Gone Series: Plague Part 9

"How come you work for Albert if you hate him?" Orc asked.

Jamal shrugged. "I'm tough, he needs someone tough."

"Yeah," Orc said. "But he treats me like c.r.a.p."

"Yeah?"

"Should see how he's living, man. You think he's living like the rest of us? Get this: at night he doesn't even go out to take a leak. He's got, like, a jar he pees in."

"I got a jar I pee in."

"Yeah, well, he's got a maid to take it out and dump it for him."

Orc's head was buzzing, not really paying attention, but Jamal was getting fired up, listing complaints about Albert, starting with the fact that Albert had meat every day and kids to clean up after him.

"See, man, he loves it like this, right?" Jamal said, already slurring his words. "Back in the world Albert was just some shrimpy little nothing. In here he's a big man and I'm, like, his, you know ..."

"Servant," Orc supplied.

Jamal's eyes flared angrily. "Yeah. Yeah. Like you, Orc, you're Sam's servant."

"I ain't anyone's servant."

"You're babysitting Drake all day and night, man, what is it you think you are? You're doing what the Sam Boss tells you."

Orc didn't have a ready answer. He wished Howard was home because Howard was smarter at talking.

Jamal pushed it. "Guys like you and me and Turk and Drake, right? We used to be in charge. Because we were tough and we weren't afraid and didn't take anyone's c.r.a.p, right?"

Orc shrugged. He was feeling very uncomfortable. "Where's Howard?" he muttered.

Jamal made a rude noise. "Howard's not the one stuck being a jailer, you are, Orc. Sam's prison guard. Keeps you busy, right, and trapped here all the time. So it's like Turk said."

"What'd Turk say?"

"Said Sam got you and Drake locked up at the same time."

"It's not like that."

Jamal laughed derisively. "Man, all you have to do is see who is top dog and who is bottom dog. See, that's where Zil was wrong: it's not about moofs and normals, freaks and non-freaks, it's about top dog, bottom dog. You and me, Orc, we're bottom dogs. Should be top dogs."

Just then Brittney's voice came up from below. "Is Sam there? Get Sam! You have to call Sam!"

Orc levered himself up off his bed and yelled, "Hey shut up. I already gotta listen to Drake all day and night."

He swayed, tried to catch himself and couldn't. He slipped and fell back on his rear. Jamal exploded in derisive laughter.

This time Orc leaped to his feet. "Stop laughing!"

"Orc, get Sam!"

"It was funny, man," Jamal said through his own braying laughter.

"Orc, Drake is trying-"

Orc cursed loudly. He stomped on the floor. "Shut up, shut up!"

And suddenly, with a rending, ripping sound, the floor beneath Orc gave way.

He fell through wood and plaster. He landed hard and lay flat on his back, winded. Splinters and dust settled on him.

He blinked, too stunned to make sense of what had just happened. His first thought was that Howard would be p.i.s.sed. His second thought was that Sam would be even more p.i.s.sed.

Brittney was standing over him, looking down at him.

Flat on his back. Drunk and foolish. A monster. And from above came Jamal's donkey laughter.

Orc reached to touch the skin that still stretched over a part of his face. He was bleeding. Not bad, not a lot, but bleeding.

In blind rage Orc got to his feet. He punched Brittney with all his strength. The girl went flying into the wall. Her head snapped against cinderblock, a hit that would have killed any real, living girl.

But Brittney couldn't die.

Which was the final straw. Something in Orc's brain snapped. He leaped, trying to grab the floor above and pull himself through, but he slipped and fell again and Jamal was pointing and laughing and Orc ran for the door, the barricaded door that had kept the Drake/Brittney thing locked up. He body-slammed the door. It held, but barely. He reared back and kicked and kicked and splinters flew.

"No! No!" Brittney screamed. "He'll escape!"

Orc stepped back, raised both his gravel-skinned arms and ran straight at the door.

It didn't fly open, it simply came apart. The frame shattered and splintered. The door itself split. And Orc tore through.

"Want to laugh at me?" he roared as he pounded up the stairs and emerged in the kitchen.

Jamal was still standing next to the hole, laughing.

"You wanna laugh?" Orc roared.

Jamal spun around, realizing too late the danger he was in. Orc was over six feet tall and almost as wide as he was tall. His legs were like tree trunks, his arms like bridge cable.

Jamal fumbled for his gun, but Orc wasn't having any of that. He grabbed Jamal by the neck, lifted him off the floor, and threw him down the hole.

Jamal hit hard. The gun flew, sc.r.a.ping across the floor.

Orc was panting, sweating, heart pounding in his chest. Now reality was starting to penetrate the alcohol-fueled rage and he saw what he had done.

Howard. He should ... Or Sam ... Someone, he should tell someone, get someone ...

It was all over now for Charles Merriman. He had redeemed himself, he had been given something important to do. But now all that was gone. And he was just Orc again.

He wanted to cry. He couldn't face it. He couldn't face Howard's disappointment and pity. Sam's cold anger.

Down in the dark bas.e.m.e.nt a long, reddish tentacle reached for the gun.

Orc turned and ran.

Sanjit Brattle-Chance had not enjoyed his first week in Per-dido Beach. Virtue Brattle-Chance had enjoyed it even less.

