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“Ahhhhhhhh!” A cry of loss, a mad tragic cry.
He bent into a backward “C” and howled like an animal.
Suddenly, the FAYZ wall was gone.
Astrid gaped in amazement at a landscape of satellite trucks and cars, a motel, a crowd of people, regular people, adults, behind a security rope, staring.
Little Pete fell on his back.
And in a flash it was all gone.
The wall was back.
And Little Pete was silent.
FORTY-FOUR
THREE DAYS LATER
“HOW IS IT going?” Sam asked Howard.
Howard looked at Orc to answer.
Orc shrugged. “Good. I guess.”
Howard and Orc had been relocated, given a new home. It was one of the few houses in Perdido Beach that had a basement. There were no windows in the basement. No electricity of course, so Sam had left a small light of his own burning there.
The only way in or out of the basement was down a flight of steps from the kitchen. There, at the bottom of the steps, they had nailed two-by-fours across and up and down, forming a thick grid work. The spaces between the two-by-fours was just three inches.
At the top of the stairs the door had been strengthened by having Orc shove a massive armoire against it.
Twice a day Orc would shove the armoire aside. Then he would stump down the stairs and peek inside. Then he would come back up and replace the barricade.
“Was it Brittney or Drake when you went down last?” Sam asked.
“The girl,” Orc said.
“Did she say anything?”
Orc shrugged. “Same thing she always says. Kill it. Kill me.”
“Yeah,” Sam said.
“How long you think we can keep this up?” Howard asked Sam.
It was not a great solution, keeping the undead thing locked in this basement to be guarded by Orc. But the alternative was destroying it. Him. Her. And that felt a little too much like murder for Sam.
Astrid and Edilio had worked for a couple of long days to try and make sense of the disaster that had come to the FAYZ. All the individuals who’d had direct contact with the Darkness, had touched the mind of the gaiaphage, had been used like pawns in a chess match.
Orsay’s power had been subverted. Her empathy and kindness had been turned against her as the gaiaphage filled her dreams with images dr
awn from her own imagination. She had shown kids a path that seemed to lead to freedom but led instead to death.
Little Pete had been tricked into believing he was playing a game. And it was his own powers that had been used to create Nerezza, the gaiaphage’s main player.
Nerezza had guided Orsay and, when the opportunity arose on that last terrible evening, pushed Zil to attack.
Lana still refused to admit that the gaiaphage had been able to tap her own healing powers to bring Brittney and Drake back to life.
