by Rick Yancey
The freckle-nosed medic comes down the aisle again, and this time he’s handing out bottles of water and telling them to close the windows because some of the children are cold and some are scared by the rush of the wind that sounds like a monster roaring. The air in the bus quickly grows stale and the temperature rises, making the children sleepy.
But Sam gave Bear to Cassie to keep her company, and he’s never slept without Bear, not ever, not since Bear came to him, anyway. He is tired, but he is also Bearless. The more he tries to forget Bear, the more he remembers him, the more he misses him, and the more he wishes he hadn’t left him behind.
The soldier offers him a bottle of water. He sees something is wrong, though Sammy smiles and pretends he doesn’t feel so empty and Bearless. The soldier sits beside him again, asks his name, and says his name is Parker.
“How much farther?” Sammy asks. It will be dark soon, and the dark is the worst time. Nobody told him, but he just knows that when they finally come it will be in the dark and it will be without warning, like the other waves, and there will be nothing you can do about it, it will just happen, like the TV winking out and the cars dying and the planes falling and the plague, the Pesky Ants, Cassie and Daddy called it, and his mommy wrapped in bloody sheets.
When the Others first came, his father told him the world had changed and nothing would be like before, and maybe they’d take him inside the mothership, maybe even take him on adventures in outer space. And Sammy couldn’t wait to go inside the mothership and blast off into space just like Luke Skywalker in his X-wing starfighter. It made every night feel like Christmas Eve. When morning came, he thought he would wake up and all the wonderful presents the Others had brought would be there.
But the only thing the Others brought was death.
They hadn’t come to give him anything. They had come to take everything away.
When would it—when would they—stop? Maybe never. Maybe the aliens wouldn’t stop until they had taken everything away, until the whole world was like Sammy, empty and alone and Bearless.
So he asks the soldier, “How much farther?”
“Not far at all,” the soldier called Parker answers. “You want me to stay here with you?”
“I’m not afraid,” Sammy says. You have to be brave now, Cassie told him the day his mother died. When he saw the empty bed and knew without asking that she was gone with Nan-Nan and all the others, the ones he knew and the ones he didn’t know, the ones they piled up and burned at the edge of town.
“You shouldn’t be,” the soldier says. “You’re perfectly safe now.”
That’s exactly what Daddy said on a night after the power died, after he boarded the windows and blocked off the doors, when the bad men with guns came out to steal things.
You’re perfectly safe.
After Mommy got sick and Daddy slipped the white paper mask over Cassie’s and his faces.
Just to be sure, Sam. I think you’re perfectly safe.
“And you’re gonna love Camp Haven,” the soldier says. “Wait till you see it. We fixed it up just for kids like you.”
“And they can’t find us there?”
Parker smiles. “Well, I don’t know about that. But it’s probably the most secure place in North America right now. There’s even an invisible force field, in case the visitors try anything.”
“Force fields aren’t real.”
“Well, people used to say the same thing about aliens.”
“Have you seen one, Parker?”
“Not yet,” Parker answers. “Nobody has, at least not in my company, but we’re looking forward to it.” He smiles a hard soldiery smile, and Sammy’s heart quickens. He wishes he were old enough to be a soldier like Parker.
“Who knows?” Parker says. “Maybe they look just like us. Maybe you’re looking at one right now.” A different kind of smile now. Teasing.
The soldier stands up, and Sammy reaches for his hand. He doesn’t want Parker to leave.
“Does Camp Heaven really have a force field?”
“Yep. And manned watchtowers and twenty-four/seven video surveillance and twenty-foot fencing topped with razor wire and big, mean guard dogs that can smell a nonhuman five miles away.”
Sammy’s nose crinkles. “That doesn’t sound like heaven! That sounds like prison!”
“Except a prison keeps the bad guys in and our camp keeps ’em out.”
38
NIGHT.
The stars above, bright and cold, and the dark road below, and the humming of the wheels on the dark road beneath the cold stars. The headlamps stabbing the thick dark. The swaying of the bus and the stale warm air.
