Gone Series Complete Collection (50 page)

“You’ll die for this, Quinn.”

Quinn swallowed hard, and this time took careful aim.

That was too much for Drake. With a furious snarl he ran from the alley.

Sam was slow getting up. To Quinn, he looked like an old man standing up after slipping on the ice. But he looked up at Quinn and performed a sort of salute.

“I owe you, Quinn.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get him,” Quinn answered.

Sam shook his head. “Man, don’t ever be sorry you don’t want to kill someone.” Then, spotting Brianna, he shook off his weariness and said, “Breeze? With me. Quinn, anyone comes back toward the day care, you don’t have to shoot them, all right? But fire into the air so we know.”

“I can do that,” Quinn said.

Sam ran toward the plaza, confident that Brianna would catch up quickly. She was with him in seconds.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Everyone’s putting on a show of complying with Caine’s terms. If we’re lucky, Bug will report back that we’re obeying before Drake gets back to tell Caine that we’ve retaken the day care.”

“You want me to go after Drake?”

“Use those fast feet. Find him if you can, but don’t try to fight him, just tell me.”

She was gone before he could add, “Be careful.”

Sam broke into a trot that seemed painfully slow compared with the way Brianna moved. The kids, the normals, more than a hundred of them, all who could be rounded up on short notice, were milling around at one end of the plaza. Sam was counting on Caine not knowing exactly how many kids were in Perdido Beach, or how many were in town as opposed to hiding in their homes. He needed to make it look convincing, but Caine’s demand left room for some few to still be hidden away with Edilio.

Astrid and Little Pete, Dekka and Taylor and the rest of the Coates Freaks were entering the church, protesting loudly, making a show of it.

Sam strode to the fountain and jumped up on the side. “Okay, Bug, I know you’re watching. Go tell Caine we’ve done what he asked. Tell him I’m waiting. Tell him if he’s not a coward, to come here and face me like a man.”

He jumped down, ignoring the stares of the hundred or more kids huddled scared and vulnerable in the plaza.

Had Bug seen what went down in the day care? He had certainly heard the shots. Hopefully he would interpret them as coming from Drake himself, or as target practice.

And just as dangerous, would Drake be able to warn Caine? He should find out soon. Either way, Sam doubted that Caine could resist a face-to-face confrontation. His ego demanded it.

Sam’s walkie-talkie crackled. He had the volume turned down low and had to hold it to his ear to hear Astrid.

“Sam.”

“Are you okay in the church, Astrid?”

“We’re both okay. We’re all okay. The day care?”

“Safe.”

“Thank God.”

“Listen, get everyone in there to lie down. Get them under the pews—that may give them some protection.”

“I feel useless here.”

“Just keep Little Pete calm, he’s the wild card. He’s like a stick of dynamite. We don’t know what he might do.”

“I think a vial of nitroglycerin would be a more apt analogy. Dynamite is actually quite stable.”

Sam smiled. “You know it always gets me hot when you say ‘apt analogy.’”

“Why do you think I do it?”

Knowing that she was right there, just fifty feet away, smiling sadly, scared but trying to be brave, sent a wave of longing and worry through him that almost brought tears to his eyes.

He wished Quinn had been able to eliminate Drake. But he suspected his friend would not have survived with his soul intact if he had. Some people could do things like that. Some couldn’t. That second group were probably the luckier ones.

“Come on, Caine,” Sam whispered to himself. “Let’s do this.”

Brianna blurred up next to him. “Drake went to his house. You know, the place where he was staying.”

“Is Caine there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good job, Breeze. Now go into the church. Go slowly so Bug can see you if he’s watching.”

“I want to help.”

“That’s what I need you to do, Brianna.”

She trudged off, making a show of it. Sam was alone. The normals huddled at the far end of the plaza as Caine had ordered. The freaks—Sam hated using the word, but it was hard not to—were in the church.

And now it came down to him and Caine.

Would Caine come?

Would he come alone?

Sam glanced at his watch. In just a little over an hour, it wouldn’t matter.

From not far enough away, he heard a coyote howl.

FORTY-FOUR

01
HOURS
, 06
MINUTES

“THEY’RE DOING
IT,”
Bug yelled as he burst through the door.

