Gone (10 page)

Had she caused this? Had she somehow healed Patrick? She almost laughed. She was getting delirious. She was losing her mind. Imagining things-

Crazy from the pain and thirst and hunger. Crazy.

She smelled something foul. Sickly sweet and foul-She looked at her shattered right arm. The flesh, especially the taut, stretched flesh that barely contained her shattered arm bones, was dark, black edging toward green. The smell was awful-

Lana took several deep breaths, shaky, fighting the upsurge of terror. She'd heard of gangrene. It was what happened when flesh died or circulation was cut off. Her arm was dying. The smell was the odor of rotting human flesh.

A vulture fluttered to a landing just a few feet away. It stared at her with beady eyes and bobbed its featherless neck.

The vulture knew that smell, too.

Patrick came bounding back, barking, and the vulture reluctantly flapped away.

"Not getting me," Lana croaked, but the weakness of her own voice just scared her further The vultures were going to get her They were.

But there was Patrick, healed after a seemingly fatal wound.

Lana laid her left hand on the llesh just below the bone on her right arm. The flesh was hot to the touch, It felt puffy beneath the crust of dried blood.

She closed her eyes and thought, whatever did it, however it happened for Patrick, I want it now for me. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

She drifted off then, thinking of home. Of her room. Posters on the walls, a dreamcatcher hanging in front of one window, forgotten stuffed animals in a wicker basket, a closet bursting with clothing, her collection of Asian fans, which everyone thought was weird.

She wasn't mad at her parents anymore. She just missed them. She wanted her mother more than anything. And her dad, too. He would know how to save her.

She dreamed feverish dreams, images that made her gasp and pant and caused her heart tc beat like a jackhammer.

She felt herself floating on a thin crust of land. The land Was like the skin of a balloon. Below, an open space lull of swirling clouds and sudden jets of flame. And farther down still, a monster, something out of her childhood, the monster that had often startled her from sleep. It was chiseled of living stone, a rough, slow-moving, cunning beast with burning black eyes.

And within that terrible beast, a heart. Only this heart glowed green, not red. And this heart was like an egg, cracked open so that brilliant, painful light escaped.

She woke with a start from the sound of her own cry.

She sat up, as she always did when waking from a nightmare in her own bed.

She sat up.

The pain was terrible. Her head pounded, her back, her.., She stared at her right arm.

For a while she forgot to breathe. Forgot even the pain in her head and back and leg. Forgot them all. Because the pain in her arm was gone.

Her arm was straight. From elbow to wrist it formed a straight line again,

The gangrene was gone as well. The smell of death was gone.

Her arm was still crusted in dried blood but it was nothing, nothing at all compared with what had been there, nothing like what it had been.

Trembling, she lifted her right arm.

It moved.

Slowly she clenched her right fist. The fingers came together.

It was not possible. It was not possible. What she was seeing could not be.

But pain didn't lie. And the searing pain in her arm was now no more than a dull throb.

Lana placed her left hand on her broken leg.

It wasn't quick. It took a Ion}; time and she was terribly weak from thirst and hunger. But she kept her hand there until, an hour later, she did what she had feared she would never do again: Lana Arwen Lazar stood up.

Two vultures sat perched atop the overturned pickup truck.

Lana said,"Guess you waited for nothing"

273 HOURS, 39 MINUTES

SAM, QUINN, EDILIO, and Astrid moved off on foot, insults and laughter following them.

"Quinn, Edilio, are you guys okay?" Astrid asked.

"Aside from the big bruise Til probably have in the middle of my back?" Quinn answered. "Sure. Aside from the fact that I got pounded on for no reason, I'm perfect. Great plan, brah. Worked out well. We gave away the golf cart, and we got beat up and humiliated."

Sam bit back a desire to yell at his friend. Quinn wasn't wrong. Sam had voted to ignore the roadblock, and they had paid a price.

Howard's words stung. It was like the little worm had peeled back his skin and shown he world what Sam was really like. Not about thinking he was too good for everyone, that was wrong, but about him not wanting to step up. Sam had his reasons, but right now they didn't matter as much as the burning feeling that he was shamed in front of his friends.

