Gone Series: Plague Part 26

"Oh, sorry about that," Penny snarled. "I hope I didn't wake you up, you piece of-"

"You okay?" Caine asked Diana.

"She's perfect," Penny said. "Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect skin. Plus she has legs that work, which is really cool."

"I'm out of here," Caine said.

"No," Diana said, "Help me lift her back out."

"Yeah, Caine, don't you want to see me naked? I'm still kind of hot. If you don't mind my legs. Just don't look at them. Because they'll kind of make you sick."

To Diana's surprise Caine said, "Whenever you're ready."

Diana popped the drain.

"Why don't you just kill me?" Penny demanded. "You know you will sooner or later, Caine. You know you can't take care of me forever. You want to do it, don't you?"

Diana tried to read the answer in Caine's eyes. Nothing. There were times she was sure she saw human decency there. And other times when his dark eyes were as pitiless as a shark's.

"Okay, raise her up," Diana said.

Caine stepped closer and lifted up his hands. Penny rose from the water like some awful parody of a surfacing dolphin. She rose and the water fell and bubbles slid off her.

Diana took the nozzle and sprayed Penny off as she floated a few feet in the air. Even the touch of the water on her legs made Penny wince and grit her teeth.

Diana spread a clean towel over the mat and Caine set Penny down slowly. Gently.

"I could fill your head with living nightmares," Penny said to Caine. "I could make you scream like I scream."

"But then I would kill you, Penny," Caine said coldly. "And I don't think you're quite ready to die."

Albert stared at the ledger book like it could answer his worries. But it was the source of his worries. The columns where he normally entered the amount of produce coming in from the fields, the number of pigeons or gulls caught by Brianna, the number of rats sold to him, the quant.i.ty of birds, racc.o.o.ns, opossums, squirrels, or deer brought in by Hunter, were all empty for this day.

Albert reminded himself to get someone down to the dock to bring up the catch. He should have done it earlier, but it had been a hectic day. Maybe he could send Jamal. Speaking of which, where was Jamal? He was supposed to be back by sunset and it was well after that.

Albert made a mental note to himself: give Dahra something nice as a reward for her quick thinking. If Quinn and his people had been brought down by this flu, the situation would be even more desperate.

Albert had a page for water. Bottled water found in homes or cars: nothing in days. Water trucked in: nothing in a day.

Just like that, in the blink of an eye, Perdido Beach had gone from self-sufficient at a very, very basic level to disaster.

Albert glanced around the room. His natural caution had become something closer to paranoia lately. The house was empty-even the maid was away. But what he was about to do would have been troublesome if observed: he opened his desk and pulled out a bottle of water.

It made a snapping sound as he broke the seal on the bottle of Arrowhead water. He drank deep, then carefully sealed the bottle and hid it away again.

He closed the ledger. Nothing to add to the incoming columns.

Then an unmistakable noise: shattering gla.s.s.

Albert froze. The sound was from close by. The kitchen?

He hesitated only a moment, running through his options. Then he reached under the desk, fumbled for and found the pistol taped to the underside.

A door opened. He heard the sound of it and felt the air pressure change and pushed back his chair and tried to rip the tape free so he could hold the gun properly as he'd been shown by Edilio, but he was too slow, too late, they were in the room and on him.

Turk, Lance, Watcher, and Raul. All armed.

It was Watcher-a quiet eleven-year-old who had been caught stealing-who whacked his knee with a crowbar.

"Aaahh!" It hadn't been that hard a swing but the pain shot up his leg and for a second he could think of nothing else. He'd never felt pain like that. His ankle and foot were tingling like he'd stepped on a downed power line.

"Get him!"

"Yeah!"

"Hit him again!"

"No!" Albert yelled, but the next blow came from Turk, who smashed the b.u.t.t of his rifle into Albert's face. His nose gushed blood. This was more numbing than painful. His thoughts were scattered, ripped into fragments.

"Wha ... ?" he said.

His pistol, gone. Where? He squeezed his hand, stupid for a few seconds, not able to figure out- Turk grabbed him from the back of his neck and slammed him facedown on the ledger. A distant part of Albert's mind worried that his blood would seep onto the pages and make them hard to read.

He groaned as someone punched him in the back and in the side and ground his face savagely against the ledger.

Turk yanked him back and shoved him against the wall. Albert's legs gave way and he fell on his rear end.

The four of them loomed over him. Albert knew he was crying as well as bleeding. And he knew that both his tears and his blood would make the creeps happy.

