Fear: A Gone Novel

certain desperate edge in his voice. “I mean good. You look good. Better than good. I mean, you know, beautiful.”
    “Seriously? You’re hitting on me?”
    “No!” Sam cried. “No. No, no, no. No. Not that…” He let that trail off and bit his lip.
    Diana laughed delightedly. “You are so easy to mess with.” Then she grew serious. “Have you ever heard of the quickening?”
    “Like for taxes?”
    “No. No, Sam, that would be Quicken. The quickening is when the fetus starts to move.”
    “Oh. Yeah. That.”
    “Give me your hand,” Diana said.
    He was absolutely sure he did not want to give her his hand. He had a terrible premonition what she would do with his hand. But he could not think of a way to refuse.
    Diana looked at him with an innocent expression. “Come on, Sam, you’re the one who can always find a way out of a life-or-death crisis. Can’t you think of a way to refuse?”
    That forced a smile from him. “I was trying. Brain freeze.”
    “Okay, then, give me your hand.”
    He did and she placed his palm against her belly.
    “Yep, that’s a, um, a definite belly,” he said.
    “Yeah, I was hoping you’d agree that that is a belly. I needed a second opinion. Just wait… There!”
    He had felt it. A small movement in her tight-stretched bulge.
    He made a sickly smile and withdrew his hand. “So, quickening, huh?”
    “Yes,” Diana said, no longer kidding. “More than that, really. I would call it a kick. And guess what? It started about three weeks ago, which would be my thirteenth week. Now, you might think, pfff, no big deal. But here’s the thing, Sam: human babies all grow at basically the same rate. It’s clockwork. And human babies do not start kicking at thirteen weeks.”
    Sam hesitated, not sure if he should acknowledge the use of that word, “human.” Whatever Diana feared or suspected or even was just imagining, he didn’t want it to be his problem.
    He had plenty of problems already. Distant problems: down on a deserted stretch of beach there was a container-load of shoulder-fired missiles. As far as he knew, his brother, Caine, had not found them. If Sam tried to move them and Caine found out, it would likely start a war with Perdido Beach.
    And Sam had problems nearer to his heart: Brianna had discovered Astrid’s haunt in the Stefano Rey. Sam had known Astrid was still alive. He’d had reports of her staying near the power plant for a few days after the great bug battle and the Big Split that had separated the kids of the FAYZ into Perdido Beach and Lake Tramonto groups.
    He’d also learned that she had slept for a while in an overturned Winnebago on a back road in the farm country. He had waited patiently for her to come back. But she never had, and then he’d heard nothing about her for the last three months.
    Now, just yesterday morning, Brianna had located her. Brianna’s super-speed made her an effective searcher on roads, but it had taken her longer to thread her way through the forest; it was not a good idea to trip over a tree root at seventy miles an hour.
    Of course, searching for Astrid was not Brianna’s main mission. Her main mission was to find the Drake-Brittney creature. Nothing had been seen or heard of Drake, but no one believed he was dead. Not truly dead.
    Sam came reluctantly back to the problem of Diana. “What’s your reading on the baby?”
    “The baby is a three bar,” Diana said. “The first time I read? Two bar. So, still growing.”
    Sam was shocked. “Three bar?”
    “Yes, Sam. He, she, or it is a mutant. A powerful one. Growing more powerful.”
    “Have you told anyone else?”
    Diana shook her head. “I’m not stupid, Sam. Caine would come after it if he knew. He would kill us both if he had to.”
    “His own child?” Sam had a hard time believing that even Caine would be that depraved.
    “Maybe not,” Diana said. “He made it very clear when I told him that he wanted nothing to do with it. I would say the idea sickened him. But a powerful mutant? Very different story. He might just take us. Caine might want to control the baby, or he might want to kill it, but for him there’s no third choice. Anything else would be…” She searched his face as if the right word might be written there. “Humiliating.”
    Sam felt his stomach churning. They’d had four months of peace. In that time Sam, Edilio, and Dekka had taken on the job of setting up a sort of half-aquatic town. Well, mostly Edilio. They had