Orc and Jack emerged from the van and Edilio said, “You get some sleep, Jack?”
“A little.”
“A little is all anyone got.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“Jack, I know you don’t want to fight.”
“I just—”
“I don’t care,” Edilio said flatly. “It’s no longer your choice. I’m drafting you.”
“You can’t—” Jack started to say.
“The one person I care most about is floating dead in a lake,” Edilio said. “Pretty soon everyone will be dead. That includes you, Jack. Everyone you know.”
Jack’s defiance withered as Edilio met his eyes and didn’t let go.
“Good,” Edilio said. “Here’s the way this goes.”
He laid out his plan, which hinged entirely on Gaia not spotting the ambush. Diana had told them all she could about her daughter, so they knew Gaia was nearsighted. Maybe that would help. Maybe, too, the fact that Gaia only had bits and pieces of human knowledge, so she hadn’t seen a hundred ambushes laid in a hundred movies and TV shows.
It was a pitiful plan. Gaia would burn through them like a hot knife through butter. They would be forced to run for it and they wouldn’t make it. Any who did survive would be caught in a panicky cross fire in the town plaza, where ten shooters hid in windows and doorways.
Well, ten minus however many had run off.
Edilio walked up the road to the very edge of Dekka’s gravity cancellation. He checked the clip in his automatic rifle. He slowly slid back the bolt to see the round already chambered. He stroked the safety with his index finger.
Where were Sam and Caine?
Where was Brianna? Would she be able to come?
How had Edilio ended up as bait?
That idea sent a wave of nausea through him. Bait. Like a body floating in a lake.
Mother Mary, take care of him. Please take him to heaven and let him be happy.
Tears filled his eyes. No. No time for that.
A figure appeared in the middle distance, walking down the road, red in the last slanting rays of sunset. Now two figures. One walked in front of the other.
Well, at least now he knew what had happened to Caine. Had he gone over to her side?
They had little enough chance against Gaia. Against Gaia and Caine together?
Well, Edilio thought, I’ll be seeing you soon, Roger.
He wished he had his rosary with him. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen.
La hora de nuestra muerte. The hour of our death. . . .
Edilio raised his automatic rifle and fired six shots at Gaia.
Sam had endured pain before. This was not as bad as the whipping Drake had given him, but it was bad. And each time he hauled himself another few inches down the road it made him cry out. He couldn’t even be sure what had been broken. But he knew that he could not feel one leg and the other tingled like a banged funny bone. And he felt a twisting, grinding agony in his back and shoulder.
He didn’t even know how long he had been like this. There were periods of unconsciousness of unknown duration. He seemed to fade in and out, nightmare sleep followed by pain-racked awakening.
At this rate he would get to Perdido Beach . . . never. He had at least a mile to go just to get to Ralph’s, six inches at a time. He would die of hunger or thirst long before he reached help. Gaia had turned Caine, or maybe just tortured him into submission. It didn’t matter which, because if Caine helped her, or even if Caine just stayed out of the fight, the odds would grow impossible.
“Unh!” he cried as he pulled himself forward.
He could get up on one foot and hop, maybe that would be faster, but if he fell, the pain would be awful.
Maybe he shouldn’t think ill of Caine. He had no idea what agony Gaia could cause his brother. He was unwilling just to risk a fall onto a broken leg; maybe Caine feared something worse.
Astrid. At least Gaia would not stretch out her death. Gaia would kill everyone as quickly and efficiently as she could. She would burn the town down to do it. Force everyone from hiding and kill them with a light like his own.
“Unh!”
He was useless, here at the end, useless. The great and powerful Sam Temple, crawling like a mutilated insect down a road as the sun set out over the ocean. The final sunset of the FAYZ.
It was unfair. They had all believed the end was in sight. To be slaughtered like those poor kids at the lake, all of them just cut down, crushed. All those lives . . .
Astrid.
He’d actually had fantasies of the two of them walking out of this place hand in hand. He had run endless scenarios, wondering how they could stay together outside, out there.
And she had been worrying about the aftermath, how they would all be seen by the world. Well, maybe this was better. Maybe it would just be better to—
No, to hell with that. No, they deserved to live. They all had paid and paid and paid their dues a thousand times over. They deserved to live.
Someone.
He looked up, flinching, fearing it was the gaiaphage.
The creature before him was bizarre, a golden-skinned, eerily smooth-looking thing.
“Taylor?”
Her eyes blinked. They had changed, somehow. She had changed. She still had that impossible golden skin, but her hair . . . and her mouth was different, somehow more human.
“Taylor! Don’t bounce! Stay!”
Did she understand? Lana must have finally found a way to heal her. Although she was no longer the old Taylor who had flirted and teased him so often: unreliable, flighty, gossipy Taylor.