“They’re heading toward Perdido Beach,” Sam breathed.

“There was a big RV. Maybe a truck,” Alex said. “I don’t remember. Others walked. I don’t think it will matter. She’s going to kill them all, you know. She’s going to melt their brains. Hah! It’s the seventh seal, it’s the opening of the book, the judgment, you know, like . . . like in . . .”

“Gaia just let them walk away?” Sam asked. The man was crazy, but he was still responding.

Alex seemed suddenly very uncomfortable. “She was . . . While she was about her killing and burning, what do they call it? A reaping? While she . . . there came a whirlwind and hurt her. I saw it. Like a devil whirlwind!”

“A whirlwind?” Caine demanded.

“Brianna,” Sam said.

“The goddess was hurt. Oh, she’ll be hungry,” Alex said, his voice an odd mix of fear and anticipation. “I . . . She’s a goddess, the gaiaphage. Her name is Gaia. But shhh. Don’t speak it.”

“She’s not a she; she’s an it,” Sam snapped. “And it is no one’s god.”

“If she’s hurt, that may be her blood trail we saw going toward the southwest,” Caine said. “Which leaves us a choice. Perdido Beach to see if your girlfriend is alive, or go and hunt down this lunatic’s so-called goddess?”

Sam peered at Alex. He had a moment of sickening insight. “She took your arm, didn’t she?”

Alex closed his eyes. “She was very hungry. She must grow and . . . very hungry.”

Sam asked, “Was anyone else with you? A girl? A guy with an arm like a kind of snake? Like a whip?”

“A girl, yes. She was the goddess’s mother, so she said.”

“Diana?” Caine frowned, then bit angrily at his thumb.

“She betrayed us and came to warn the people here.” He grinned. “But she was too late! You should have seen it! Hah! Light show, man, like a heavy metal concert.”

Sam saw something then that was out of place. He peered into the darkness, formed a ball of light in his hand, and walked over to the stick with its pathetic flag.

He drew the blond hairs out, looked at them, and put them in his back pocket. That moment was the worst of it. Feeling that she had been so close. That he had not been there when she needed him. The tears came, and he extinguished his light so that Caine would not see.

But she was alive. Astrid was alive and most likely on her way with the other survivors to Perdido Beach.

Sam steadied his voice and without turning around said, “Mister? Alex? I’m sorry all this has happened to you. This is a very . . . terrible place, sometimes. But we can’t help you. You’re going to have to fend for yourself.”

“So we’re going after Gaia?” Caine asked.

Sam nodded. “We’re going after Gaia.”

SIXTEEN

35 HOURS, 33 MINUTES

SINDER HAD SPENT the afternoon, evening, and now into the night with Lana working on Taylor. It seemed to take both of them, together, to reattach the missing bits of Taylor.

She was not quite a vegetable, which would have made Sinder’s powers sufficient. And she was not quite an animal, which would have allowed Lana to heal her alone.

She was . . . she was a bloodless, gold-skinned, lizard-tongued, rubber-haired, dead-eyed freak, and she pretty obviously gave Sinder a case of the unholy willies.

Lana had to admit that even in a place where there was a kid named Whip Hand and a kid made of wet gravel, Taylor was weird.

“Can you stand?” Lana asked Taylor.

It had not been established that Taylor could understand what they said. Or that she really had control over her body. Whatever awful thing Little Pete had inadvertently done to her, it was quite a job.

Taylor did not stand. She flicked out her long tongue and sat, no different from before.

“I don’t know what to make of her,” Sinder said.

“How’s Taylor?” Sanjit asked, coming in from taking Patrick on his evening potty run.

“Well, she’s been put back together,” Sinder answered when Lana refused to do anything but glare at Sanjit. The truth was, she was craving the smokes just a little less than earlier. And yet she still wanted one.

Suddenly the bed was empty. Taylor was gone.

The three of them stared at the spot where she had been.

“Okay,” Sanjit said. “That was unexpected.”

Then, just as suddenly, Taylor reappeared.

She flicked out her reptilian tongue, slowly moved her head from side to side, and then disappeared again.

“She’s got her bounce back,” Lana said.

Taylor did not return in the next five minutes, and they were about to give up and go about their other business when she popped back, this time standing in a corner of the room. In her left hand she had an irregularly shaped, pale-yellow chunk. She threw this on the bed.

Sinder picked it up gingerly. It was the size of half a loaf of bread.

“It’s cheese,” Sinder said.

The object in Taylor’s other hand was a half pack of Marlboros.

Lana grinned and accepted it, ignoring Sanjit’s despairing cry.

“Finally,” Lana said. “All this healing stuff finally pays off.”

Taylor bounced away and did not bounce back.

A minute later the door was literally kicked in by Dekka with an unconscious Brianna in her arms.

Alex remembered waking up in his bed, in his room in his grandmother’s house in Atascadero. He had turned on the Cartoon Network and started the day with a Coors Light and a couple hits off a very stale bong. He had called in sick to his job at Best Buy and texted Charlie Rand to see when he’d be coming by.