Lies (Gone #3)(8)

The smell had kept everyone awake through the rest of the night.

And now, in the hour before dawn, their own faces smeared with grease, they’d brought him a leg. The left one, Caine guessed. A token of respect. And an unspoken desire that he join them in their crime.

As soon as Bug left, Caine began trembling.

Hunger was a very powerful force. But so were humiliation and rage.

Down in Perdido Beach the kids had food. Not much, maybe, but Caine knew that the threat of starvation had receded for them. They weren’t eating well in Perdido Beach. But they were eating much better than the kids at Coates.

Everyone who could have defected from Coates already had. Those who were left were kids with too many problems, too much blood on their hands….

It was down to Caine and Diana, really. And a dozen creeps and losers. Only one was any real help in the event of trouble—Penny. Penny, the monster bringer.

There were days when Caine almost missed Drake Merwin. He’d been an unstable mental case, but at least he’d been useful in a fight. He didn’t make people think they were seeing monsters, like Penny. Drake was the monster.

Drake wouldn’t have stared at this…this thing on the table. This all-too-recognizable object, charred and blackened. Drake wouldn’t have hesitated.

An hour later, Caine found Diana. She was sitting in a chair in her room, watching the sunlight’s first rays touch the treetops. He sat on her bed. The springs creaked. She was in shadow, almost invisible in the faint light, nothing but the glitter of her eyes and the outline of a hollow cheek.

In the dark, Caine could still pretend that she was her old self. Beautiful Diana. But he knew that her luscious dark hair was brittle and tinged with rust. Her skin was sallow and rough. Her arms sticks. Her legs unstable pins. She didn’t look fourteen anymore. She looked forty.

“We have to give it a try,” Caine said without preamble.

“You know he’s lying, Caine,” Diana whispered. “He’s never been to the island.”

“He read about it in some magazine.”

Diana managed an echo of her old snarky laugh. “Bug read a magazine? Yeah. Bug’s a big reader.”

Caine said nothing. He sat still, trying not to think, trying not to remember. Trying not to wish there had been more to eat.

“We have to go to Sam,” Diana said. “Give ourselves up. They won’t kill us. So they’ll have to feed us.”

“They will kill us if we give ourselves up. Not Sam, maybe, but the others. We’re the ones responsible for turning out the lights. Sam won’t be able to stop them. If not freaks like Dekka or Orc or Brianna, then Zil’s punks.”

The one thing they still had at Coates was a pretty good idea of what was going on in town. Bug had the ability to walk unseen. He was in and out of Perdido Beach every few days, sneaking food for himself, mostly. But also overhearing what kids were saying. And supposedly reading torn magazines he didn’t bother to sneak back to Coates.

Diana let it go. Sat quietly. Caine listened to her breathing.

Had she done it? Had she committed the sin herself? Or was she smelling it on him now and despising him for it?

Did he want to know? Would he be able to forget later that her lips had eaten that meat?

“Why do we go on, Caine?” Diana asked. “Why not just lie down and die. Or you…you could…”

The way she looked at him made him sick. “No, Diana. No. I’m not going to do that.”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Diana whispered.

“You can’t. We’re not beat yet.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to miss this party,” Diana said.

“You can’t leave me.”

“We’re all leaving, Caine. All of us. Into town to be taken out one by one. Or stay here and starve. Or step outside as soon as we get our chance.”

“I saved your life,” he added, and hated himself for begging. “I…”

“You have a plan,” Diana said dryly. Mocking. One of the things he loved about her, that mean streak of mockery.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I have a plan.”

“Based on some stupid story from Bug.”

“It’s all I’ve got, Diana. That, and you.”



Sam walked the silent streets.

He felt unsettled by his encounter with Orsay. And unsettled, too, by his encounter with Astrid in his bedroom.

Why hadn’t he told her about Orsay? Because Orsay was saying the same thing Astrid was saying?

Let it go, Sam. Stop trying to be all things to all people. Stop playing the hero, Sam. We’re past all that.

He had to tell Astrid. If only to have her walk him through it, make sense of this thing with Orsay. Astrid would analyze it clearly.

But it wasn’t that simple, was it? Astrid wasn’t just his girlfriend. She was the head of the town council. He had to officially report on what he had learned. He was still getting used to that. Astrid wanted laws and systems and logical order. For months Sam had been in charge. He hadn’t wanted to be, but then he was, and he’d accepted it.

And now he was no longer in charge. It was liberating. He told himself that: it was liberating.

But frustrating, too. While Astrid and the rest of the council were busy playing Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers, Zil was running around unopposed.