The sun was already most of the way across the narrowed sky. Sanjit knew he should break away, run for it. He could run the whole way there. He’d deliver his message sooner and he’d get back sooner and…
Sanjit saw something moving through the brush off at the limits of his excellent sight. Something low and quick, slinking through brush.
Coyotes.
Lana had offered him a pistol, urged it on him. “I don’t know how to shoot,” he’d said, pushing it back.
“Take it or I’ll shoot you with it myself.”
They had kissed after that. Just a hurried kiss in the shadow of the church as Lana moved between injured kids. And he had plastered on his jaunty smile and tossed off a jaunty wave and taken off.
What if he never saw her again?
Mason finished his business. The coyotes were no longer in view. The sun touched the far edge of the remaining sky.
Caine had waited. Patiently, since circumstances had forced patience on him. Lana helped the victims of Penny’s assault.
Quinn was running around getting the morning’s sparse catch brought in and cooked up over a fire in the plaza. Caine recognized that as a smart move. The smell of broiled fish and the soothing sound of a bonfire would help keep kids from rushing off.
Well, some kids, at least.
Now Quinn was ready for Caine.
“Get me out of this,” Caine demanded.
Quinn said, “It’s not so easy. You should know: you’re the scumbag who invented cementing.”
Caine let that go. He had no choice. For one thing, it was true. For another, he was helpless. And finally, he had wet himself. Hadn’t even noticed when it had happened, but somewhere, during one of Penny’s vicious nightmare attacks, he had done it and now it smelled.
All of which left him in a vulnerable position.
“We’ll have to chip it away a little at a time,” Quinn opined. “Try swinging a full-size sledgehammer and someone’s likely to miss and hit your head or wrists.”
He detailed a couple of the fishermen, Paul and Lucas, to begin the job. They had a small, short-handled sledgehammer and a chisel. That had taken some doing, since both were in use as weapons. The kids who gave them up had to be paid. And no one was taking ’Bertos anymore; it was strictly barter.
“Tell me if this hurts,” Paul said, and brought the hammer down on the chisel held by Lucas.
CLANG!
It hurt. The sharp force of the blow translated into a dull pain that Caine felt in the bones of his hands. Not quite as bad as being hit directly by the hammer, but it was close.
He gritted his teeth. “Keep at it.”
Lana came swaggering over, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. There were still injured kids crying, but Caine wasn’t seeing many serious cases left. Dahra Baidoo was with her, helping tend the wounded. Dahra looked a little weird to Caine’s eye, like someone sleepwalking, or a mental patient zoned on meds. But what else was new? Crazy was getting to be the norm. And Dahra had better reason than most—she’d borne the brunt of the bug attack here in town.
Lana stepped beside Dahra, put her hand on Dahra’s head, and for a second hugged it against her shoulder. Dahra closed her eyes briefly and looked as if she was about to cry. Then she scrubbed her face with her hands and shook her head almost violently.
Lucas struck a second blow and a three-inch chunk of concrete fell away.
“Caine,” Lana said.
“Yeah, Lana. Want to make some snide crack involving irony and karma?”
Lana shrugged. “Nah. Too easy.” She knelt down beside Caine and then, feeling weary, sat all the way down, cross-legged. “Listen, Caine. I sent Sanjit to warn Sam about—”
“About the wave of refugees on their way? He’ll figure that out soon enough, won’t he? He can make light.” He glared up at the sky, feeling like it was a personal enemy. “In a couple of hours light will be all anyone cares about.”
“That’s not why I sent Sanjit. I was going to go myself before this latest fiasco. I sent him because I think Diana is in danger.”
Caine’s heart missed a beat. The reaction surprised him. As did the catch in his throat when he said, as coldly as he could, “Danger? You mean more than the rest of us?”
CLANG!
All the while Paul and Lucas were chipping away at the concrete. With each hammer fall Caine winced. He wondered if bones were breaking. He wondered how they would get off the last of the cement—the part attached to his flesh. In between the sudden sharp pain there was a constant dull pain and an infuriating itch.
“I can feel its mind sometimes,” Lana said.
He looked sharply at her. “It?”
CLANG!
“Don’t play dumb, Caine.” She touched her hand to his head, where the punctures of the staples still oozed blood. Almost instantly the pain in his head diminished. But nothing helped when the next blow of the hammer and chisel made him feel as if fingers were being broken.
CLANG!
“Ahhh!” he cried.
“You were with it,” Lana said. “I know you still feel it sometimes.”
Caine scowled. “No. I don’t.”
Lana snorted. “Uh-huh.”
He wasn’t going to argue about it. They both knew the truth. That was something he shared with the Healer: too much up-close-and-personal time with the gaiaphage. And yes, it left scars, and yes, it was sometimes as if the creature could touch the edge of Caine’s consciousness.
He closed his eyes and the nightmare came on like a storm-driven wave. It had been all hunger then. The gaiaphage needed the uranium at the power plant. That hunger had been so huge, so frantic, Caine could still feel it as a stifling, heart-throttling, choking feeling.