“You didn’t report it?”
Merwin shrugged, heavily this time. “No, ma’am. No one reported me for shooting that man in the neck. Because we were all of us hungry and tired and scared and very, very angry. And the oldest of us was just twenty years old.”
“Sam wouldn’t . . .,” she started to say.
“Oh, well, Ms. Temple, there are genuine saints in this world: I married one. But there aren’t many. I like to think Drake—my grandson, Drake, not that old corporal—I like to hope, anyway, that he found the strength to . . . But he was always a troubled boy. Especially after my son died. The stepfather . . . young Drake’s stepfather . . .” He blew out a breath. “But I don’t know and you don’t know.”
“What happens when we do know?” she asked in a small voice.
“I suppose we’ll behave like a bunch of holier-than-thou hypocrites. Because the alternative is to look at ourselves in the mirror and know that we are capable of dark and terrible things.”
They were quiet on the ride back to the dock. Connie shook his hand.
“Thanks for taking me and for talking with me. That must be a very hard thing to carry all these years.”
The old man smiled, and there was a glint of steel in his eyes. “Not the way you think, though, Ms. Temple. See, what’s hard is knowing I took pleasure in that act of revenge. And knowing if I had to do it all again, I’d still pull that trigger.”
She slowly released his hand and stared, stricken, into eyes that were cold and cruel, as he said, “Dark and terrible things. And the joys they bring.”
EIGHTEEN
27 HOURS, 13 MINUTES
GAIA WAS MOVING faster, almost at a normal walking speed. The leg was healing. It would have healed altogether if she’d been able to sit and focus on it. But the two mutants were on her trail, and in addition to that she had to keep moving to stay ahead of the fire, which had quickly burned to the edge of the forest and merely awaited some encouragement to spread farther.
It had occurred to Gaia that inhabiting a body meant she, too, was vulnerable to smoke and fire. She had run through her mental inventory of powers that would save her from smoke inhalation. Nothing.
At least the pain was under some control now. The music in her ears helped distract her. The song was called “When All the Lights Go Out.” There was a lot of yelling. Gaia decided she liked yelling music best.
She walked straight down a gravel road, counting on the fact that she had a small lead and was in open ground now where she would see Sam and Caine before they caught up to her. They were a manageable threat. What worried her far more was the knowledge that Little Pete was looking at her. She could feel him watching her. And while Nemesis was fading fast, he wasn’t dead yet.
Bodies were definitely a mixed blessing—they kept you alive, they focused power, and they allowed you to move about. But they felt pain, and they could be killed.
What would happen to the great and glorious creature called the gaiaphage if this body died?
The truth was, she didn’t know. She might end up like Little Pete, a disembodied ghost. Or she might actually, truly, die. Cease to exist.
They hungered, these bodies. Constantly. It was like an insistent, nagging voice in her head: Feed me. Feed me now!
She found a dead body by the side of the road, a boy. At first glance he didn’t seem to be injured. But when she used her foot to push him over, she saw a chunk of wood protruding from his back near his spine. He might not even have known it was there, and had simply bled to death as he walked from the lake toward Perdido Beach.
Well, one less to kill.
She quickly stripped off his clothing and put it on. It was filthy and stained with blood, but her own clothing was worse and now too small as well. It might confuse her pursuers. She ate some of his thigh, then quickly moved onward. In a while she would try out her speed again. This slow walking was boring.
She reached the highway just as a yellow school bus half covered in graffiti came rattling toward her. It stopped by the side of the road, and a dozen kids climbed out. They were carrying implements and buckets. Two of them manhandled a wheelbarrow out through the back door.
One of them, a girl with black hair, looked up, saw Gaia, and frowned uncertainly. Other kids stared past Gaia and pointed not at her but at the forest fire, which was certainly generating a lot of smoke. Even here, far from the trees, Gaia could smell it.
Gaia walked straight to the group, who were now heading into the field, tossing what looked like fish heads and bones ahead of them. The fish heads were instantly devoured by seething masses of worms, which then allowed the kids to pass unharmed into the field, dragging their buckets with them.
Gaia pulled out one earbud.
“Better get to work,” a boy said to Gaia.
But the black-haired girl, who had been watching her narrowly, said, “I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t,” Gaia agreed. She didn’t want to alert and panic the others, so she avoided a light show and simply swung a backhand that crushed the girl’s head and killed her instantly.
The bossy boy said, “What the—”
He dodged her first punch; her second one caught him a glancing blow that shattered his arm. He opened his mouth to scream, but he never had the chance. Her hand found his throat and crushed his larynx as easily as crushing a grape.
She tossed his body behind the bus, where it wouldn’t be seen by the kids now moving slowly across the field.
There were ten in all. She followed them at a quick walk, stepping between rows of plants heavy with green pods. She caught up to the nearest girl and punched her once in the back and snapped her spine.