The other entry talked about work as the “activities necessary for the survival of society.”
“Yeah,” Albert said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
He started reading. He jumped from volume to volume, understanding only part of what he was reading, but understanding enough to follow another lead and then another. It was exactly like following hyperlinks, only slower, and with more lifting.
“Work” led to “labor,” which led him to “productivity,” which led to someone named “Karl Marx,” which led to another old guy named “Adam Smith.”
Albert had never been much of a serious student. But what he had learned in school had never mattered much from his point of view. This mattered. Everything mattered now.
Albert drifted slowly off to sleep and woke up with a start feeling eyes watching him.
He spun around, jumped to his feet, and heaved a huge sigh of relief when he saw that it was just a cat. The cat was a yellow tabby, a little fat, probably old. It had a pink collar and heart-shaped brass tag. It stood with perfect confidence and self-possession in the middle of the aisle. The cat stared at him from green eyes. Its tail twitched.
“Hi, kitty,” Albert said.
The cat disappeared.
Gone.
Albert recoiled in shock, his face suddenly ablaze with pain. The cat was on him, on his face, digging razor-claws into his head. The cat hissed, needle-teeth exposed by a fierce scowl a millimeter from Albert’s eyes.
Albert yelled for help, yelled at the cat. The cat dug its claws deeper. Albert still had a volume of the encyclopedia in his right hand—the “S” book. He slammed it down on his own head.
The cat was gone. The book knocked Albert silly.
And now the cat was clear across the room, sitting calmly atop the librarian’s desk.
It was impossible. Nothing moved that fast. Nothing.
Albert drew a shaky breath and began backing toward the door to the street.
Without any movement that Albert’s eyes could detect, the cat went from the desk to the back of Albert’s neck. It was on him like a mad thing, clawing, scratching, tearing, hissing.
Again, Albert swung the heavy book and again the blow landed on his own flesh because now the cat was perched atop a stack, peering down at Albert, mocking him with cool, green-eyed contempt.
It was going to attack him again.
Instinct made Albert swing the book up to protect his face.
He felt the book jump violently in his hands.
The cat’s face, distorted by rage, was an inch from Albert’s own face.
But the book was still in place.
And the cat was in the book.
No, through the book.
Albert stared in shock as the cat’s eyes darkened and its animal soul fled.
He dropped the encyclopedia on the floor.
The book, the heavy blue leather-bound volume, bisected the cat just behind the front paws. It was as if someone had cut the cat in half and sewed it in two pieces to the book. The back of the cat stuck out from the back cover.
Albert was panting as much from terror as exertion. The thing on the floor, that thing wasn’t possible. The way the cat had moved, not possible.
“Nightmare. You’re having a nightmare,” he told himself.
But if it was a dream it was a dream with a lot of the texture of reality. Surely he wouldn’t dream the smell of mildew. Surely he wouldn’t dream the way the cat’s bladder and bowels emptied messily in death.
Albert remembered seeing the librarian’s large shoulder bag at her desk. With shaking hands he emptied the contents out onto the desk: lipstick, wallet, compact, a cell phone all scattered.
He picked up the encyclopedia. It was heavy. The weight of the cat added to the book had to be twenty pounds. And the cat-in-the-book was bulky, too big to fit easily into the bag.
But he had to show this to someone. This was an impossible thing. Impossible. Except that it was real. Albert needed someone else to tell him that it was real, someone to confirm that he wasn’t dreaming or crazy.
Not Caine. Sam? He would be at the firehouse, but this wasn’t a Sam thing, it was an Astrid thing. Two minutes later he was on Astrid’s well-lit stoop.
Astrid opened her door cautiously and only after checking the peephole.
“Albert? It’s the middle of the…oh, my God, what happened to your face?”
“I could use some Band-Aids,” Albert said. He’d forgotten what he must look like. He’d forgotten the pain. “Yeah. I could use some help. But that’s not why I came here.”
“Then…”
“Astrid. I need…” His words failed him, then. Now safe in Astrid’s entryway, the fear took hold and for a minute he just could not form a word or make a sound.
Astrid drew him inside and closed the door.
“I need…,” he began again, and again couldn’t say more. In a strangled voice he said, “Just look.”
He dumped the cat and the book onto the Oriental rug.
Astrid went completely still.
“It was so fast. It attacked me. I couldn’t even see it move. It was like it was in one place, right? And then it was on me. I mean, it didn’t jump, Astrid. It just…appeared.”
Astrid knelt to push gingerly at the book. She tried to make the book fall open, but the body of the cat went through each page and held them together. Not like the cat had made a hole: like the cat had fused together with the paper.
“What is it, Astrid?” Albert pleaded.
She said nothing, just stared. Albert could all but see the wheels turning in her brain. But she gave him no answer, and Albert accepted after a while that no answer would be forthcoming. No explanation was possible for a thing that could not be.
But she had seen the thing, the impossible thing. He wasn’t crazy.
After what felt like a very long time Astrid whispered, “Come on, Albert, let’s do something with those scratches.”