Til be fine, no big thing" Edilio said to Astrid."If I keep walking, it'll go away"

"Oh yeah, great, be a big man, Edilio" Quinn sneered. "Maybe you enjoy getting pounded on. Me, no. I do not enjoy getting pounded on. And now we're supposed to walk all the way to the power plant? Why, so we can look for some little kid who probably doesn't even know he's missing?"

Again Sam resisted the surge of anger. As mildly as he could he said, "Brother, nobody is making you come"

"You saying I shouldn't?" Quinn took two quick steps and grabbed Sam's shoulder. "You saying you want me to leave, brah?"

"No, man. You're my best friend."

"Your only friend,"

"Yeah. That's right" Sam admitted.

"All Pm saying is, who died and made you king?" Quinn asked. "You're acting like you're ihe boss here. How did that happen? How come Pm taking orders from you?"

"You're not taking orders " Sam said angrily. "I don't want anyone taking orders from me. If I wanted people taking orders from me, all I had to do was stay in town and start telling people what to do" In a cuieter voice Sam said, "You can be in charge, Quinn."

"I never said I wanted to be in charge," Quinn huffed. But he was running out of resentment. He shot a dark look at Edilio, a wary look at Astrid. "It's just weird, brah. Used to be it was you and me, right?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed.

In a whining voice Quinn said, "I just want to get our boards and head for the beach. I want everything to go back to how it was" Then in a startling shout he cried, "Where is everyone? Why haven't they come for us? Where. Are. My. Parents?"

They began walking again, Edilio hobbling a little, Quinn falling behind and muttering. Sam walked beside Astrid, still self-conscious in her presence,

"You handled Ore back there," he said. "Thanks."

"I tutored him through remedial math." She made a wry smile. "He's a little intimidated by me. We can't count much on that, though."

They walked down the middle of the highway. It was strange to see the yellow line under their feet, strange.

"Fallout Alley Youth Zone" Astrid said.

"Yeah. I guess that will stick, huh?"

"Maybe it's not just a joke," Astrid said. "Maybe this is about Fallout Alley?"

Sam looked sharply at her. "You mean maybe an accident at the nuclear plant?"

She shrugged."Pm not sure I mean anything"

"But you think it could be connected? Like the plant blew up or something?"

"The power is still on, Perdido Beach gets all its power from the plant. The lights are still on. So one way or the other, the plant is still running."

Edilio stopped. "Hey, guys. Why are we walking?"

"Because that jerk Ore and that tool Howard stole our golf cart," Quinn said.

"Dude" Edilio said, and pointed at a car that had plunged off the road and come to a stop n the drainage ditch. There were two bikes mounted on a trunk-top bike rack.

"I feel bad taking someone's bike" Astrid said.

"Get over it" Quinn said. "Haven't you noticed: It's a whole new world. It's the FAYZ."

Astrid peered up at a seagull floating not far above them. "Yes, Quinn. I did notice"

They took the two bikes and rode two-on, Quinn perched on Edilio's handlebars, Astrid on Sam's. Her hair blew in his face, stinging him a little. Sam was sorry when they located two more bikes.

The highway did not go to the power plant. They had to turn onto a side road. There was an impressive stone guardhouse at the turnoff, and a red-striped gate, like the ones at a railroad crossing. It was lowered to bar the way. They pedaled around it.

The road wound through hillsides carpeted in desiccated grass and wilting yellow wildflowers. There were no homes or businesses near the plant. It was surrounded by hundreds of acres of emptiness in all directions. Steep hillsides and infrequent stands of trees, meadows and dry creeks.

Eventually the road veered down to the tumbled rock shoreline. The view was stunning, but the surf, normally explosive, was gentle, tamed. The road rose and fell, wound back on itself a couple of times, hid behind hills, and then opened on a new panorama of the ocean.

"There's another security gate up ahead," Astrid said.

"If there's a guard there, I'll kiss him," Quinn said. "This is all constantly watched and patrolled" Astrid said. "They have almost a private army that protects the plant." "Not anymore"Sam said.

