Fear (Gone, #5)

by Michael Grant

The colonel didn’t look much like a colonel. He had the flawlessly pressed army uniform, of course, and the neatly trimmed hair, but he tended to slouch inside that uniform, leaving the impression that either it was a size too big or he had shrunk since buying it.

“That’s not going to happen,” Connie said firmly. “Because what’s going to happen is that the barrier is going to come down. And my son Sam and your daughter, Dahra, are going to come walking down that road.” Abana smiled. She finished their long-worn joke. “And walk right past us to get a burger at Carl’s.” Connie reached for her hand. “That’s right. That’s what’s going to happen. It’ll be, ‘Hey, Mom, see you later: I’m going to go grab a burger.’” They were quiet for a while. Both women closed their eyes and lifted their faces to the sun. “If only there had been some warning,” Abana said. She’d said it before: she regretted having argued with her daughter the morning before the event. And as usual the response was on the tip of Connie’s tongue: I did have warning. I had a warning. But this time, as every time, Connie Temple said nothing.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Only no loving God, seeing her faith, had intervened to stop the killing. For the excellent reason that there was no loving God. That it had taken her so long to realize this was an embarrassment to her. She was Astrid the Genius, after all. The name she had carried for years. And yet Sam, with his shoulder-shrugging indifference to all matters religious, had been so much closer to the truth. What kind of a fool looked at the world as it was—and this terrible world of the FAYZ especially—and believed in God? A God actually paying attention, let alone caring about his creations? She had murdered Little Pete. Murdered. She didn’t want to dress it up with any nice word. She wanted it harsh. She wanted the word to be sandpaper dragged across her raw conscience.

It had been amazing to watch the quiet authority Edilio brought to the job. Sam was nominally in charge, but it never would have occurred to Sam to worry so much about sanitation.

“It’s all a question of how fast the stain is spreading,” Astrid told herself, taking pleasure from the precision of numbers. How long until the dome was dark? Astrid wondered. Because Astrid had very little doubt that the stain would continue spreading. Into her head came a memory from long ago: Sam admitting to her that he was afraid of the dark. It was in his room, in his former home, the place he’d shared with his mother. It was perhaps the reason that in a sudden panic he had created the first of what would come to be known as Sammy suns. Sam had many more terrible things to be scared of now. Surely he was over that ancient terror. She hoped so. Because she had a terrible feeling that a very long night was coming.

The pickup truck crept down the road. Crept for many reasons: First, it saved gas. Second, they were driving with the lights out because headlights would be visible a long way off. Third, the road from the lake down to the highway was narrow and only sketchily paved. And fourth: Sam had never really learned to drive. Sam was behind the wheel. Dekka was beside him. Computer Jack was in the cramped space behind the front seat, wedged in and not happy. “No offense, Sam, but you’re going off the road. Off the road! Sam! You’re going off the road!” “No, I’m not; shut up,” Sam snapped as he guided the huge truck back onto the road, narrowly avoiding overturning in the ditch. “This is how I’m going to die,” Jack said. “Crammed in like this in a ditch.”

Penny said two words, the second of which was “you.” Caine laughed. “I think you meant ‘——you, Your Highness.’”

“You like irony, Edilio?” Astrid asked him. For a moment she thought she’d embarrassed him by using a word he didn’t understand. But after a long, reflective pause Edilio said, “You mean like the irony of an illegal from Honduras ending up being what I am?” Astrid smiled. “Yeah. Like that.” Edilio gave her a shrewd look. “Or maybe like Diana having a baby?” That forced a laugh from Astrid. She shook her head ruefully. “You are the most underestimated person in the FAYZ.” “It’s my superpower,” Edilio said dryly.

“Who would you say are the ten most powerful people in the FAYZ, Edilio?” Edilio raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really?” “Yes.” “Number one is Albert,” Edilio said. “Then Caine. Sam. Lana.” He thought about it for a moment longer and said, “Quinn. Drake, unfortunately. Dekka. You. Me. Diana.” Astrid folded her arms in front of her. “Not Brianna? Or Orc?” “They’re both powerful, sure. But they don’t have the kind of power that moves other people, you know? Brianna’s cool, but she’s not someone who other people follow. Same with Jack. More so with Orc.” “You notice something about the ten people you named?” Astrid asked. Then she answered her own question. “Four of the ten have no powers or mutations.”

“Old-school, huh? Like a hermit. Or a monk. Holy men . . . women, too, I guess . . . going off to the wilderness to make peace with God.” “I’m not a holy anything.” “But you made peace?” Astrid took a deep breath. “I’ve changed.” “Ah. Like that?” Her silence was confirmation. “Lots of people, they go through bad times, they lose their faith. But they come back to it.” “I didn’t lose my faith, Edilio: I killed it.

It did occur to Sam for just a fleeting moment that Caine might not be the one who had taken the missiles. But there was really only one other possibility. A ridiculous possibility. Ridiculous. No, Caine had the missiles. Which meant the four-month-long peace was coming to an end. It was dark, and no one was looking at him, so Sam didn’t feel too guilty about the fact that he was smiling.

affectionate speculation about Edilio and the nature of his friendship with the Artful Roger;

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“That’s not why I sent Sanjit. I was going to go myself before this latest fiasco. I sent him because I think Diana is in danger.” Caine’s heart missed a beat. The reaction surprised him. As did the catch in his throat when he said, as coldly as he could, “Danger? You mean more than the rest of us?”

