Not real, he thought as he moved past the slug.
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Maybe, he said to himself, as he shifted one foot forward.
Maybe none of it is real. Except for this foot. And that foot.
One then the other.
Duck felt the breeze of the first bullet.
He zoomed upward as fast he could. Which was not very
fast.
The second bullet was farther from its target.
Duck yelled, “Hey! Stop it!”
“Freak! Freak!” voices cried up at him.
“I didn’t hurt anyone!” Duck yelled back.
“So why not come on down here?” Turk shouted. Then,
like he had said something brilliant, he accepted a high five
from some chubby kid with a bottle of booze in one fist.
Maybe fifty faces were gaping up at Duck, orange highlights and black shadows in the light of the bonfire. Halloween colors. They looked strange. Little ovals with staring eyeballs
and open mouths. He could barely even recognize them
because this wasn’t how you looked at people, from way up
high, them with their necks craning.
He saw the barrel of the gun, and the face behind it, one
eye open, the other squinted shut. Aiming. At him.
“Get him!” Zil encouraged. “You get the first steak if you
can hit him.”
“Mike!” Duck yelled. “You’re a soldier, dude. You’re not
supposed to—”
Duck saw the muzzle flash. He heard the bang.
“Why are you shooting at me?” Duck cried.
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Careful aim. A muzzle flash. A loud crack.
“Stop, man, stop!”
“You’re missing him,” Zil yelled.
“Let me have that stupid gun,” Hank demanded. He
jumped out of the convertible and ran toward Mike.
It may have been Hank’s jostling that saved Duck’s life.
The third bullet whizzed by.
Hank grabbed the gun away.
Meanwhile, Duck had risen another thirty or forty feet,
higher than he’d gone before. He was up to a giddy height
now. He could see the roof of town hall. He was higher than
the steeple of the church had been. He could see the school
in one direction, Clifftop in the other. He could see far out
to sea.
He was probably a hundred feet up now, ten stories. And
up here was just a bit more of a breeze blowing off the water,
pushing him gently, like a loose helium balloon, back inland.
Too slow.
Hank fired. A miss. But a close one.
It was insane. He was rising, rising, but too slow, too slow,
and Hank had all the time in the world to take careful aim,
to line up the back sights with the front, to settle them just
below his target, and squeeze off a round.
Duck tensed, awaiting the bullet. Wondering if it would
hit his leg, his arm, and merely cause horrible pain. Or strike
his heart or head, and finish him.
Hank squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
Hank threw the gun at Mike in disgust.
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Mike frantically reloaded, but in the time it took him to
slide in more bullets, Duck had floated and drifted higher
and farther.
Hank fired. By the time the bullet had come close to Duck,
gravity had slowed it. Duck could see it fly past his head. He
saw the moment it reached its apogee. And then he watched
it drop back toward the ground.
Duck threw up as he drifted over the church. Sacrilege,
probably. But his stomach was empty, so not much rained
down on the shattered building below.
Duck floated on. Away from the horror unfolding in
the plaza. They were going to kill Hunter. Hunter, who had
begged for his help.
Nothing he could do: he went where the wind blew. And
nothing he could have done—except get shot—if the wind
blew him the other way.
“Superpowers,” he said to himself, “don’t always make you
a superhero.”
She had lost herself again.
She kept coming and going. One minute there, the next
gone.
Sometimes she was inside herself. Inside her own brain.
Other times she was somewhere else, looking at herself from
a distance.
It was so sad seeing what had become of Lana Arwen
Lazar.
Then she would be there, right inside her own lolling head,
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looking out through her own red-rimmed eyes.
She walked now. Two feet. Walking.
Seeing the stone walls beside her.
Danger ahead—the gaiaphage felt it, and so did she. So did
she. Had to be stopped.
Something Lana was supposed to get. Something she had
dropped.
She stopped. The gaiaphage didn’t know what to call it.
And for a moment Lana couldn’t make sense of the images in
her head. The flat-steel surfaces. The cross-hatched grip.
“No,” she begged the creature.
“No, I don’t want to,” she cried as she knelt.
Her hand groped for it. Fingers touched it. It was cold. Her
index finger curled around the trigger. If she could just raise
it to her own head, if she could . . .
But now she was walking, and the weight was in her hand,
so heavy. So terribly heavy.
She reached the truck, still locking the mine shaft entrance.
She crawled onto the hood, sobbing. Slid through the shattered window, indifferent to the glass as it cut her palms and knees.
Why couldn’t she stop herself? Why couldn’t she stop this
hand, that foot?
The light of the stars overhead was blinding as she stepped
into the mouth of the mine shaft.
The enemy there, the danger.
