Gone Series: Plague Part 40

She shook her head. "I can't beat these things, but I can at least fight them."

"What if he won't come?" Quinn asked.

"He'll come. It will be his big moment."

"Will he be able to stop these creatures?"

"How would I know?" Brianna demanded. "It wasn't my idea. I'm not the one saying we should bring him back. Maybe he and Drake will go back to being best buddies. How would I know?"

"Well, I guess Edilio thinks Caine can save us."

Neither of them spoke for a while, both thinking of Edilio, wondering if he would survive. Right from the start Edilio had been one of the good guys. Probably the best of them.

He and Mary: two selfless, loyal, decent people. One dead after betraying everything and everyone. The other maybe dying right now, ignored and alone.

"One more question for you, Brianna. It's serious. So don't just give me your automatic tough-chick answer, okay? Because I want the truth."

"Yeah?"

"Can you beat Caine? If he starts in with his usual, starts pushing people around, hurting them ... Can you take him?"

He saw the beginnings of a c.o.c.ky smile. But then she dropped the act, sighed, and said, "I don't know, Quinn."

Still he hesitated. He didn't want to go. And he knew why. "Everybody kind of likes me now because I fish. I have this thing I do, right, and it's necessary and so people respect me." He sighed and unwound the motorboat's rope from its cleat. "Now I'll be the guy who brought Caine back."

Brianna nodded. "Sucks to be you. Sucks worse to be me."

Impulsively, Quinn hugged her. Like a brother. She didn't return the gesture, but she didn't blur away either.

"Hang in there, Breeze."

"You too, Fisherman."

Quinn stepped down into the boat. Brianna was out of sight before he could fire the engine.

He headed out of the marina, chugging along slowly until he was away. Then he pushed the throttle to full speed and pointed the bow toward the distant island.

Astrid looked around, wondering where they were and where they were going. Orc seemed to have someplace in mind. But he also seemed confused. They were in an area of tangled woods and sharp, sudden, brush-choked valleys.

"Are you taking us to Coates?" Astrid asked.

"Yeah," Orc answered.

"Why there?"

"You wanted to get away, right?"

"I want my brother to be somewhere safe," Astrid said, conscious of the hypocrisy.

"It's safe there," Orc said.

"How do you know?"

"It's a secret," Orc grumbled. "I mean, there's no one there. None of those kids anyway. Caine and all them guys."

"What if Drake goes there?"

Orc shrugged, which caused Little Pete's head to fall from his shoulder and loll back. "If Drake's there, I'll take care of him."

Astrid stepped quickly to catch up with Orc. She put her hand on his shoulder. He slowed down and moved aside so she could walk beside him.

"Are you looking for Drake?" Astrid asked. "Because I don't think that's a good idea."

"I don't care about Drake," Orc said angrily. "I had enough of him. But I have to be away from town. Where else am I going to go?"

Astrid felt sure that was part of the truth. But not all of it.

"Thanks for helping us," she said. "But you don't have to stay away from town. It's not your fault Drake escaped."

"Didn't say it was."

"Then why?"

Orc said nothing, just walked on heavily, stone feet trampling the undergrowth like some undersized G.o.dzilla. Then, "This kid," he said.

"What kid?"

"This kid, this little kid, was all sick or whatever, and I was ... I guess I was drunk."

"What happened with the kid?"

"Got in my way," Orc said.

It was hard to read Orc's expression. But she heard anguish in his voice.

"Oh," Astrid said.

"Gotta leave town. Like Hunter. That's the law. You oughta know, you made up that law."

"I didn't come up with 'thou shalt not kill,'" Astrid said defensively. The sanctimony in her own voice made her sick. The same Bible that said "thou shalt not kill" also said "he who hateth his brother is a murderer."

Didn't she hate her brother? Hadn't she contemplated murder? Hadn't she dared Turk and Lance to do it for her? If Orc had to go into exile, then didn't she as well?

Would she wish her brother dead and live with that mortal sin, and yet draw the line at sleeping with Sam? How absurd was that? Murder, sure, but fornication? No way.

Astrid had never felt so low. She dropped back so Orc wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. Oh, G.o.d, how had she become this person? How had she failed so utterly?

Hypocrite. Murderer in her heart. A cold, manipulative witch. That's what she was. Astrid the Genius? Astrid the Fraud.

