His room was on the right. Mommy and Daddy’s room was on the left. But Justin didn’t go in either direction, because he noticed right then that he wasn’t the only person in the house. There was a big kid in the guest room where Meemaw slept when she came to visit at Christmas.
The big kid was a boy, Justin thought, even though his hair was really long and he was turned away. He was sitting in a chair, reading a book, with his feet up on the bed.
The walls of the room had been covered with drawings and colorings that someone had taped up.
Justin froze in the doorway.
Then he slid backward, turned, and went to his room. The big kid hadn’t seen him.
His room was not the same as it used to be. For one thing, there were no sheets or blankets or anything on his bed. Someone had taken his favorite blanket. The nubby blue one.
“Hey.”
Justin jumped. He spun around, flushed and nervous.
The big kid was looking at him with a kind of puzzled look on his face.
“Hey, little dude, take it easy.”
Justin stared at him. He didn’t seem mean. There were lots of mean big kids, but this one seemed okay.
“You lost?” the big kid asked.
Justin shook his head.
“Oh. I get it. Is this your house?”
Justin nodded.
“Right. Oh. Sorry, little dude, I just needed a place to stay and no one was living here.” The big kid looked around. “It’s a nice house, you know? It has a nice feeling.”
Justin nodded, and for some reason started to cry.
“It’s cool, it’s cool, don’t cry. I can move out. One thing we have plenty of is houses, right?”
Justin stopped crying. He pointed. “That’s my room.”
“Yeah. No prob.”
“I don’t know where my blanket is.”
“Huh. Okay, well, we’ll find you a blanket.”
They stared at each other for a minute. Then the big kid said, “Oh yeah, my name is Roger.”
“My name is Justin.”
“Cool. People call me the Artful Roger. Because I like to draw and paint. You know, from the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist.”
Justin stared.
“It’s a book. About this kid who’s an orphan.” He waited like he expected Justin to say something. “Okay. Okay, you don’t read a lot of books.”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ll read it to you, maybe. That way, I’d be paying you back for living in your house.”
Justin didn’t know what to say to that. So he said nothing.
“Right,” Roger said. “Okay. I’m . . . um, going to go back to my room.”
Justin nodded fervently.
“If it’s okay with you, I mean.”
“It’s okay.”
TEN
51 HOURS, 50 MINUTES
“THAT’S THE LAST of the fuel,” Virtue reported mournfully. “We can run the generator for another two, three days at most. Then no more electricity.”
Sanjit sighed. “I guess it’s good we finished off the ice cream last month. It’d melt otherwise.”
“Look, Wisdom, it’s time.”
“How many times have I told you: Don’t call me Wisdom. That’s my slave name.”
It was a tired old joke between them. Virtue would call him Wisdom only to provoke him, when he thought Sanjit wasn’t being serious.
For a part of his life, Sanjit Brattle-Chance had been called Wisdom by just about everyone. But that part of his life had ended seven months earlier.
Sanjit Brattle-Chance was fourteen years old. He was tall, thin, slightly stooped, with black hair down to his shoulders, laughing black eyes, and skin the color of caramel.
He had been an eight-year-old orphan, a Hindu street kid in Buddhist Bangkok, Thailand, when his very famous, very rich, very beautiful parents, Jennifer Brattle and Todd Chance, had kidnapped him.
They called it adoption.
They named him Wisdom. But they, and every other adult on San Francisco de Sales Island, were gone. The Irish nanny? Gone. The ancient Japanese gardener and the three Mexican groundskeepers? Gone. The Scottish butler and the six Polish maids? Gone. The Catalan chef and his two Basque assistants? Gone. The pool guy/handyman from Arizona, and the carpenter from Florida who was working on an ornate balustrade, and the artist-in-residence from New Mexico who painted on warped sheets of steel? Gone, gone, and gone.
Who was left? The kids.
There were five children all together. In addition to “Wisdom,” they were: Virtue, who Sanjit had nicknamed “Choo”; Peace; Bowie; and Pixie. None of them had started their lives with those names. All were orphans. They came from Congo, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and China respectively.
