Fear (Gone #5)(55)

He turned away and angrily shouldered Dekka aside.

“You two get it together, because we got problems enough,” Edilio said, and stomped away.

Brianna continued to snore.

Moonlight picked Orc out of a pile of jumbled rock. Astrid wondered if Sam knew that Orc had gone ashore. She wondered if she needed to send word.

No. This was the more important mission. She had to get to Perdido Beach. Maybe Caine and Albert knew what was coming. But maybe not. If the kids in town weren’t prepared they would panic and then they would all be lost.

An image came to mind, unbidden, unwelcome: a picture of kids in absolute darkness walking lost in the desert. They would walk until a hungry zeke, or a coyote, or Drake caught them. And those would be the luckier ones. Most would die an excruciating death of hunger and thirst.

Astrid steered clear of Orc. He was searching for someone or something. It had to be Drake, which could only be a good thing from her point of view.

She tried to think of something other than the image her mind had conjured of slow death by starvation in absolute darkness.

She needed to think.

Darkness wasn’t the end state, was it? Surely something was causing the barrier to darken. The stain had a reason if not a purpose. It meant something. But what?

Most likely it was linked to the gaiaphage, that unknowable evil. The FAYZ’s own personal Satan.

No one knew much about it. Lana didn’t like to talk about it. Little Pete had been in contact with it, manipulated by it. The chimera that called itself Nerezza had been its creature. It had co-opted Caine at one point, or so the story went, but Caine had broken free.

Astrid began to jog, careful to watch the path beneath her feet. As soon as she was well away from the lake she planned to stay just off the gravel road. She wasn’t sure if that was the smart thing to do or very stupid. But she reasoned that anyone looking for her would first check the main roads.

It would take her longer this way. But no one would expect her—of all people—to go overland through rough terrain.

Well, they didn’t know her. In the last four months she had become quite comfortable with rough terrain.

She loped along, glorying in the sense of power from overcoming fear. Yes, it was dark. Yes, evil forces were on the loose. But she would outrun them or outthink them or if necessary outfight them.

If she couldn’t do any of those, then she would endure.

A pang of guilt stabbed her without warning. She should have made her case to Sam and tried to get him to agree. She shouldn’t have just run off on her own.

He would never have agreed.

She was doing the right thing. For once she was deciding to act. Not to manipulate or convince. But to act.

With luck she would reach Perdido Beach by morning.

And with a bit more luck she would be back with Sam by tomorrow night.

Brittney knew what she was to do. Mostly. The god that named itself gaiaphage had told her what she and Drake were to do. But the gaiaphage had not given her the power to keep Drake’s memories as her own. Each time she emerged it was into a situation that might be totally unexpected.

In this case she recognized the crack in the bluff and knew she was hiding from Brianna. But now it was night and that was a surprise.

Almost as big a surprise as the fact that when she peered out she saw Orc looming huge no more than fifty feet away from the opening.

Brittney froze. The coyotes were already as quiet and still as statues.

Orc was slowly laboring up the hill, searching as he went in a steady, methodical way that was like nothing she’d ever seen from her former jailer.

He was meticulously scanning the ground, stomping through bushes, shoving boulders aside. Orc would not find them anytime soon, and the coyotes would show Brittney another hiding place if need be, but there was something disturbing in the way Orc was searching. Methodical. Calm. Dangerous.

The coyotes would be no use against Orc. And Brittney would be helpless. Orc was powerful. He could rip her into pieces. Those massive gravel hands could tear her apart as easily as she might tear a piece of bread.

He couldn’t kill her, or Drake; so it seemed. But even now, as far from her old life as it was possible to get, Brittney felt sick with dread at what Orc could do. She might not feel pain like she once had. But she would feel something.

Orc moved on, lumbering past, a starlit beast. She did not understand why he wanted her, or wanted Drake, but she was sure that was his purpose.

Her hand brushed against a smooth rock face and she felt something wet.

“Whip Hand made blood,” Pack Leader said.

“It’s too dark to see,” Brittney said. “Do you—” No, that was stupid. Pack Leader did not read. But still, he might know something. She didn’t have to ask.

“Rock that lives came from there.” Pack Leader couldn’t point, but he could aim his eyes. Through the gap in the rock Brittney could see what might be a small rowboat. She inched forward, silent, afraid of a massive stone hand reaching down from above. Inch by inch, until she was standing outside of the cave. She stood perfectly still. Listened. She heard the monster moving rocks, but the sound was not close at hand.

The moon shone down on the forlorn rowboat. It had painted trim—possibly green, impossible to tell for sure.

She scanned the boats at anchor, bobbing gently at the end of ropes or in some cases seemingly just drifting randomly. A sailboat caught her eye. It had trim that was very much like that on the rowboat.