Fear (Gone #5)(71)

TWENTY-FIVE

12 HOURS, 40 MINUTES

SINDER WEPT AS she and Jezzie ripped up their vegetables. It was all over. Their hard work, almost done now. This was the final harvest.

Their little dream of helping to make things better for everyone was at an end. And like all failed hopes it seemed stupid now. They’d been idiots to hope. Idiots.

This was the FAYZ. Hope led to a kick in the face.

Idiots.

They filled plastic trash bags with carrots and tomatoes. And cried silently while Brianna stood watch over them, pretending not to notice.

It was hard for Orc to tilt his head back and look up at the sky. His rocky neck just didn’t like to bend that way. But he made the effort as the sun, with shocking speed, was swallowed by the western edge of that toothed hole in the sky.

Straight up, over his head: blue sky. The clear blue sky of a California early afternoon. But below that sky was a blank, black wall. He was only a few hundred feet away from it. He could walk over and touch it if he wanted.

He didn’t want to. It was too … too something. He didn’t have a word for it. Howard would have had a word for it.

Orc was buzzing with a weird kind of energy. He hadn’t slept. He had searched through the night, sure that Drake was out here, sure that he could find him. Or if not find him, then at least be here when he showed up.

Then he would rip Drake apart. Rip him into little pieces and eat the pieces and crap them out and bury them in the dirt.

Yeah. For Howard.

No one cared Howard was gone. Sam, Edilio, those guys: they didn’t care. Not about Howard. They just cared that something bad was happening. Someone had to care that Howard was dead and gone now. And would never come back.

Orc had to care, that was who. Charles Merriman had to care that his friend Howard was gone.

People didn’t know it, but Orc could still cry. They all figured he couldn’t.... No, that wasn’t true; they didn’t figure anything. They never saw anything but a monster made out of gravel.

He couldn’t blame them.

The only one who saw past that was Howard. Maybe Howard used Orc, but that was okay, because Orc used him, too. People did that. Even people who really liked each other. Good friends. Best friends.

Only friends.

Orc was walking a pattern, back and forth. He walked along from almost the dome to as far as the dock was, then maybe a hundred yards farther out, and back and forth, and another hundred yards out. He’d gone all the way to the far end of the lake and back. But something told him Drake wouldn’t go all the way around like that.

No, no, not Drake. Orc knew Drake a little from when Drake was running things for Caine back so long ago in Perdido Beach. Back when Drake was just a creep, but a regular human creep.

And he’d known Drake in a way while he and Howard had been his jailers. He’d spent a lot of hours listening to Drake rant and rave.

It was Orc’s fault Drake had ever gotten away.

Drake could be tricky, sure, but he wasn’t like Astrid or Jack or one of those real smart kids. He wouldn’t have some big plan. He would just hide until he saw a way.

A way to do what? Orc didn’t know. Sam and the others hadn’t told him anything about it. Just that Drake had killed Howard and let the coyotes eat him. And that he was out loose.

Orc kept his eyes down for the most part. Easier that way. Plus he was looking for something: a footprint, maybe. Coyote prints if he could find them. But even better would be Drake’s footprints.

He’d heard all about how you couldn’t kill Drake. You could smash him or cut him up into little pieces and he’d still put himself back together.

Well. That might discourage most people. But while a drunken Orc wore out pretty easy, a sober, determined Orc had plenty of time and plenty of energy. He wouldn’t mind just taking Drake apart over and over again. And he didn’t feel tired. He felt more awake all the time.

Orc was walking in the gloomy shadow of a rock bluff. There were cracks all in those rocks, and he had decided now to check in every one. One by one. Every crack. Under every rock.

Orc froze. Was that… Yeah, that was a footprint. Most of a footprint. The ground was hard, and the only reason the print showed at all was that a gopher or whatever it was that dug holes up here had dug out a bit of fresh dirt.

In that dirt was half a footprint. A bare foot, not a shoe.

Orc stared down at it. He placed his own foot beside it. It made the print seem even smaller. It seemed awful small to be from Drake. Drake was a pretty big dude. This was more like a little kid, or a girl.

He could make out three toes: the little ones. The toes pointed down toward the water.

Orc followed the direction with his gaze. Weird, the light was, weird. The shore of the lake looked strange. Something not right.

Then he was distracted by the sight of Sinder and Jezzie working away in their garden. And there was Brianna, watching him actually, when she should have been watching over Sinder and Jezzie.

He raised a massive arm to wave at Brianna and seconds later she was beside him.

“Hey. Orc. Trade jobs with me. Sam has me babysitting the weepy gardeners there. You could watch them.”

“No.” He shook his head.

Brianna tilted her head, a little like a bird. Orc remembered her, too, from when he first met her and she was just coming down from Coates with Sam. She’d gotten pretty full of herself since those days.