Plague

tank.
    There was a hand pump built into the dock’s gas tank. But it wasn’t as if Drake would let them pull in and refuel.
    “We need gas,” Sam said.
    He headed the boat away from the marina, keeping close to the shore, hoping Drake’s creepy army would follow. They were faster on land than in the air so they zoomed in their crazy bumblebee way back to land on shore.
    He looked back and saw Drake urging the creatures on. They were quick, skittering on their insect legs. But not quite as fast as the boat. At top speed he could pull away.
    “Are we running away?” Toto wondered.
    “Yes,” Sam snapped.
    “That’s not true.”
    “Is there any way to shut you off?” Sam demanded. “We’re faster than they are. So we’re going to draw them off, double back, and beat them back to the marina.”
    “Then what?” Dekka asked.
    “We gas up and drive around out here forever,” Sam said.
    “Great plan,” Dekka said.
    “Sooner or later Drake gives way to Brittney. We might have a shot then.”
    It didn’t take long at full speed to reach the end of the lake. The huge roaches swarmed along the shore, rushing eagerly to catch up. None were airborne now.
    “Where’s Drake?” Jack asked.
    Sam scanned the insect army. No sign of Drake. Sam killed the engine, saving gas for the mad dash back to the marina. In the sudden quiet he heard a different engine.
    A sleek boat with two big outboards was throwing up a cloud of spray and whump-whump ing toward them. There could be no doubt as to who was driving the boat.
    The bugs on the shore. Drake on the water.
    “If he has a gun, we’re in trouble,” Dekka said.
    “He doesn’t need a gun,” Sam said grimly. “He can ram us. He’s unkillable, we’re not.”
    “What do we do?” Jack asked. Then, more panicked, “What do we do?”
    Dekka put a calming hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy.”
    Sam measured the shoreline, checked the gas supply, glanced at his two friends, and finally appraised Toto.
    “Dude, do you think you can pump gas?”
    Toto looked away and passed the question along to the imaginary Spidey head. “Can I pump gas?” Then, apparently hearing an answer, he said, “Yes.”
    Sam fired the engine up. He turned the wheel, waited, waited, as Drake’s bow wave grew large.
    “Jack. Grab that boathook. And be ready.”
    “What?”
    “You ever see that movie where Heath Ledger was a knight?”
    “Not his best movie,” Dekka said.
    “True,” Toto agreed.
    “Hold on,” Sam warned. He put the engine into gear, pushed the throttle all the way, and flew toward Drake.
    Lana did not run, she was too tired for it, and anyway Howard was probably wrong. Turk and Lance surely did believe they’d killed Albert. As he’d laid there, shrieking in pain beneath Lana’s healing touch, Lance kept babbling something about forgiveness, praying to be saved, saying he was sorry for Albert. “It was Turk, it wasn’t me!” he’d said, his destroyed cheek flapping bloodily with each word as the drenching rain swept the blood down to the carpet beneath his head.
    Lana had mostly healed Turk and Lance. They wouldn’t die, at least. She hadn’t much seen the point: they were scum and someone would only have to kill them all over again, sooner or later. But she supposed it wasn’t her decision to make. She was just a player in the madness.
    She had missed her chance to be a hero by destroying the gaiaphage. And she had failed to stop the virus that now claimed nine bodies. Instead she’d saved a couple of creeps. Yay for her.
    She and Howard found Albert just as he’d said: sitting with his back against the wall.
    Lana noticed an awful lot of blood. A small, sticky sea of it around Albert.
    “He didn’t die right away,” Lana observed. “Dead people don’t bleed as much. And see how the wall is smeared? He sat up.” She knelt and placed her fingers on his neck. “Then he just sat here and bled to death.”
    No question in her mind. He had a bullet hole in his face. And a much larger exit wound out the far side. It looked as if some wild animal had taken a messy bite out of his skull.
    “I don’t raise the dead,” Lana said.
    “No, wait,” Howard insisted. He knelt beside her and lifted one eyelid. It was dark, there wasn’t much light for an iris to react to. So Howard fished out a lighter and flicked the flame.
    Lana’s eyebrows went up. “Do it again.”
    Howard lifted the other lid. That iris, too, responded.
    “Huh,” Lana