<3<3<3

“But you and me. We’re cool?” Dekka was crying again, but this time she wiped the tears away with a laugh. “Breeze, how could we not be cool? We are definitely the badass sisters.” “What do we do now? I can’t run very fast in the dark.” “Yep. But we still go after Drake. He’s got Diana, and we can’t leave her to him. He hates women, you know.” “Yeah. I did notice that about him.” Brianna felt energy flowing through her again. The tiredness, the frustration, they were gone. And the coming darkness? Well, she could still swing a very, very fast machete. “The boy hates chicks, right? Let’s go give him a good reason to.”

Sam saw shame on Edilio’s face. “I’m sorry, babe; you know I love that little guy. I didn’t mean it like that.” Edilio reached for Roger, then, with a darting sideways glance at Sam, stopped himself. Roger had made an identical move, and also stopped after an abashed glance at Sam. Sam stood very still, and for a few very awkward seconds no one spoke.

all this tension means that I STILL KINDA SHIP SAM/EDILIO

“Bad stuff in Perdido Beach,” Sanjit began. “Penny somehow managed to cement Caine. They’re going to try to free him, but last I saw Caine he was crying and having his cemented hands beaten on with a hammer.” Sam’s reaction surprised him: his first feeling was worry, and even outrage, on Caine’s behalf.

“What are you going to do?” Edilio asked. “Why didn’t you tell me you were gay?” Sam demanded. Edilio looked like he’d been punched. But he recovered quickly, to go to an expression that was half-wary, half-embarrassed. “You got enough stuff to deal with.” “That’s not something I have to ‘deal with,’ Edilio. My girlfriend lost, the world ending, having to go out there after Drake, that’s stuff I have to deal with. Me finding out you’ve got someone to care about like that? How is that something I have to deal with?” “I don’t know, I just . . . I mean, it took me a while to kind of figure it out. You know.” “Does everyone except me know?” Sam asked. He realized this was a stupid concern; this was hardly the time to worry about seeming out of touch. But no one had been closer to him than Edilio, almost from the first day. It bothered him to think everyone knew something he didn’t. It hurt his feelings. “No, man,” Edilio reassured him. “No. And it’s not about me being, you know, ashamed or whatever. It’s that . . . look, I have a lot of responsibility. I have to have people trust me. And some kids are still going to call me a faggot or whatever.” “Seriously? We’re about to be plunged into eternal darkness and you think those kids out there are going to worry about who you like?” Edilio didn’t answer. And Sam had the feeling maybe Edilio knew more than he did on the subject. He let it go.

“I gotta tell you the truth, man,” Sam said, shaking his head slowly, side to side, as he spoke. “I don’t see a way out of this. I don’t even see the starting point for a way out of this. I don’t expect us to survive this.” Edilio nodded. Like he knew this. Like he was ready for it to be said. “So in case this is it, Edilio, in case I go out there and don’t come back, I want to say thank you. You’ve been a brother to me. My true brother.” Sam carefully avoided looking at Edilio.

seriously, Sam/Edilio tho......

“I wish I knew whether Sanjit was safe,” Lana said. “I was just thinking about Edilio for some reason,” Quinn said. “Somehow I always feel like if Edilio’s still standing, we’re not totally beaten yet.” He laughed. “Weird, I guess, because I didn’t used to like him. I used to call him a wetback. Not the worst thing I ever did, I guess, but I wish I could take it back.” Caine was resting beside them, having used his power to noisily rip some wooden doors off houses and then carry them back to feed the fire. “It’s stupid to waste time worrying about what you did,” Caine said. “It’s not going to matter.” “Your brother, Sam, he worries about it all the time,” Quinn said. He winced, thinking maybe that was violating a confidence. But weren’t they past all that? Past everything, in fact? Wasn’t this maybe the last peaceful conversation before the end? “Does he?” Caine asked. “Idiot.”

“‘Fear is the mind-killer,’” Lana said, reciting from memory. “‘Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I . . .’ I can’t remember the rest. From a book I read a long time ago.” To almost no one’s surprise, Astrid said, “Dune, by Frank Herbert. ‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.’” She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. “‘Only I will remain.’” There was a collective sigh that was almost a sob.

I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS

“Why didn’t they finish us?” Sam wondered. “If I tell you something crazy, will you just accept it?” Caine said. “It’s the FAYZ.”

An old couple came running from a motorhome, scribbling as they ran. Their sign read, Can you check on our cat, Ariel? No one would answer that, because the cats had all been eaten. Where is my daughter? And a name. Where is my son? And a name. And whose job was it, Astrid wondered bitterly, to write the answers? Dead. Dead. Died of carnivorous worms. Died of a coyote attack. Murdered in a fight over a bag of chips. Dead of suicide. Dead because she was playing with matches and we don’t exactly have a fire department. Killed because it was the only way we could deal with him. How did one explain to all those watching eyes what life was like inside the FAYZ?