The girl across the aisle is sitting up now, dark hair matted to the side of her head, cheeks hollow and skin drawn tight across her skull, making her eyes seem owly huge.
Sammy smiles hesitantly at her. She doesn’t smile back. Her stare is fixed on the water bottle leaning against his leg. He holds out the bottle. “Want some?” A bony arm shoots across the space between them, and she pulls the bottle from his hand, gulps down the rest of the water in four swallows, then tosses the empty bottle onto the seat beside her.
“I think they have more, if you’re still thirsty,” Sammy says.
The girl doesn’t say anything. She stares at him, hardly blinking.
“And they have gummies, too, if you’re hungry.”
She just looks at him, not speaking. Legs curled up beneath Parker’s green jacket, round eyes unblinking.
“My name’s Sam, but everybody calls me Sammy. Except Cassie. Cassie calls me Sams. What’s your name?”
The girl raises her voice over the hum of the wheels and the growl of the engine.
“Megan.”
Her thin fingers pluck at the green material of the army jacket. “Where did this come from?” she wonders aloud, her voice barely conquering the humming and growling in the background. Sammy gets up and slides into the empty space beside her. She flinches, drawing her legs back as far as she can.
“From Parker,” Sammy tells her. “That’s him sitting up there by the driver. He’s a medic. That means he takes care of sick people. He’s really nice.”
The thin girl named Megan shakes her head. “I’m not sick.”
Eyes cupped in dark circles, lips cracked and peeling, hair matted and entangled with twigs and dead leaves. Her forehead is shiny, and her cheeks are flushed.
“Where are we going?” she wants to know.
“Camp Heaven.”
“Camp…what?”
“It’s a fort,” Sammy says. “And not just any fort. The biggest, best, safest fort in the whole world. It even has a force field!”
It’s very warm and stuffy on the bus, but Megan can’t stop shivering. Sammy tucks Parker’s jacket under her chin. She stares at his face with her huge, owly eyes. “Who’s Cassie?”
“My sister. She’s coming, too. The soldiers are going back for her. For her and Daddy and all the others.”
“You mean she’s alive?”
Sammy nods, puzzled. Why wouldn’t Cassie be alive?
“Your father and your sister are alive?” Her bottom lip quivers. A tear cuts a trail through the soot on her face. The soot from the smoke from the fires from the bodies burning.
Without thinking, Sammy takes her hand. Like when Cassie took his the night she told him what the Others had done.
That was their first night in the refugee camp. The hugeness of what had happened over the past few months hadn’t hit him until that night, after the lamps were turned off and he lay curled next to Cassie in the dark. Everything had happened so fast, from the day the power died to the day his father wrapped Mommy in the white sheet to their arrival at the camp. He always thought they’d go home one day and everything would be like it was before they came. Mommy wouldn’t come back—he wasn’t a baby; he knew Mommy wasn’t coming back—but he didn’t understand that there was no going back, that what had happened was forever.
Until
that night. The night Cassie held his hand and told him Mommy was just one of billions. That almost everybody on Earth was dead. That they would never live in their house again. That he would never go to school again. That all his friends were dead.
“It isn’t right,” Megan whispers now in the dark of the bus. “It isn’t right.” She is staring at Sammy’s face. “My whole family’s gone, and your father and your sister? It isn’t right!”
Parker has gotten up again. He’s stopping at each seat, speaking softly to each child, and then he’s touching their foreheads. When he touches them, a light glows in the gloom. Sometimes the light is green. Sometimes it’s red. After the light fades away, Parker stamps the child’s hand. Red light, red stamp. Green light, green stamp.
“My little brother was around your age,” Megan says to Sammy. It sounds like an accusation: How come you’re alive and he isn’t?
“What’s his name?” Sammy asks.
“What’s that matter? Why do you want to know his name?”
He wishes Cassie were here. Cassie would know what to say to make Megan feel better. She always knew the right thing to say.