And now she slogged through darkening woods to find a cold shelter with a drunken killer and her brother. One who killed from rage and stupidity; the other who killed from what? Ignorance? Indifference? From the simple fact of too much power for anyone to handle, let alone an autistic child? She laughed, but it was not a happy sound.

"What's funny?" Orc demanded suspiciously.

"Me," Astrid said.

They spotted the dark gabled roofs of Coates through the trees and then struck the road that led up to the front gate.

It was a gloomy place, a haunted place. Pale whitewashed stone that showed evidence of violence. A ma.s.sive hole in the facade was like a fatal bullet wound. The door had been ripped apart, shredded.

Orc stomped steadily forward, climbed the steps, and yelled, "Anyone here?"

His voice echoed in the arched entryway. "There're beds upstairs. Gotta take the back stairs."

He led the way, obviously familiar with the layout. Astrid wondered how he had come to know the place so well. Orc was not a Coates kid.

They found a dorm room that hadn't been burned or shredded or used as a toilet.

Orc tossed Little Pete negligently onto a bare mattress. Astrid searched for and found a tattered blanket, which she spread over him.

She felt his forehead. Still feverish, but perhaps no worse than before. She had no thermometer. He was coughing in fits and starts. Not worse, not better.

"What's next, Petey?" she asked him.

If Lance had squeezed the trigger, would the bullet have killed Little Pete? Would he have had the power to stop it? Surely. But would he have known what was happening?

"How much do you know, Petey? How much do you understand?"

He would need clean bedding after he wet himself. And she herself needed clothing, she was still in just a nightgown. And although there would be no food left in this place, surely there might be a few drops of water.

Astrid called to Orc, but he didn't hear. She heard his heavy footsteps reverberate in the eerie silence.

Best to leave him be. In another room she found clothing that was close to her size. Close enough. It wasn't clean, but at least it had not been worn recently. Coates had been abandoned for a while. She wondered if it belonged to Diana.

She went in search of water. What she found was Orc. He was in the dining hall. His ma.s.sive legs were propped on a heavy wooden table. He had pushed two chairs together to bear his weight and spread.

In his hand he held a clear gla.s.s bottle full of clear liquid.

The room smelled of charcoal and something sickly sweet. The source was obvious: in the corner, next to a window, was a contraption that could only be a still. Copper tubing probably salvaged from the chemistry lab looped from a steel washtub that rested on an iron trestle over the cold remains of a fire.

"This is where Howard makes his whiskey," Astrid said. "That's how you know the place."

Orc took a deep swig. Some of the liquor sloshed out of his mouth. "No one ever comes here since Caine and all them took off. That's how come Howard set up here."

"What does he use?"

Orc shrugged. "Don't matter much as long as it's any kind of vegetable. There's a patch of corn only a few people know about. Artichokes, too. Cabbages. It don't matter."

Astrid took a chair at some distance from him.

"You changed clothes," he said.

"I was cold."

He nodded and drank deep. His eyes were on her, looking at her in detail. She was very glad to no longer be wearing her nightgown.

She wondered whether Orc was old enough for her to worry about in that way. She thought not. But it was a frightening possibility.

"Should you be drinking that so fast?"

"Gotta be fast," Orc said. "Otherwise I pa.s.s out and can't get enough to do the trick."

"What trick?" Astrid asked.

Orc made a sad smile. "Don't worry about it, Astrid."

She didn't want to worry about it. She had enough of her own worries. So she said nothing as he gulped and gulped until forced to take a breath.

"Orc," she said softly. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"Like I said, don't worry 'bout it."

"You can't do that," she said. "It's ... it's wrong."

She noticed two more bottles down on the floor, right where he could reach them without moving.

"It's a mortal sin," she said, feeling like a stupid fool. The very word "sin" felt like a sin when she spoke it.

Hypocrite, she berated herself silently. Fraud.

"If you do this, you'll have no chance to repent," Astrid said. "You'll die with a mortal sin on your conscience."

"Got that already," Orc said.

"But you're sorry for that. You've thought about it. And you're sorry for it."

Orc sobbed suddenly, a loud sound. He tilted his head back and she saw the last of the bottle drain into his mouth.

"If you've asked for forgiveness, and if you felt truly sorry, then G.o.d has forgiven you for that little boy."

The bottles weren't corked, just sealed with a piece of Saran Wrap and a rubber band. Orc pulled the plastic off a second bottle.

"There's no G.o.d in the FAYZ, didn't you know that?" he said.

Chapter Thirty-Two.