“It must be a very important dream,” Nerezza said.
“The first time, I was at the FAYZ wall. Now I’m seeing the same thing when I sleep. But I’ve already told Sam the message. Why am I seeing the same thing again?”
“There’s a difference between you delivering a message and Sam getting the message, Prophetess.”
Orsay sat up. Nerezza was bothering her. More and more she found herself wondering about Nerezza. But she had become dependent on the girl to guide her and shield her and take care of her.
“You think I need to repeat the message to Sam?”
Nerezza shrugged and made a modest smile. “I’m not the Prophetess. That’s for you to decide.”
“She said to let the kids go. Into the red sunset.”
“Your vision of the great escape from the FAYZ,” Nerezza said. “The red sunset.”
Orsay shook her head. “This wasn’t a dream I reached for. I wasn’t at the FAYZ wall, I was here, asleep.”
“Your powers are expanding,” Nerezza suggested.
“I don’t like it. It’s like…I don’t know. Like they’re coming from somewhere. Like I’m being pushed. Manipulated.”
“No one can push you or control your dreams,” Nerezza said. “But…”
“But?”
“Maybe it’s very important that Sam hear you. Maybe it’s very, very important that he not stand in the way of truth.”
“I’m not a prophet,” Orsay said wearily. “I just dream. I don’t know if any of it is even real. I mean, sometimes it seems real, but other times it seems crazy.”
Nerezza took her hand. Orsay found her touch strong and cool. It sent a shiver up Orsay’s arm.
“They’re all telling lies about you, Prophetess,” Nerezza said. “You must not doubt yourself because they are busy, even now, attacking you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They fear you. They fear your truth. They are spreading lies that you are a false prophet.”
“I don’t…What are you…I…”
Nerezza put her finger on Orsay’s mouth, shushing her. “No. You must be sure. You must believe. You must be the Prophetess. Otherwise, their lies will pursue you.”
Orsay lay still as a terrified mouse.
“The fate of false prophets is death,” Nerezza said. “But you are the true Prophetess. And you will be protected by your faith. Believe, and you will be safe. Make others believe, and you will live.”
Orsay stared in horror. What was Nerezza talking about? What was she saying? Who were these people who were telling lies about her? And who would threaten her? She wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Was she?
Nerezza called out in a loud voice tinged with impatience. “Jill! Jill! Come in here.”
The girl came in a few seconds later. She was still carrying her doll, holding on to it for all it was worth.
“Sing for the Prophetess,” Nerezza ordered.
“What song should I sing?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Nerezza asked.
So, the Siren sang:
Sunny days…
And Orsay stopped thinking of anything but sunny, sunny days.
TWELVE
45 HOURS, 36 MINUTES
HUNTER HAD BECOME a creature of the night. It was the only way. Animals hid during the day and came out at night. Opossums, rabbits, raccoons, mice, and the biggest prize of all: deer. The coyotes hunted at night, and Hunter had learned from them.
Squirrels and birds you had to go after in the daytime. But night was the time for Hunter to truly live up to his name.
Hunter’s range was wide, from the edge of town, where raccoons and deer came to look for ways into people’s backyard gardens, to the dry lands, where snakes and mice and other rodents were to be found. Along the shoreline he could kill birds, gulls, and terns. And once, he had bagged a lost sea lion.
He had responsibilities, Hunter did. He wasn’t just Hunter, he was the hunter.
He knew the two words were the same, although he could no longer spell the word.
Hunter’s head didn’t work the way it used to. He knew that. He could feel it. He had murky memories of himself living a very different life. He had memories of himself raising his hand in a classroom to answer a hard question.
Hunter would not have those answers now. The answers he did have, he couldn’t really explain with words. There were things he knew, things about the way you could tell if a rabbit was going to run or stand still. Whether a deer could smell you or hear you or not.
But if he tried to explain…words didn’t come out right.
One side of his face wasn’t right. It kind of didn’t have any feeling in it. Like one side of his face wasn’t anything but a slab of dead meat. And sometimes it felt as if that same dead-meat thing spread into his brain. But the strange mutant power, the ability to direct killing heat wherever he wanted, that remained.
He couldn’t talk very well, or think very well, or form a real smile, but he could hunt. He had learned to walk quiet. He had learned to keep the breeze in his face. And he knew that in the night, in the darkest hours, the deer would head toward the cabbage field, drawn there despite the killer worms, the zekes that would kill anything that stepped foot in one of their home fields without permission.
The deer, they weren’t that smart. Not even as smart as Hunter.
He walked carefully, treading on the balls of his feet, feeling through his worn boots for the twig or loose rock that would give him away. He moved as quietly as a coyote.