“His name was Michael, okay? Michael Joseph, and he was six years old and he never did anything to anybody. Is that okay? Are you happy now? Michael Joseph was my brother’s name. You want to know everybody else’s?”
She is looking over Sammy’s shoulder at Parker, who has stopped at their row.
“Well, hello, sleepyhead,” the medic says to Megan.
“She’s sick, Parker,” Sammy tells him. “You need to make her better.”
“We’re going to make everybody better,” Parker says with a smile.
“I’m not sick,” Megan says, then shivers violently beneath Parker’s green jacket.
“Heck no,” Parker says with a nod and a big grin. “But maybe I should check your temperature, just to make sure. Okay?”
He holds up a quarter-size silver disk. “Anything over a hundred degrees glows green.” He leans over Sammy and presses the disk against Megan’s forehead. It lights up green. “Uh-oh,” Parker says. “Lemme check you, Sam.”
The metal is warm against his forehead. Parker’s face is bathed for a second in red light. Parker rolls the stamp over the back of Megan’s hand. The green ink shines wetly in the dimness. It’s a smiley face. Then a red smiley face for Sammy.
“Wait for them to call your color, okay?” Parker says to Megan. “Greens are going straight to the hospital.”
“I’m not sick,” Megan shouts hoarsely. Her voice cracks. She doubles over, coughing, and Sammy instinctively recoils.
Parker pats him on the shoulder. “It’s just a bad cold, Sam,” he whispers. “She’s gonna be okay.”
“I’m not going to the hospital,” Megan tells Sammy after Parker returns to the front of the bus. She furiously rubs the back of her hand against the jacket, smearing the ink. The smiley face is now just a green blob.
“You have to,” Sammy says. “Don’t you want to get better?”
She shakes her head sharply. He doesn’t get it. “Hospitals aren’t where you go to get better. Hospitals are where you go to die.”
After his mother got sick, he asked Daddy, “Aren’t you going to take Mommy to the hospital?” And his father said that it wasn’t safe. Too many sick people, not enough doctors, and not anything the doctors could do for her, anyway. Cassie told him the hospital was broken, just like the TV and the lights and the cars and everything else.
“Everything’s broken?” he asked Cassie. “Everything?”
“No, not everything, Sams,” she answered. “Not this.”
She took his hand and put it against his chest, and his pounding heart pushed fiercely against his open palm.
“Unbroken,” she said.
39
HIS MOTHER WILL only come to him in the in-between space, the gray time between waking and sleeping. She stays away from his dreams, as if she knows not to go there, because dreams are not real but feel more than real when you’re dreaming them. She loves him too much to do that.
Sometimes he can see her face, though most of the time he can’t, just her shape, a little darker than the gray behind his lids, and he can smell her and touch her hair, feel it trail through his fingers. If he tries too hard to see her face, she fades into the dark. And if he tries to hold her too tightly, she slips away like her hair between his fingers.
The hum of the wheels on the dark road. The stale warm air and the swaying of the bus beneath the cold stars. How much farther to Camp Heaven? It seems like they’ve been on the dark road beneath the cold stars forever. He waits for his mother in the in-between space, his eyes closed, while Megan watches him with those big, round, owly eyes.
He falls asleep waiting.
He is still asleep when the three school buses pull up to the gates of Camp Haven. High above in the watchtower, the sentry pushes a button, the electronic lock releases, and the gate slides open. The buses pull in and the gate slides shut behind them.
He doesn’t wake up until the buses roll to a stop with a final, angry hiss of their brakes. Two soldiers are moving down the aisle, waking the children who have fallen asleep. The soldiers are heavily armed, but they smile and their voices are gentle. It’s okay. Time to get up. You’re perfectly safe now.
Sammy sits up, squinting in the sudden blaze of light flooding through the windows, and looks outside. They have stopped in front of a large airplane hangar. The big bay doors are closed, so he can’t see inside. For a moment he isn’t worried about being in a strange place without Daddy or Cassie or Bear. He knows what the bright light means: The aliens couldn’t kill the power here. It also means Parker told the truth: The camp does have a force field. It has to. They don’t care if the Others know about the camp.
