Plague by Michael Grant
He walked down the steps, turned away without looking back, and walked toward the highway. He had the strangest feeling that he was walking alone.
At the highway he paused. Brianna was there, of course. Dekka, too, and Jack. Jack carried Edilio like a baby—a very large baby.
In addition there were forty or fifty others who had picked up and left their homes to follow him.
Quinn came forward and Sam pulled him aside. His old friend looked tortured and sad.
“What’s up, brah?” Sam asked.
Quinn couldn’t speak. He was choked with emotion. “Dude . . .”
“You want to stay in town.”
“My crews . . . my boats and all . . .”
Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Quinn, I’m glad you found something so important to do. Something you really like.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
Sam pulled him into a brief hug. “You and me, we’re still friends, man. But you have responsibilities.”
Quinn nodded miserably.
Sam scanned the crowd again, searching for Astrid. She was not there.
It wasn’t far to Ralph’s parking lot. Sam sagged against a parked car. Some of the kids came up to offer statements of support or encouragement. But most came up to say things like, “You really have Nutella?” Or “Can I live on a boat? That would be so cool.”
They were coming for Nutella and noodles, not for him.
He felt numb. Like everything that was happening was happening to someone else. He pictured himself at the lake, on a houseboat. Dekka would be there, and Brianna and Jack. He would have friends. He wouldn’t be alone.
But he couldn’t stop himself from looking for her.
She no longer had Little Pete to worry about. They could be together without all of that. But of course he knew Astrid, and knew that right now, wherever she was, she was eaten up inside with guilt.
“She’s not coming, is she?” Sam said to Dekka.
But Dekka didn’t answer. She was somewhere else in her head. Sam saw her glance and look away as Brianna laid a light hand on Jack’s shoulder.
Dahra was staying in the hospital, but a few more kids came. Groups of three or four at a time. The Siren and the kids she lived with came. John Terrafino came. Ellen. He waited. He would wait the full two hours. Not for her, he told himself, just to keep his word.
Then Orc, with Howard.
Sam groaned inwardly.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Brianna said.
“The deal was kids make a choice,” Sam said. “I think Howard just realized how dangerous life can be for a criminal living in a place where the ‘king’ can decide life or death.”
To Sam’s relief, Howard did not come over to talk to him. Orc and he sat in the back of a pickup truck. Other kids gave them a wide berth.
“It’s time,” Jack said.
“Breeze? Count the kids,” Sam said.
Brianna was back in twenty seconds. “Eighty-two, boss.”
“About a third,” Jack observed. “A third of what’s left.”
“Wait. Make that eighty-eight,” Brianna said. “And a dog.”
Lana, looking deeply irritated—a fairly usual expression for her—and Sanjit, looking happy—a fairly usual expression for him—and Sanjit’s siblings were trotting along to catch up.
“I don’t know if we’re staying up there or not,” Lana said without preamble. “I want to check it out. And my room smells like crap.”
Just before the time was up, Sam heard a stir. Kids were making a lane for someone, murmuring. His heart leaped.
“Hey, Sam.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Diana?”
“Not expecting me, huh?” She made a wry face. “Where’s blondie? I didn’t see her at the big pep rally.”
“Are you coming with us?” Brianna demanded, obviously not happy about it.
“Is Caine okay with this?” Sam asked Diana. “It’s your choice, but I need to know if he’s going to come after us to take you back.”
“Caine has what he wants,” Diana said.
“Maybe I should call Toto over,” Sam said. The truth teller was having a conversation with Spidey. “I could ask you whether you’re coming along to spy for Caine, and see what Toto has to say.”
Diana sighed. “Sam, I have bigger problems than Caine. And so do you, I guess. Because the FAYZ is going to do something it’s never done before: grow by one.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You are going to be an uncle.”
Sam stared blankly. Brianna said a very rude word. And even Dekka looked up.
“You’re having a baby?” Dekka asked.
“Let’s hope so,” Diana said bleakly. “Let’s hope that’s all it is.”
Pete
HE WALKED ON the edge of a sheet of glass a million miles high.
On one side, far, far below him, the jangly noises and eye-searing colors were dimmed. He saw his sister’s yellow hair and piercing blue eyes, but now he was too far away for them to hurt him.
He saw the echoes of the lurid, bright-eyed monsters who had tried to eat him. They were ghosts sinking lazily down toward the greenish glow far, far below.
They had reached for him with stinging tongues and slicing mouths. So he had made them disappear.
The pain in his body was gone. He was cool and light and amazingly limber. He turned a cartwheel along the edge of the glass and laughed.
His body, full of heat and aching and coughs like volcanoes, had gone away, too. Just like the bugs.
No body, no pain.
Little Pete smiled down at the Darkness. It did not try to touch him now. It shrank away.
It was afraid.
Afraid of him.
Little Pete felt as if a giant weight had been lifted off his shoulders. All of it, the too-bright colors and the too-penetrating eyes, and the misty tendrils that reached for his mind, all of it was so very far off.
Now Little Pete floated up and away from the sheet of glass. He no longer needed to teeter precariously there. He could go anywhere. He was free of the sister and free of the Darkness. He was free at last from the disease-wracked body. And he was free, too, from the tortured, twisted, stunted brain that had made the world so painful to him.
For the first time Little Pete saw the world without cringing or needing to run away. It was as if he’d been watching the world through a veil, through milky glass, and now saw it all clearly for the first time in his brief existence.
His whole life he had needed to hide. And now he gasped at the thrill of seeing and hearing and feeling.
His sick body was gone. His distorting, terrifying brain was gone.
But Pete Ellison had never been more alive.
About the Author
MICHAEL GRANT has spent much of his life on the move. Raised in a military family, he attended ten schools in five states, as well as three schools in France. Even as an adult he kept moving, and in fact he became a writer in part because it was one of the few jobs that wouldn’t tie him down. His fondest dream is to spend a year circumnavigating the globe and visiting every continent. Yes, even Antarctica. He lives in Southern California with his wife, Katherine Applegate, and their two children. You can visit him online at www.themichaelgrant.com.
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Praise for the Gone Series
Gone
“This intense, marvelously plotted, paced, and characterized story will immediately garner comparisons to Lord of the Flies or even the long-playing world shifts of Stephen King, with just a dash of X-Men for good measure. A potent mix of action and thoughtfulness—centered around good and evil, courage and cowardice—renders this a tour de force that will leave readers dazed, disturbed, and utterly breathless.”
—ALA Booklist (starred review)
Hunger
“Readers will be unable to avoid involuntarily gasping, shuddering, or
—VOYA (starred review)
Other Gone books by Michael Grant:
Gone
Hunger
Lies
Copyright
Plague
Copyright © Michael Grant 2011
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grant, Michael.
Plague: a Gone novel / Michael Grant. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Gone)
Summary: A deadly, flulike epidemic and plague of flesh-eating creatures threaten the lives of the children at Perdido Beach while Sam, Astrid, Caine, and Diana each struggle with doubts and uncertainties.
ISBN 978-0-06-144912-3 (trade bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-06-144913-0 (lib. bdg.)
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Good and evil—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Sick— Fiction. 5. Plague—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G7671P1 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010021834
CIP
AC
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11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062077165
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Michael Grant, Plague
(Series: Gone # 4)