Fear

None too gently he pushed them aside and ran on through, up past the Pit, up to the gravel road, up to where he could hear snarling and a gun being fired.

Sanjit plowed into him and for a second Sam didn’t know who he was. He held him out at arm’s length, said, “Stay out of the way,” and took off for the scene of slaughter.

That he was too late was apparent. The coyotes weren’t killing at this point; they were feeding and dismembering.

He raised his palms and a beam of searingly intense green-white light shot forth. The beam caught part of a body and the head of a coyote. The coyote’s head ballooned like a time-lapse video of a burning marshmallow.

Sam swept the beam up the road to where coyotes were already racing away, dragging bodies or pieces of bodies along through the dirt. He caught a second coyote in the hindquarters, which erupted in flame. The coyote howled in pain, fell, tried to keep running with just its two front legs, and lay down on its side to die.

The rest were out of range by then, some even abandoning their meat.

Sanjit came running up to stop beside a heaving, panting Sam.

A boy, maybe twelve, unrecognizable but alive and crying pitiably, lay in two pieces in a bush off the road.

Sam took a deep breath, marched to him, took careful aim, and burned a neat hole in the side of his head. Then he widened his beam and played it over the corpse until there was nothing but ashes.

He shot an angry look at Sanjit. “Anything you have to say about that?”

Sanjit shook his head. He couldn’t form a complete thought. Sam wondered if he’d be sick. He wondered if he himself would be.

“If it was me,” Sanjit began, and ran out of words.

That blunted Sam’s anger. But only a little. This was his fault. It was his job to protect.... Why hadn’t he sent Brianna off months ago to exterminate the last coyotes? Why hadn’t he thought to send a patrol up the road to meet the inevitable refugees?

He now faced the task of cremating the rest of the dead. There was no way he could let brothers and sisters and friends see what the coyotes had left behind. These mangled, barely recognizable slabs of meat could not be what loved ones carried with them in memory for the rest of their lives.

“Why are you here?” Sam demanded as he began his grisly work. “Did you bring these kids here?”

“Lana sent me.”

“Explain.” He didn’t know Sanjit well. Just knew that he had pulled off something close to a miracle in flying a helicopter from the island to Perdido Beach.

“Bad stuff in Perdido Beach,” Sanjit began. “Penny somehow managed to cement Caine. They’re going to try to free him, but last I saw Caine he was crying and having his cemented hands beaten on with a hammer.”

Sam’s reaction surprised him: his first feeling was worry, and even outrage, on Caine’s behalf.

Caine had been an enemy from the start. Caine was responsible for battle after bloody battle. He had come close to killing Sam on more than one occasion. Maybe, Sam reflected, he was reacting to the fact that Caine was, after all, his brother.

But no. No, it was that Caine was strong. And however much of a power-mad jerk he was, Caine would have tried to keep some kind of order. He would have—probably—worked to avoid panic. Always for his own reasons, but still…

“So, Albert’s in charge,” Sam said thoughtfully, and burned a foot resting almost comically upright.

“Albert bailed,” Sanjit said. “Quinn talked to him as he was heading to the island with three girls.”

This was worse news than the incapacitation of Caine. A lot worse. There were three major powers in the FAYZ: Albert, Caine, and Sam. Three people whose combination of power and authority and skills might have kept things together for a few days or a week until … until some kind of miracle happened.

Albert, Caine, and Sam. That was the foundation of the stability and peace of the last four months.

“Did you see Astrid?” Sam asked.

“Astrid? No. I don’t even know if I would recognize her; I’ve only seen her once, months ago.”

“She went to warn you guys about the stain. And offer my … my light-hanging services.”

“Well, I guess I’m relieved that I’m not the only one off on a wild-goose chase.”

Sam looked sharply at him. There was some steel in this kid. He had been the last one to run from the coyotes. And judging by the fat pistol in his hand and the discarded weapons lying along the road, he’d been the only one to really give them a fight.

And he hadn’t quibbled when Sam did the hard but merciful thing.

“Sanjit, right?” Sam said. He held out his hand.

Sanjit took it. “I know who you are, Sam. Everyone does.”

“Well, you’re with us for now.” He jerked his head up at the sky.

“I have a family,” Sanjit said. “I have to get back.”

“Brave is good,” Sam said. “Stupid is another thing. Those coyotes don’t need light to find you. You’re a friend of Lana’s, right?”

Sanjit nodded. “Yeah. We live at Clifftop with her.”

“The Healer has you living with her?” he asked incredulously. “I’m learning all kinds of things today.”

“I guess she’s my girlfriend,” Sanjit said.

Sam fired at what looked like a chunk of hamburger wearing a part of a T-shirt.

“If you’re with Lana, then your family is as safe as anyone. You getting killed won’t help them. You’re with us now. Just one thing: talk freely to Edilio, but no one else. Clear? If kids hear that Albert has bailed…” He shook his head. “I thought better of Albert than that.”