Fear (Gone #5)(120)

They were a stab in her heart when she just could not take any more, when she just could not start to feel any more. Too much. She couldn’t switch suddenly from one despair to a different despair.

Dekka stood behind Sam with her arms crossed, almost as if she were hiding. Quinn and Lana stood a little apart, just marveling at the sight of the outside world, but having as yet no faces to connect with.

“We’re monkeys in a zoo,” Sam said.

“No,” Astrid said. “People like monkeys. Look at the way they look at us. Imagine what they’re seeing.”

“I’ve been picturing it since the beginning.”

Astrid nodded. “Yeah.”

“You want to know what they see? What my mother sees? A boy who fired light from his hands and tried to incinerate a baby,” Sam said harshly. “They saw me burn a child. No explanation will ever change that.”

“We look like savages. Filthy and starved, dressed like street people,” Astrid said. “Weapons everywhere. A girl lying dead with a rock crushing her brains.” She looked at her mother and oh, there was no avoiding her mother’s look of … of what? Not joy. Not relief.

Horror.

Distance.

Both sides, parents and children, now saw the huge gulf that had opened up between them. Astrid’s father seemed small. Her mother looked old. They both were like ancient photographs of themselves, not like real people. Not as real as her memories of them.

Astrid felt as if their eyes were looking through her, searching for a memory of their daughter. Like they didn’t want to see her, but some girl she had long since ceased to be.

Brianna came zooming up, a welcome distraction that caused silent faces on the other side to form round circles with their mouths: Ooh. Ahh. And hands to point and cameras to swivel. Brianna gave a little salute and a wave.

“She’s ready for her close-up,” Dekka said dryly.

“Is it bright in here, or is it just me?” Brianna said. Then she drew her machete, whirled it at ten times human speed, stopped, sheathed it again, and executed a little bow to the baffled and appalled onlookers. “Yes. Yes: I will play myself in the movie. The Breeze is way beyond special effects.”

Astrid breathed for what felt like the first time in a long while. She was thankful Brianna had broken at least some of the tension.

“By the way, back to business: they’re headed into the desert,” Brianna announced to Sam. “A happy little crew, Mom and daughter and Uncle Whip Hand. I got a little too close and that baby nearly buried me under about a ton of rock. That is one bad baby.”

Brianna nodded, satisfied. “That can be my tagline. ‘That is one bad baby.’”

“No, no,” Dekka said. “Just: no.”

Astrid smiled, and her mother thought it was meant for her and smiled back.

“I saw someone recording it,” Sam said. “Me burning that … that creature. You know what they’ll see? You know what people out there will think?”

Astrid knew he was jumping out of his skin. She could see—anyone could see—the look of horror on Connie Temple’s face every time she looked at her son.

“Son,” singular, for Caine had taken one long look at his mother, turned, and walked away, back to town.

“You’ve been afraid of this for a long time, Sam,” Astrid said in a low voice. “You’ve been afraid of being judged.”

Sam nodded. He looked down at the ground, then at Astrid. She had expected to see sadness there. Maybe guilt. She almost cried out with relief when she saw the eyes of the boy who had never backed down. She saw the eyes of the boy who had first stepped forward to fight Orc and later Caine and Drake and Penny.

She saw Sam Temple. Her Sam Temple.

“Well,” Sam said, “I guess they’ll think what they want to think.”

“It’s getting dark out there,” Dekka said. “When night comes, we’d better get Penny out of there. Bury her. Everyone who shows up stares at—”

Dekka fell silent, because Sam was moving. He walked purposefully to the spot where Penny’s body lay, her head crushed beneath a rock, like some grotesque parody of the Wicked Witch of the East.

Cameras tracked Sam’s movement.

Eyes—many of them hostile, condemning—traced his every step.

Sam looked straight at the cameras. Then he looked at his mother. Astrid held her breath.

Then Sam systematically, thoroughly, incinerated Penny’s body. Until nothing but ash was left.

Connie Temple stood still as a statue, refusing to look away.

When Sam was finished, he nodded once at his mother, turned his back, and walked over to Astrid. “She will not be buried in the plaza with good kids who died for no good reason. If we’re looking for people to bury, we’ll find what’s left of Cigar and Taylor.”

Lana shook her head just slightly. “I can’t say for sure that Taylor is dead. Or that she’s alive.”

Sam nodded. “That’s the kind of thing all those people out there are going to have a hard time understanding. But anyway, there they are, and you know what? We still have kids to feed and a monster to kill.” He reached his hand toward Astrid. “You ready to go?”

Astrid looked past him, over his shoulder, to her mother’s worry-etched face. Then she took Sam’s hand.