Gone Series: Plague Part 41

3 HOURS, 48 MINUTES.

SAM FIRED. THE beams of light hit the hovering bug squarely. The rays of light bounced and fragmented, steaming the water.

"Dekka!" Sam yelled.

She killed gravity beneath the hovering bug so that it shot suddenly upward followed by a swoosh of rising water.

But it was no good. More of the creatures were opening their roachlike wings and flying awkwardly out toward the boat.

Sam cursed. He threw the engine into gear and spun the wheel. The boat zoomed toward the middle of the lake.

The bugs tried to chase, but they were insects, not eagles, and their flight was jerky and poorly controlled.

"I can maybe crush them," Jack said over the roar of the engines.

"He believes he maybe can," Toto commented.

"But they scare me."

"That is true, too," Toto said.

"Yeah, I could have guessed that," Sam yelled as they dodged another lumbering creature.

They could keep dodging the bugs, maybe forever, but when Sam tapped the gas gauge it showed just an eighth of a tank.

There was a hand pump built into the dock's gas tank. But it wasn't as if Drake would let them pull in and refuel.

"We need gas," Sam said.

He headed the boat away from the marina, keeping close to the sh.o.r.e, hoping Drake's creepy army would follow. They were faster on land than in the air so they zoomed in their crazy b.u.mblebee way back to land on sh.o.r.e.

He looked back and saw Drake urging the creatures on. They were quick, skittering on their insect legs. But not quite as fast as the boat. At top speed he could pull away.

"Are we running away?" Toto wondered.

"Yes," Sam snapped.

"That's not true."

"Is there any way to shut you off?" Sam demanded. "We're faster than they are. So we're going to draw them off, double back, and beat them back to the marina."

"Then what?" Dekka asked.

"We gas up and drive around out here forever," Sam said.

"Great plan," Dekka said.

"Sooner or later Drake gives way to Brittney. We might have a shot then."

It didn't take long at full speed to reach the end of the lake. The huge roaches swarmed along the sh.o.r.e, rus.h.i.+ng eagerly to catch up. None were airborne now.

"Where's Drake?" Jack asked.

Sam scanned the insect army. No sign of Drake. Sam killed the engine, saving gas for the mad dash back to the marina. In the sudden quiet he heard a different engine.

A sleek boat with two big outboards was throwing up a cloud of spray and whump-whumping toward them. There could be no doubt as to who was driving the boat.

The bugs on the sh.o.r.e. Drake on the water.

"If he has a gun, we're in trouble," Dekka said.

"He doesn't need a gun," Sam said grimly. "He can ram us. He's unkillable, we're not."

"What do we do?" Jack asked. Then, more panicked, "What do we do?"

Dekka put a calming hand on his shoulder. "Take it easy."

Sam measured the sh.o.r.eline, checked the gas supply, glanced at his two friends, and finally appraised Toto.

"Dude, do you think you can pump gas?"

Toto looked away and pa.s.sed the question along to the imaginary Spidey head. "Can I pump gas?" Then, apparently hearing an answer, he said, "Yes."

Sam fired the engine up. He turned the wheel, waited, waited, as Drake's bow wave grew large.

"Jack. Grab that boathook. And be ready."

"What?"

"You ever see that movie where Heath Ledger was a knight?"

"Not his best movie," Dekka said.

"True," Toto agreed.

"Hold on," Sam warned. He put the engine into gear, pushed the throttle all the way, and flew toward Drake.

Lana did not run, she was too tired for it, and anyway Howard was probably wrong. Turk and Lance surely did believe they'd killed Albert. As he'd laid there, shrieking in pain beneath Lana's healing touch, Lance kept babbling something about forgiveness, praying to be saved, saying he was sorry for Albert. "It was Turk, it wasn't me!" he'd said, his destroyed cheek flapping bloodily with each word as the drenching rain swept the blood down to the carpet beneath his head.

Lana had mostly healed Turk and Lance. They wouldn't die, at least. She hadn't much seen the point: they were sc.u.m and someone would only have to kill them all over again, sooner or later. But she supposed it wasn't her decision to make. She was just a player in the madness.

She had missed her chance to be a hero by destroying the gaiaphage. And she had failed to stop the virus that now claimed nine bodies. Instead she'd saved a couple of creeps. Yay for her.