But only Sanjit had insisted on fighting for his birth name. Sanjit meant “invincible” in Hindi. Sanjit figured he was closer to being invincible than he was to being wise.
But for the last seven months he’d had to step up and at least try to make smart decisions. Fortunately he had Virtue, who was just twelve but a smart, responsible twelve. The two of them were the “big kids,” as opposed to Peace, Bowie, and Pixie who were seven, five, and three and mostly concerned with watching DVDs, sneaking candy from the storeroom, and playing too close to the edge of the cliff.
Sanjit and Virtue were at the edge of the cliff themselves now, gazing down at the crumpled, half-sunk, sluggish yacht a hundred feet below.
“There are hundreds of gallons of fuel down there,” Sanjit observed. “Tons of it.”
“We’ve been over this about a million times, Sanjit. Even if we could get that fuel up the cliff without blowing ourselves up, we would just be delaying the inevitable.”
“When you think about it, Choo, isn’t all of life really just delaying the inevitable?”
Virtue sighed his long-suffering sigh.
He was short and round where Sanjit was angular. Virtue was black. Not African-American black, African black. His head was shaved bald—not his usual look, but he hadn’t liked the way his hair looked after three months without a haircut, and the best Sanjit could do for him was a buzz cut with the electric clippers. Virtue had a perpetually mournful look, like he went through life expecting the worst. Like he was distrustful of good news and morbidly gratified by bad news. Which was true.
Sanjit and Virtue balanced each other perfectly: tall and short, thin and beefy, glib and pessimistic, charismatic and dutiful, a little crazy and utterly sane.
“We are about to lose electricity. No DVDs. We have enough food, but even that won’t last forever. We need to get off this island,” Virtue said firmly.
The swagger seemed to go out of Sanjit. “Brother, I don’t know how to do it. I cannot fly a helicopter. I’ll get us all killed.”
Virtue didn’t answer for a while. There was no point in denying the truth. The small, bubble-canopied helicopter perched on the stern of the yacht was a flimsy-looking thing, like a rickety dragonfly. It could lift the five of them off the island and to the mainland. Or crash into the cliff and burn. Or crash into the sea and drown them. Or just spin out of control and chop them up like they’d been dropped into a giant food processor.
“Bowie is not getting better, Sanjit. He needs a doctor.”
Sanjit jerked his chin toward the mainland. “What makes you think there are doctors there? Every single adult disappeared off this island and off the yacht. And the phones and the satellite TV and everything stopped working. And there’s never a plane in the sky, and no one comes here to find out what’s going on.”
“Yes, I noticed all that,” Virtue said dryly. “We’ve seen boats off toward town.”
“They might just be drifting. Like the yacht. What if there are no adults over there, either? Or what if . . . I don’t know.” Sanjit grinned suddenly. “Maybe it’s nothing but man-eating dinosaurs over there.”
“Dinosaurs? You’re going with dinosaurs?”
Peace was coming across what had once been a perf
ectly manicured lawn and was now on its way to becoming a jungle. She had a distinctive walk, knees together, feet taking too many short steps. She had glossy black hair and worried brown eyes.
Sanjit steeled himself. Peace had been watching Bowie.
“Can I give Bowie another Tylenol? His temperature is going up again,” Peace said.
“How high?” Virtue asked.
“A hundred and two. Point two.”
“A hundred point two or a hundred and two point two?” Virtue asked a bit impatiently.
“That one. The second one.”
Virtue shot a look at Sanjit, who stared down at the grass. “It’s too early for another pill,” Virtue said. “Put a wet washcloth on his forehead. One of us will be in soon.”
“It’s been two weeks,” Sanjit said. “It’s not just the flu, is it?”
Virtue said, “I don’t know what it is. According to the book, the flu doesn’t last this long. It could be . . . I don’t know, like a million things.”
“Like what?”
