Gone Series: Plague Part 29

"Gas!" Jack cried.

Sam slapped him on the shoulder. "Yes! A marina isn't a marina if they don't have fuel."

He grinned and started to run toward the marina. A nagging voice in his head warned him not to hope, not to expect a good answer. It's the FAYZ, the voice said.

It's still the FAYZ.

But after so much pain, so many disappointments, and so many horrors, surely they were due for some good news?

Surely.

Lana opened her eyes.

Patrick licked her face. Which was probably why she opened her eyes.

Something heavy lay on her chest. A head. Long, dark hair.

She pushed it away and it groaned, and said, "I'm awake."

Sanjit sat up, looked at her, and wiped drool from the corner of his mouth.

Lana was on the beach. The sun was up but had not yet cleared the mountains. How she had come there she did not know. Instinctively she felt for her gun. It was not in her waistband. It had become tangled in the blanket.

"How did I get here?"

"I brought you here."

Lana absorbed that. "Why?" she demanded suspiciously.

"You pa.s.sed out."

Lana ran her hands through her tangled hair. She wiped her mouth and made a face, tasting the inside of her mouth. "You have any water?"

"Sadly, no," Sanjit said.

She sighed and looked at him with tired eyes. "What is it with you? You don't even have a blanket," Lana said.

"I wasn't going to sleep."

"Tell me you weren't watching me sleep, because then I'd have to throw up."

Sanjit grinned. "I did. I watched you sleep. And heard you sleep, too."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, you farted once. But mostly you talk in your sleep. Groan in your sleep."

"What did I say?"

Sanjit made a show of trying to recall. "Well, mostly it was, urrgh, mmmm, unh, unh, don't try to ... urggh. And the fart was very, um, genteel. Like: poot-poot! Almost musical."

Lana stared at him.

He s.h.i.+vered.

"Are you cold?" she asked.

"Just a little chilly. You know, from just waking up." He s.h.i.+vered again and wrapped his arms around his drawn-up legs.

She pulled her top blanket off, balled it up, sand flying, and shoved it at him. He draped it over his shoulders.

"How many more dead?" she asked.

"It was five total when we left."

Lana hung her head down for a moment and Sanjit remained silent. Then she stood up. She walked down to the water's edge. She stripped off her outer clothing, leaving only her underthings.

Then, gritting her teeth, she ran into the surf, and as soon as the water was up to her knees, she dove headfirst. It was freezing. But it was clean. It washed away the blood and the grime.

She rinsed her mouth with salt water.

Then, s.h.i.+vering, she came back out of the water and ran back to Sanjit.

"You're staring," she said.

"Yes. I am. I'm a teenage boy. Beautiful girls in wet underwear have a tendency to cause staring in teenage boys."

She bent down, picked up the blanket, shook the sand out of it, and wrapped it around her. Sanjit stood up.

She kissed him on the mouth.

A real kiss.

He cupped her wet head in both hands and kissed her back.

"That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," Lana said.

For once, she noted with satisfaction, Sanjit did not seem to have a glib comeback. In fact he looked just a little sick, and very much as if he meant to kiss her again.

"Back to the hospital," she said.

Brittney rose to consciousness on a narrow dirt path. Seven-foot-high dirt and stone walls hemmed her in, towered over her. And perched atop those walls, coyotes leered down, their mouths open, tongues lolling out.

Jamal was behind her, checking the wire that held her arms pinned together at wrist and elbow.

Her ankles, too, were tied, but with a loose rope so that she could take short steps, but not run.

"Where are we?" Brittney asked.

Jamal shrugged with his one good shoulder. "Somewhere Drake wants us to go." He yawned, glanced up nervously at the coyotes, and yawned again.

"You should get some rest," Brittney said. "You're in pain and tired."

"Here?" He laughed bitterly. "This feel like the place for a nap?"

No, Brittney acknowledged silently. There was something dark about this place, even though the sun was up in the sky. Something about the air. Something about the look in the eyes of the coyotes. A darkness that reached inside to her un-beating heart.

"I want to go back," Brittney said.

"Yeah? Me, too," Jamal said. "But if I do, old Drake will whip the skin off me."

He shoved her forward. She stumbled when the rope snapped at her ankles and almost fell. But she caught herself and shuffled on, not knowing what else she could or should do.

What must I do, Lord, to earn my true death and my place in your heaven?

"This is a bad place, Jamal," Brittney said. "I can feel it."

