Light

by Michael Grant

Quinn set the glass down and ran his hand through his hair, a gesture that flexed his considerable biceps and well-defined triceps, causing Alicia to edge a little forward on her seat and thereby definitely annoying Albert.

  “I’ll tell you, dude,” Quinn said, “I think the way things stand right now, you’ll go down in history as a slimy little creep who ran off and left everyone to starve.”

  “History?” Albert mocked.

  Quinn shrugged. “Everyone seems to think the barrier is coming down. Just before I left, we saw some TV footage outside of some guy, some adult guy, falling through. Into the FAYZ. Yeah. Into. Anyway, the gaiaphage obviously thinks we’re getting out; otherwise why move into a body? Right?”

  Albert couldn’t argue with that.

  “So, yeah: history,” Quinn said. “We’re all being watched now. And judged. Up until a few days ago you were a big hero. Now you’re dirt. The only way you fix that is by coming back and doing what you do.”

  TEN

  61 HOURS, 36 MINUTES

  THAT NIGHT SAM and Caine camped out within a mile of Gaia and Diana.

  Quinn slept in a bed with actual sheets while Albert walked the halls of the mansion on San Francisco de Sales Island and wondered if he had made a mistake agreeing to go back.

  Astrid lay in the cabin she usually shared with Sam and tried to think about life after, about how they could be, how . . . but ended up thinking of Drake, twenty feet below her in a water-filled box. She tried then to turn her thoughts to memories of Sam, but again Drake intruded. So she gave up on sleep and read a book.

  Diana curled on the ground near a pile of stones Gaia had consented to heat and prayed not to dream but did dream, a dream of an overly lit hospital room, and an incubator, and herself approaching that incubator, only to see a bloody beast inside beating violently at the Plexiglas sides. Nurses stared at her.

  Edilio crashed on a ratty mattress in the corner of what had once been the town magistrate’s office. He started to try and organize his plans for the next day but fell asleep so suddenly and so completely that when he woke up in the morning he would find he had only removed one shoe.

  Lana lay with Sanjit and thought of many things. Of Taylor, and what she might be, and whether Sinder—who had agreed to stop by tomorrow—would be able to make any difference. And she thought for a while of Quinn, and wondered if he would care enough to try and force her to stop smoking. This made her feel disloyal, so she veered her thoughts away and tried to imagine what she could ever do, how she could ever survive out there.

  Dekka dreamed of Brianna.

  Brianna dreamed of running, and she smiled in her sleep.

  Little Pete didn’t notice the passage of time in the usual way. He drifted and for a while seemed almost to stop thinking, to stop being. But then he was again, focused, aware, and still repeating to himself that it was not okay to hit.

  Where the highway passed through the barrier, eighty-seven hungry, traumatized, heavily armed kids wrapped in filthy sleeping bags or blankets lay bathed in the eerie light of the out there and saw that the price of a Carl’s Jr. Memphis BBQ burger was just $3.49.

  ELEVEN

  52 HOURS, 10 MINUTES

  BY MID-MORNING ORC was on the move. He had decided once and for all he would go into hiding. There was forest off to the west somewhere. Dark trees and good places to hide. Astrid had told him about being there, about wild berries but with thorns all around them—oh, he was hungry. And how she had laid traps for squirrels and things. But mostly about berries. Thorns didn’t bother Orc.

  That was where she had lost God, out in the forest for four months alone. She said that, anyway, so Orc was worried a little. Since finding God he had become a better person. He didn’t drink anymore. And he didn’t hurt anyone. And he wasn’t angry inside like he’d been all his life.

  Well, angry a little, still. He missed Howard. He could see now that Howard had used him. And Howard was a sinner, too, that was for sure. But Howard had still been his friend. Not his good friend, maybe, but his close friend.

  Howard had been killed by Drake. And eaten up by coyotes.

  Once, he’d read a story in the Bible about a woman who was eaten by wild dogs. There was some bad stuff in that book.

  But Orc was not afraid of coyotes.

