Mind swirling, crazy, not even afraid now, just . . .
Memories flashed like a jerky video. That day when he fell
off a pony at his fifth birthday party.
That time he ate the whole pie . . .
His mom. So pretty. Her face . . .
Dad . . .
The pool . . .
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He stopped falling. Something had stopped him at last.
Too late, he thought.
Can’t fall through to China, Duck thought.
Well, Duck thought, I guess I did want to be a hero.
And then Duck stopped thinking anything at all.
FORTY-SIX
C A I N E S T O O D I N darkness.
Sam’s light was gone.
There was a soft, slurry sound. Like rushing water but
without water’s music.
Caine stood in darkness as the sound died slowly away.
And now, silence as well as darkness.
Diana. He would never save her now. He might survive,
but for the first time in his life, Caine knew that his life, without Diana, would be unbearable.
She had teased him. Abused him. Lied to him. Manipulated him. Betrayed him. Laughed at him.
But she had stuck by him. Even when he had threatened her.
Could what they had really be described as love? He’d
blurted it, that word. But were either of them capable of that
particular emotion?
Maybe.
But no longer. Not now. Up above, up on the surface, she
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was dead or close to it. Her blood seeping into the ground.
“Diana,” he whispered.
“Am I still alive?”
At first Caine thought it might be her voice. Impossible.
“Light,” Caine said. “I need light.”
There was no light. For what seemed like an eternity, no
light. The voice did not speak again.
Caine sat in the dark, too beaten to move. His brother
curled in a ball. Dead, or wishing he was. And Diana. . .
Quinn fought panic as he descended the irregular shaft Duck
had cut. The rope felt thin in his hands. The walls of the vertical shaft scraped his back and sides as he descended. Rocks kept falling on his head.
Quinn knew he was not brave. But there was no one left.
Something was wrong with Brianna. She was doubled up on
the ground, clutching her stomach and crying.
Quinn didn’t know what was happening down below. But
he knew that if Sam and Caine didn’t bring Lana back up out
of there, there would be too many deaths for Quinn to even
think about.
Had to do this.
Had to.
He reached the bottom of the shaft and felt his legs swing
freely. He lost his grip and fell the final few feet.
He landed hard, but without breaking anything.
“Sam?” Quinn whispered, a sound that died within inches
of his mouth.
He fumbled for the flashlight in his pocket. He snapped the
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light on. His eyes had adjusted to the dark. The light seemed
blinding. He blinked. He aimed the beam ahead.
There, not a hundred feet away, a human figure in silhouette. Moving.
“Caine?”
Caine turned slowly. His face was stark and white. His
eyes rimmed red.
Caine rose slowly, like an arthritic old man.
Quinn rushed to him and shone his light around, sweeping the area. He saw Sam facedown.
And there, standing with her arms at her side, stood
Lana.
“Lana,” Quinn said.
“Am I alive?” Lana asked.
“You’re alive, Lana,” Quinn said. “You’re free of it.”
A dark shadow passed over Lana’s face. Her mouth twisted
downward. She turned and began to walk away.
Quinn put his arm on her shoulder. “Don’t leave us, Healer.
We need you.”
Lana stopped.
“I . . . ,” she began.
“Lana,” Quinn said. “We need you.”
“I killed Edilio,” she said.
“Not yet you didn’t,” Quinn said.
Mary Terrafino woke to the taste and smell of fish.
Instantly she twisted her face away. The smell was disgusting.
She looked around wildly. To her amazement she was tied
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up. Tied to an easy chair in her day care office.
“What am I doing here?” she demanded, bewildered.
“You’re having dinner,” her little brother said.
“Stop it! I’m not hungry. Stop it!”
John held the spoon in front of her. His cherubic face was
dark with anger. “You said you wouldn’t leave me.”
“What are you talking about?” Mary demanded.
“You said you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t leave me alone,”
John said. “But you tried, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re babbling about.” She noticed
Astrid then, leaning against a filing cabinet. Astrid looked
like she’d been dragged through the middle of a dog fight.
Little Pete was sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth.
He was chanting, “Good-bye, Nestor. Good-bye, Nestor.”
“Mary, you have an eating disorder,” Astrid said. “The
secret is out. So cut the crap.”
“Eat,” John ordered, and shoved a spoonful of food in her
mouth. None too gently.
“Swallow,” John ordered.
“Let me—”
“Shut up, Mary,” John snapped.
Diana first. Caine would allow no other choice.
Then Edilio, who was so close to death that Lana thought
he must have had his hand on the gate of Heaven.
Dekka. Horribly hurt. But not dead.
Brianna, with her hair falling out in clumps.
Last, Sam.