"Yeah," he said. "Drake is a bad boy, and he goes to bad places. But better off with him than against him, I figure."

They emerged from the cut-through in view of a half-ruined hole in the side of a sheer rock face. There was just enough pale pink light to see that the mine shaft was blocked by tons of fallen rock. The ma.s.sive timbers that framed the hole were splintered and looked as if they might snap.

Whatever evil Brittney felt, it came from there, from that hole, that pile of rocks.

"Where are we?"

"The mine shaft," Jamal said. "Haven't you heard all about that? In there? That's the thing that gave Drake his whip."

"In where?" Brittney said. "It's all collapsed. It's sealed up."

"That's probably good, huh? 'Cause if that thing feels this bad from out here, I don't want to know what it feels like up close." He bit his lip and in a low voice said, "Like a big claw holding your heart. Like icicles in your brain."

"Jamal, if you ran away ..."

He shook his head. "Drake would come after me. Look, you can't be killed, right? And he can't be killed, right? Which means, I betray him, sooner or later he gets me."

"Maybe fire," Brittney said softly. "Maybe G.o.d's holy fire can destroy us both."

"Yeah, well, I don't happen to have any of that."

"Only Sam can end this."

Jamal put up his hands in a who, me? gesture and said, "I am cool with that. If big Sam wants to take Drake out, I'm not going to say anything to stop him. But listen: all you're trying to do is slow Drake down, girl. Him and Sam, they're going to get into it eventually, right? So maybe you should be trying to speed him up, you see what I'm saying?"

Brittney stared at Jamal. Was it a trick?

Is this the devil tempting me?

"What did the demon Drake ask you to do?"

Jamal nodded at the cave. "He just said be here. He's got in his head that he can talk to that thing in there. Or at least hear what it says."

Brittney could believe that. How could she not believe in things that seemed supernatural? Her brother sometimes spoke to her as an angel. And G.o.d was with her always. Wasn't He?

And she herself, this gruesome remnant of the girl she once was, she herself was something outside of nature.

Was Sam the Lord's servant? The very tool G.o.d had chosen to liberate Brittney? She'd begged Sam often for liberation. But G.o.d's ways were not knowable to her. His time was not her time. His will be done.

"What does Drake want of me?" Brittney asked.

"Just, you know, don't always be trying to run away so I have to tie your legs and slow us down and all."

"Is he going after Sam? Is that his plan, to go after Sam?"

She thought she caught just the slightest falseness in Jamal's eyes as he said, "That's exactly his plan. Straight for Sam, as soon as he checks in with ... you know."

"You can sleep, Jamal," Brittney said. "Sleep until Drake comes back. I won't run away."

"How am I going to trust you?"

"Because I swear it. On the blood of the Lamb, I swear it."

Jamal woke to the pain of Drake kicking him.

"What?"

Drake was actually smiling. It wasn't a good look for him.

"You were asleep," he said. "And I'm still here."

Jamal jumped up and quickly untied Drake. "Yeah, I did just what you said, Drake. Just like you said. I told her that you would go after Sam first thing. Then Sam would burn you both up and ..."

He gulped, suddenly realizing that this might be taking it too far.

But Drake was in a charitable, expansive mood. He patted Jamal lightly on the cheek with the tip of his whip. "You did good. And I will get Sam Temple. Sooner or later."

Drake gazed at the mine shaft. What he felt toward the Darkness within was something very much like love. Fear, yes, but the Darkness deserved his fear. His fear and his devotion.

If he had to pull the rocks out of there one by one, and if it took weeks, he would reach the Darkness and free him.

"My old body's down there," Drake said, realizing it for the first time. "My old body is down there with him."

Drake felt a sudden pang of longing. He wanted to press his body against the rocks in the mine's mouth. It would bring him closer. Maybe the Darkness would reach out to him, touch his mind, tell him what to do next.

But he couldn't do that in front of Jamal.

"Start hauling rock," Drake said. "You have to pile it, like, back over there." He pointed a relatively flat s.p.a.ce. "I don't know how far the rock fall goes. It may take us a while. Put Brittney Pig to work when she comes back."

For two hours or more they lifted and carried. It would have helped if they had a wheelbarrow. It would have helped if Jamal's arm weren't broken. They had to lift each chunk of stone, each shattered timber. Some were big enough that they had to each take an end. Some were so big they couldn't even budge them and had to just go around them.