  He planted huge, bare, stony feet on rock and dirt and thorny brush and none of it mattered. He just wanted to find a place, like Astrid had found, where he could be alone. In the wilderness.

  Once, Jesus had gone into the wilderness. He had talked to the devil there and outsmarted the devil by making the devil get behind him.

  It’s a metaphor, you idiot, Howard had said once when Orc had read it to him. Or a whatever. A simile. Something like that, I forget. What it means is if someone is trying to get you to do something bad you say, “Get away. Get thee behind me, dude.”

  Orc had grinned. Well, he had tried to grin, which usually scared people. And he’d said, I guess I better tell you to get behind, huh, Howard?

  Howard had had a nice way, sometimes, of kind of cocking his head and looking up at Orc and smiling with just half his mouth. I’m always behind you, big guy, he had said.

  It made Orc almost cry, remembering.

  Anyway, his own Satan, who was also his only friend, was gone, and now Orc was alone.

  He looked up and thought of the day ahead and was not afraid. Whatever bad stuff was ever going to happen to Charles Merriman had already happened. Probably. And anyway, there were bigger hands even than his own gravel hands, and it was those big hands that held his fate.

  “Berries and thorns,” Orc said to himself, trying to picture what Astrid had told him.

  Quinn had spent the night on the island. He ate cheese—actual cheese that Albert’s careful survey of the house had found in a special cheese-aging room. It had apparently never occurred to Caine and Diana, or to Sanjit before them, to look for cellars and subcellars, but Albert, being Albert, had located and cataloged everything of any use in the mansion, and had done it all in just the few days he’d been there.

  Quinn had to admit: it never would have occurred to him, either. The concept of a special cheese room was not part of his experience.

  Someone had also been growing pot in a small, underground greenhouse, but it had all died off when the power was cut back.

  In the morning Albert had Leslie-Ann and Pug help lower a massive wheel of Parmesan cheese in a net down to Quinn’s boat. Alicia would be going back to the mainland with Albert, but Leslie-Ann and Pug would stay behind. Pug had been taught to fire the missiles and use a gun and had strict instructions to fire on anyone who was not Albert.

  Anyone.

  It took Albert a while to get ready. It was lunchtime when they finally got moving—after crackers and peanut butter, lovely, lovely peanut butter. Quinn was trying hard not to regret the fact that it would now be back to the regular grind of work. It was a long, hard row back to town—harder since Albert and his giant cheese were dead weight and Albert clearly was not going to take a turn at the oars. Neither would the cheese.

  Alicia rowed for a while, but she was almost more trouble than she was worth. In the end she just put her feet up on the cheese and added to the dead weight.

  “The thing is,” Albert said, “I did the logical thing with my business. Right?”

  Albert was in an unusually talkative mood, which just annoyed Quinn. Generally when Quinn rowed, he slipped into a contemplative mood, often pondering the meaning of life, but also less overwhelming questions like Star Trek versus Star Wars, and why people would spend a fortune on some fancy car when any car would get you where you were going.

  “I’m used to being criticized, everyone resenting me because I’m successful,” Albert said. “It’s probably inevitable.”

  And sometimes, despite himself, Quinn thought about Lana.

  Those thoughts never ended well. The thing was, Quinn liked Sanjit. And he was glad that Lana was happy, or at least as happy as Lana could
get.

  “They don’t really have a right to hate me, you know: it’s not like I owe anyone anything. Actually, they owe me. Without me they’d all have starved to death by now.”

  There had been a time when Quinn had thought he and Lana would end up . . . what, going out together? Hah. Those sorts of ideas were just strange in the FAYZ. “Hanging out.” The phrase made Quinn smile. If they were getting out of here, he would have to adjust to a world where people hung out. A world where there wasn’t really any such thing as a full-time job for a fourteen-year-old kid.

  “If they’d all been reasonable instead of panicky and emotional, I wouldn’t have had to offshore.”

  That finally penetrated Quinn’s reverie. “You’re going with ‘offshoring’? Good luck. Some people might call it treason, or cowardice, or abandoning ship like a rat, but give ‘offshoring’ a try.”

