Light

by Michael Grant

  Now this would be a feast for Gaia!

  She backed slowly, carefully, out of the thornbush, indifferent to the multitude of tiny cuts.

  Brittney had no warning of the wire that went around her throat. No time even to flinch as the wire cut into her neck, severed the empty, bloodless arteries, and stopped tightening only when it had closed around her upper spine.

  “Wish it was Drake, not you, Britt,” Brianna said.

  Then Brianna put her foot on Brittney’s back and heaved as hard as she could. The wire sliced through cartilage and nerve tissue, making a sound like a knife cutting gristle, and suddenly Brittney’s head rolled free and landed in the dirt with a thump.

  Brittney could not move her head, but she had rolled to an angle where she could see Brianna. Brianna was sweating from exertion. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. The garrote—a two-foot-long piece of piano wire strung between steel grips that had once been part of someone’s home gym—hung from her free hand.

  Brianna looked down at her, quite satisfied, and said, “Now I’m going to chop you into little bits and spread the pieces all over the place. See if you or Drake can reassemble yourself then.”

  Brittney was not dead. Aside from no longer being attached to her body she didn’t feel any difference, just a dull pain in her neck. When she strained her eyes upward, she could see her body. The body was attempting to stand up all by itself.

  But when Brittney tried to speak, she found she could only whisper, and the sound of her whisper was partly drowned out by the gasping noise of air sucked into her severed esophagus.

  “You can’t kill us,” Brittney whispered.

  “Maybe not. But I’m sure going to try.”

  Brianna carried a sawed-off shotgun in her specially adapted runner’s backpack, and a machete, also slung over her back. She pulled out the machete and swung it so fast Brittney couldn’t see the blade move. She just saw the fact that her body was now minus a leg, which caused it to topple over.

  Whump!

  There was a whir of movement that raised the dust, and a sound of chopping, a rapid-fire whap! whap! whap! whap! and what had been Brittney’s body was in pieces—arms cut off and then cut in two. Legs off and then chopped into three pieces. Torso hacked into random chunks. There was no blood. It was as if Brianna were chopping up an embalmed corpse.

  That thought bothered Brittney. How could she be alive with no blood? What was she?

  “Want to watch?” Brianna asked.

  She grabbed Brittney’s hair, lifted her up, and set her on a flat rock. The first effort failed, and Brittney’s head rolled off. But Brianna was finally able to settle Brittney’s head atop the rock so that Brittney could see her body lying in a couple dozen bloodless pieces.

  The pieces were already twitching toward one another, extending tentacles, attempting to rejoin. And things that had been female were becoming male as Drake slowly reemerged to discover he was in very bad shape.

  With a look of distaste Brianna began to pick the pieces up and toss them a distance away. “I can’t have you putting yourself back together, Brittney . . . Ah! Wait, is that Drake coming back?”

  Brianna performed a short happy dance and stepped—perhaps accidentally—on a piece of flesh that Drake would miss.

  “Perfect. So much better this way. Hello, Drake. So glad you could make it. I’m just going to start moving your pieces farther apart. Much farther apart. Then I’ll have Sam go around and fry each piece. And then I believe that’ll be it for you, Brittney slash Drake. I believe we’ll have seen the end of both of you. And your little whip, too.” She patted Drake on the head. Then she picked up a foot and a shoulder section, one in each hand. With a wink she was gone, leaving a trail of dust.

  Quinn was rowing back to shore. It was a point of pride for him that he always carried his share of the hard work, in fact more than his fair share, because if you were boss, you started off by setting a good example. So even though he had gotten a hook caught in the back of his arm and had had to cut it out and as a consequence was bleeding through a salt water–soaked bandage held with a strip of duct tape, he pulled at the oars.

  No one on his crews ever claimed Quinn was lording it over them or saddling them with too much work. Well, sometimes they did, but it was in the nature of long-running jokes.

  “You’re pulling to your left, Captain,” Amber said.