They came to a chain-link tence topped with razor wire. The fence extended down to the rocks on the left, and disappeared up into the hills on the right. There was a much more serious guardhouse here, almost a fortress, 't looked like it could handle a major attack. The gate was a tall section of chain link that could roll back and forth at the push of a button.

They stopped pedaling and stood looking up at the obstacle.

"How do we get in?" Astrid wondered,

"Someone climbs the gate," Sam said. "Rock, paper, scissors?"

The three boys did rock, paper, scissors, and Sam lost.

"Dude. Paper? Come on," Quinn teased. "Everybody knows you go with scissors on the first round"

Sam scaled the chain link quickly, but the razor wire gave him pause. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the most troublesome strand of wire. He carefully swung a leg over and yelped as the wire nicked his thigh. Then he was over. He dropped to the ground, leaving his shirt behind on the wire.

He entered the guardhouse. The air-conditioning was on full blast, making him instantly regret the loss of his shirt.

A bank of color monitors showed the road they had just come down, as well as a rotating array of outdoor scenes: ocean and rock and mountain. It also showed several passcard-protected doors to the plant. In the rest room he spotted an electronic passcard on a lanyard, hanging from a hook. Some guy had been using the can when he disappeared. Sam hung ihe lanyard around his neck.

In a closet off the main room he found a gray-green military-style uniform shirt, man)' sizes too large. Against the wall was a locked rack of automatic weapons, machine pistols. The room smelled of oil and sulfur*

He looked for a long time at the guns. Automatic weapons versus baseball bats.

"Don't go down that road," Sam muttered.

He left the gun closet and closed the door firmly. But his hand rested on the knob awhile. Then he shook his head. No. It had not gotten to that point.

Not yet.

The force of the temptation made him queasy. What was the matter with him that he hod even considered it for a second?

He pushed the button to open the gate.

"What took you so long?" Quinn asked suspiciously.

"I was looking around for a shirt."

The power plant stood in perfect isolation, a vast, imposing complex of warehouselike buildings dominated by two immense, concrete bell-jar domes.

All his life Sam had heard about the power plant. It seemed like half the people in lerdido Beach worked here. Growing up he had heard the recited reassurances. And he wasn't afraid of nuclear power, really. But now, seeing the actual plant—a bright, bristling beast crouched above the sea and beneath the mountains—il made him nervous.

"You could pile every house in Perdido Beach into this place," Sam said. iVe never seen it up close. It's big"

"It kind of reminds me of when I was in Rome and saw Saint Peter's, this really big cathedral," Quinn said. "It's, like, you know, you feel small looking at it. Like maybe you should kneel down, just to be on the safe side"

"Stupid question, right, but we aren't going to get radioactive, are we?" Edilio asked.

"This isn't Chernobyl," Astrid said tartly."They didn't even have containment towers there. That's what the two big domes are. The actual reactors are under the containment domes so if anything does happen, the radioactive gas or steam is contained inside"

Quinn slapped Edilio on the jack, fake friendly. "And that's why there's nothing to worry about. Except, huh, they call this area Fallout Alley. I wonder why? What with everything being totally safe and all"

Quinn and Sam knew the story, but for Edilio's benefit, Astrid pointed at the more distani of the two domes. "See how the color is different, the one dome looks newer? The dome over there was hit by a meteorite. Almost fifteen years ago. But what are the odds of that ever happening again?"

"What were the odds of it happening once?" Quinn muttered.

"A meteorite?" Edilio echoed, and he glanced up at the sky. The sun was well past its high point and settling toward the water.

"A small meteorite moving at high speed " Astrid said. "It hit the containment vessel and blew it up. Vaporized it. It hit the reactor and just kept going. Actually; it was good it was moving so fast."

Sam saw the picture in his head. He could imagine the big space rock hurtling down at impossible speed, trailing fire, blowing the concrete dome apart.

"Why is it good that it was so fast?" Sam asked.

"Because it drilled into the earth and carried ninety percent of the uranium fuel down with it into the crater. It pushed it almost a hundred feet down. So they basically just tilled in the hole, paved it oven and rebuilt the reactor"

"I heard a guy was killed," Sam said.

Astrid nodded. "One of the engineers. I guess he was working in the reactor area"