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Drake, the Whiphand, was in a sense, Lana’s creation. The Darkness had used her to give Drake his whip. And he had used her to give Drake a second life. It was no wonder, Sam thought, that Lana refused to acknowledge that.
Lana had spent days healing the wounded. And then she and Patrick had walked out of town. No one had seen her since.
Sam and Astrid had talked honestly about their mistakes. Astrid berated herself for being arrogant and dishonest, and too slow to understand what was happening.
Sam knew all too well how he had failed. He had been terrified by his own weakness and had reacted by mistrusting his friends. He had become paranoid and finally, indulging in self-pity, had run away. Abandoned his post.
But the gaiaphage had underestimated Brittney. It had needed her power, her immortality as well as Lana’s healing power, to bring Drake back from the grave.
Brittney had fought him every step of the way. Not knowing what she was fighting she had nevertheless resisted Drake’s takeover of the body they shared. Even when the gaiaphage had filled her shattered mind with visions of her dead brother, Brittney’s faith and willpower had kept the demon she sensed inside her from escaping completely.
The gaipahage had wanted to break the will of the kids of Perdido Beach. It had wanted them to give up, to abandon hope. Only then would the kids of the FAYZ become its slaves.
It had failed in the end. But it had been a matter of milliseconds. Had Zil managed to delay Dekka just a little longer, or had Drake not been slowed by Edilio’s heroism, the children who jumped with Mary would have died.
That would have been the fatal blow for the struggling little society of Perdido Beach.
They had survived, but barely.
And maybe they had done better than just survive: Astrid’s laws were in effect. They’d been voted in by all the kids assembled the day after Mary’s Big Jump, as Howard had dubbed it.
It was a bitter thing, to Sam, to think that after all she had done, Mother Mary was to be known for her final madness. Sam hoped she really was alive, somehow, on the outside.
There would be no grave in the plaza for Mary. There was one now for Orsay.
They might never know whether that brief glimpse of a world just outside the FAYZ wall was real or just a last trick of the Darkness. The one person who might know was talking even less than usual: Little Pete had fallen into something almost like a coma since he’d held his shattered game player. He would eat. But that was all he would do.
If Little Pete died, God only knew what would happen to this universe that he had created. And if kids ever really guessed how powerful Little Pete was, and yet how vulnerable, how long would he be left to live?
“I asked how long you think we can keep this up?” Howard repeated.
“I don’t know, man,” Sam said. “I guess we take it day by day.”
“Like everything,” Howard agreed.
There came the faint sound of Drake’s voice. A muffled howl of fury.
“He does that when he gets control,” Howard said. “That and a lot of threatening. Mostly, ‘I’ll kill you all!’ That kind of thing. I’m kind of getting used to it.”
“It wants us to be afraid. It wants us to give up,” Sam said.
Howard formed his sly grin. “Yeah, well, we don’t want to do that, do we?”
“No. No, we don’t.”
But that mad, screaming voice, even muffled as it was, still sent a chill up Sam’s spine.
“You guys need anything?” Sam asked.
Howard answered. “You mean, aside from a hamburger, a peach pie, a bucket of ice cream, a DVD, a TV, a phone, a computer, and a one-way ride out of crazy-town?”
Sam almost smiled. “Yeah. Aside from that.”
He went back outside. The street was empty. The unreal sun shone high overhead. He doubled over and coughed. The flu that was still going around had finally caught up with him.
But he was alive. And that was all you could ever ask from the FAYZ.
