Gone (27 page)

It was a stupid thing to do, watering the lawn, since she couldn't be sure there would be water enough for her. But ihe man who had owned this tumbledown desert abode had loved the few square meters of grass. It was an act of defiance against the desert. Defiance, even though he had chosen to live out here in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Anyway* in a crazy world* why shouldn't she be crazy, too?

The man who owned the cabin was named ]im Brown. She found that out from papers inside his desk. Plain old Jim Brown. There was no picture of him, but he was only forty-eight years old, a little too young, Lana thought, to leave civilization behind and become a hermit.

The shed behind the cabin was stacked to the roof with survival rations. Not a single fresh thing to be found, but enough canned crackers, canned peanut butter, peaches, fruit cocktail, chili, Spam, and military-style meals ready to eat to last Lana and Patrick at least a yean Maybe longer.

There was no phone. No TV or any electronics. No air-conditioning to soften the brutal afternoon heat. There was no electricity at all. The only mechanical things were the windmill that turned the pump that brought water up from the aquifer below, and a foot-powered grindstone used to hone picks and shovels and saw blades. There were more than a few picks, shovels, saws* and hammers.

There was evidence as well of a car or truck. Tire marks led through the sand from a sort of carport that sagged against the side of the house. There were empty oil cans in the trash and two red* twenty-five-gallon steel tanks that smelled like they were full of gasoline.

Out back was a stack of railroad ties, neatly formed into a square pile. Beside this was smaller lumber, a lot of it used two-by-fours scarred by nails.

Hermit Jim, as Lana thought of him, must be out. Maybe he had left forever. Maybe what had happened to her grandfather had happened to him, and now she was the only person left alive in the whole world.

She didn't want to be there if he came back. There was no way to know whether you could trust a man who lived in a searing hot valley between dusty hills at the end of no road, and had a lawn as lush as a putting green.

Lana finished watering the grass and sprayed Patrick playfully with the hose before turning it off.

"Want some chili, boy?" she asked the dog.

She led the way back inside. It was an oven in the cabin, so hot, she started sweating before she had cleared the threshold, but Lana did not think she would ever complain about something so minor. Not after what she had endured.

Heat? Big deal. She had water, she had food, and all her bones were unbroken, which was how she liked them.

The chili came in a big number-ten can, With no refrigeration, they had to eat it before it could go bad, so it was chili, meal after meal, till it was gone. But at least there was fruit cocktail for dessert. Tomorrow, maybe she'd open one of the number-ten cans of vanilla pudding and just eat pudding for a couple of days.

There was no oven, just a one-burner cooktop. No sink-There was a single chair and a table, and an uncomfortable cot against a walk The one decorative feature was a ratty Persian rug in the center of the only room. The best seat in the house was a smelly but comfortable La-Z-Boy that sat on that rug. It was stuck in the recline position, but that was tine with Lana. She was all about reclining and taking things easy.

The only thing to do was read. Hermit Jim had exactly thirty-eight books. She had inventoried them. There were fairly recent novels by Patrick O'Brian, Dan Simmons* Stephen King, and Dennis Lehane, and some books that she supposed were philosophy by writers like Thoreau. There were classics whose names seemed familiar ro her:
Oliver Twist* The Sea Wolf, The Big Steep, Ivanhoe.

Nothing had exactly jumped out at her, there were no ]. K. Kowling or Meg Cabot books, nothing for kids at all. But over the course of the first day she had read all of
Pride and Prejudice and
now she was starting
The Sea Wolf
Neither was an easy book. But Lana had nothing but time on her hands.

"We can't stay here, Patrick" Lana said as the dog attacked his bowl of chili. "Sooner or later we have to move on. My friends will be worried. Everyone will be. Even Mom and Dad. They must think we're dead/'

But even as she said it, Lana had her doubts. There wasn't much to do once she had inventoried the groceries, so she spent most of her time sitting on the wooden chair, reading, or just watching the desert landscape. She would pull the chair into the doorwav where she could have some shade and lookout acrossthelawnatthehiilsaround.Shehad mastered the trick of reading a paragraph at a time, looking up to scan the area for danger, checking Patrick for warning signs, then sinking back into the book for another paragraph.

