Fear

Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.”

“Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said.

“In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.”

He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation.

Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.”

She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?”

“She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—”

BOOOOM!

The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand.

Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth.

In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.”

He looked toward the south. From where he was standing he couldn’t exactly see Perdido Beach. There were no lights except for his eternal Sammy suns, and they would be behind curtains at night.

Down there in town his brother, Caine, was … doing what exactly? That was the question. Had this been Caine’s idea, this booby trap? Had he heard or seen the explosion and was he now rejoicing, believing Sam had been killed?

What would Caine do if he thought Sam was dead? Would he come against the lake? Could Albert stop him?

Caine wouldn’t dare attack the lake as long as Sam was alive. As long as Sam was alive and could join forces with Albert, Caine would be careful.

But he wondered how long it would be before Caine moved against Albert and Sam. Would Caine really let Diana have his child and stay with Sam?

It did occur to Sam for just a fleeting moment that Caine might not be the one who had taken the missiles. But there was really only one other possibility. A ridiculous possibility.

Ridiculous.

No, Caine had the missiles. Which meant the four-month-long peace was coming to an end. It was dark, and no one was looking at him, so Sam didn’t feel too guilty about the fact that he was smiling.

Cigar felt hands touching him.

Maybe. Maybe hands. Maybe the paws of a monster who would sink terrible claws into him and rip the flesh from his arm.

He screamed.

Maybe. He couldn’t be sure. Had he ever stopped screaming?

He heard a far-off wail, a hopeless, helpless sound. Was it coming from him?

“I’ve never been able to grow an organ back,” Lana’s voice said. “Last time I tried… Let’s just hope you don’t end up with whip eyes.”

He knew her voice. He knew she was there beside him. Yes. That was her touch on him. Unless she was the creature that smiled before chewing your fingers off and then ate its way up your arms, blood spurting around its grinning, needle-toothed mouth, laughing at his pain, chewing him, ripping until he screamed and screamed and his screaming throat became a roaring animal, a lion’s mouth roaring out of his throat....

“Look! Something’s happening.”

Cigar didn’t recognize that voice. A boy’s voice, wasn’t it?

“Who are you?” Cigar cried out.

“It’s Lana.”

“Who are yoooooou?”

“I think he means me. It’s me, Sanjit.”

There were snakes in Cigar’s dried-blood eye sockets. He could feel them. They were writhing like mad.

“Nerves,” Sanjit said.

“You might be feeling something,” Lana said.

“Aaaaahhhhhh!” Cigar cried. He tried to claw at his eyes but his hands were pinned. Helpless. He’d had his arms chewed off, hadn’t he? He didn’t have arms anymore. So how had he clawed the roaches out of his eyes if he had no arms? Answer that, Bradley. His real name, Bradley.

Answer that.

And if you don’t have arms how did you light those cigars, those big fat cigars and puff until the ends were glowing red and so hot and then plunge those red-hot tips into the empty holes of your eye and then shriek in agony and beg God, “Kill me, kill me, kill me”?

“The nerves are regrowing. Unbelievable,” Sanjit said.

“He’s trying to claw his eyes again,” Lana said.

“Yeah,” Sanjit agreed. “This can’t ever happen again. That witch has to be stopped.”

“It was Caine’s doing,” Lana said angrily. “He knows what Penny is like. She’s a mental case. She’s evil. She was always twisted, but after her injuries … something snapped in that girl.”

“My eyes!” Cigar screamed.

Something. A bar of faint, distant light. Like the earliest hints of sunrise, like the blackness was just a little bit less black.

“Something is happening,” Sanjit said. “Look! Look!”

“My eyes!”

“Not yet, dude, but something is growing. Little white balls, no bigger than BBs right now.” Sanjit put his hand on Cigar’s chest and dug his ripping, tearing, stiletto fingers into Cigar’s heart and…

No. No. That wasn’t real. That wasn’t real.

The light bar, that faint glow was growing. Cigar stared at it, willing it to be real. He needed something to be real. He needed something to not be a nightmare.