Weakness.
Vulnerability.
“It’s called a train.”
When exactly had Diana started thinking in those terms of weakness and vulnerability? When had Diana stopped feeling she had some duty to Gaia and begun to think of ways to stop her?
Gaia had slung the cooked arm over her shoulder. The bicep was mostly consumed, as was the tender meat of most of the fingers. The thumb still remained untouched.
Diana knew the taste of human flesh. That was the terrible crime for which she had been punished by a God who could see even into the FAYZ. Gaia was that punishment, the curse that now mocked her mother’s horror at cannibalism with jaunty, careless amorality.
“Why won’t you let me go to a doctor?” the red-haired man moaned.
“There’s no doctor,” Diana said. “Where do you think you are?”
“She . . . oh, my God!” the man cried.
“You’ll be better off if you don’t spend too much time thinking about it,” Diana said. “The wound isn’t bleeding any—”
“She’s eating my arm!”
Diana spotted a long stick, an umbrella pole, she thought, part of the wicker mess from the train, perhaps. She hefted it experimentally. It was about six feet long and not too heavy, broken jagged and sharp at one end, brass-bound at the other. A very nice walking stick.
“Stab her with it!” the man hissed.
Diana almost laughed. “You don’t want to attack her.”
“She’s a monster!”
“Yeah. We have monsters here. She’s one. The worst. But you won’t kill her with a stick.”
His face was gray, the look of a man in terrible pain and shock. The look of a man who had lost a lot of blood. But the wound had been cauterized, if not really healed. Gaia didn’t care much about cosmetic things; she hadn’t even completely healed her own face. He would live long enough to feed her again. That’s all Gaia cared about.
“I have a knife in my pack.”
This time, Diana did laugh. “Go ahead: give it a try.”
That hard, cynical laugh brought him up short.
“Are you . . . like her?”
“I’m her mother,” Diana said.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, we haven’t seen him around here much.” Diana liked the stick. It helped her plow ahead through the sand, following in Gaia’s footsteps.
“Who are you people?” It was like he’d been in too much shock to ask these basic questions before now.
“My name is Diana. She’s Gaia. She’s . . .” How to explain Gaia? “Well, not exactly what she looks like. Less girly. More Satan-like. What’s your name?”
“Alex. Alex Mayle. I feel like I’m going crazy. I don’t know what—”
“What were you doing out there?”
“Just trying to get some cool video. You know. YouTubes.”
“Still have your camera?”
“My phone! I have my phone.” With his one hand he managed to draw his iPhone from his pocket. He dialed a number.
“911? Seriously?” Diana laughed.
“There’s no signal.”
“Hmmm. That’s a surprise. Because none of us ever thought of making a phone call to 911 and saying ‘get us out of here.’ Should have thought of that.” It wasn’t that Diana was enjoying this, exactly. But it was a reminder of just how much she had endured, how much she had survived.
Still here, she thought. Still alive. Still sane, mostly.
He opened his camera app and aimed it at Gaia’s back. Then he slid the phone back in his pack. He had to use his knees to hold the pack.
“I’m going to die,” Alex moaned.
“Not yet,” Diana said darkly. “Not until she finds another food source.”
The implication stopped him in his tracks. He hung back, and then Diana heard the sound of his footsteps scrambling away.
Without even looking back Gaia simply raised a hand, and Alex flew through the air to land hard at her feet.
“Leave me alone!” Alex cried up at Gaia.
“I could kill you and carry the nutritious parts with me,” Gaia said. “But that would be harder, carrying all that meat. So you’ll carry yourself until I find better food. If you try to run away, I’ll do something very painful to you. It won’t kill you, but you’ll wish you were dead.”
“What are you?” he begged, rising to his knees. “What are you?”
“I am the gaiaphage,” Gaia said proudly. “I am your . . . your master. Obey me.”
Gaia found that amusing, obviously, as her young face broke out in a grin that she shared with Diana, as though the two of them were coconspirators in dismembering Alex. As though Diana would see the humor in it all.
Gaia walked on, and Diana helped Alex to his feet.
It was strange. The first adult she had spoken to in almost a year. Sometimes she had pictured this moment. The fantasy had usually involved firemen and cops rushing in, offering help and food and comfort. Safety.
But this adult wasn’t here to rescue her. He was just another lost, desperate fool, more scared than she was.
“I just want to go home,” he moaned. He started crying again.
Diana’s stomach clenched with a hunger pain. That familiar pain reached into her memory and dragged out images she could not stand to look at. It was a terrible feeling. So was the fact that she was eyeing the cooked arm and salivating.