  “At least I’m pulling,” Quinn said, and the two of them lifted the oars, leaned forward, dipped the oars, and pulled in long-practiced unison.

  “You know, if you’re feeling weak you could let Cathy take over,” Amber said, grunting with the effort. “What with your boo-boo and all.”

  “I’d have to be missing an arm before I rowed as weak and spastic as Cathy,” Quinn teased.

  For her part, Cathy, seated in the stern and guiding the tiller, said, “Just a good thing we didn’t catch much or we’d never make the marina.”

  “Yeah, a good thing,” Quinn said, unable to keep the worry from his voice. “Barely enough to feed us, let alone the whole town.”

  He glanced up at a cabin cruiser in the out there. He was a long way from getting used to the fact that he could see the outside. It was weird. Nothing had changed in his daily life except for the fact that he could now see out of his prison. Still a prison, but now the prison had a view.

  Two women in bikinis were on the bow, and two much older guys were in the stern of the cabin cruiser, with their fishing rods in rod holders, chilling with bottles of beer. The captain seemed to be of a different breed, a thirtysomething man with salt-bleached clumpy hair and red skin and wraparound glasses. He was watching Quinn’s boats with interest.

  The cabin cruiser was throwing up a bow wave Quinn admired and envied. What must it be like to fish from a power boat?

  “Give ’em a wave, Cath,” Quinn said. So Cathy did, and the captain gave them a sort of salute. And then one of the women on the bow took off her bikini top.

  “Well, I didn’t expect that,” Quinn admitted.

  “Drunk,” Amber said.

  The cruiser captain, obviously displeased, turned his boat sharply, which threw the woman off balance and would foul the men’s lines if they weren’t quick about reeling in.

  Quinn could see the men yelling at the captain, and the captain stoically ignoring them as he motored away. The last Quinn saw of him he was shaking his head in an I can’t believe these people kind of way.

  At the dock they unloaded the catch—not impressive—and hauled out their gear for mending. Salt water was hell on nets. By now Quinn knew just about every submerged rock or old wreck that could snag a net, but they still needed checking and mending every day.

  He was excused by mutual agreement from this part of the day’s work because he was the one who had to go and meet with Caine, a task no one else wanted.

  He trudged up the slope toward the town plaza, torn between missing the businesslike and practical Albert and cursing him at the same time for being a treacherous, cowardly weasel. Dealing with Caine was always difficult. Caine was not a businessman: he had a tendency to believe that threatening Quinn would produce more fish. Other times Caine could be self-pitying or grandiose or even depressed. Until very recently Albert had managed Caine, but in these last couple of days Quinn was starting to fear that in some way the care and feeding of the temperamental “king” had fallen to him.

  It was therefore with mounting joy bordering on giddiness that he made out the face of Edilio sitting at Caine’s outdoor desk. Virtue was with him, and kids were coming and going, evidently getting instructions from Edilio.

  Once, long ago in what felt like another life, Quinn had derided Edilio as a wetback, an illegal alien. Now he could have kissed him.

  “Tell me you’re in charge,” Quinn said after he had mounted the steps.

  “I’m in charge,” Edilio said, with a shy grin.

  “If I were any less tired, I’d do the happy dance,” Quinn said. “I stil
l may.”

  Edilio stuck out his hand and Quinn took it.

  “I hear you’re having a hard time getting anything in exchange for your fish,” Edilio said.

  Quinn nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Give me twenty-four hours to figure it out?”

  “You got it. So, where’s His Highness?”

  Edilio, straight-faced, said, “His Highness is off with Sam.”

  “Are they killing each other?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Edilio said. “They’re looking for Gaia.”

  That wiped the grin off Quinn’s face. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. And I’m the one who asked them to do it, not that I had to twist their arms much. Have a seat, if you have the time.”

  Quinn took a seat. Virtue had a notebook. He was writing notes, like an administrative assistant taking minutes of a meeting.

  “The island,” Edilio said.

  Quinn sighed heavily. Oh, man. “Yeah?”