“Read the stupid book yourself, Sanjit,” Virtue snapped. “Fever? Chills? It could be fifty different things. For all I know, it could be leprosy. Or leukemia.”
Sanjit noticed the way his brother winced after he said that last word. “Jeez, Choo. Leukemia? That’s, like, serious, right?”
“Look, all I can go by is the book. I can’t even pronounce most of it. And it goes on and on, maybe this, could be that, I mean, I don’t see how anyone understands it.”
“Leukemia,” Sanjit said.
“Hey, don’t act like that’s what I said, okay? It was just one possibility. I probably just thought of it because I can actually pronounce it. That’s all.”
They both fell silent. Sanjit stared down at the yacht and more specifically at the helicopter.
“We could try to patch the lifeboat from the yacht,” Sanjit said, although he knew Virtue’s answer already. They’d tried to launch the lifeboat. A rope had snagged, and the lifeboat had landed on a spur of rock. The wooden hull had been punctured, the boat had sunk and was now sloshing in between two rocks that slowly, gradually widened the extent of the damage. The lifeboat was a pile of sticks.
“It’s the helicopter or nothing,” Virtue said. He was not a touchy-feely kid, Virtue, but he squeezed Sanjit’s thin bicep and said, “Man, I know it scares you. It scares me, too. But you’re Sanjit, invincible, right? You’re not that smart, but you have amazing luck.”
“I’m not that smart?” Sanjit said. “You’d be flying with me. So how smart are you?”
Astrid settled Little Pete in a corner of her office at town hall. He kept his eyes focused on the long-dead handheld and continued pushing buttons, as if the game were still on. And maybe in Little Pete’s head, it still was.
It was the office the mayor had used back in the old pre-FAYZ days. The office Sam had used for a while.
She was still seething from the fight with Sam. They had argued before. They were both strong-willed people. Arguments were inevitable, she supposed.
Plus, they were supposedly in love and sometimes that brought its own set of disagreements.
And they were roommates, and sometimes that caused problems.
But they had never, either of them, fought like this.
Sam had taken his few things and moved out. She supposed he would find an unoccupied house—there were plenty of those.
“I shouldn’t have said that to him,” she muttered under her breath as she scanned the giant list of things to do. The things that needed doing to keep Perdido Beach functioning.
The door opened. Astrid looked up, hoping and fearing that it was Sam.
It wasn’t. It was Taylor.
“I didn’t think you walked through doorways, Taylor,” Astrid said. She regretted the edgy tone in her voice. By now the news that Sam had moved out would have spread throughout the town. Juicy personal gossip moved at the speed of light in Perdido Beach. And there was no bigger item of gossip than a breakup between the first couple of the FAYZ.
“I know how cranky you get when I pop in,” Taylor said.
“It is a little unsettling,” Astrid said.
Taylor spread her hands placatingly. “See? That’s why I walked in.”
“Next you could work on knocking.”
Astrid and Taylor didn’t like each other much. But Taylor was an extremely valuable person to have around. She had the ability to instantly transport herself from place to place. To “bounce,” as she called it.
The enmity between them went back to Astrid’s belief that Taylor had a crush of major proportions on Sam. No doubt Taylor would figure she had a golden opportunity now.
Not Sam’s type, Astrid told herself. Taylor was pretty but a bit younger, and not nearly tough enough for Sam, who, despite what he might be thinking right now, liked strong, independent girls.
Brianna would be more Sam’s style, probably. Or maybe Dekka, if she were straight.
Astrid shoved the list away irritably. Why was she torturing herself like this? Sam was a jerk. But he would come around. He would realize sooner or later that Astrid was right. He would apologize. And he’d move back in.
“What is it you want, Taylor?”
“Is Sam here?”
“I’m head of the council, and you’ve just come bursting in and interrupting my work, so if you have something to say, why don’t you just say it to me?”
“Meeooow,” Taylor mocked her. “Cranky much?”
“Taylor.”
“Kid says he saw Whip Hand.”