After a while the unending emptiness took a toll on her never-strong sense of optimism.

The barrier was still there. It was behind the cabin, not in her field of vision unless she stepped away from the cabin.

Una carried a tin cup of water toward the door, intending to drink it while having another look at the lawn and suddenly there was Patrick, racing toward hen His fur was up. He shook his head like he was having a seizure.

"Get in!" Lana yelled-

She held the door open. Patrick barreled in, She slammed the door and threw the boll.

Patrick hit the rug> skidded, rolled over twice, and came up to a sitting position. Something was in his mouth. Something alive.

Lana approached cautiously. She bent down to see.

"A horny toad? That's what you have? You scared me half to death over a horned toad?" She felt her heart thud heavily as it restarted. "Spit that thing out. Good grief, Patrick, I count on you and you freak out over a stupid horned toad?"

Patrick didn't want to give up his prize. Lana decided to let him have it. It was dead now, anyway, and she supposed Patrick was entitled to his own version of crazy,

"Take it outside and you can keep it" she said. She headed for the door but knelt first to straighten the rug. Then she noticed the hatch in the tloor-

Lana pulled the rug back farther, folding it up over the La-Z-Boy.

She hesitated, not sure if she wanted to see what was under those floorboards. Maybe Hermit Jim was Serial Killer Jim.

But it wasn't like she had anything else to do. She shoved the recliner aside and roiled up the rug. There was a recessed steel ring. She pulled it up.

Lying in the space below were neatly stacked metal bricks* each maybe six or eight inches long, half as wide, and a third as thick.

There was no question in Lana's mind what they were. "Gold. Patrick. Cold"

The gold bars were heavy, twenty pounds or more> but she lilted enough out to be able to see ihe extent of the pile. Her best estimate was that there were fourteen in all, each at least twenty pounds.

Lana had no idea what gold was worth, but she knew what a pair of gold hoop earrings cost.

"That is a lot of earrings," she said.

Patrick looked into the hole with puzzlement.

"You know what this means, Patrick? All this gold here and all those picks and shovels outside? Hermit |im is a gold miner"

She ran outside to the lean-to where Hermit Jim had for-merly parked his truck. Patrick bonnded along, hoping for a game. Sometimes she tossed a broken axe handle for him to retrieve, but today Patrick was to be disappointed.

For the first time Lana carefully followed the tire tracks. They were fading, but still visible. A hundred feet from the house, they split. Some tracks, older ones, it seemed, headed one direction, southeast, probably toward Perdido Beach, Somewhat fresher tracks headed toward the base of the ridge to the north.

Perdido Beach she believed could be fifteen, maybe twenty miles or so away, a very long walk in ihe heal. But if the mine was at the base of the ridge, it didn't look like even a tenth of that distance. Hermit Jim might be there. If he was, so was his truck. If he wasn't his truck might still be there* anyway.

Lana felt a profound aversion to the idea of venturing into the wild again. She'd come very, very close to dying the last time. And the coyotes might still be out there, waiting patiently. But the mile to the mire? She could do that,

She filled a plastic jug with water. She filled herself with water and made sure Patrick was hydrated, too. She stuffed her pockets with MKEs—meals ready to eat—and packed more into a towel she twisted to form a pouch. She smeared herself with sunscreen from an emergency medical kit.

"Let's go for a walk, Patrick"

Edilio grinned as Astrid took her seat on the left side of the Boston Whaler. "Thank God. Now at least we got one smart person on this boat,"

Edilio and Quinn pushed the boat off the sand, back into the gently lapping surf. They climbed aboard, then trailed their legs over the side to clean off clinging sand.

Sam headed the boat out to sea, out toward the barrier. He hoped Drake was dead or at least badly injured. But he wasn't sure and he wanted to get well away before the psychopath started shooting at them.

It occurred to Sam that never before in his lite had he wished someone dead. Eight days had passed since the coming of the FAYZ. Eight days and he'd seen enough craziness to last him a lifetime. And now he was fantasizing about a kid being dead.