  Albert waited until he was finished, then said, “Obviously none of it is my fault so long as I behaved in my own best interests.”

  “Douche.”

  “What?”

  “I was coughing,” Quinn muttered.

  He looked up, avoiding Albert’s suspicious gaze, and saw the same cabin cruiser he’d seen the day before. The captain didn’t look in his direction.

  They passed Quinn’s outgoing crews and received some good-natured catcalls for Quinn—mostly on the theme of him shirking work. And there were some less good-natured remarks for Albert.

  Edilio must have spotted them coming in, because he was waiting on the dock to receive Albert like some kind of visiting celebrity.

  Edilio reached down, took Albert’s hand, and hauled him up onto the dock.

  “I’m glad you could come, Albert,” Edilio said, perfectly diplomatic. “We need your help.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Albert said. “You want people back at work and you’ve already figured out that begging and reasoning don’t work.”

  “Also threatening,” Edilio said.

  “You just used the wrong threat,” Albert said. “I brought some paper and a Sharpie. I need a stick. No, make it several sticks.”

  Half an hour later, Albert marched to the barrier with Edilio in tow. It was now a rather desperate-looking encampment. At least a hundred kids, all filthy and bedraggled, sat staring out. Out at parents, out at siblings, out at the Carl’s Jr. just a block away, out at TV monitors, out at news reporters trying to interview them. It was like some kind of desperate refugee camp, except all that seemed to separate the well-fed, even overfed, people from the starving people was basically a sheet of glass.

  No one had bothered to even dig a slit trench, so the entire place stank of urine and human excrement.

  Albert focused on the largest cluster of TV cameras. With Edilio carrying half a dozen signs stapled to wooden poles, Albert strode purposefully to a slight rise, unceremoniously chased off the kids sitting there. He swung a backpack off his shoulders and opened it.

  “Attention! Attention, everyone! I have cheese!”

  Then he began throwing chunks of Parmesan cheese out into the crowd.

  The result was instant pandemonium. Desperately hungry kids rushed for the cheese, pushed, shoved, shouted, threatened, waved weapons, beat, kicked, clawed, cried, and cried some more. And as soon as any of them had a hand on some morsel of cheese, they began to stuff it into their mouths like hyenas rushing to eat a wildebeest before the lion came back.

  “I’m going to—” Edilio began.

  Albert cut him off. “No! Do nothing!”

  Then, as the cheese ran out and the riot calmed, and kids were left to stanch the flow of bloody noses, Albert began setting up his signs, one by one.

  The first one read:

  These kids are going to starve if they sit here watching you.

  The second one read:

  They need to get back to work. If you keep them here, they will die.

  The third one read:

  I can feed them if they work. Go away or stay and watch them die.

  The fourth:

  You can visit from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Now leave.

  The last sign read:

  Alberco: Feeding your kids. Albert Hillsborough, CEO.

  To the stunned and now bruised and bloodied crowd of kids Albert said, “I’m going to make this simple. I’m shutting Quinn down, so no more fish. You just had the last food you get unless you get back to work. Everyone will resume their old jobs. If you’ve come here from the lake, either go back to the lake or see me for a work assignment.”

  It would work right now, Albert thought, or it wouldn’t work ever.

  A single voice muttered something about Albert trying to push everyone around. Albert ignored it.

  “Now, wave good-bye to your families or whatever, and let’s get back to work.”

  Kids started to move. A few at first, then more. Some of those on the outside, some of the parents and siblings, started to retreat tearfully.

  The TV cameras did not retreat. Instead they swiveled toward Albert. Albert looked impressive. He wasn’t a big kid, he was still a bit of a shrimp, but he was wearing clean and pressed khakis and a somewhat too large, pink, immaculate Ralph Lauren button-down shirt.

  Albert pulled a six-inch-long tube from his pocket, unscrewed one end, and tapped out a fat cigar. Among the things he had discovered on the island was a humidor. He used a small chrome blade to snip one end of the cigar, stuck it in his mouth, lit it with a matching cigar torch, and puffed out a cloud of smoke.