Lana lay in the dark in the cabin listening to the mysterious sounds of the desert outside. Something made a soft, slithery sound like a hand stroking silk. Something else emitted rapid percussive bursts, a tiny insect drummer who slowed after a few seconds and lost his way and fell silent before starting all over again.
The windmill squeaked infuriatingly. Never for long, never in any kind of pattern. There was no real breeze, just whispers that turned the weathered wooden blades a quarter turn…squeak…or a half turn…squeak, squeak…or barely nudged them to produce a sound like the shrill peep of a baby bird.
Against all that was the reassuring snore from Patrick. He would snore and stop and snore again and every now and then give up a low yipping sound that Lana found endearing.
Lana’s body was well. Her injuries were all miraculously healed. She had washed away the caked-on blood. She had water and food and shelter.
But Lana’s brain was an engine revved to breakneck speed. It turned over and over, swirling through memories of pain, memories of terror, flashes of her grandfather’s empty seat, the tumble down the slope, the buzzards, the lion.
But as lurid as all those images were, they were just fresh paint splashed on more permanent images. The pictures that lingered were of home. School. The mall. Her dad’s car and her mom’s van. The community pool. The sizzling fantasy skyline of the Las Vegas strip visible from her bedroom window.
Taken all together, the pictures churning and churning in her head fed a constant slow burn of rage.
She should be home, not here. She should be in her room. She should be with her friends. Not alone.
Not alone listening to eerie noises and a squeak and a snore.
If she had been a little more careful…. She had tried to stuff the bottle of vodka into her shoulder bag, the cute one with the beadwork she liked. The bag was too small, but the only bag big enough was her book bag and she hadn’t wanted to carry it because it didn’t work with her outfit.
For that, she had been caught. For a
stupid question of fashion, of looking cool.
And now…
A tidal wave of fury at her mother swept across her. It felt like she would drown in all that rage.
Her mother, that’s who she blamed. Her father just did what her mom told him to do. He had to back her up even though he was the nicer one, not as strict or as snipey as her mother.
What was the big deal if she gave Tony a bottle of vodka? It’s not like he was driving a car.
Lana’s mother just didn’t understand Las Vegas. Vegas wasn’t Perdido Beach. There were pressures on her in Las Vegas. It was a city, not a town, and not just any city. Kids grew up faster in Vegas. Demands were made, even of seventh graders, eighth graders, let alone a ninth grader like her.
Her stupid mother. Her fault.
Although it was kind of hard to blame her mother for the blank, intimidating wall in the desert. Kind of hard to blame her for that.
Maybe it was aliens and right now some creepy monsters were chasing her mother and father through the streets of Las Vegas, like in that movie, War of the Worlds. Maybe.
Lana found that thought strangely comforting. After all, at least she wasn’t being chased by aliens in giant tripods. Maybe the wall was some kind of defense put up against the aliens. Maybe she was safe on this side of the wall.
The bottle of vodka wasn’t the only time she’d snuck something for Tony. Lana had palmed some of her mother’s Xanax for him. And she had shoplifted a bottle of wine once from a convenience store.
She wasn’t naïve: She never thought Tony loved her or anything. She knew he was using her. But she was using him too, in her own way. Tony had some status in the school, and some of that had been transferred to her.
Patrick snorted and raised his head very suddenly.
“What is it, boy?”
She rolled from the narrow cot and crouched silent and fearful in the dark cabin.
Something was outside. She could hear it moving. Faint sounds of padded feet on the ground.
Patrick stood up but in a strange, slow-motion way. His hackles were raised, the fur on his back bristling. He was staring intently at the doorway.
There was a scratching sound, exactly like a dog might make, trying to get inside.
And then Lana heard, or thought she heard, a garbled whisper. “Come out.”
Patrick should be barking, but he wasn’t. He was rigid, panting too hard, staring too fixedly.
“You’re just imagining things,” Lana whispered, trying to reassure herself.
“Come out,” the gravelly whisper called again.
Lana discovered that she had to pee. Had to go very badly and there was nothing like a bathroom in the cabin.
“Is someone there?” she cried.
No answer. Maybe it had just been her imagination. Maybe it was just the wind.
She crept to the door and listened intently. Nothing. She glanced at Patrick. Her dog was still bristling, but he had relaxed a bit. The threat—whatever it had been—had moved away.
Lana opened the door a crack. Nothing. Nothing she could see, anyway, and Patrick was definitely no longer worried.
She had no choice: she had to run to the outhouse. Patrick bounded along beside her.
The outhouse was a simple vertical box, undecorated, unadorned, not overly smelly and quite clean. There was no light, of course, so she had to feel her way around, locate the seat and the toilet paper.
At one point she started giggling. It was, after all, a little funny peeing in an outhouse while her dog stood guard.
The walk back to the shack was a bit more leisurely. Lana took a moment to gaze up at the night sky. The moon was already descending toward the western horizon. The stars…well, the stars looked odd. But she wasn’t quite sure why she thought so.
She resumed the walk back to the cabin and froze. Between her and the front door stood a coyote. But this was like none of the coyotes her grandfather had pointed out to her. None of those had been even as big as Patrick. But this shaggy yellow animal was the size of a wolf.
