The alarm had stopped blaring.
He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down. “Dude,
you are hurt bad.”
“Yeah,” Sam admitted. “Hurts. Like fire.”
“There’s this,” she said doubtfully. She held up an ocher-
colored blister pack. The label read “Morphine Sulfate
Injection USP. 10 mg.”
Sam squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. The pain
made him want to scream. It was beyond anything he could
endure. Like his flesh was burning, like someone was pressing a red-hot iron against his skin.
“I don’t know,” Sam said through his teeth.
“We need Lana,” Brianna said.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Too bad I sent Dekka to kill her.”
He lay there feeling waves of pain so great, they made him
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want to throw up. The morphine would dull the pain. But it
would also probably take him out of the battle. No one else
could stop Caine. No one else . . .
He had to function . . . had to . . .
He cried out in agony, unable to hold it in, unable to stop
himself.
Brianna tore open the blister pack and jabbed the syringe
into his leg.
A wave of relief swept through him. But with it, weariness,
weirdness, and a dreamy indifference. He was sinking down
and down and down into a dark place. Letting himself fall
away, leaving Brianna staring down at him as he fell toward
the center of the earth.
A resource, some wisp of his remaining consciousness was
thinking.
A weapon.
“Breeze,” Sam managed to say.
“What, Sam?”
“Breeze . . .”
“I’m here, Sam.”
It would be ready. The creature knew their powers. Knew
their limits. Knew everything Lana knew. Probably everything Caine and Drake knew.
But not everything there was to know.
With a sudden, spasmodic lurch, Sam managed to grab
her arm and squeeze it tight. “Breeze. Breeze . . . get Duck.”
“I’m not leaving you, boss,” Brianna argued.
“Breeze. The radiation. You were exposed.”
504 M I C H A E L
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He couldn’t see the expression on her face. But he heard
the sharp intake of breath.
“Am I going to die?” Brianna asked. She made an unconvincing laugh. “No way.”
She was so far away now. Miles away from Sam. In another
world. But he still had to reach her.
“Oh, God,” Brianna cried.
“Breeze. Get Duck. The mine. Lana.”
He let go then, and fell into the pit and drifted from
reality.
Brianna hit town like Paul Revere riding a rocket. She zoomed
down streets, banging on doors, yelling, “Duck! Duck, get
your butt out here!”
No Duck. Plenty of kids heard her yelling and ducked.
Which on another day she might have found funny.
She ran as fast as she could. Not fast enough to outrun her
own fear. Radiation. She had touched the reactor pool.
Was she already doomed?
She ran into Astrid with Brother John and her own little
weird brother pulling a red wagon toward town hall. At first
she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Mary Terrafino
was in the wagon, curled up and covered with a blanket that
dragged on the pavement.
Brianna hit the brakes and skidded to a stop in front of
Astrid. Little Pete was chanting something at the top of his
lungs. “Nestor! Nestor! Nestor!” Crazy. Like a crazy street
person. Brianna didn’t know how Astrid could stand it.
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When Little Pete spotted Brianna, he stopped. His eyes
glazed over, and he slowly pulled a handheld game from his
pocket.
“Brianna! Is Sam okay?” Astrid cried.
“No. Drake tore him up.” She wanted to sound tough,
but the sobs came bubbling up and overtook her. “Oh, God,
Astrid, he’s hurt so bad.”
Astrid gasped and covered her hand with her mouth. Brianna put her arms around Astrid and sobbed into her hair.
“No, I don’t think so,” Brianna said. She stood back and
wiped her tears. “I gave him something for the pain. But he’s
messed up, Astrid.”
Astrid grabbed her arm hard, squeezing enough to cause
Brianna pain.
“Nestor,” Little Pete said.
“Hey,” Astrid snapped at Brianna. “Get it together.”
It shocked Brianna. She’d never thought of Astrid as weak
and girly, really, but she hadn’t thought of her as tough, either.
But Astrid’s jaw was clenched, her eyes cold and steely.
“Nestor,” Little Pete repeated.
“I’m supposed to get Duck,” Brianna said.
“Duck?” Astrid frowned. “Sam was probably out of his
mind.”
“Duck,” Little Pete said.
Astrid stared at him. Brianna saw the look, could almost
hear the wheels spinning in Astrid’s brain.
At that moment there was a commotion. Two dozen kids,
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G R A N T
some cavorting like they were at Mardi Gras, came around
the corner into the town plaza. Creeping slowly behind them
was a convertible with its top down and its lights flashing.
The car’s CD player was blaring a song Brianna didn’t know.
Splayed across the hood of the car was the half-mangled
body of a deer.