“All right,” Caine said. “Showtime. Everyone load up. Into the cars.”

There was a scramble for the door. Chaz, Chunk, Mallet, and a much-abashed Frederico, who had finally freed himself from duct-tape bondage, all raced for the station wagon in the garage. Diana, oozing suppressed rage from every pore, followed. Panda grabbed Lana by the arm and pushed her toward the door.

Only then did Caine realize someone was missing. “Where’s Howard?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Panda admitted. “I didn’t see him leave.”

“Useless worm. Without Orc, he’s dead weight,” Caine said. “Forget him.”

The second car in the garage was a luxury car, an Audi with a sunroof. Panda jumped behind the wheel, and Diana rode shotgun. Caine took the backseat for himself.

Panda pushed the automatic garage door remote control. Both doors rose.

Both cars lurched forward. The Subaru wagon promptly crunched into the side of the Audi.

Chaz was driving the wagon. He rolled down his window. “Sorry.”

“Great start,” Diana said.

“Go,” Caine ordered tersely.

Panda accelerated into the street, keeping his speed to a prudent twenty-five miles per hour. The wagon stayed a block back.

“Bada bum bada bum bada bum bum bum.” Diana began humming the
William Tell Overture.

“Knock it off,” Caine snapped.

They had gone two blocks when Panda slammed on the brakes.

A dozen coyotes streaked across the street.

Caine rose up through the sunroof and yelled, “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

Pack Leader stopped and glared with yellow eyes. “Whip Hand gone,” he snarled.

“What? What happened at the day care?”

“Whip Hand go. Pack Leader go,” the coyote said.

“No way,” Caine said. To Diana, he said, “They’ve got the day care. What do I do?”

“You tell me, Fearless Leader.”

Caine slammed his fist down on the roof of the car. “Okay, Pack Leader, unless you’re a coward, follow me.”

“Pack Leader follows the Darkness. All others follow Pack Leader. Pack is hungry. Pack must eat.”

“I’ve got food for you,” Caine said. “There’s a plaza full of kids.”

Pack Leader hesitated.

“It’s easy,” Caine said. “You can come with me and take as many kids as you want. Get every one of your coyotes. Bring them all. It’s a buffet.”

Pack Leader yipped a command to his pack. The coyotes circled back toward him.

“Follow us,” Caine cried, caught up in it now, eyes wild and excited. “We go straight toward the plaza. You go straight at the kids there. It will work perfectly.”

“The fire fist is there?”

Caine frowned. “Who? Oh. Sam. Fire fist, huh? Yes, he’ll be there, but I’ll take care of him.”

Pack Leader seemed dubious.

“If Pack Leader is frightened, maybe someone else should be pack leader.”

“Pack Leader no fear.”

“Then let’s kick,” Caine said.

“Oh, man,” Howard said. “Oh God, oh God, what happened to you, Orc?”

He had slipped out of Caine’s hideout and made his way to the house he had once shared with Orc. He found his protector there, sitting on a couch that had broken beneath Orc’s weight, collapsed in the middle. Empty beer bottles were everywhere.

Orc held up a game controller. “My fingers are too big to work this thing.”

“Orc, man, how did this . . . I mean, man, what happened to you?”

Orc’s face was still half his own. His left eye, his left ear and the hair above it, and all of his mouth were still recognizably Orc. But the rest of him was like some slumping statue made of gravel. He was at least a head taller than he had been. His legs were as big around as tree trunks, his arms as thick as fire hydrants. He had burst through his clothing, which now hung from him and provided the barest degree of modesty.

When he shifted in his seat, he made a sound like wet stones.

“How did this happen, dude?”

“It’s a judgment on me,” Orc said flatly.

“What’s that mean, man?”

“For hitting Bette. It’s God, Howard. It’s His judgment on me.”

Howard fought the urge to turn and run screaming. He tried to look at Orc’s one human eye but he found himself looking into the other eye, a yellow oyster beneath a brow of stone.

“Can you move? Can you stand up?”

Orc grunted and stood much more easily than Howard expected.

“Yeah. I still have to be able to get up to pee,” Orc said.

“What happens when it spreads to your mouth?”

