No, there was a second gun. Too late!

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Gaia spun around, not so much knocked by the impact as by the spasm of pain. She fell on her back.

  “Get her! Get her! Get her!”

  BLAM! BLAM!

  “I’m out of bullets!”

  Gaia tried to sit up, but something inside her was badly damaged, and the pain was extraordinary.

  In one ear Social Distortion sang “Story of My Life.” It was a song both upbeat and melancholy.

  A girl with a knife rose up beside her. Gaia threw an invisible punch that sent the knife wielder flying.

  Sudden noise behind her, feet on soft dirt: Gaia twisted to see and was hit in the chest with a spiked baseball bat.

  She grabbed the bat with lightning reflexes, held it, and with her other hand burned a hole through her assailant.

  Three.

  Gaia pushed herself up and shook her head. She was woozy. Her head was pounding; her eyes didn’t want to focus; her chest hurt. Blood was leaking from her in too many ways.

  Unable to see clearly, she swept a beam of light three hundred sixty degrees. Again. Again. A scream cut short.

  Two.

  She had to prioritize. What should she heal first? What was killing her?

  She lifted her new shirt and saw that the nail wound in her chest was small compared to the bullet hole. And worse still, far worse, was the exploded exit wound where the bullet had come out of her side. She pressed her hand on that and focused.

  She blinked tears from her eyes and saw two people running away, already back at the highway, racing toward Perdido Beach. She aimed a beam after them, but there was no aiming now: they were fuzzy in the distance, and she hit nothing.

  Killing everyone in the FAYZ was proving more difficult than she’d expected.

Light, Chapter 18