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.
After Mommy got sick and Daddy slipped the white paper mask over Cassie’s and his faces.
“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
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:
“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.