Lana knew the enemy’s name. She knew what the enemy
would do. When the gaiaphage had fed, he would be ready
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for Dekka. More than ready.
But not yet.
“Don’t,” Lana said to Dekka. “Don’t.”
Dekka froze. There was a look of horror on her face.
The other one stood to one side. He carried a gun. Lana
knew his name, too. Edilio. But he was not the danger.
“It’s Lana,” Dekka said.
“Lana, run to us,” Edilio said. He held out his hand.
Lana felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness. A sob that
filled the world. It was as if that outstretched hand was all she
could see, all she could feel.
She wanted so badly to reach for it.
“Come on, Lana,” Edilio urged.
Tears filled Lana’s eyes. Her head moved slowly, side to
side. “I don’t want to,” her voice said.
Lana lifted the gun.
“I don’t . . . ,” Lana whispered.
She took aim. Inside her head a scream a scream a
scream.
“Lana, no!” Dekka cried.
Lana didn’t hear the shot. But she felt the gun buck in her
hand. She saw the jet of flame.
And she saw Edilio fall straight back.
She saw him land on his back.
His head bounced as he hit.
/> Lana shifted her aim. Sights lined up on Dekka who
seemed paralyzed in shock.
Lana squeezed the trigger.
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Click.
Click.
Dekka raised her hands. Her expression was furious, deter
mined. But she did not use her power. Her eyes flickered. She
lowered her hands and rushed to Edilio.
Dekka knelt over Edilio. She gasped. Pressed her hand
against the wound in his chest. Trying to hold the blood in.
“Lana. Lana,” Dekka pleaded with tears running down her
cheeks. “Help him.”
Lana stood confused. The gun wasn’t working. Why wasn’t
it working? The question was not hers, the thought not her
thought.
The gaiaphage was confused. Why did the weapon not kill?
It did not understand. So much it knew. But not everything.
The gun slipped from Lana’s fingers. She heard it clatter
on stone.
“Lana, you can save him,” Dekka pleaded.
I can save no one, Lana thought. Least of all myself.
Lana took two steps back.
The last thing she saw was Dekka rushing to Edilio.
Lana returned to her master.
FORTY
38 MINUTES
T H E S U N W A S sinking into the sea. Shadows were lengthening in Perdido Beach. The plaza was full of kids, far more kids than Zil could possibly feed with one deer.
It worried him at first. But then he realized the simple solution: Those who would take part in the sacrificing of Hunter would eat. Those who would only watch, would not.
Those who laid hands on Hunter would be a part of Zil’s
group. They would have demonstrated their loyalty beyond
all doubt. Their bridges would be burned. He would own
them, body and soul after that.
They would be lifetime members of the Human Crew.
A big fire had been built in the dried-out fountain. Someone clever had raided the hardware store and had rigged a spit onto which big hunks of the deer, chopped into slabs with
an ax, were roasting.
The smell was amazing.
Turk had grabbed spray cans and tagged the fountain and
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some of the sidewalks with Lisa’s stylized “HC” logo.
“How we doing this, man?” Antoine asked.
“Doing what?” Zil answered.
“Hunter. How we doing it?”
Hunter had recovered a little from the hit to the head. He
had tried to free his hands, but Hank had smacked him good.
Cheers had risen from some of the crowd. Others had looked
queasy.
“Yank,” Turk said, and made a comic hanging motion.
“Where? Is what I mean, man,” Antoine said. He was slurring
badly, almost to the point of not being intelligible. Drunk.
“There.” Lance pointed to the tumbled-down church.
“Where the door used to be? It makes an arch. You can
pass a rope up through that hole. One end around Hunter’s
neck, right? The other end can be really long. You can extend
it all the way down through the square, so you could have,
like, a hundred kids pulling on it.”
He frowned and glanced back and forth. “Pull him up,
then you can tie the rope off to one of the trees, around the
base.”
Zil considered Lance curiously. It seemed strange to find
this popular kid getting involved, actually coming up with
a plan for an execution. Weird. Lance had none of Hank’s
seething, crazy rage. None of Turk’s desperate toadying. He
wasn’t a pathetic burn-out like Antoine.
“That’s a good plan, Lance,” Zil said.
Hank’s eyes glittered dangerously.
“If we’re going to do this, we better get on with it,” Turk
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said. “Astrid’s a freak-lover. And that Brianna. She could be
bringing Sam.”
“Sam’s busy. Besides, I’m not afraid of Sam. We have all
these kids with us,” Zil said, sounding far more confident
than he felt. “But yeah, let’s get this thing going. Hank. Lance.
Start stringing the rope.”
Zil climbed up onto the trunk of the convertible. “Everybody! Everybody!”