Patrick had not seen or heard the animal approach and now he seemed almost too shocked to react. Patrick, who had leaped to battle a mountain lion, now seemed cowed and uncertain.
Lana’s grandfather had lectured her on desert animals: the coyote that was to be respected but not feared; the lizards that would startle you with their sudden bursts of speed; the deer that were more like large rats than like Bambi; the wild burros so different from their domesticated brothers; and the rattlesnakes that were no threat so long as you wore boots and kept your eyes open.
“Shoo,” Lana yelled, and waved her hands as her grandfather had taught her to do if she ever came too close to a coyote.
The coyote didn’t move.
Instead it made a sharp yipping sound that caused Lana to jump back. Out of the corner of her eye she saw dark shapes rushing toward her, three or four of them, swift shadows.
Now Patrick reacted. He growled menacingly, bared his teeth and raised his hackles, but the coyote didn’t move and his companions were approaching fast.
Lana had been told that coyotes were not dangerous to humans, but there was no way to believe that now. She dodged to the right, hoping to fake out the coyote, but the animal was far too quick to be fooled.
“Patrick, get him,” she urged helplessly.
But Patrick wasn’t going any further than growling and putting on a show and in seconds the other coyotes would arrive and then…well, who knew what then?
Lana had no choice: She had to reach the cabin. She had to reach the cabin or die.
She yelled at the top of her voice and ran straight at the coyote in her path.
The animal recoiled in surprise.
There was a flash of something small and dark and the coyote yelped in pain.
Lana was past him in a heartbeat. Ten steps to the cabin door. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…
Patrick ran ahead of her, panicked, and shot inside.
Lana was on his heels, spun, and slammed the door shut without even slowing down. She skidded to a stop, turned, ran back to the door, and threw herself against it.
But the coyotes did not pursue. They had other problems. She heard wild yelping, canine cries of pain and rage.
After a while the yelping slowed, slurred, and finally stopped. A new coyote voice set up a wild howling, howling at the moon.
Then silence.
In the morning, with the sun bright and all the night’s terrors banished, Lana found the coyote dead, a hundred feet from her door. Still attached to its muzzle was half a snake with a broad, diamond-shaped head. Its body had been chewed in half but not before the venom had flowed into the coyote’s bloodstream.
She looked for a long time at the snake’s head. It was a snake without any doubt. And yet she was sure she had seen it fly.
Lana put that out of her mind. And along with it she dismissed the whisper she had heard because flying snakes and whispering coyotes the size of Great Danes, well, none of that was possible. There was a word for people who believed impossible things: crazy.
“I guess Grandpa wasn’t that big an expert on desert wildlife after all,” she said to Patrick.
NINETEEN
132 HOURS, 46 MINUTES
“YOU DON’T HAVE to like the dude, brah, but he’s doing good stuff.” Quinn was poised to knock on the door of their third house that morning. It was Sam and Quinn and a Coates kid, a girl named Brooke. They were “search team three.”
It was day eight of the FAYZ. The fifth day since Caine had moved in and taken over.
The second day since Sam had kissed Astrid beside a freshly dug grave.
Caine had organized ten search teams to move through the town, each covering a square block to start. The idea was to go into each house on each of the four streets that formed the block. They were to make sure the stove was off, the air-conditioning was off, the TV was off, interior lights were off, and the porch lights lit. They were to turn off automatic
irrigation systems and turn off hot water heaters.
If they couldn’t figure any of that out, they would add it to a list for Edilio to follow up on. Edilio always seemed able to figure out mechanical things. He was running around Perdido Beach with a tool belt and two Coates kids as “helpers.”
The search teams were also to search for lost kids, babies who might have been abandoned, might be trapped in cribs. And pets, too.
In each house they made a list of anything useful, like computers, and anything dangerous, like guns or drugs. They were to note how much food there was and collect all the medicines so they could be sent to Dahra. Diapers and formula went to the day care.
It was a good plan. It was a good idea.
Caine had some good ideas, no question. Caine had tasked Computer Jack to come up with an emergency communication system. Computer Jack had the idea of going old school: he’d set up short-wave radios in the town hall, the fire station, the day care, and the abandoned house Drake used for himself and some of his sheriffs.
But Caine had taken no action against Orc.
Sam had gone to him to demand action.
“What am I supposed to do?” Caine had asked reasonably. “Bette was breaking the rules, and Orc is a sheriff. It was a tragedy for everyone involved. Orc feels very bad.”
So Orc still prowled the streets of Perdido Beach. For all Sam knew, Bette’s blood was still on the bully’s bat. And now the fear of the so-called sheriffs was magnified ten times over.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Sam said. He wasn’t going to get into a discussion of Caine in front of Brooke. He assumed the ten-year-old was a spy. In any case, he was in a foul mood because one of the houses they were to visit later was his own.
Quinn knocked. He rang the bell. “Nada.” He tried the door. It was locked. “Bring on the hammer,” Quinn said.
Each search team had a wagon, either taken from the hardware store or borrowed from someone’s yard. They carried a heavy sledgehammer in the wagon.
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