Plague

some good news.”
    Orc stood staring.
    The kid, the Petard, he was still just floating there in the rain, like it was all nothing.
    Astrid looked like a zombie or whatever.
    The two shot kids were yelling and spazzing. Grinding Orc’s last nerve. He didn’t care about them. They were no better than he was. Let them scream, but not now, with his head banging like a drum, with the echo of gunshots still bouncing around in his skull.
    Edilio had said to get out of town. That’s what was rattling around in his brain, too. Killers had to get out of town.
    Astrid’s laws. She made them up.
    “That true, right?” he asked her without preamble.
    “What?”
    “Anyone kills anyone, they have to go away for good.”
    “Are you going to kill them?” She meant the two hurt kids. It took him a while to realize that.
    “What if . . . what if you didn’t mean to kill some kid.”
    “I have to get him away from here,” Astrid said. But Orc didn’t think she was talking to him.
    “I mean, if you didn’t even mean to. Like it was just an accident?”
    “I don’t know what you’re asking,” Astrid said.
    Orc was out of words. He felt so tired. He hurt so badly.
    “Can you pick him up? Can you carry him?” Astrid was asking him something. So maybe she didn’t care what he’d done.
    “The ’tard?”
    “Little Pete. Can you carry him, Charles?”
    “Where to?”
    “Away,” Astrid said. “That’s the law. Killers have to leave. That’s what he is, you know. He’s the worst of us all. Every death from the FAYZ . . . All those kids . . .”
    Orc seized on an idea that drifted through his slow brain. He lost focus when Lance started howling louder than before.
    “Shut up or I’ll shut you up,” he yelled. He struggled to regain his thought. Little Pete. Killing. “Yeah, but he don’t know what he’s doing, right? People who don’t know what they’re doing, it’s not their fault.”
    “Please, Charles. Pick him up. Edilio will be back with Lana soon. We have to be gone by then.”
    Orc stepped over Turk. The boy was shivering uncontrollably now, his legs stuck straight out, feet twisted, shaking as he held his guts.
    Lance was still screaming, he hadn’t stopped, but now he was mixing in curses, raging at everyone, spewing every hateful word he could think of.
    Orc looked down at Little Pete. Astrid said he had killed people. Orc didn’t see how that was possible. He couldn’t even move much, it didn’t seem.
    Little Pete coughed three times real fast. He didn’t cover his mouth or anything. It was like he didn’t even know he’d coughed.
    Orc plucked Little Pete out of midair. He didn’t weigh much. Orc was strong.
    Astrid watched it all like she was a million miles away. It was as if she was seeing everything through a telescope.
    “Where to?” Orc asked her.
    Astrid knelt and picked up the gun she had dropped. “Away,” she said.
    Orc shrugged and headed down the stairs and walked north, toward the hills, and away from the sound of screams.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
6 HOURS, 11 MINUTES

    DRAKE EMERGED .
    He was holding a stone. Which meant Brittney had been holding the same stone.
    It must have been heavy for her but his tentacle wrapped around it and held it without much strain.
    Around him the bugs were looking less and less like insects. Not even like really large insects. The least of them was as big as a Dalmatian. The largest were as big as ponies. They reminded him more of Humvees or tanks.
    They seemed more fragile at this size, as though the same weight of burnished exoskeleton had been stretched to make a much larger creature. Only half of them were still carrying out debris. The rest, the larger ones, had stepped aside and now waited with an impression of impatience about them. Like jets waiting for takeoff.
    That’s what they reminded him of: fighter jets. They had a predatory, dangerous air about them. Like all they had to do was get the word and they’d go blasting off, dealing out death and destruction.
    Who was to give them the word? Him?
    The coyotes had disappeared. Had they decided to leave? Or had the bugs eaten them finally? Drake noticed a smear of blood on a slab of rock and thought he knew the answer.
    Had the Darkness made the coyotes sacrifice themselves to feed his new servants?
    Drake tossed his rock onto the pile. Then he turned back toward the mine shaft. Back to the welcoming shadow of that hole in the earth. His step was light. His heart beat fast, but