Light

by Michael Grant

  “You’re not listening. I’m going with you to kill what some would call my daughter, although I don’t think she’s anyone’s daughter. But if I suspect you’re going to hurt Diana, our peace treaty ends. We clear on that?”

  Sam nodded. “We’re clear.”

  “Deep down, she’s a good person, Diana is,” Caine said, and sighed. “Deep down, I’m not. But she is.”

  NINE

  64 HOURS, 25 MINUTES

  AS SOON AS the lights came on, so to speak, Albert had known he had made a mistake. He had seen doom, nothing but doom coming as the dome went dark. But then, like something out of the book of Genesis, it was “Let there be light.”

  And there was light.

  Now as he stood sourly recalling his own failure of judgment, the sun, the actual sun, was setting out over the ocean, and Perdido Beach was touched with gold.

  In this light Albert pretty much looked like he’d panicked. In this light he didn’t look like the prescient, cold-eyed businessman. He looked like a coward.

  Standing on the southernmost point of San Francisco de Sales Island over these last three terrible days he’d seen that the wild, terrified mobs of kids had not, as he’d expected, burned Perdido Beach to the ground just to provide light as he’d expected. In fact, he was looking now through a very good telescope he’d found in the Brattle-Chance home, and while he could certainly not make out faces, he could see people in town. And he could see beyond town to the motels that had been built, and the fast-food restaurant, and the news trucks. Out there.

  And now all was being revealed to that wider out-there world.

  Had it happened just a week earlier, he, Albert Hillsborough, would have been one of the great heroes of the FAYZ. Who had kept the McDonald’s running while there was still electricity? Albert Hillsborough. Who had created the market up at the school? Albert Hillsborough. Who had created a stable currency—the ’Berto—using gold and McDonald’s game pieces? Albert Hillsborough.

  He had put people to work.

  He had saved them all from starvation. Everyone knew it.

  My God, had it all ended then, he could have written his own ticket. He was barely in high school and he would have had university business schools lining up to give him a full scholarship.

  Albert Hillsborough—Harvard MBA.

  Recently graduated Albert Hillsborough offered vice presidency at General Electric.

  Albert Hillsborough named youngest president ever of Sony Corporation.

  All of it lost in a moment of panic. The story might already be out there. Half the country might already despise him.

  Albert Hillsborough buys waterfront villa in the south of France. Says, “I needed some place to dock my yacht.”

  Albert Hillsborough hosts party aboard his yacht. George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Olivia Wilde, and Sasha Obama in attendance.

  But he really had done all those good things, and he’d done them without ever raising his hand against anyone, and without any so-called powers he had saved everything.

  Just by being smart. Not a genius like Astrid, just smart. By working hard. By not giving up.

  Albert Hillsborough dating supermodel. “Marriage not in the plans,” Hillsborough says.

  Albert Hillsborough declines to run for president despite huge poll numbers. Says, “That job doesn’t pay enough.”

  A boat.

  There it was, black on a rippled yellow sea: a boat.

  One of his missiles was lying under a tarp held down by rocks on what had once been a lush green lawn and was now an overgrown, dried-out weed patch. He had read the instructions carefully. The missiles weren’t hard to fire, really, but then, why would they be? They were used by soldiers in the heat of battle—they’d have to be fairly simple.

  It was a rowboat. One of Quinn’s.

  He turned the telescope toward it and after a few jumpy misses finally centered the boat in the circle and saw the broad back straining against the oars. It would be at least another hour before Quinn could reach the island.

  Albert had never before felt shame; it was an alien emotion for him. But of all the people to have to see: Quinn.

  At the start Quinn had been Sam’s best friend. But he had been weak while Sam was still uncertain and had fallen in with Caine. Caine had been too violent, too overtly evil for Quinn to stomach, which had left Quinn neither here nor there, not someone Sam trusted, not someone of any use to Caine.

  But over time Quinn had found his place. And then he had slowly, imperceptibly, grown from the unreliable, foolish boy he’d been into, well, into the Fisherman. People called him that, just as they called Lana the Healer. The Fisherman, with a capital “F.”

