Plague

to be in his arms. She wanted to kiss him. And maybe more. Maybe a lot more.
    All of it, all the things he wanted she wanted, too.
    Stupid jerk, didn’t he get that? Was he so clueless he didn’t know that she wanted it all, too?
    But she wasn’t Sam. Astrid didn’t act on impulse. Astrid thought things through. Astrid the Genius, always so irritatingly in control. That was the word he’d thrown at her: control.
    How could Sam not realize that if they crossed that line it would be one more sin? One more abandonment of her faith. One more surrender to weakness.
    There had been too many of those. It was like little pieces of Astrid’s soul were flaking off, falling away. Some pieces not so small.
    Her self-control had crumbled so swiftly it was almost comic. After all the temptations and provocations, the calm, civilized, rational girl had evaporated like a bead of water on a hot skillet, sizzle, sizzle, all gone. And what had emerged then had been pure violence.
    She had tried to kill Nerezza. In screaming, out-of-control rage. The memory of it made her sick.
    And that wasn’t all of it. She had wanted Sam to burn Drake to ashes even if it meant murdering Brittney as well.
    Astrid couldn’t be that person. She had to put herself back together. She had to take time to rebuild herself. She was afraid she would shatter. Like a glass sculpture, chip chip chip away and all at once it would shatter into a thousand pieces.
    And yet, a cool, calculating part of her knew she could not alienate Sam too much. Because it was only a matter of time before everyone else figured out that there was a way out of the FAYZ.
    The exit door was right in front of them. Lying just a few feet from Astrid.
    A simple act of murder . . .
    Others had seen what Astrid had seen on that cliff, when Little Pete’s mind had blanked out, overwhelmed by the loss of his stupid toy game.
    A simple act of murder . . .
    She sat beside her motionless brother. She ought to brush his teeth. Ought to change his pajamas. Ought to . . .
    His forehead was damp.
    Astrid put her hand to his head. He’d been hot all night, but this was worse. She pushed the button on the thermometer by the bed, waited for it to zero out, and stuck it under Little Pete’s tongue.
    She felt a cool breeze in the room. Her eyes went instantly to the window. It was open wide. Pushed all the way up.
    There was no question: it had been closed. She’d been sitting beside it. It had been locked. And now it was open.
    And for the first time since the coming of the FAYZ, a cool breeze blew into the room and wafted over the damp forehead of the most powerful person in this little universe.
    Drake felt the Darkness touch his mind. He shivered with pleasure.
    It was still out there, Drake was sure of it. Still calling to him, to Drake, the faithful one, the one who would never turn against the Darkness.
    Drake cracked his whip hand just to hear the sonic-boom snap of it. And to let Orc hear it, too.
    “Hey, Orc! Come down here so I can whip that little patch of skin off you!” Drake demanded.
    Drake Merwin could see a little by the light of the tiny, dim Sammy sun. He hated that light—he knew where it had come from, and what it represented: Sam’s power, that dangerous light of his.
    Drake remembered the pain of that light. He’d been on his back, helpless. And Sam, his face a mask of rage, glorying in his moment of revenge, had burned off Drake’s legs and was working his way methodically up Drake’s torso.
    Then that stupid little pig Brittney had emerged.
    Drake didn’t know what happened next, he couldn’t see or hear when Brittney was in control. All he knew was that Sam hadn’t vaporized him. And here he was, trapped. Locked in this basement listening to Orc’s heavy tread upstairs.
    Drake didn’t know what had happened to make him this way, to cause him to share a body with Brittney. Much of recent life was a mystery. He remembered Caine turning on him. He remembered the massive uranium rod flying straight toward him.
    And the next thing he knew, he was in a nightmare that went on and on and on forever. There was a girl in the nightmare, the little piggy, the stupid little metal-mouth moron, Brittney.
    Hadn’t they killed her? Long ago? He remembered a crumpled, bleeding form on a polished floor.
    Brittney had died. Drake had died. And then, neither of them was dead, and both somehow were connected in a nightmare world where dirt filled their mouths and ears and