Once he pushed the throttle forward and was beyond the range of any bullet, he started to feel better. This was as close as Sam had come to surfing since the coming of the FAYZ. The waves were unimpressive short chop, but the Whaler landed on them with wonderful force that translated up through his legs, rattled his teeth, and brought a smile to his lips. Salt spray was flying, and for Sam it was hard to be grim when the spray was lashing his face.

"Thanks, Edilio. You too, Quinn," Sam said. He was still furious at Quinn, but they were—literally—all in the same boat now.

"See how much you want to thank me when I hurl all over this boat" Edilio said. He was looking a little green.

Sam reminded himself to keep a safe distance from the FAYZ barrier, but at the same time :ie wanted to keep it close. There was still the tantalizing possibility of a gap, a gate, an opening through which they could all sail and say good-bye to this madness.

Far to the north he could see the cliffs that marked the inlet occupied by the power plant, Beyond that, just a smudge in the haze, the outline of the nearest of half a dozen small private islands.

Astrid had dug out the life jackets and was strapping one onto Little Pete. Edilio accepted one too, but Quinn refused.

Astrid also found a small cooler packed with warm sodas, a loaf of bread, and the rest of the makings of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. "We won*t starve "she said. "At least not right away-"

The barrier was just to their left, a terrible, imposing, blank wall. The waves lapped against it, an impatient sound-The water wanted to escape, too.

Sam was a fish in an aquarium and the FAYZ wall was the side of the tank. It was the same semi translucent mystery it was on land.

He skimmed along until he was far enough out that Clifftop was no bigger than a LEGO perched above a narrow ribbon of sand. Perdido Beach was like an oil painting, dots and splashes of color that suggested a town without providing any detail.

Tm going to try something," he announced.

Sam killed the engine and let the boat wallow. The boat seemed to want to drift along the wall. There was a current, only slight, but definite. The current chased down the side of the wall heading away from land, following the long curve still farther out to sea.

"Do we have an anchor?" Sam asked.

The answer was a retching sound. Sam looked away as Edilio gave Up his lunch.

"Never mind," said Sam, Til look."

There was no anchor. But he noticed that Astrid was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She handed one to Sam.

He had not realized he was hungry. He stuffed half the sandwich in his mouth. "This is why they call you Astrid the Genius," he mumbled through the peanut butter.

"Man, don't talk about food " Edilio groaned.

Sam searched his little boat. No anchor anywhere, but there were some plastic bumpers, which he hung over the side in case he brushed against the barrier. And there was a coil of blue-and-white nylon rope. He tied one end securely to a cleat and tied the other end around his ankle. He stripped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes, leaving him in shorts. Rummaging in one of the holds, he found a long screwdriver.

"What are you doing?" Quinn asked.

Sam ignored him. "Edilio, man, you going to live?"

"I hope not," Edilio said through gritted teeth.

"Pm going to dive down, see if I can get below the barrier"

Astrid looked skeptical, worried, but Sam could see she was in her own head, preoccupied Probably trying to come to grips with almost getting shot.

Quinn said,"Til haul you in if you get jammed up"

Sam nodded, not ready to talk toQuinn. Not sure he would ever be ready to talk to Quinn. Then he dived off the side.

The water was a welcome friend. Cold, a shock, but welcome. He laughed at the taste of salt.

He took a couple of deep breaths, held the last one, and dived. He swam with powerful kicks and his free hand while the other hand held the screwdriver out to fend oft the FAYZ walk He had no desire to be pushed up against it. Touching with a linger had hurt, laying a shoulder or thigh against it would not be pleasant.

Down and down he went. He wished he'd had the tore* sight to grab some scuba gear or at least a face mask and fins at the marina, but he'd been a bit preoccupied at the time. The water was pretty clear, but still, visibility was reduced in the shadow of the barrier.

When he reached the end of his air he stabbed toward the barrier. The screwdriver hit nothing, and he felt a momentary surge of excitement that disappeared when his next thrust stopped dead against solid resistance.

He shot to the surface and gasped for air.

The barrier extended at least twenty feet down below the surface. If there was a bottom to it, he'd have to find it using an air tank and flippers.