  His crews were absolutely devoted. He outworked anyone in the FAYZ. More than any other person except for Albert, he fed Perdido Beach. He had stood up to Penny and to Caine, although Quinn was not the hero type.

  And at the end it had been Quinn who’d stayed to see things through when Albert ran away.

  No, he did not want to speak to Quinn.

  Albert glanced at the missile. It wouldn’t be hard. But beyond the missile, out at sea, out in the open sea beyond the FAYZ barrier, there was a glistening white cruise ship passing slowly. Probably, what, four miles away? Five? But not so far that binoculars and telescopes trained in his direction would miss the flame and the explosion.

  “And there’s the fact that I don’t kill people,” Albert admitted almost sadly. “I’m a businessman.”

  He walked slowly back to the mansion to tell Alicia and Leslie-Ann that they would be having a guest.

  “Oh, God, it hurts. It hurts!” He was staggering and shrieking, pausing to stare in horror at the stump of his arm, crying, babbling. His shirt was saturated with blood, now mostly dried.

  The red-haired man was not used to suffering, Diana thought.

  Well, welcome to the FAYZ, mister. This is a hard place.

  Gaia was walking along at a sprightly pace, still following the barrier as the sun fell into the distant sea and the shadows deepened. They were very near the northeastern point, where there was a wrecked train: a dozen boxcars tossed around the landscape, some plowed into the sand, others piled up against each other.

  Their shadows were long. Night was rapidly approaching. It was possible to imagine goblins and spooks in this desert train wreck.

  “The Nutella train,” Diana said. She of course knew about the bisected train that Sam, Dekka, and Jack had found. The freight had been mostly useless, everything from toilets to wicker furniture. But there had also been a huge amount of Nutella, Cup-a-Noodles, and Pepsi. The discovery remained one of the great days in FAYZ history.

  Diana would have given anything for a bowl of noodles.

  Everything edible had been removed, hauled to the lake, and either eaten and drunk or bartered to Perdido Beach. Baby Gaia had been nurtured in Diana’s womb on a diet that included a lot of Nutella. Sam and Edilio had been generous with her for the sake of her baby. For the sake of what could be their own destruction.

  “What is this thing called?” Gaia asked.

  Again Diana noted the fact that there were holes in Gaia’s knowledge. She knew a lot. She didn’t know everything.

  Weakness.

  Vulnerability.

  “It’s called a train.”

  When exactly had Diana started thinking in those terms of weakness and vulnerability? When had Diana stopped feeling she had some duty to Gaia and begun to think of ways to stop her?

  Gaia had slung the cooked arm over her shoulder. The bicep was mostly consumed, as was the tender meat of most of the fingers. The thumb still remained untouched.

  Diana knew the taste of human flesh. That was the terrible crime for which she had been punished by a God who could see even into the FAYZ. Gaia was that punishment, the curse that now mocked her mother’s horror at cannibalism with jaunty, careless amorality.

  “Why won’t you let me go to a doctor?” the red-haired man moaned.

/>   “There’s no doctor,” Diana said. “Where do you think you are?”

  “She . . . oh, my God!” the man cried.

  “You’ll be better off if you don’t spend too much time thinking about it,” Diana said. “The wound isn’t bleeding any—”

  “She’s eating my arm!”

  Diana spotted a long stick, an umbrella pole, she thought, part of the wicker mess from the train, perhaps. She hefted it experimentally. It was about six feet long and not too heavy, broken jagged and sharp at one end, brass-bound at the other. A very nice walking stick.

  “Stab her with it!” the man hissed.

  Diana almost laughed. “You don’t want to attack her.”

  “She’s a monster!”

  “Yeah. We have monsters here. She’s one. The worst. But you won’t kill her with a stick.”

  His face was gray, the look of a man in terrible pain and shock. The look of a man who had lost a lot of blood. But the wound had been cauterized, if not really healed. Gaia didn’t care much about cosmetic things; she hadn’t even completely healed her own face. He would live long enough to feed her again. That’s all Gaia cared about.

