Eyes swiveled to Computer Jack, who gulped and bobbed his head yes and pushed his glasses up and blushed.
“It will take time, but together we can do it,” Caine said. He emphasized his certainty by smacking his closed right fist into his left palm. “In addition to a sheriff to sort of make sure the rules are being followed, a job that I think Drake Merwin is qualified to do since his father is a Highway Patrol lieutenant, we’ll need a fire chief to handle emergencies, and I nominate Sam Temple. Based on what people said earlier about his brave action in that fire, I think he’s an obvious choice, don’t you?”
There were nodded heads and murmurs of agreement.
“He’s co-opting you,” Astrid whispered. “He knows you’re his competition.”
“You don’t trust him,” Sam whispered back. It was not a question.
“He’s a manipulator,” Astrid said. “Doesn’t mean he’s bad. He may be okay.”
Mary said, “Sam saved the hardware store and the day care. And he almost saved that little girl. Speaking of which, someone needs to bury her.”
“Exactly,” Caine said. “God willing, we won’t have to face that need again, but someone has to bury the dead. Just as someone needs to help people who get sick or hurt. And someone needs to take care of the little children.”
Dahra Baidoo spoke up and said, “Mary has totally been taking care of the prees—I mean, preschoolers,” she explained. “Her and her brother, John.”
“But we need help,” Mary said quickly. “We’re not getting any sleep. We’re out of diapers and food and”—she sighed—“everything. John and I know the kids now, and we can keep running things, but we need help. We need a lot of help.”
Caine seemed to mist up, almost as if he might shed a tear. He walked quickly to Mary, drew her to her feet, and put his arm around her. “What a noble person you are, Mary. You and your brother will be given the power to draft. . . . How many people will it take to care for the prees?”
Mary calculated in her head. “The two of us and four others, maybe,” she said. Then, gaining confidence, she said, “Actually, we need four in the morning and four in the afternoon and four at night. And we need diapers and formula. And we need to be able to ask people to get us stuff, like food.”
Caine nodded. “The young ones are our greatest responsibility. Mary and John, you have absolute authority to draft whatever people you need, and demand whatever supplies you need. If anyone argues, Drake and his people, including Captain Orc, will make sure you get what you need.”
Mary looked overwhelmed and grateful.
Howard did not.
“Say what, now? I let it go by before, but are you saying Orc works for this guy?” He jerked a thumb at Drake, who just smiled like a shark. “We don’t work for anyone. Captain Orc doesn’t work for anyone, or under anyone, or follow anyone’s orders.”
Sam saw a coldly furious expression appear on Caine’s handsome face, then disappear as swiftly as it had come.
Orc must have seen it too, because he stood up, and Cookie along with him. Both clutched bats. Drake, still smiling, stepped between them and Caine. A fight was coming, sudden as a tornado.
Diana Ladris, oddly, was eyeing Sam closely, as if unconcerned by Orc.
Caine sighed, raised his hands, and used both palms to smooth back his hair.
There came a rumble, up through the floor and the pews. A small earthquake, minor, nothing that Sam, like most Californians, hadn’t felt before.
Everyone jumped to their feet, everyone knew what you did in an earthquake.
But then came a rending sound, steel and wood twisting, and the crucifix separated from the wall. It ripped free of the bolts holding it in place, like an invisible giant had yanked it away.
No one moved.
A shower of plaster and pebbles fell on the altar.
The crucifix toppled forward. It fell like a chainsawed tree.
As it fell, Caine dropped his hands to his sides. His face was grim, hard, and angry.
The crucifix, at least a dozen feet tall, slammed with shocking force down onto the front-row pew. The impact was as loud and sudden as a car wreck.
Orc and Howard jumped aside. Cookie was too slow. The horizontal bar of the cross caught his right shoulder.
He was on the ground and a red stain was spreading.
It all happened in the space of a few heartbeats. So fast that the kids who’d leaped to their feet didn’t have the chance to bolt.