  Albert knew two things at that moment. First, that his signs, and the image of him right now, standing as tall as he could and playing the role of arrogant businessman, would be on every newscast in the world.

  And second, he knew that from this moment forward his recent error would be forgotten and if he lived to get out of the FAYZ he would be a millionaire before he even went to college.

  “You did the right thing sending for me, Edilio,” Albert said.

  Edilio sighed.

  Along with many other things from the old days, bikes had become a luxury in the FAYZ. Many had been destroyed out of sheer vandalism or stupidity—attempting the kinds of stunts that were harder to do with adults around, such as riding down the steps of the town hall or setting up a ramp to jump over a car.

  Dahra had helped some of the kids who’d tried that last one. And at least one kid who had tried to ride a bike through a window. And another who’d thought he could ride a bike off his roof. Lana had refused to heal them at first on grounds that they were idiots.

  And there had been blown tires, broken chains, all the mishaps that occurred, along with parts being stolen and bikes being repurposed to make wheelbarrows. So Dahra’s own bike—a relic of better days that she had kept hidden underneath a tarp in her garage—was a rarity. It had been kept in one piece. But the tires had long since gone flat and Dahra had wasted much of the day before looking for a pump before finally finding one in a neighbor’s garage. She was concerned that she was now too late and Astrid would miss meeting Connie Temple. But hey, this was the FAYZ, this was not the world where all you had to do to get someplace was nag your parents into driving you. She would do her best. That’s all she could do.

  There had been times in the history of the FAYZ when she would have expected to be set upon by gangs or by coyotes as she rode out of town, but at the moment most of the population was up against the barrier and not paying much attention. And most people thought the coyotes had been finished off by Brianna anyway.

  The highway was an eerie graveyard of cars wrecked at the moment the FAYZ occurred, and of course others that had been vandalized or burned out since. Every single one had been broken into by kids searching for food or drugs or alcohol. The batteries were all long since dead, gas tanks evaporated or drained off.

  Dahra weaved her way through the wrecks and around debris and drifting trash. From Perdido Beach to the lake was just about the maximum distance you could go in the FAYZ. A full day’s walk for sure, but not
quite as bad by bike, although sticking to the roads made it less direct.

  She passed the turnoff to the power plant, the center point of the FAYZ and more or less the halfway mark for her. The Santa Katrina hills rose off to the right, shadowed by the rising sun, and now she had to choose which road to take. The nearest was gravel and dirt, which would be hard with a bike. If she rode on into the Stefano Rey National Park she’d find a better-paved but steeper road—at least that’s what kids said; Dahra had never been. The wooded part would be shadier, too, and that sounded good. It was hot and she was out of shape. She had spent most of the last year in the basement of the town hall, down in the so-called hospital, reading medical books and doling out the dwindling supply of medicine.

  She had taught herself to bandage, to attach splints, to suture wounds—Lana wasn’t always available. And she had with great misgiving taken on a bit of dentistry. At least as much dentistry as could be accomplished with a pair of needle-nose pliers and a small vise grip.

  Well, maybe if they ever got out she could look into medical school. Of course, first she’d have to go back to being a kid. Three more years of high school, then college, and then medical school, maybe.

  She had “spoken” with her mom at the barrier. Her mother had wondered if she was keeping up with her school subjects. How were you supposed to even answer a question like that? She hadn’t slept a full night since . . . forever. She had been up just about every night of the last year applying cold compresses to bring down fevers, holding puke buckets, wiping up diarrhea . . . until the great plagues had come, the killing cough and the murderous insect infestation.

  That had broken her. For a while. But she had come back.

  Yes, she had.

  Dahra rested, drank some water, wished she had some food, told herself they’d feed her at the lake, and rode on.

  The sign for the Stefano Rey was still in place. Not enough people got up this way to properly vandalize it, like every other sign had been. There was even an unvandalized stop sign, a rarity in the FAYZ, where bored kids with spray paint had painted suggestions for just what you should stop: breathing, wetting yourself, and things a bit cruder.