Avery?
Kalisha:
Gone. Him and the rest. When the tunnel came down on top of them.
Nicky:
It’s better this way, Luke. He wouldn’t have been the same. Not himself. What he did,
what
they
did . . . it would have stripped him, like it did all the others.
What about the kids in Front Half? Are any of them still alive? If there are, we have to—
It was Kalisha who answered, shaking her head, sending not words but a picture: the late
Harry Cross, of Selma, Alabama. The boy who had died in the cafeteria.
Luke took Sha by the arms.
All of them? Are you saying all of them died of seizures even
before
that came down?
He pointed to the rubble of Front Half.
“I think when it lifted off,” Nicky said. “When Avery answered the big phone.” And when it
was clear Luke didn’t fully understand:
When the other kids joined in.
“The faraway kids,” George added. “At the other Institutes. The Front Half kids were just
too . . . I don’t know the word.”
“Too vulnerable,” Luke said. “That’s what you mean. They were vulnerable. It was like one
of the damn old shots, wasn’t it? One of the bad ones.”
They nodded.
Helen whispered, “I bet they died seeing the dots. How awful is that?”
Luke’s answer was the childish denial grownups smile at cynically and only other children
can fully understand:
It’s not fair! Not fair!
No
, they agreed.
Not fair
.
They drew apart. Luke looked at them one by one in the dusty moonlight: Helen, George,
Nicky . . . and Kalisha. He remembered the day he met her, pretending to smoke a candy
cigarette.
George:
What now, Lukey?
“Tim will know,” Luke said, and could only hope it was true.
29
Chad led the way around the destroyed buildings. Stackhouse and Chef Doug trudged behind
him, heads down. Tim followed, gun in hand. Luke and his friends walked behind Tim. The
crickets, silenced by the destruction, had begun to sing again.
Chad stopped at the edge of an asphalt track along which half a dozen cars and three or four
pickup trucks were parked, nose to tail. Among them was a midsized Toyota panel truck with
MAINE PAPER INDUSTRIES on the side. He pointed at it. “What about that, sir? Would
that do you?”
Tim thought it would, at least for a start. “What about the keys?”
“Everybody uses those maintenance trucks, so they always leave the keys under the visor.”
“Luke,” Tim said, “would you check on that?”
Luke went; the others went with him, as if they couldn’t bear to be separated even for a
minute. Luke opened the driver’s door and lowered the visor. Something dropped into his
hand. He held up the keys.
“Good,” Tim said. “Now open up the back. If there’s stuff in there, empty it out.”
The big one called Nick and the smaller one named George took care of this chore, tossing
out rakes, hoes, a toolbox, and several bags of lawn fertilizer. While they did it, Stackhouse sat
down on the grass and put his head on his knees. It was a profound gesture of defeat, but Tim
did not feel sorry for him. He tapped Stackhouse on the shoulder.
“We’ll be going now.”
Stackhouse didn’t look up. “Where? I believe the boy said something about Disneyland.” He
gave a singularly humorless snort of laughter.
“None of your affair. But I’m curious. Where are
you
going to go?”
Stackhouse did not answer.
30
There were no seats in the rear of the panel truck, so the kids took turns sitting up front,
starting with Kalisha. Luke squeezed in on the metal floor between her and Tim. Nicky,
George, and Helen clustered at the back doors, looking out through the two small dusty
windows at a world they had never expected to see again.
Luke:
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