“Help me, help me!” Cookie cried.
He lay bellowing on the floor. Blood was seeping through the fabric of his T-shirt. It pooled on the tile floor.
Elwood shoved the cross off him, and Cookie screamed.
Caine had not moved. Drake Merwin kept his cold gaze on Orc, his arms still crossed, seemingly indifferent.
Diana Ladris maintained her focus on Sam. The knowing smirk on her face didn’t waver.
Astrid grabbed Sam’s arm and whispered, “Let’s get out of here. We have to talk.”
Diana saw that as well.
“Ahhh, ahhhh, help me, oh man, I’m hurt!” Cookie cried.
Orc and Howard made no move to help their fallen comrade.
Caine, perfectly calm, said, “This is terrible. Does anyone know first aid? Sam? Your mother was a nurse.”
Little Pete, who had sat silent and still as a stone, began to rock faster and faster. His hands flapped as if he were warding off an attack of bees.
“I have to get him out of here, he’s spiraling,” Astrid said, and bundled Little Pete away. “Window seat, Petey, window seat.”
“I’m not a nurse,” Sam blurted. “I don’t know . . .”
It was Dahra Baidoo who broke from her stunned trance to kneel beside the thrashing, bellowing Cookie. “I know some first aid. Elwood, help me.”
“I guess we have our new nurse,” Caine said, sounding no more agitated or concerned than the school principal announcing a name for the honor roll.
Diana turned away, drifted past Caine, and whispered something in his ear. Caine’s dark eyes swept across the shocked kids, seeming to size them up in turn. He formed a bare smile, and nodded imperceptibly to Diana.
“This meeting is adjourned till we can help our wounded friend . . . what is his name? Cookie?”
Cookie’s voice was even more urgent, demanding help, edging toward hysteria. “It really hurts, it really hurts bad, oh, God.”
Caine led Drake and Diana down the aisle, past Sam, following Astrid and Little Pete from the church.
Drake paused halfway, turned back, and spoke for the first time. In an amused voice he said, “Oh, um, Captain Orc? Have your people—the ones who aren’t injured—line up outside. We’ll work out your . . . um, duties.”
With a grin that was almost a snarl, Drake added a cheerful, “Later.”
FIFTEEN
251 HOURS, 32 MINUTES
JACK WAS SLOW to realize that he should follow Caine and the rest out of the church. He jumped up too suddenly and banged into the pew, making a noise that drew the attention of the quiet boy Caine had called a hero.
“Sorry,” Jack said.
Jack walked quickly outside. At first he couldn’t see any of the other Coates kids. A lot of people were outside the church, milling around, talking about what had happened inside. Cookie’s cries of pain were only slightly muffled.
Jack spotted the tall blond girl he’d seen inside, and her little brother.
“Excuse me, do you know where Caine and everybody went?”
The girl, he didn’t remember her name, looked him in the eye. “He’s in the town hall. Where else would our new leader be?”
Jack often missed nuance when people talked. But he didn’t miss her cold sarcasm.
“Sorry to bother you.” He pushed his glasses back up on his nose and tried to smile at the same time. He bobbed his head and looked around for the town hall.
“It’s right there.” The girl pointed. Then she said, “My name is Astrid. Do
you really think you can get the phones working?”
“Sure. It will take time, though. Right now the signal goes from your phone to the tower, right?” His tone was condescending and he formed his hands into a schematic of a tower with beams radiating toward it. “Then it gets sent on to a satellite, then down to a router. But we can’t send signals to the satellite now, so—”
He was interrupted by a shockingly loud cry of pain from inside the church. It made him flinch.
“How do you know we can’t reach a satellite?” Astrid asked.
He blinked in surprise and made the smug face he made whenever someone questioned his technological expertise. “I doubt you would understand.”
Astrid said, “Try me, kid.”