She and Howard found Albert just as he'd said: sitting with his back against the wall.

Lana noticed an awful lot of blood. A small, sticky sea of it around Albert.

"He didn't die right away," Lana observed. "Dead people don't bleed as much. And see how the wall is smeared? He sat up." She knelt and placed her fingers on his neck. "Then he just sat here and bled to death."

No question in her mind. He had a bullet hole in his face. And a much larger exit wound out the far side. It looked as if some wild animal had taken a messy bite out of his skull.

"I don't raise the dead," Lana said.

"No, wait," Howard insisted. He knelt beside her and lifted one eyelid. It was dark, there wasn't much light for an iris to react to. So Howard fished out a lighter and flicked the flame.

Lana's eyebrows went up. "Do it again."

Howard lifted the other lid. That iris, too, responded.

"Huh," Lana said.

She pressed both hands against Albert's head. After a few minutes holding that pose she bent his head forward to see the awful exit wound. Around the jagged, ripped edges, flesh was growing.

"The brother's not dead," Howard said.

"About as close as you can get," Lana said. "But no: he's not dead. And this kind of thing, at least, I can heal."

"Boy's going to owe me," Howard said.

"You're a trip, Howard, as my dad would say," Lana said. "You are definitely a trip."

"You'll tell Albert I brought you, right? You'll tell him it was me, right?"

"Why? Are you leaving?"

Howard stood up. "Gotta go find Orc. I just figured out where he'd go."

Lana got herself into a more comfortable position. Patrick went off to scavenge around in the house.

"You find anything, you better share," Lana called after her dog.

The two boats raced toward each other.

Six seconds to impact.

Sam's mind was racing. Drake would know he was bluffing. Drake didn't fear an impact, he would know Sam was bluffing and he would expect Sam to suddenly veer aside.

Four seconds to impact.

"Jack!" Sam yelled. "Up on the bow!"

"What?"

"Do it!" Sam bellowed.

Jack sprang straight from the stern to the bow. He was holding the boathook like a lance. Like he really was a knight. Hopefully Drake had noticed.

One second.

"Now, throw it!" Sam shouted.

Jack threw it with all his desperate, supernatural strength.

Sam had not expected the boathook to impale Drake- and it didn't. But even an unkillable killer had instincts, and Drake instinctively dropped to let the boathook fly harmlessly over his head.

Sam had already twisted the wheel.

They blew past Drake's boat, spraying it with their bow wave and taking a drenching spray in return.

Dekka grinned at Toto. "See, this is what makes Sam, Sam."

It took a furious Drake ten seconds to turn his boat and come after Sam.

The bugs were even slower to catch on. Now they were racing back along the sh.o.r.e, but neither Drake nor the bugs would get to the marina before Sam.

"Okay," Sam yelled over the throb of the engines. "Toto, when we get there you pump like crazy, right? I'll show you how. But Drake will be on us quick and he may try again to ram us, so Jack? You and Dekka be ready."

"Ready to do what?"

"Hang on!" Sam yelled. He aimed the boat for the dock, threw it into reverse, the water boiled, the engine roared, and the boat sc.r.a.ped harshly to a stop by the gas pump.

Sam grabbed Toto and shoved him bodily up onto the dock.

"Dekka! Tie us off." He unlimbered the hand pump, thrust the nozzle into the gas tank and physically placed Toto's hands on the pump. "Up and down, up and down, and don't stop until I tell you to."

Sam ran to the end of the dock. Drake was roaring down on them. Sam glanced left, right, looking for what he needed. A low-slung sailboat. That would do.

"Dekka! Float that boat!"

Dekka raised her hands and the boat rose from the water, dripping all over them, tilting to one side so that for a moment Sam was afraid it would roll over and smash its mast down on their heads.

"Okay, Jack. You missed with the boathook. Try this!"

Jack had to skirt Dekka's field, and for a second he lost his footing and almost fell into the water. Sam grabbed his hand and hauled him upright.

Jack backed up twenty feet, took a deep breath, and ran straight at the boat that now hovered over the end of the dock.

Sam had the pleasure of seeing the sudden realization dawn in Drake's eyes.