“Is Sam there?”
“I hope so,” Astrid said fervently. “But anyway, Dekka and Brianna are there, or will be soon, and Lana will heal Brianna.” It struck Astrid that just yesterday she’d snarked to Sam about Brianna being their difficult child. Without that child they would all be dead now.
“Orc is coming with us to protect us on the way. If we walk fast, and we help each other out, we’ll be there by morning.”
“We have to bury the people who got killed,” a little boy said.
“Yes, we do,” Astrid said softly. “But not tonight.”
“My sister’s dead,” the boy said. “She’s burned up.”
“Your brothers and sisters and friends want you to live,” Astrid said, her voice quivering with emotion. “We have to live. Later we can bury people, but right now, tonight, we have to live.”
In the end, three kids stayed behind. Astrid didn’t have the energy or the certainty to compel them. And she was fairly sure that she herself, and her little band of wanderers, would also be dead before they ever reached Perdido Beach.
There would be no meeting with Connie Temple. It seemed Astrid had been wrong: it was not time to plan for after. It was still time to run, to cower, to beg for life.
To fight.
A tent pole stood stark, its surrounding nylon all burned away. Astrid looked for something, anything, and found nothing. So she bit the hem of her shirt, ripped at the small tear, and with some difficulty tore off a six-inch-wide swatch of fabric.
She yanked out several strands of her hair, twisted them into a knot with the fabric, and jammed it onto the tent pole like a pathetic flag.
It would have to do.
Sam and Caine reached the lake, their lungs screaming for air, muscles twanging with exhaustion. Neither was fit for what had turned out to be an hour-long run punctuated by pratfalls and scrapes.
As they pelted down the slope they could see that it was too late. The devastation was total.
Sam fell to his knees. “Astrid! Astrid!”
There was no answer.
“Give us some light, Sam,” Caine said grimly.
“Astrid!”
“Hey, keep it together, surfer dude, you’re no good to her freaking out.”
Sam got to his feet again, but it was all he could do to stand up. The houseboat was a hull, improbably still floating, but burned down to the waterline. She was dead.
She was dead. The monster had killed her.
“Hey: I said, turn on some light!” Caine yelled, and shook Sam by both shoulders. “Light!”
Sam dragged himself back to reality. The smell of cooked grease and smoking tires was in the air. The fires burned low, consuming the last of their grisly fuels. The lake itself was black. Sam focused and formed a ball of light.
He moved the light up in the air, ten, twelve feet, then sent it drifting across the settlement, like a weak searchlight. Burned cars, burned tents. Burned bodies.
Sam rushed to the nearest body. No, too short to be Astrid.
“You don’t want to do that, man. Because if it is her you don’t want to see it.”
It bordered on compassionate. At another time Sam might have appreciated it. Now he stared down at a kid who looked like a plastic toy soldier that had been put in the microwave.
Caine directed him to move the light out over the water. A sailboat—no, half a sailboat—rocked crazily in the gentle swell.
Suddenly, there was movement. Sam and Caine both spun toward the sound. A person, walking.
“Who’s that?” Caine demanded.
No answer.
“I count to three and if I reach three you die,” Caine said tersely.
“Don’t!”
There was something odd about the voice. It sounded too deep. Caine grabbed Sam’s floating light and brought it closer.
Sam and Caine both stared.
“You’re an adult!” Sam said.
“Who are you?” Caine demanded. “How did you get here? Is the barrier down?”
The man was a wreck, that much was clear. He had a stump of an arm with dangling bits of meat half healed. No surgeon had done that.
“What’s your name?” Sam asked.
“Alex.”
“Where did you come from, Alex?”
“I . . . I fell through.”
Both stared. It was weird. Both still felt some automatic deference to adults, but at the same time it was clear that they were the ones in charge here. This particular adult was not exactly ready to take charge.
“Hey, Alex, you need to start talking,” Caine said. “What do you mean you fell through?”
“The goddess . . . she drew me through the barrier so that I might feed her.” He clenched his remaining fist, but the expression on his face was almost reverential.
Sam and Caine exchanged a glance. They’d both seen their share of kids in shock, kids deranged by trauma. This was their first adult. Their first adult of any kind in a very long time, and he was crazy.
“What happened here? Did you see?” Sam asked.
The man pointed to the bluff overlooking the east end of the lake and the settlement. “She came from there. The goddess of light. She swept down upon them . . .”
“Gaia?” Caine asked.
“You know her?” Alex asked eagerly. “Do you have food?”
“Did anyone survive?” Sam asked, his voice catching, afraid to hear the answer.
“Yes, some. Children. They went off . . .” He searched around, then nodded. “That way. I saw some trying to get a body from the lake. I think maybe they drowned. Judgment day. Hey? Like judgment day.”