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1
Quinn had hauled him up on the rope, helped greatly by
Caine.
Lana sat in the dirt as the sun came up.
Quinn brought her water. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
She could say the words he wanted to hear, but Lana knew
she could not make him believe. “No,” Lana said.
Quinn sat next to her. “Caine and Diana, they took off.
Sam is sleeping. Dekka . . . I don’t think she’s over it yet.”
“I can’t cure a person of memories,” Lana said dully.
“No,” Quinn agreed. “I guess if you could, you’d cure
yourself.”
He put his arm around her shoulders, and she started crying then. It felt like she could never stop. But it didn’t feel bad, either. And Quinn did not leave her. Far off there was the
sound of a car’s engine.
Quinn said, “Hey, Brianna zipped back to town. Brought
Astrid and someone else.”
Lana didn’t care. Lana didn’t think she would ever care
about anything again.
But then, there was the sound of a car door opening and
closing. And suddenly, Patrick was there, his cold, wet nose
thrust insistently against her neck.
Lana put her arms around him, hugged him close, and
cried into his fur.
FORTY-SEVEN
I T W A S L A T E the next day before Edilio could bring himself to the job at hand. But then he fired up the backhoe and dug two holes in the corner of the plaza.
Mickey Finch. A bullet hole in his back.
Brittney, mangled so badly, no one could look at her. Some
sort of slug seemed to have attached itself to her, an eighteen-
inch-long thing that could not be pried away from her.
In the end, they buried it with her. She was dead, after all:
she wouldn’t care.
There was no hole for Duck Zhang. But they put up a cross
for him. They had searched the cavern as best they could. But
all they’d found was a hole that went down and down seemingly forever.
The hole was collapsing in on itself as Sam shone his light
down. It was already filling with tons of rock and dirt.
“No one knew Duck all that well,” Sam said at the service. “I don’t think anyone would have guessed he’d be a hero. But he saved our lives. He did it willingly. He made
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the choice to give his life for us.”
They put a few wildflowers on the graves.
After the service Edilio took a can of black spray paint and
began to paint over the “HC” tags that had appeared on too
many storefronts.
THREE DAYS LATER
“ S O , H O W ’ S I T going to work, Albert?” Sam asked. He
wasn’t as interested as he should be. Probably because he
hadn’t slept much yet. Too much to do. Too much to figure
out.
He was done. He’d told them all: He was done. Done being
the Sam Temple. From now on he was just a kid. Like any
other. No longer the anything.
But not just yet. Right now there was still too much to do.
Kids to feed. A terrible rift to be somehow patched up.
Memories of suffering that would have to be dealt with,
somehow, absorbed, accepted.
They were at the edge of the cabbage field. Sam, Astrid,
Albert, Edilio, and Quinn.
Quinn was standing in the bed of a pickup truck wearing
tall rubber boots. In the truck were a dozen of Duck’s famous
blue bats. They kept being hauled in by Quinn and Albert’s
fishermen. Perfectly good protein, but so noxious, so foul that
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5
even the starving couldn’t gag down the putrid meat.
“We disburse a given amount of gold to every kid,” Albert
was explaining. He at least was excited. “Then, if they want,
they trade it for paper currency, the McDonald’s game pieces.
The gold is kept in a central deposit. They can come back and
trade their paper currency for gold anytime they want. This
is how they know the paper currency has lasting value.”
“Uh-huh,” Sam said for about the millionth time. He hid a
yawn as well as he could.
In the three days since the horror in that cavern, Sam had
been kept running. It was a game of whack-a-mole. One crisis
after another.
They had found Zil. He had three broken ribs and was in
terrible pain. No one felt very sorry for him. Astrid wanted
him imprisoned. It might still happen. But Sam had too many
other problems on his plate.
Fresh anti-freak graffiti continued to appear in Perdido
Beach.
Mary was eating, but Astrid had warned him that that
alone meant very little. Mary was a long way from being
well.
The power plant was damaged, probably beyond repair.
The lights were out everywhere now. Probably forever.
The FAYZ had gone dark.
But Jack was with them again, and maybe Jack could do
penance by making things work again. He stood awkwardly
near Brianna.
Dekka watched them and kept her silence.
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“Let’s do this,” Sam said to Quinn. Then, to Astrid, “I’ll
bet you five ’Bertos this doesn’t work.”
Howard had dismissed Albert’s list of names for the new
currency and had dubbed them “Albertos.” ’Bertos. The name
had stuck. It was Howard’s peculiar genius to invent names
for things.
“I don’t need money,” Astrid said. “I need to cut your hair.
I like seeing your face. Although I can’t imagine why.”
“Done.” Sam shook her hand, sealing the bet.
“Ready?” Quinn called out.