"What do you want?" he said, slurring his words, realizing a broken tooth was stuck into his tongue.

"What do we want?" Turk mocked. "Everything, Albert. We want everything."

After cleaning Penny, Diana felt the need for a shower herself.

She shampooed. She conditioned. She shaved her legs and armpits. So normal. So like being home. Except that here her mother's creepy boyfriends didn't sneak in to get a look at her and pretend they'd come looking for aspirin or whatever.

She turned off the shower with great reluctance. She could stand there under the spray forever. But in the back of her mind was the knowledge that they had all wasted food until they were starving. She had learned a deep lesson about waste.

She wrapped one of the soft bath sheets around herself and brushed her teeth.

She went toward her bed and found Caine waiting there for her. He was standing awkwardly, chewing his thumbnail.

"Napoleon?" she asked him.

"No," he said, and looked down at the floor.

"Uh-huh."

"I helped with Penny."

"Yes, you did. And you only threatened to kill her once."

A flicker of a smile. "Even Sam would have threatened her."

Diana went to him. They did not touch. But they stood just inches away. Close enough for Diana to feel his breath on her face.

"Why did you save me?" Diana asked.

Caine sucked in a deep, steadying breath, like he was getting ready to dive into a pool. "Because I ..." He paused, blinked, seeming surprised at the words coming out of his own mouth. "Because what would I do without you? How would I live without you? Because."

"Because?"

"Because you are the only human being I need."

Diana looked at him skeptically. Was he changed? Even a little? Or was it all just manipulation?

She might never know. But at that moment she also knew this was all she would get from him. And she knew that it was enough. Because she was not going to turn him away.

She grabbed his head in both hands and drew him to her. She kissed him hard. It was a hungry, needy, wild kiss. No time to breathe, no time to be gentle, no time for any more stupid questions or doubts.

Diana took a step back, unwound the towel, and let it drop.

Caine made a sound like a strangling animal.

She pushed him hard. He landed on his back on the bed.

He began to fumble with his shirt, trying to get it off.

"No, I'll do that," Diana said. "I'll do everything."

Pete.

SOMETHING WAS NOT right. He could no longer balance atop the sheet of gla.s.s. He had fallen. He was falling still.

There was a ringing in his ears. A fire burned inside his body and that body was almost all he saw now. The sister was a faint echo. The Darkness was far away. He was inside himself, burning, twisting, and falling forever and forever.

He tried to make his mother appear, but she wavered and slipped away.

The cool breeze could not reach inside him, it sliced his skin but did not put out the fire.

He felt his body empty out. Wrong. Wrong even to see himself, wrong to have his body be so big a part of his mind, pushing everything else aside.

Pain. An explosion, one of many, erupted from him and shot white-hot spears into him again and again.

His sister was upset, her distraught, too-bright, too-blue eyes swam around like fish in an aquarium.

The pale tentacle reached, quested, but could not find him because he was no longer high atop it all, perched and balanced, he was falling, spinning downward into thirst and burning and pain.

He had to make it stop.

But how?

Chapter Twenty-One.

24 HOURS, 10 MINUTES.

LITTLE PETE LICKED his lips. They were dry and cracked.

Astrid was thirsty, too. She'd gone out a couple of times, defying the quarantine, to look for water.

Her plan now was to wait for dawn when the dew would settle on the leaves of the trees, on the siding of the house.

She had a squeegee and a bucket and some fairly clean rags. She had to get water. She had to get Pete something to drink.

No one to call on for help. Sam was gone. She had looked for Edilio but not found him. Who could get her anything? Who could help her?

Little Pete coughed hoa.r.s.ely and licked his lips as he hung in midair, twisting slowly, like a chicken on a rotisserie, hovering in the breeze that blew strong through the window.

Afterward Diana lay alone in her bed. She'd kicked Caine out and Caine was relieved to go.

Diana would not have minded him staying. But she sensed he needed to go off and think, wonder what he'd gotten himself into, and regret any implication that he had cleaned up his act and accepted her terms.

It was all a fantasy, of course, the idea that he would change. Maybe someday. Maybe when he was older. Maybe when he got a career and a house and a wife and all the other things that cause wild boys to turn into men.

Not that men were always better behaved than boys.

Diana stayed on her side of the bed, just as if Caine was still there. That had become his side of the bed. It belonged to him.

Of course if that was true she was going to have to find some condoms. From just the two times the risk of pregnancy wasn't great, especially given the fact that her body was half wrecked. But still. The last thing anyone wanted was a baby.