Walking behind the car, stumbling, dragging one leg like
it wasn’t working right, face bloody, came Hunter. His hands
were covered with something metallic, and wrapped in duct
tape. A rope was around his neck. Holding the rope and sitting atop the backseat, like he was a politician at a parade, was Zil. Lance was driving. Antoine, whom Brianna knew
to be a druggie jerk, was riding shotgun. Two other kids she
didn’t really know were in the other seats. One of them was
holding up a small, hand-lettered sign that read, “Free Food
for Normals.”
“What the . . . ,” Brianna said.
“Stay out of it, Brianna,” Astrid said. “Go help Sam.”
“They can’t do this!” Brianna cried.
Astrid grabbed her arm. “Listen to me, Brianna. Your job
is to help Sam. Do what he said: get Duck.”
“This is major trouble coming, Astrid.”
“Bad things,” Astrid said. “Very bad things are going on.
Listen to me, Breeze. Are you listening?”
Someone must have spotted Brianna because suddenly
there were kids rushing toward her from the procession,
kids waving baseball bats and tire irons and at least one
long-handled ax.
“It’s a freak! Get her!”
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“She’s spying on us!”
“Get out of here, Breeze,” Astrid said urgently “Find a way
to help Sam. If we lose him, we’re done.”
“These creeps don’t scare me!” Brianna yelled. “Bring it
on, you punks!”
To shock her, Astrid grabbed her face. She squeezed it
har
d, like a very angry mother with a very bad little child.
“It’s not about you, Brianna! Now get out of here!”
Brianna pulled back. Her face was flushed from anger. The
mob was racing toward her. But “racing” meant one thing to
them, and a whole different thing to her.
Astrid was probably right. They didn’t call her Astrid the
Genius for nothing. But Brianna knew if the mob lost her,
they’d likely take it out on Astrid.
“Take care of yourself, Astrid,” Brianna said.
Brianna zoomed fifty feet away from Astrid and came to
a stop. “Hey. Morons. I’m right here. You want a piece? You
want a piece of the Breeze?”
The crowd spotted her, turned, and went after her, veering
away from Astrid.
“Get her!”
“Get that mutant freak!”
“Yeah, right,” Brianna sneered. “Come and get me.”
She waited, a coldly furious grin on her face, until the first
of her pursuers was within ten feet.
Then she gave the mob a middle-finger salute and zoomed
away at a speed even a car couldn’t match.
THIRTY-NINE
47 MINUTES
D U C K Z H A N G W A S having a fine time if you set aside the
fact that no one seemed to be distributing food anymore and
he was so hungry, he couldn’t see straight.
He’d reached the point where he bitterly regretted the lost
hot dog relish he’d intended to give to Hunter.
But on the plus side he was no longer worried about falling
through the earth all the way to its molten core. He had begun
to figure out how to control this absurd power he had.
Duck was no genius, but it had finally occurred to him
that his was the power of density. He could control the density of his body, without growing larger or smaller. If he went one way, he became so dense, he could fall straight into the
ground. Like dropping a marble into a bowl of pudding.
Which, as he had discovered, was a bad thing.
But if he went the other way, as he was learning to do, he
could float. Not fly, but float. Like a helium balloon. He could
do it now even without having to experience violent mood
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swings. He could simply decide to sink. Or he could decide
to float.
Floating was much better. It turned the whole world into a
sort of giant swimming pool. And this time around, no one
was going to crash his party.
He was floating now about fifty feet above the plaza. He’d
started off over by the school. He’d lifted off and then just . . .
drifted. The only concern being that he not drift too far from
town and end up having a long walk home. Worse still would
be drifting out to sea. That could be bad. He could imagine,
say, dozing off up here and waking up to find himself two
miles out to sea. In the dark. That was a long, long swim.
“What I need,” he said to the rooftop below him, “is, like,
wings or something. Or like a rocket pack. Then I could fly
for real.”
“Like Superman.”
It was a happy thought. That did make it a little easier to
stay comfortably aloft.
One of the other problems was that, unlike water, air was
hard to move around in. Going up or down was easy. Going
forward or backward was impossible. And even twisting
around, for example, if you were lying on your back, well,
that was not an easy thing to do, either.
As he was discovering.
He was, in effect, lying on his side at the moment, trying
to come all the way around to face the ground. You couldn’t
really push against air.
But that was okay. He’d figure it out.
510 M I C H A E L
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One thing he was considering was picking some cabbages
or melons. Not now, not with the sun going down. But maybe
in the morning. All that lovely, lovely food right out there
in the fields. And he would be able to float just above the
ground, out of range of the zekes, but able to reach down and
snag a nice, juicy cantaloupe.
