The concrete blocks were gone like they had never existed, though the hands of those who had been trapped longest were masses of pale, dead, sloughing skin.
Caine was quick. He backed away, turned, and ran for the building. Diana seemed torn, uncertain; then she bolted after Caine.
Little Pete picked up his game. The block had disappeared a split second before smashing down on the game. It was dirty and had a piece of grass sticking out of it now, but it still worked.
Drake stood rooted. The gun was still in his hand, smoking from the bullet he had fired into Sam’s knee.
He blinked.
He raised the gun and fired at Little Pete. But his aim was wild. His aim was off because of the blinding flash of greenish-white light.
Drake’s arm, the entire arm holding the gun, burst into flame.
Drake screamed. The gun fell from his melting fingers.
The flesh burned black. The smoke was brown.
Drake screamed and stared in stark horror as the fire ate away at his arm. He broke and ran, the wind fanning the flames.
“Good shot, Sam,” Edilio said.
“I was aiming at his head,” Sam said, gritting his teeth through the pain.
Lana knelt beside Sam and laid her hands on the bloody mess of his knee.
“We have to get out of here,” Sam managed to say. “Forget me, we have to run. Back to…Caine will…”
But that was the last of his strength. It felt as if a black hole was swallowing him up. He swirled down and down into unconsciousness.
THIRTY-FIVE
86 HOURS, 11 MINUTES
“WHERE ARE WE?” Sam woke up all at once and was embarrassed to find that he was being half dragged down the road by Edilio and a kid he didn’t know.
Edilio stopped. “Can you stand?”
Sam tested his legs. Lana’s healing of his leg had been complete. “Yeah. I’m fine. Feel okay, actually.”
He looked back and realized they had been leading a sort of ragtag parade. Astrid and Little Pete, Lana holding a boy’s hand while her dog bounded into the woods to chase a squirrel. Quinn walked by himself along the shoulder of the road, shunned and ashamed. And there were almost two dozen kids, the liberated freaks from Coates.
Edilio saw the look on his face. “You got yourself a crowd of followers, Sam.”
“Caine hasn’t come after us?”
“Not yet.”
The group of them was straggling down the road, bunched here and there, spread out elsewhere, wandering, undisciplined.
Sam winced when he saw the hands of the Coates kids. The concrete had leeched all the moisture from their skin. Their skin was white and loose, hanging in tatters in some cases, like the tattered bandages of some horror movie mummy. Their wrists revealed red circles where the concrete had rubbed the flesh bloody. They were filthy.
“Yeah,” Edilio said, knowing what he was seeing. “Lana’s going through them one at a time. Healing them. She’s amazing.”
Sam thought he heard something extra in Edilio’s voice. “She’s cute too, huh, Edilio?”
Edilio’s eyes went wide and he started blushing. “She’s just…you know…”
Sam slapped his shoulder. “Good luck with that.”
“You think she…I mean, you know me, I’m just…” Edilio stammered his way to a stop.
“Dude, let’s see if we can stay alive. Then you can ask her out or whatever.”
Sam surveyed the scene. They were on the Coates road, passing the iron gate, still many miles from Perdido Beach.
Astrid noticed that he was awake and hurried her pace. “About time you woke up,” she said.
“Well,” he played along with her bantering tone, “usually after I get shot and then fire lasers out of my hands, I like to enjoy a brief nap.” He caught Lana’s eye and mouthed the word “thanks.”
Lana shrugged as if to say “no biggie.”
“Caine won’t let this stand,” Astrid said, turning serious.
“No. He’ll come after us,” Sam said. “But not just yet. Not until he’s come up with a plan. He’s lost Drake. And he’s gotta be worried that we have all these kids with powers who hate his guts.”
“What makes you think he won’t just come after us?”
“Think about when he first came rolling into Perdido Beach,” Sam said. “He had a plan. He trained his people and rehearsed.”
“So we go back to Perdido Beach?” Astrid asked.
“Orc is still there, and a few others. There may be trouble with them.”
“We need to get some food for these kids,” Edilio said. “That’s first.”
“Three or four miles to Ralph’s,” Sam mused. “Can they make it?”
“I guess they have to,” Edilio said. “But they’re scared, too. I mean, you got some messed-up kids here. What they been through and all?”
“We’re all scared, there’s not much we can do about that,” Sam said. But he didn’t like the sound of that. It was glib. It was meaningless: sure, they were all scared, but there was something they could do about it.
In fact, they had to do something about it.
Sam stopped in the middle of the road and waited for the others to catch up.
“Listen,” he said. He raised his hands to get their attention, calm them down, but they had seen what happened when Sam raised his hands. They flinched and seemed about ready to dart off the road and into the woods.