Plague

and pinpoint lights.
    “Where is Dekka?” Toto asked.
    “Up there.”
    “That is true,” Toto said.
    “Yeah. Watch where you step, unless you want to go floating, too.”
    It seemed like a long time before Dekka finally appeared amid falling gravel. She floated easily down, regained her footing, and said, “Okay, more than fifty feet, that’s for sure. I don’t know how far I went, but a long way. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it works better when I’m canceling gravity straight down. But I can only fly straight up. So if you’re thinking I can go all airborne and fly to town, that’s not happening.”
    “I’m thinking,” Sam said, “that the FAYZ is a big bubble. Like a . . . what are those things with water inside and you shake them up with snow and—”
    “A snow globe,” Toto supplied.
    “Like a snow globe. And if you have a bubble inside that snow globe, what does it do? It rises to the top, right?”
    “The top of this bubble is probably directly over the power plant,” Dekka said. “I mean, if the FAYZ is a perfect sphere.”
    “Okay, tell me if this makes sense.” Sam frowned, trying to work it through as he talked. “The train is near the northern wall of the FAYZ. So if you were standing there and you canceled gravity . . .”
    “You’d go scraping along the wall—very painfully—until you reached the top. Like a bubble rising to the top of a snow globe.”
    “There are cars at the power plant. I mean, ones that have been used more recently, within the last month, cars Edilio drove there. So the batteries should still work. A lot have had their gas drained, but we wouldn’t need much.” He was thinking out loud. Not even paying attention to Toto’s repeated “He believes it, it’s true, Spidey” remarks.
    “I can’t beat the bugs,” Sam said. “My power doesn’t work on them. Not well enough, anyway. But they can be crushed. And I think maybe they can be blown up.”
    “Are you talking about those missile launchers in the train?” Dekka asked.
    “I’m talking about exactly that,” Sam said. “You raise that container of missiles. You fly it to the top of the dome. You bring it down by the power plant. We find a vehicle with a gallon of gas and we go tearing for Perdido Beach.” He shrugged. “Then we see how these bugs like the M3-MAAWS, Multi-role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapons System.”
    Caine walked the few blocks from the town hall to the highway alone. A gunslinger out of some old cowboy movie.
    Kids followed him, but at a safe distance. A dozen of them crowded just inside the busted-out plate glass window of an insurance company. A couple more found seats in parked cars.
    Good, let them watch as I save their butts, Caine thought.
    But now, alone, standing in the middle of the highway astride the old divider line, he was far from confident. How many of the creatures would come? How large were they? How powerful?
    Were they already watching him, out there in the dark?
    And what about Drake? Would there be a chance for him to win Drake over? Drake could still be a very useful number two guy. Unless he was determined to be number one.
    Fighting these superbugs plus Drake? Suddenly the island seemed very, very inviting.
    He could walk away right now. Diana and him, just the two of them, alone on the island. Stick the townies with Penny and Bug. Just him and Diana. Food, luxury, sex. Wasn’t that infinitely better than this battle?
    An old suspicion shadowed his thoughts: was he being played? The Darkness had used him before. Was this the gaiaphage’s will reaching into his mind again?
    He didn’t feel it. He hadn’t felt the Darkness at all while on the island. Even before that, from the point where Caine had defied the Darkness, the gaiaphage had left him alone.
    No. This was his own decision. But why? Why give up the island? For what? To be torn apart by monsters hatched in human bodies? Even if he survived, what would he face? Artichokes and fish, resentment, probably a fight with Sam, and Diana’s sullen withdrawal.
    “King Caine! Yeah!”
    He rounded quickly, angry, assuming it was a taunt. A boy in the insurance company raised a fist and yelled, “Wooooh!”
    Caine nodded in his direction.
    Sheep. So long as they had a shepherd to ward off the wolves, they were happy. Spineless, indifferent, weak, stupid: it was hard not to have complete contempt for them.
    Of course, if he failed, they’d turn on him in a heartbeat.
    Then again, if he