  “I have a knife in my pack.”

  This time, Diana did laugh. “Go ahead: give it a try.”

  That hard, cynical laugh brought him up short.

  “Are you . . . like her?”

  “I’m her mother,” Diana said.

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, we haven’t seen him around here much.” Diana liked the stick. It helped her plow ahead through the sand, following in Gaia’s footsteps.

  “Who are you people?” It was like he’d been in too much shock to ask these basic questions before now.

  “My name is Diana. She’s Gaia. She’s . . .” How to explain Gaia? “Well, not exactly what she looks like. Less girly. More Satan-like. What’s your name?”

  “Alex. Alex Mayle. I feel like I’m going crazy. I don’t know what—”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  “Just trying to get some cool video. You know. YouTubes.”

  “Still have your camera?”

  “My phone! I have my phone.” With his one hand he managed to draw his iPhone from his pocket. He dialed a number.

  “911? Seriously?” Diana laughed.

  “There’s no signal.”

  “Hmmm. That’s a surprise. Because none of us ever thought of making a phone call to 911 and saying ‘get us out of here.’ Should have thought of that.” It wasn’t that Diana was enjoying this, exactly. But it was a reminder of just how much she had endured, how much she had survived.

  Still here, she thought. Still alive. Still sane, mostly.

  He opened his camera app and aimed it at Gaia’s back. Then he slid the phone back in his pack. He had to use his knees to hold the pack.

  “I’m going to die,” Alex moaned.

  “Not yet,” Diana said darkly. “Not until she finds another food source.”

  The implication stopped him in his tracks. He hung back, and then Diana heard the sound of his footsteps scrambling away.

  Without even looking back Gaia simply raised a hand, and Alex flew through the air to land hard at her feet.

  “Leave me alone!” Alex cried up at Gaia.

  “I could kill you and carry the nutritious parts with me,” Gaia said. “But that would be harder, carrying all that meat. So you’ll carry yourself until I find better food. If you try to run away, I’ll do something very painful to you. It won’t kill you, but you’ll wish you were dead.”

  “What are you?” he begged, rising to his knees. “What are you?”

  “I am the gaiaphage,” Gaia said proudly. “I am your . . . your master. Obey me.”

  Gaia found that amusing, obviously, as her young face broke out in a grin that she shared with Diana, as though the two of them were coconspirators in dismembering Alex. As though Diana would see the humor in it all.

  Gaia walked on, and Diana helped Alex to his feet.

  It was strange. The first adult she had spoken to in almost a year. Sometimes she had pictured this moment. The fantasy had usually involved firemen and cops rushing in, offering help and food and comfort. Safety.

  But this adult wasn’t here to rescue her. He was just another lost, desperate fool, more scared than she was.

  “I just want to go home,” he moaned. He started crying again.

  Diana’s stomach clenched with a hunger pain. That familiar pain reached into her memory and dragged out images she could not stand to look at. It was a terrible feeling. So was the fact that she was eyeing the cooked arm and salivating.

  No, she told herself. Not again. I’ll die first. She thought of Alex’s knife, supposedly in his backpack. Not the wrist—that could be too easily fixed by Gaia if she chose to. It would have to be an artery in her throat. A quick, deep, assured, stabbing thrust. And death before the evil creature, her daughter, could stop her.

  But then hope, that cruel thing, came to taunt her. Caine would come for her, wouldn’t he? He would know she needed rescue. Because deep down he cared for her, didn’t he?

  But when he did come, if he did come, Gaia would kill him, wouldn’t she?

  And then I’ll do it, Diana told herself. Then the quick, deep, assured thrust. Not before.

  Albert had taken three people to the island with him. Leslie-Ann was his maid, a mousy little thing. She was mostly useless, but she had saved his life once upon a time.

  Pug—she had an actual name, but Albert didn’t recall what it was—was a big girl, strong and not very bright, and loyal to Albert, though he wasn’t quite sure why. She was not clever enough to make trouble.