"It's like a giant lunatic asylum," Virtue said.

"Yeah. It is, kind of," Sanjit said. They had spent the afternoon inspecting the helicopter. Edilio had a.s.signed them the job of reporting back on whether it was totally broken or just mostly broken.

So far it was looking totally broken. Both skids-the ski-like things it landed on-were crumpled. Part of the gla.s.s bubble canopy was shattered, just gone, and the rest of it was starred and cracked.

Night had fallen and that was the end of inspecting anything. Virtue had wanted to go straight home. Sanjit had stalled.

"Let's just hang out and talk, Choo," Sanjit said. "I mean, look, we've had all this stress, right? But now Bowie's getting well-"

Virtue made a rude noise. "If you believe that so-called Healer."

"I believe her completely," Sanjit said.

The girl named Lana had come and laid her hand on Bowie. She'd barely spoken, had replied to polite inquiries with single-syllable answers or grunts. Or annoyed silence.

But Sanjit had been fascinated. He'd thought about little else ever since. After all, how could he not be attracted to a girl who could heal with a touch and yet walked around with a ma.s.sive automatic pistol stuck in her belt?

His kind of girl.

He had learned that she lived up here at Clifftop. In fact Edilio had carefully and repeatedly warned Sanjit not to irritate her while he was checking out the helicopter.

His exact words had been, "For G.o.d's sake, don't get in Lana's way."

To which Sanjit had said, "Is she dangerous?"

Edilio had given him a strange look. "Well, she shot me once. But it was under the influence of the Darkness. Which she had tried to kill all by herself with a truckload of gas. And then she healed me. So I don't know if that makes her dangerous. But if it was me, I would definitely not make her mad."

So Sanjit and Virtue sat on the gra.s.s and watched the sun go down and the stars appear. And Sanjit secretly watched the hotel.

"Did you hear about the talking coyotes?" Virtue demanded. Like if there were such a thing, it was Sanjit's fault.

"Yeah. Creepy, huh?"

"And the thing they call the Darkness?" Virtue shook his head dolefully. He'd always been gloomy. The cloud to Sanjit's suns.h.i.+ne, the pessimist to Sanjit's optimist. They were adopted brothers, from Congo and Thailand, respectively. From a desperate refugee camp, and from the tough streets of Bangkok.

"Yeah. I wonder what it is?"

"The gaiaphage. That's the other word they use. 'Gaia,' as in world. 'Phage,' as in a worm or something that eats something up. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say I don't think something that calls itself a 'world eater' is a good thing."

"No?" Sanjit made an innocent face, deliberately provoking his brother.

"Fine." Virtue pouted. "But have you seen the graveyard they put in the plaza? There's, like, two dozen graves there."

Sanjit twisted around to look back at the helicopter. It had saved them. It seemed a shame just to let it lie there dead. "I'd need some big wrenches. A ladder. Hammer. And then, you know, someone who actually knew what to do with all of it."

"Fine, you don't really want to talk."

They had landed the helicopter-well, crashed it, anyway- behind Clifftop hotel. In some scruffy trees and bushes just past the parking area.

The barrier was close at hand. So even if the helicopter could ever be flown-and Sanjit couldn't imagine what the point would be-it would take a lot of luck not just to fly it straight into the barrier.

The barrier was a trickster. At ground level it was opaque, while suggesting translucence.

Higher up it was sky. But when you were up there it wasn't like you could see beyond the barrier. If you tried, the barrier was just opaque again.

Tricky tricky. Like a street magician's sleight of hand, Sanjit thought.

He realized Virtue was talking again.

" ... once Bowie's completely better. Maybe Caine isn't totally unreasonable. I mean, he was starving before and that would make anyone unreasonable."

"Choo," Sanjit said. "Caine is pure, distilled essence of evil. What are you even talking about?"

"Okay, even if he's evil, maybe we can work out some kind of deal."

"You don't even believe that," Sanjit said.

Virtue slumped back, deflated. "Yeah."

"We are not going back to the island, my brother. We've been voted off. This is our home now."

Virtue nodded. He looked like a kid who had just gotten the news that he would be shot at dawn.

"Cheer up, Choo," Sanjit said. "There are a lot of good things about this place."

"You heard about the zombie, right? The one they've got locked in a bas.e.m.e.nt? Half the time it's this nice Christian girl. And the rest of the time it's a psychopath with a whip for an arm?"

Sanjit made a thoughtful face. "I do believe I heard something about that. But really, Choo, it's not like a bas.e.m.e.nt-dwelling Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde zombie is all that unusual."

Despite himself Virtue very nearly smiled. "Fine. Be that way, Wisdom."

"Don't use my slave name." It was an old joke between them. Sanjit had been born Sanjit, a homeless Hindu street kid in Buddhist Bangkok. When the actors Jennifer Brattle and Todd Chance had adopted him, they'd given him an aspirational name: Wisdom.

It never had fit. Wisdom meant ... well, wisdom.

"You're not looking at the bright side, Choo," Sanjit said. He had in fact just spotted the bright side.

"Bright side? There's no bright side. What bright side?"

"Girls, Choo," Sanjit said, smiling hugely. "You'll understand in a few years."