He had everyone’s attention almost instantly. The crowd
was hungry, desperate, and very impatient. Several kids had
tried to rush at the meat and grab some right from the flames.
They’d had to be beaten back by Hank and a group of kids
he’d enlisted as bodyguards.
“The food is ready,” Zil announced to loud cheers.
“But we have something more important to do, first, before
we can eat.”
Groans.
“We have to carry out some justice.”
That earned a silent stare until Turk and Hank started raising their hands and yelling, showing the crowd how to act.
“This mutant, this nonhuman scum here, this freak
Hunter . . .” Zil pointed, arm stretched out, at his captive.
“This chud deliberately murdered my best friend, Harry.”
“Na troo,” Hunter said. His mouth still didn’t work
right. Brain damage, Zil supposed, from the little knock
on his head. Half of Hunter’s face drooped like it wasn’t
quite attached right. It made it easier for the crowd of kids
to sneer at him, and Hunter, yelling in his drooling retard
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voice, wasn’t helping his case.
“He’s a killer!” Zil cried suddenly, smacking his fist into
his palm.
“A freak! A mutant!” he cried. “And we know what they’re
like, right? They always have enough food. They run everything. They’re in charge and we’re all starving. Is that some kind of coincidence? No way.”
“Na troo,” Hunter moaned again.
“Take him!” Zil cried to Antoine and Hank. “Take him,
the murdering mutant scum!”
They seized Hunter by the arms. He could walk, but only
by dragging one leg. They half carried, half marched him
across the plaza. They dragged him up the church steps.
“Now,” Zil said, “here is how we’re going to do this.” He
waved his hand toward the rope that Lance was unspooling
back through the plaza.
An expectant pause. A dangerous, giddy feeling. The smell
of the meat had them all crazy. Zil could feel it.
“You all want some of this delicious venison?”
They roared their assent.
“Then you’ll all grab on to the rope.”
A dozen or more kids leaped forward to seize the rope.
Others hesitated. Glanced toward the church. Glanced toward
Hunter being held by Zil’s crew.
Lance had tied a noose.
Hank now pushed it down over Hunter’s head and tightened it around his neck.
But there was a disturbance in the crowd. Someone was
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pushing through. Kids were yelling at the intruder. There was
shoving. But finally Astrid appeared, disheveled, flushed,
furious. She wasn’t hauling a wagon anymore. And she didn’t
have John with her, which was good, Zil thought: Mary and
John were popular. A lot of these kids had little brothers and
s
isters at the day care.
Astrid was a different story. She was tied to Sam, and a
lot of kids thought she was too full of her own self. Plus, she
had her creepy little brother with her. And no one liked him.
Rumor had it that he was some kind of powerful freak himself. But was too retarded to do anything much about it.
Waste of time keeping a retard alive when humans were
starving.
“Stop this!” Astrid cried. “Stop this now!”
Zil looked down at her. He was almost surprised to realize
that he was not intimidated by her. Astrid the Genius. Sam’s
girlfriend. One of the three or four most important people in
the FAYZ.
But Zil had the power of the crowd behind him. He felt it
in his heart and soul, like a drug that made him all-powerful.
Invincible and unafraid.
“Go away, Astrid,” he said. “We don’t like traitors here.”
“Oh? And how do we feel about thugs? How do we feel
about murder?” She was really very pretty, Zil noticed. Much
hotter than Lisa. And now that he was taking over . . .
“We’re here to execute a murderer,” Zil said, pointing
at Hunter. “We are bringing justice in the name of all normals.”
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“There’s no justice without a trial,” Astrid said.
Zil grinned. He spread his hands. “We had a trial, Astrid.
And this chud scum was found guilty of murdering a normal.
“The penalty,” he added, “is death.”
Astrid turned to face the mob. “If you do this, you’ll never
forgive yourselves.”
“We’re hungry,” a voice cried, and was immediately echoed
by others.
“You’re going to murder a boy in a church?” Astrid
demanded, pointing toward the church. “A church? In God’s
house?”
Zil could see that those words had an effect. There were
some nervous looks.
“You will never wash the stain of this off your hands,”
Astrid cried. “If you do this, you will never be able to forget
it. What do you think your parents would say?”
“There are no parents in the FAYZ. No God, either,” Zil
said. “There’s just humans trying to stay alive, and freaks
taking everything for themselves. And you, Astrid, are all
about helping the freaks. Why? I really wonder why?”
He was starting to genuinely enjoy this. It was great fun to
see pretty, smart Astrid looking helpless.
“You know what I think, people?” Zil said. “I think maybe
Astrid has some powers she hasn’t told anyone about. Or
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