  And finally, Alicia. Alicia had been trained by Edilio to handle a gun. She’d been part of his security force until he’d caught her extorting bribes. At which point Albert had hired her, informally, as a spy. She was clever, a good observer, and had done a good job of keeping him aware of everything.

  She was also tall, about five inches taller than Albert, which he liked, and she had large breasts, which Albert also liked. But she was not loyal like Leslie-Ann or Pug; she was too unstable for loyalty. She had been one of the first Coates kids to abandon Caine and come over to the Perdido Beach side. Later she had rejoined Caine for a time, and later still had lurked at the edges of Zil’s Human Crew.

  She was on the island because Albert had lately begun to develop an interest in girls. When it had seemed that the FAYZ would be plunged into permanent darkness, Albert had thought that under the circumstances . . . well . . . But, no. None of that had happened.

  And now he was stuck with her.

  At present, she was shining a flashlight down, watching Quinn come up the rope hand over hand, climbing the cliff with the agility and ease of an ape.

  “He’s strong,” Alicia said.

  “He rows a boat all day long.”

  “Huh.” Pause. “You know, you should work out, Albert. We have a gym. You and those stick arms of yours.”

  Albert was looking for a suitably cutting retort when Quinn came up over the side of the cliff, stood up, brushed himself off, and said, “Albert.”

  “Who sent you, Quinn?” He was not interested in small talk. Alicia had a gun, and so did Pug, who was standing a few dozen feet away, watchful, ready.

  “Yeah, good to see you, too, Albert,” Quinn said.

  Albert hesitated, nodded, and said, “I guess come inside and we can talk.” He turned on his heel and stalked up to the house, not waiting for Quinn. Alicia fell back so she could walk just behind Quinn.

  There was an electric light on inside, something no one had seen for months in Perdido Beach. But just a single bulb: fuel was in very short supply, and Albert’s priority was keeping the water pump running and having enough energy to at least take some of the chill out of his showers.

  They went inside and to the living room with vast bowed windows that provided a horizon-to-horizon view. Perdido Beach was a silhouette now, a dark spac
e against the bright lights of out there.

  Leslie-Ann brought in a pitcher of iced tea and glasses. Glasses filled with actual ice. Quinn stared at the ice like he was seeing the gates of heaven.

  “So?” Albert pressed as Quinn poured himself some tea, added sugar—a second impossible luxury—and took a drink.

  “So, Albert, I noticed you didn’t fire a missile at me.”

  “No.”

  “Which means you want to know what’s going on. So maybe stop acting all high and mighty. I don’t work for you anymore, Albert. I’m only here because Edilio asked me to come.”

  “Edilio?” Albert frowned. “Not Caine?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t know this, Albert, since you ran off when things looked bad, but with the barrier transparent things have changed.”

  “Yes. It’s lighter during the day,” Albert said dryly.

  “Lookers—people, adults, people out there, I mean—are all up against the barrier where the highway goes. TV cameras, parents, nuts. It’s a mess because—”

  “I can see them,” Albert cut in. “Let me guess: no one’s working, they’re all waving at their family members, and pretty soon everyone will be very, very hungry.”

  Quinn didn’t bother to confirm.

  “Caine?” Albert asked.

  “Caine is off with Sam looking for Gaia. Edilio is running things now, thankfully.”

  Albert drank some tea and thought it over. He could work with Edilio. Edilio was much more sensible than Caine. For one thing he wouldn’t go around proclaiming himself king and then let his psycho allies terrorize everyone.

  “Edilio wants me to come back and get people working,” Albert guessed.

  “Yep.”

  “How about you, Quinn?”

  “Me?” Quinn looked him right in the eye. “I think you’re a selfish little coward.”

  The insult did not particularly bother Albert. Selfishness was a virtue, and if self-preservation was cowardice, so be it. “I’ve got everything I want right here,” Albert said, holding up the glass of ice as proof number one, then nodding at Alicia as proof number two, then sweeping a hand around the elegant room, barely visible in the meager fifteen watts.