hit
her!”

Forty.

The distance was eaten up in a rush.

Thirty-five.

“What are you doing?” Caine demanded. He was gripping the chrome pole with white fingers.

“I don’t know!” Sam yelled. “It’s not me!”

The engine sputtered. Coughed. And suddenly they were freewheeling.

“We’re out of gas!”

The bus slowed but did not stop.

Fifteen miles an hour and a hundred feet left. Gaia was smack in the middle of the road.

The engine caught! It found a last sip of gas and the bus jolted forward, and the instant before it reached Gaia she leaped nimbly aside.

The bus seemed to be moving in slow motion now. Caine saw Gaia twist, her face older, no longer quite a little girl, her eyes mad with fear and fury.