  “Have you seen anything going on there?”

  “You mean like Albert up on the cliff watching us through a telescope?”

  “Yeah, like that. And also like him trying to talk to you.”

  Quinn shook his head. “No, not that. Me and Albert are not friends, not anymore. And he’s got those missiles out there.”

  “You think he got them up the cliff to where he can use them?”

  “I know he did. I have a pretty good pair of binoculars. I’ve seen him and his girls training. He wanted me to see.”

  “Has he ever warned you off? Like threatened you?”

  “He doesn’t have to. No reason for me to go in there and look for trouble.”

  Edilio considered this and nodded. “It sucks. You guys used to work well together. By now Albert must realize he made a dumb mistake in panicking.”

  “Edilio, ask me anything, but don’t ask me to go and try to sweet-talk Albert. He stabbed us all in the back.”

  “Caine’s done worse, far worse, and Sam is out there with him now.”

  “Albert wouldn’t listen to me anyway, Edilio. Albert thinks he’s far above me. I’m just a working guy who smells like fish. He’s the brains. He’s the big organizer. He’d probably shoot me out of the water.”

  Edilio sighed and leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Quinn, listen, man. We need stuff back to normal. We need the market open and we need people working, or we’re all in big trouble. Kids are gonna die of hunger watching their mom or dad eating a pizza three inches away. Kids are acting like everything is all over; it’s not all over. Just because they can see out doesn’t mean they’re getting out. Kids who ought to be harvesting and planting are sitting there up against the barrier watching TV shows because some network put up a big monitor with captions on. Those lookers out there don’t know what damage they’re doing here. They might as well be giving those kids drugs or something.”

  Quinn didn’t disagree. He’d lost two of his own people that way. The rest stayed out of personal loyalty to him, not wanting to let him down.

  Edilio didn’t push the matter: he let it rest there. Which kind of irritated Quinn, because it meant Edilio was trusting him to step up. He had more than enough to keep him busy. He was tired, and he didn’t even think Albert would listen. Plus Albert might well shoot him right out of the water.

  “No fish, anyway,” he muttered at last. Giving Edilio as peeved a look as he could, he said, “When?” He’d been hoping to find an excuse to visit Lana. It was painful seeing her with Sanjit, but less painful than not seeing her. And, after all, he did have a boo-boo.

  Then he saw the Sorry look on Edilio’s face.

  “Great,” Quinn said.

  SEVEN

  71 HOURS, 12 MINUTES

  IT WAS EXHAUSTING work for Brianna. She would run two or three pieces of the Drake/Brittney thing off to far corners of the FAYZ, and by the time she got back to grab more, she’d find the body already partly reassembled. Then she’d have to chop it up all over again.

  Still, the total pile grew smaller. Some of the pieces were now ten miles apart. That was a long way for a chunk of thigh to ooze and squirm. Other pieces would be swimming. If they could.

  At some point in all of the back-and-forth, the head, still on its rock, had reverted to Brittney but then had gone right back to Drake, as if Brittney were weakening, no longer able to manifest for more than a few minutes.

  This made Brianna much happier. Brittney had never been evil—a nut, maybe, a little weird, but then who wouldn’t be, in Brittney’s rather unusual situation? She’d been buried alive, after all, only to reemerge inextricably linked with Drake in a sort of weird immortality.

  If that didn’t mess you up, you were unmessable.

  In any case it was Drake’s head that now cursed her in a gasping whisper.

  “I’m not quite sure what to do with you, Drake,” Brianna said, squatting down to look him in the eye.

  “The gaiaphage will kill you,” Drake hoarse-whispered. Then he spit up a piece of gravel that must have been sucked up off the ground through his severed windpipe.

  “I probably better take you to Sam; he can fry you up,” she said. “By the way, why do you have a sack full of dead lizards and some eggs?”

  Drake just hissed. Then he called her a dyke and made some extremely crude suggestions. Extremely crude. Crude enough that Brianna actually got angry. She raised her machete high and brought it down with all the strength and speed at her command. Which was considerable. The machete struck sparks off the stone after it had passed clean through the skull, face, and neck.