“Orc, you ready?” Sam asked.
Orc nodded his head.
“Do it,” Sam said.
Quinn lifted one of the blue bats and hurled it into the cabbage field. In a flash, the worms swarmed over it. In seconds it was just bones, like a turkey after a Thanksgiving feast.
“Okay, let’s test this,” Sam ordered.
Quinn tossed the second bat to Orc. Orc caught it and
walked into the field. After a dozen steps, he tossed the blue
bat ahead of him.
Again, the surge of worms. Again, the zekes reduced it to
bones.
“Okay, Orc,” Sam said.
Orc bent down and yanked up a cabbage.
He tossed it back to land at Sam’s feet. A second and a third
cabbage followed.
The zekes made no move toward Orc.
But they wouldn’t be sure until the zekes were offered
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7
something more easily digested than Orc’s stone feet.
“Breeze?” Sam said.
Brianna hefted a bat and zipped into the field. Sam waited,
tense, knowing she was faster than the worms, but still . . .
Brianna tossed the bat. The zekes hit it.
And Brianna ripped a cabbage from the ground.
“You know,” Astrid said, “I seem to recall a certain condescending—one might even say contemptuous—response when I first suggested negotiating with the zekes.”
“Huh,” Sam said. “Who would ever be dumb enough to be
condescending to you?”
“Oh, it was this bald guy I know.”
Sam sighed. “Okay. Okay. Grab your scissors and do your
worst.”
“Actually,” Astrid said, “there’s something else you have
to do first.”
“Always something,” Sam said gloomily.
Quinn joined them and apologized for stinking of fish.
“Brah, don’t apologize. You’re a very big part of keeping
people from starving.”
The other reason the danger of mass starvation had receded
for a while, at least, was Hunter. He had recovered most of his
function, although his speech seemed permanently slurred,
and one eye drooped above a down-twisted mouth.
Hunter had been charged with killing Harry. He had been
sentenced to exile from Perdido Beach. He would live apart
from them, alone, but living up to the name his parents had
given him.
588 M I C H A E L
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So far, Hunter had killed a second deer and a number of
smaller animals. He dropped them at the loading dock of
Ralph’s. He asked for nothing in return.
Dekka bent over and lifted one of the cabbages. “This
would go great with some roasted pigeon.”
Hunter’s trial had been carried out by a jury of six kids,
under rules set up by the Temporary Council: Sam, Astrid,
Albert, Edilio, Dekka, Howard, and the youngest member,
Brother John Terrafino.
“Well, ba
ck to work, huh?” Sam said.
“Get in the car,” Astrid said.
“What are—”
“Let me rephrase. By order of the Temporary Council: get
in the car.”
She steadfastly refused to explain what was happening on
the drive back to town. Edilio drove, and he was equally mum.
Edilio pulled up and parked in the town beach parking lot.
“Why are we going to the beach? I have to get back to town
hall. I have, like, all this stuff—”
“Not now,” Edilio said firmly.
Sam stopped walking. “What’s up, Edilio?”
“I’m supposed to be the sheriff, right? That’s my new title?”
Edilio said. “Okay, then, you are under arrest.”
“Under arrest? What are you talking about?”
“You are under arrest for trying to kill a kid named Sam
Temple.”
“Not funny.”
But Edilio persisted. “Trying to kill a kid . . . just a kid . . .
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589
named Sam Temple. By stressing him out with the whole load
of the world on his back.”
Sam didn’t find it amusing. Angry, he turned back toward
town. But there was Astrid, close on his heels. And Brianna.
Quinn, too.
“What are you all up to?” Sam demanded.
“We voted,” Astrid said. “It was unanimous. By order of
the Perdido Beach Temporary Council, we sentence you, Sam
Temple, to relax.”
“Okay. I’m relaxed. Now can I get back to work?”
Astrid took his arm and all but hauled him across the
beach. “You know what’s interesting, Sam? I’ll tell you what’s
interesting. A fairly small disturbance in deep water, creating
a ripple, a surge, can become a pretty impressive wave as it
nears shore.”
Sam noticed that someone had set up a tent on the beach.
It looked forlorn.
Out to sea, a boat putted by, its motor chugging in low
gear.
“Is that Dekka out on the boat?” Sam asked.
They reached the tent. Lying in the sand there were two
surfboards. Quinn’s. And Sam’s.
“Your wet suit’s inside, brah,” Quinn said.
Sam resisted. But not for long. After all, the council
had authority now. And if they said he had to go surfing,
well . . .
Ten minutes later Sam was facedown on his board. His
feet were already tingling from the cold water. The sun was
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already baking his back through the wet suit. The taste of salt
was in his mouth.
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