Astrid’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“You know Frankie?”
“Which one?”
“The one who’s a boy. He says he saw Drake Merwin walking along the beach.”
Astrid stared at her. The mere mention of Drake Merwin gave Astrid chills. Drake was—had been—a boy who proved all by himself that you didn’t have to be an adult to be evil. Drake had been Caine’s number one henchman. He had kidnapped Astrid. Forced her with threats, with sheer terror, to ridicule her own brother to his face.
He had burned down Astrid’s house.
He had also whipped Sam so badly that Sam had almost died.
Astrid did not believe in hate. She believed in forgiveness. But she had not forgiven Drake. Even with him dead, she had not forgiven him.
She hoped there was a hell. A real hell, not some metaphorical one, so that Drake could be there now, burning for all eternity.
“Drake’s dead,” Astrid said evenly.
“Yeah,” Taylor agreed. “I’m just telling you what Frankie is saying. He’s saying he saw him, whip hand and all, walking down the beach, covered with mud and dirt and wearing clothes that didn’t fit.”
Astrid sighed. “This is what happens when little kids get into the alcohol.”
“He seemed sober,” Taylor said. She shrugged. “I don’t know if he was drunk or crazy or just making trouble, Astrid, so don’t blame me. This is supposed to be my job, right? I keep my eyes open and come tell Sam—or you—what’s up.”
“Well, thanks,” Astrid said.
“I’ll tell Sam when I see him,” Taylor said.
Asrid knew Taylor was trying to provoke her, and yet it worked: she was provoked. “Tell him anything you want, it’s still a free . . .” She had started to say country. “You’re free to say whatever you like to Sam.”
But Taylor had already bounced away, and Astrid was talking to air.
ELEVEN
47 HOURS, 53 MINUTES
THE PERDIDO BEACH Anomaly, that’s what they called it on the news. The Anomaly. Or the Dome.
Not the FAYZ. Although they knew that’s what the kids inside the Anomaly called it.
The parents, the family members, all the other pilgrims who gathered in a special “viewing area” at the southern end of the Dome tended to call it the fishbowl. Sometimes just the bowl. That’s what it was to the ones who camped out there in tents and sleeping bags and “dreamed” of their c
hildren on the other side: a fishbowl. They knew a little of what was in the bowl, but the little fish, their children, did not know what was outside in the great big world beyond.
Construction was going on in the area. The state of California was rushing through a bypass for the highway. The old road disappeared into the bowl and reappeared on the other side, twenty miles away. It made a mess for the businesses on the coastal route.
And other businesses were springing up on the south side of the bowl. The tourists had to be fed, after all. Carl’s Jr. was building a restaurant. So was Del Taco.
A Courtyard by Marriott was being thrown together at startling speed. Next to it a Holiday Inn Express had broken ground.
In her more cynical moments Connie Temple thought every construction company in the state of California saw the bowl as nothing but a huge opportunity to make money.
The politicians were enjoying it all a bit too much, too. The governor had been there half a dozen times, accompanied by hundreds of reporters. Satellite trucks were packed like sardines all up the beach.
But each day Connie noticed the number of reporters and satellite trucks was just a bit smaller than the day before. The world had gone from stunned disbelief to giddy exploitation to the mundane grind of turning a tragedy into a tourist trap.
Connie Temple—Nurse Temple, as she was inevitably called by the media—had become one of two spokespersons for the families.
That was the shorthand for all those who had children locked inside the bowl: the families.
Connie Temple and Abana Baidoo.
It was easier before they could know what was happening inside the bowl. At first all anyone had known was that a terrifying thing had happened. An impenetrable energy field had created a dome twenty miles across. They figured out very quickly that the nuclear power plant was at the epicenter.
There were dozens of theories about what it was, that dome. Every scientist in the world, it seemed, had made a pilgrimage to the site. Tests had been conducted, measurements taken.
They had tried drilling through it. Under it. Had flown over it. Had dug beneath it. Had approached it by submarine.
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