“I think it’s done spreading. It stopped a few hours ago, maybe.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Nah. But it itches when it’s spreading.” As if to illustrate, he used one of his sausage-sized stone fingers to scratch the line between his gravel nose and his human cheek.

“Heavy as you are, man, you must be pretty strong just to stand up.”

“Yeah.” Orc dipped his hand into the cooler by his feet and came up with a can of beer. He tilted his head back and opened his mouth. He squeezed the top of the can and it blew out an eruption of liquid and foam. Orc swallowed what landed in his mouth. The rest dribbled down his face onto his rocky chest. “Only way I can open ’em now. My fingers are too big to pull the tab.”

“What are you doing, man? You just been sitting here drinking beer?”

“What else am I gonna do?” He shrugged his slag heap shoulders. His human eye was either crying or teared up. “Thing is, I’m almost out of beer.”

“Man, you have to get back in the game. There’s a war coming. You need to be in on it, making your statement, you know?”

“I just want to get some more beer.”

“Okay, then. That’s what we’ll do, Orc. We’ll get some more beer.”

Stars filled the sky.

The moon glinted off the steeple.

A coyote howled, a wild ululation, a ghostly cry of despair.

In his mind Sam saw the mutants in the church. He saw Edilio concealed with a handful of trusted kids in the smoked-out ruins of the apartment building. He saw Quinn on the roof with the machine gun he might use or not. He saw the kids milling and lost and scared at the south end of the plaza. And Mary and the little kids still in the day care. And Dahra in the church basement awaiting casualties.

Drake had retreated. For now.

What would Orc do?

Where was Caine?

And what would happen in one hour when the clock ticked and marked exactly fifteen years since Sam had been born, linked though he hadn’t known it to a brother named Caine?

Could he beat Caine?

He had to beat Caine.

And somehow he had to destroy Drake as well. If—when—Sam stepped outside, took the big jump, poofed, he didn’t want to leave Astrid to Drake’s mercy.

He knew he should be scared of the end. Scared of the mysterious process that would, it seemed, simply subtract Sam Temple from the FAYZ. But he wasn’t as worried for himself as he was for Astrid.

Less than two weeks ago she had been an abstraction, an ideal, a girl he could check out furtively, but without ever revealing his own interest. And now she was almost all he thought about as his own personal clock ticked down toward a sudden and possibly fatal disappearance.

How would Caine play it, that’s what the rest of his mind turned over and over. Would Caine walk into town like a gunslinger in some ancient cowboy movie?

Would they stand at thirty paces and draw?

Which would be more powerful? The twin with the power of light, or the twin with the power to move matter?

It was dark.

Sam hated the dark. He had always known that when the end came for him it would be in the dark.

Dark and alone.

Where was Caine?

Was Bug watching him even now?

Would Edilio do what Quinn could not?

What surprise would Caine have up his sleeve?

Taylor appeared standing a few feet away. She looked like she’d just come from an interview with a demon. Her face was white, her eyes wide, glittering in the light of streetlamps. “They’re coming,” she said.

Sam nodded, braced his shoulders, consciously slowed the sudden sprint of his heart. “Good,” he said.

“No, not him,” Taylor said. “The coyotes.”

“What? Where?”

Taylor pointed over his shoulder.

Sam spun. They came at a run, full out from two directions, racing straight for the unprotected crowd of children.

It was like some classroom nature film. Like watching as a lion pride attacked a herd of antelope. Only this herd was human. This herd had no reservoir of lightning speed.

Helpless.

Panic swept them. They surged toward the middle, kids at the edges seeing their doom approach on swift paws.

Sam broke into a run, raised his one good hand, looked for a target, yelled. But then, the loud roar of a car engine.

He skidded to a halt, spun again. Headlights raced down the street past the church. A dusty SUV. It slammed into the curb surrounding the plaza, jumped the sidewalk, and came to a shuddering stop that sent up clods of damp dirt.

Behind it other cars, racing.

Screams as the coyotes neared the human herd.

Sam stretched out his hand and green fire lanced toward the left-side swarm of coyotes.

He couldn’t fire at the other column, they were blocked by panicky, running children, all now racing toward Sam for protection and so making it impossible for him to beam.