  Drake’s head split, top to bottom. The left side—which had almost all of his nose but only a quarter of his mouth—rolled off the stone. The other half—not so much nose and a lot more mouth—stayed in place.

  Brianna had a strong stomach, but something about seeing the inside of Drake’s head was almost too much for her. It retained all the same structures it had had when Drake was fully human. But it did not bleed. It was alive, but alive in a way very different from the way in which most people were alive.

  The brain was gray. Brains are sometimes described as gray, but in reality they’re pinkish—she’d seen brain spilled, so she knew. Drake’s was genuinely gray with a tinge of green. It looked like an unhealthy cauliflower that had been split down the middle.

  She could also see what she supposed were sinuses—open spaces above and behind the nose.

  And she could see teeth.

  The brain did not fall out all the way, but it did sag a bit and looked as if it might fall out if she shook the head sideways a little.

  And it had an odd smell about it. It was the smell of the meat department at a supermarket. A smell that suggested slaughterhouses.

  “About your little fantasies there, Drake? Your boy parts? They’re in the glove compartment of an old, wrecked pickup truck that looks like it rolled down a ravine. Might even be Lana’s grandfather’s truck: I should ask her. And some are floating out in the surf. I mean, if you’re ever looking for them.”

  What was left of Drake’s mouth tried to speak, but his esophagus was no longer even slightly intact. The exposed tongue stuck sideways, licking air.

  Brianna opened the bag of dead lizards and the little eggs. She lifted the right side of Drake’s head and dropped it in. Then fetched the left side and dropped it in as well.

  The bag was surprisingly heavy, and the weight of it was awkward, so she couldn’t run full speed. She set off at a slow thirty miles an hour, whistling happily but making no sound since even at thirty the wind snatched the tune away.

  It took just ten minutes—she stopped to pee and drink some water at one point—to reach the lake. She sauntered down the dock toward the houseboat, swinging the bag with affected nonchalance, feeling a bit like one of those girls who likes to shop and can’t wait to show off her purchases to her friends.

  Astrid and Dekka were on the boat, apparently discussing something important. Astrid looked impatient, like
she was restraining herself from saying something snippy. Dekka looked like a thundercloud that might spark lightning at any moment. So, basically, both girls were totally normal.

  Astrid was the first to notice Brianna.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be patrolling?”

  “Where’s Sam?” Brianna asked.

  “He’s out. So is Edilio,” Dekka said. “You going to tell us what’s in the bag or do we have to guess?”

  Brianna stopped. She was disappointed. In her imagination the big revelation would have been to an admiring Sam Temple. He was the one she wanted to impress. Failing that, Edilio, who was generally warm and sweet to her.

  But she was tired and wanted to put the bag down. Also, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer.

  She climbed nimbly up to the top deck of the boat, grinned, and said, “Is it anyone’s birthday? Because I have a present.”

  “Breeze,” Dekka warned.

  So Brianna opened the bag. Dekka looked inside. “What is it?”

  So Brianna upended the bag. Dead lizards, broken eggs, and Drake’s head landed on the antiskid flooring.

  “Ahhhh!” Astrid screamed.

  “Ah, Jesus!” Dekka yelled.

  “I know,” Brianna said proudly.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Oh, that is . . .”

  What lay there was something to strike envy into the heart of a horror movie special-effects expert. The two halves of Drake’s head had started to rejoin. But because the halves had been tossed wildly together, the process was very incomplete. Very.

  In fact at the moment the halves were backward, so that the left half was looking one direction and the right half another. Sections of neck and spine stuck both up and down. The part that held most of Drake’s mouth was stuffed with hair from the back of his head.

  And, somehow, bits of dead lizard were squeezed in between. But the dead lizards thus incorporated were no longer dead. And there was egg white smeared across one eye.

  The mouth was trying to speak and not managing it.