To Jack’s surprise, she seemed to follow everything he said. So he went on to explain how he could reprogram a few good desktop computers to serve as a primitive router for the phone system. “It wouldn’t be fast. I mean, it couldn’t handle more than, say, a dozen calls simultaneously, but it should work at a basic level.”
Astrid’s little brother seemed to be staring at Jack’s hands, which he was now twisting nervously. Jack was anxious being away from Caine. Before they had come down from Coates Academy, Drake Merwin had warned everyone that they should keep talk with the Perdido Beach kids to a minimum.
A warning from Drake was serious.
“Well, I better go,” Jack said.
Astrid stopped him. “So you’re into computers.”
“Yeah. I’m kind of a tech guy.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“That’s young to have those skills.”
He laughed dismissively. “Nothing I’ve been talking about is hard to do. It’s not something most people could do, but it’s not hard for me.”
Jack had never been shy when it came to his tech skills. He’d gotten his first real computer for his fourth Christmas. His parents still told the story of how he had spent fourteen hours on the machine that first day, pausing only for Nutri-Grain bars and juice boxes.
By the time he was five he could easily install programs and navigate the web. By age six his parents were turning to him for computer help. By eight he had his own website and was acting as his school’s unofficial tech support.
At nine, Jack had hacked into the computer system of his local police department to erase a speeding ticket for a friend’s father.
His own parents found out and panicked. The next semester he was at Coates Academy, which was known as a place to send smart, difficult children.
But Jack wasn’t difficult, and he resented it. In any case, it didn’t help him stay out of trouble. On the contrary, there were kids at Coates whom Jack’s parents would have called bad influences. Some of them, very bad influences.
And some were just bad.
“So, what would be hard for you, Jack?” Astrid asked.
“Almost nothing,” he answered truthfully. “But what I would like to do is get some kind of internet working. Here in the . . . in whatever this is.”
“It seems we’re calling it the FAYZ.”
“Yeah. Here in the FAYZ. I mean, I’d estimate there are two hundred and twenty-five or so decent computers, based on the number of homes and businesses. The land area is pretty small, so it would be fairly simple to set up Wi-Fi. That’s easy. And if I had even a pair of old G5s to work with, I think I could stand up a limited local system.”
He smiled happily at the thought.
“That would be great. So, tell me, Comp—should I really call you Computer Jack?”
“That’s what everyone calls me. Or sometimes just Jack.”
“Okay, Jack. What is Caine up to?”
Jack was caught off guard. “What?”
“What’s he up to? You’re a smart kid, you have some idea.”
Jack wanted to leave, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. Astrid moved in and put her hand on his arm. He stared down at the hand.
“I know he’s up to something,” Astrid said. Her little brother trained his big, vacant saucer eyes on Jack. “You know what I think?”
Jack shook his head slowly.
“I think you’re a nice person,” Astrid said. “I think you’re very smart, so people don’t always treat you very well. They’re scared of your talent. And they try to use you.”
Jack caught himself nodding in agreement.
“But I don’t think that kid Drake is a nice person. He’s not, is he?”
Jack held very still. He didn’t want to give anything away. He was not as quick at understanding people as he was machines. Mostly people weren’t that interesting.
“He’s a bully, isn’t he? Drake, I mean.”
Jack shrugged.
“I thought so. And Caine?”
When Jack didn’t answer, Astrid let the question hang there. Jack swallowed and tried to look away, but it wasn’t easy.
“Caine,” Astrid repeated. “There’s something wrong with him, isn’t there?”
Computer Jack’s resistance crumbled, but not his caution. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “He can do things,” Jack said. “He can—”
“Jack. There you are.”
Jack and Astrid both jumped. It was Diana Ladris. She nodded cordially at Astrid. “I hope your little brother is all right. The way you rushed out of there, I thought maybe he was sick.”
“No. No, he’s fine.”
“He’s lucky to have you,” Diana said. As she said it, she took Astrid’s hand in hers, like she was determined to shake hands. But Jack knew better.