They are perfectly safe.
Megan’s breath is heavy in his ear, and he turns to look at her. Her eyes are huge in the glare of the floodlights. She grabs his hand.
“Don’t leave me,” she begs.
A big man heaves himself onto the bus. He stands beside the driver, hands on hips. He has a wide, fleshy face and very small eyes.
“Good morning, boys and girls, and welcome to Camp Haven! My name is Major Bob. I know you’re tired and hungry and maybe a little scared…Who’s a little scared right now? Raise your hand.” No hands go up. Twenty-six pairs of eyes stare blankly at him, and Major Bob grins. His teeth are small, like his eyes. “That’s outstanding. And you know what? You shouldn’t be scared! Our camp is the safest place in the whole ding-dong world right now, I kid you not. You’re all perfectly safe.” He turns to one of the smiling soldiers, who hands him a clipboard. “Now there are only two rules here at Camp Haven. Rule number one: Remember your colors. Everybody hold up your colors!” Twenty-five fists fly into the air. The twenty-sixth, Megan’s, remains in her lap. “Reds, in a couple of minutes you’ll be escorted into Hangar Number One for processing. Greens, sit tight, you’ve got a little farther to go.”
“I’m not going,” Megan whispers in Sammy’s ear.
“Rule number two!” Major Bob booms. “Rule two is two words: Listen and follow. That’s easy to remember, right? Rule two, two words. Listen to your group leader. Follow every instruction your group leader gives you. Don’t question and don’t talk back. They are—we all are—here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to keep you guys safe. And we can’t keep you guys safe unless you guys listen and follow all instructions, right away, no questions.” He hands the clipboard back to the smiling soldier, claps his pudgy hands, and says, “Any questions?”
“He just said don’t ask questions,” Megan whispers. “And then he asks if we have any questions.”
“Outstanding!” Major Bob yells. “Let’s get you processed! Reds, your group leader is Corporal Parker. No running, pushing, or shoving, but keep it moving. No breaking line and no talking, and remember to show your stamp at the door. Let’s move it, people. The sooner we get you processed, the so
oner you can catch some sleep and have some breakfast. I’m not saying the food is the best in the world, but there’s plenty of it!”
He lumbers down the steps. The bus rocks with each footfall. Sammy starts to get up, and Megan yanks him back down.
“Don’t leave me,” she says again.
“But I’m a red,” Sammy protests. He feels sorry for Megan, but he’s anxious to leave. It feels like he’s been on the bus forever. And the sooner the buses are empty, the sooner they can turn around and go back for Cassie and Daddy.
“It’s all right, Megan,” he tries to comfort her. “You heard Parker. They’re going to make everybody better.”
He falls into line behind the other reds. Parker is standing at the bottom of the steps, checking stamps. The driver shouts out, “Hey!” and Sammy turns, just as Megan hits the bottom step. She slams into Parker’s chest and screams when he grabs her flailing arms.
“Let me go!”
The driver pulls her from Parker’s grip and drags her back up the steps, an arm locked around her waist.
“Sammy!” Megan screams. “Sammy, don’t leave me! Don’t let them—”
The doors slam closed, cutting off her cries. Sammy glances up at Parker, who gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“She’s going to be fine, Sam,” the medic says quietly. “Come on.”
As he walks to the hangar, he can hear her screaming behind the yellow metal skin of the bus, over the throaty growl of its engine, the hiss of its brakes letting go. Screaming as if she’s dying, as if they’re torturing her. And then he steps through a side door into the hangar and he can’t hear her anymore.
A soldier is standing just inside the door. He hands Sammy a card with the number forty-nine printed on it.
“Go to the closest red circle,” the soldier tells him. “Sit down. Wait for your number to be called.”
“I gotta get over to the hospital now,” Parker says. “Stay frosty, champ, and remember it’s all cool now. There’s nothing that can hurt you here.” He tousles Sammy’s hair, promises he’ll see him again soon, and gives him a fist bump before leaving.