Only problem was, how to get out over the field to begin
with. And then, how to get back. If there was no breeze, he
might stay hovering above a deadly zeke field forever.
That was not a happy thought. Not at all. To make his
power really useful he would have to learn how to move once
he was in the air.
Right now he was having a hard enough time just keeping
his eye on the ground below.
Something was definitely going on down below. There was
some big thing going on in the plaza. Someone had driven
a convertible right onto the grass. Sam was not going to be
happy about that. And now there were maybe fifty kids down
there, all milling around like they were having a party.
Duck smelled the meat before he saw it.
He had to squint hard in the failing light. There it was,
across the hood of the car. A deer.
Now someone was building a fire in the dry bed of the
fountain. The smoke was rising toward Duck, just a whiff,
really, although he supposed it could get to be irritating eventually.
He was drifting on the slight breeze, so he wasn’t too worried. What he was, was ravenous. The smell of meat was H U N G E R
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overwhelming. No wonder kids were freaking out.
He couldn’t see who the kids were, just the tops of their
heads, which didn’t tell you much. But then he saw that one
boy was tied by a rope to the bumper of the car.
Suddenly Duck had a very bad feeling about this gathering.
He spotted a face he knew, Mike Farmer, one of Edilio’s
soldiers. He was staring straight up at Duck.
Duck gave a little wave. He smiled. He was about to say,
“Hey, what’s going on down there?”
Then Mike yelled, “There’s one up there! Look! It’s one of
them!”
One of who? Duck wondered.
Face after face looked up at him. Even the boy who was
tied up. Hunter. It was Hunter, and not looking good, either.
Looking like he’d been beaten up.
Others in the crowd looked up at Duck. And then, Zil.
Duck found himself staring down at Zil. Meeting his eyes.
Realizing in one terrible moment what was happening below.
Sam, gone. Edilio, gone. No one in charge. All of the leaders
off. And Zil with Hunter as his prisoner and fresh meat on
the menu.
“A chud spy!” Turk shouted.
“Get him!” Zil shouted.
Someone threw a rock. Duck saw it rise toward him, arc
gracefully, and fall away.
Another rock, closer, but still too low.
Then Mike raised his rifle to his shoulder and took aim.
•
•
•
512 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
Sam was on the bus. Sun shining so bright through the windows.
It was bouncing along. Quinn there beside him. But something was wrong with Quinn, something Sam didn’t want to look at.
Sam felt people staring at him. Eyes on the back of his head.
Music playing f
rom far away. Against Me! singing “Borne on
the FM Waves of the Heart.”
Something was happening at the front of the bus. The
driver. He was clutching at his heart.
I’ve been here, Sam thought. This happened.
This happened.
Only it would be different this time. Last time, so long ago,
he had taken the wheel as the driver slumped over from his
heart attack.
But had the driver had a tentacle around his throat?
And had Sam been screaming?
Sam lurched to his feet, startled to find himself doing it.
He hadn’t intended to. But he was up and lurching from side
to side, grabbing seatbacks for support, eyes staring at him.
The driver turned and grinned at him with teeth dripping
blood.
The guardrail swung open like a big gate, and the bus
roared through and plunged over the cliff. Falling, falling,
the rocks and the sea rushing up at him, the whole bus full of
kids not really reacting, not caring, just staring and the driver
grinning, and now the worms . . .
Sam tried to cry out, but his voice didn’t work. He was
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choked by the driver’s snake arm, choked and spinning.
Sam knew it was a dream, yes, had to be because the
bus just kept falling forever and nothing could fall forever.
Could it?
The dreamscape changed suddenly and he was no longer on the bus. He was coming around the corner into his kitchen and Astrid, not his mother, whom he expected to see,
but Astrid, was yelling at someone he couldn’t see.
No time for this, Sam told himself. No time for dreaming.
No time to waste here.
Wake up, Sam.
But no part of his body worked anymore. He was glued
down. Tied with a thousand tiny ropes that squirmed and
writhed like snakes or worms.
And yet now, now, somehow he was moving.
He opened his eyes. Was he seeing this? Was he seeing the
room, the floor, the dome ceiling a million miles away?
Was any of it real?
On the floor lay what looked like something washed up
from the bottom of the deepest ocean. Pale and fleshy, moist.
No more than eighteen inches long. It was pulsating slightly,
just a ripple that moved it very slightly. Like a slug might
move.
Sam felt sure he should know what the thing was. But he
wasn’t even sure it was real. And he had to go now. Now or
never. Up out of the dark pit and out into the world while the
morphine lasted.