Astrid pulled her hand away.
Diana had a nice smile, but she didn’t use it now. Jack wondered if Diana had been able to finish with Astrid. Probably not; it usually took her longer to read a person’s power level.
The mood of confrontation was broken by the sound of a diesel engine. It was a kid who looked like he might be Mexican, driving a backhoe down the street.
“Who is that?” Diana asked.
“Edilio,” Astrid said.
“What’s he doing?”
The boy on the backhoe began to dig a trench, right in the grass of the plaza, close to the sidewalk where the little girl’s body lay under its blanket, avoided by all.
“What’s he doing?” Diana repeated.
“I think he’s burying the dead,” Astrid said softly.
Diana frowned. “Caine didn’t tell him to do that.”
“What does it matter?” Astrid asked. “It needed to be done. In fact, I think I’ll go and see if I can help. You know, if you think that would be okay with Caine.”
Diana didn’t smile. She didn’t snarl, either, and Jack had seen her do that on more than one occasion. “You seem like a nice girl, Astrid,” Diana said. “I’ll bet you’re one of those brainy, Lisa Simpson types, all full of great ideas and worried about saving the planet or whatever. But things have changed. This isn’t your old life anymore. It’s like . . . you know what it’s like? It’s like you used to live in a really nice neighborhood, and now you live in a really tough neighborhood. You don’t look tough, Astrid.”
“What caused it? The FAYZ. Do you know?” Astrid demanded, refusing to be intimidated.
Diana laughed. “Aliens. God. A sudden shift in the space-time continuum. I heard someone call you Astrid the Genius, so you’ve probably thought of explanations I can’t even guess at. It doesn’t matter. It’s happened. Here we are.”
“What does Caine want?” Astrid asked.
Jack could not believe Astrid hadn’t withered in the face of Diana’s confidence. Most people did. Most people couldn’t stand up to her. If they did, they were sorry.
Jack thought he saw a flicker of appreciation spark Diana’s dark eyes.
“What does Caine want? He wants what he wants. And he’ll get it,” Diana said. “Now, run off to the funeral over there. Stay out of my way. And take care of your little brother. Jack?”
The sound of his own name snapped Jack o
ut of his trance. “Yes.”
“Come.”
Jack fell into step behind Diana, ashamed of his instant, doglike obedience.
They marched up the steps of the town hall. Caine, to the surprise of no one who knew him, had taken over the mayor’s office. He was behind a massive mahogany desk, rocking slowly from side to side in a too-big maroon leather chair.
“Where did you go?” Caine asked.
“I went to get Jack.”
Caine’s eyes flickered. “And where was Computer Jack?”
Diana said, “Nowhere. He was just wandering, lost.”
She was covering for him, Jack realized with a shock.
“I ran into that girl,” Diana said. “The blond with the strange brother.”
“Yes?”
“They call her Astrid the Genius. I think she’s involved with that kid, the fire kid.”
“His name is Sam,” Caine reminded her.
“I think Astrid’s someone we need to keep an eye on.”
“Did you read her?” Caine asked.
“I got a partial read, so I’m not sure.”
Caine spread his hands in exasperation. “Why am I begging for information here? Just tell me.”
“She’s on about two bars.”
“Any idea what her powers may be? Lighter? Speeder? Chameleon? Not another Dekka, I hope. She was difficult. And hopefully not a Reader like you, Diana.”
Diana shook her head. “No idea. I’m not even sure she’s two bars.”
Caine nodded. Then he sighed as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. “Put her on the list, Jack. Astrid the Genius: two bars. With a question mark.”
Jack pulled out his PDA. It no longer got internet, of course, but its other functions still worked. He punched in the security code and opened the file.
The list opened. There were twenty-eight names on it, all Coates kids. In the column after each name was a number: one, two, or three. Only one name had a four after it: Caine Soren.
Gone Series Complete Collection Page 12