“Yes. We should get John here,” Astrid said. It felt wrong bringing the little kid into this, but he was on the council.
Howard laughed, loud and long. “Yeah, let’s get John here. That way we can stall for a while longer. We can keep on doing nothing for just a little while longer.”
Albert said, “Take it easy, Howard.”
“Take it easy?” Howard jumped to his feet. “Yeah? Where were you last night, Albert? Huh? Because I didn’t see you out there on the street listening to kids screaming, seeing kids running around hurt and scared and choking, and Edilio and Orc struggling, and Dekka hacking up her lungs and Jack crying and…
“You know who couldn’t even take it?” Howard raged. “You know who couldn’t even take what was happening? Orc. Orc, who’s not scared of anything. Orc, who everyone thinks is some kind of monster. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t…but he did. And where were you, Albert? Counting your money? How about you, Astrid? Praying to Jesus?”
Astrid’s throat tightened. She couldn’t breathe. For a moment panic threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to run from the room, run away and never look back.
Edilio got to his feet and put an arm around Howard. Howard allowed it, and then he did something Astrid never thought she would see. Howard buried his face in Edilio’s shoulder and cried, racking sobs.
“We’re falling apart,” Astrid whispered for herself alone.
But there was no easy escape. Everything Howard had said was true. She could see the truth reflected in Albert’s stunned expression. The two of them, the smart ones, the clever ones, the great defenders of truth and fairness and justice, had done nothing while others had worked themselves to exhaustion.
Astrid had figured her job was to bring order out of chaos when the night of horror was finally over. And now was the time for her to step up. Now was the time for her to show that she could do what needed doing.
Where was Sam?
It hit her full force then, the shocking realization. Was this how Sam felt? Was this how he’d been feeling since the beginning? All eyes on him? Everyone waiting for a decision? Even as people doubted and criticized and attacked?
She wanted to be sick. She had been there for so much of it. But she hadn’t been the one. She hadn’t been the one making those choices.
And now…she was.
“I don’t know what to do,” Astrid said. “I don’t know.”
Diana leaned far out over the side of the boat and dipped her head into the water. She kept her eyes closed at first, intending to come straight back up once her hair was wet.
But the flow of cool water around her ears and scalp was so very pleasant that she wanted to see and wanted to stay there. She opened her eyes. The salt water stung. But the pain was a new pain and she welcomed it.
The water was green foam, swirling down the side of the boat. She wondered idly if Jasmine would come floating up toward her, face bloated, pale…
But no, of course not. That was a long time ago. Hours. Hours like weeks when you’re hungry and sunburned and now thirst is screaming at you to drink, drink the lovely green water like punch, like Mountain Dew, like refreshing mint tea, so cold all around your head.
All she had to do was let go. Slip into the water. She wouldn’t last long. She was too weak to swim very long and then she would slide down into the water like Jasmine had done.
Or maybe she could just hold her head down here and take a deep breath of water. Would that do it? Or would she just end up choking and puking?
Caine wouldn’t let her drown, of course. Then Caine would be all alone. He would raise her up out of the water. She couldn’t drown until Caine was gone, and then she might as well because, as sad as it was to realize, he was all she had.
The two of them. Sick puppies. Twisted, arrogant, cruel and cold, both of them. How could she love someone like that? How could he? Process of elimination? Neither of them could find anyone else?
Even the nastiest, ugliest species found mates. Flies found mates. Worms, well, who knew? Probably. The point being…
Sudden panic! She yanked her head back up and gasped at the air. Choked, gasped, and started crying with her face in her hands, sobbing without tears because you needed something inside you to produce tears. The water running down from her hair felt like tears.
No one noticed. No one cared.
Caine was watching the shore of the island as it passed on their left.
Tyrell was checking the gas gauge nervously every two seconds. “Dude, we’re on empty. I mean, we are way in the red.”
The cliffs were sheer and impossible. The sun beat down on Diana’s head and if someone had magically appeared beside her and said, here, Diana, press this button and…oblivion…
No. No, that’s what was amazing as she thought about it. No. She still wouldn’t. She would still choose to live. Even this life. Even though it meant spending her days and nights with herself.
“Hey!” Penny said. “Look at that. Isn’t that, like, an opening?”
Caine shielded his eyes and stared hard. “Tyrell. In there.”
The boat turned lazily toward the cliff. Diana wondered if they were going to just ram the wall. Maybe. Nothing she could do about it.
But then, she saw it, too, nothing more than a dark space in the buff, sun-blasted rock. An opening.
“Probably just a cave,” Tyrell said.
They weren’t far out from the cliff and it didn’t take long for them to see that what at first looked like a cave was actually a gash in the rock face. At some point a part of the cliff had collapsed in on itself, creating a narrow inlet, no more than twenty feet wide at the base, but five times that wide at the top. But the base of the inlet was choked with rock. There was no sandy beach awaiting them, no place to land the boat.