“Get over it,” Quinn said. “Haven’t you noticed: It’s a whole new world. It’s the FAYZ.”
Astrid peered up at a seagull floating not far above them. “Yes, Quinn. I did notice.”
They took the two bikes and rode two-on, Quinn perched on Edilio’s handlebars, Astrid on Sam’s. Her hair blew in his face, stinging him a little. Sam was sorry when they located two more bikes.
The highway did not go to the power plant. They had to turn onto a side road. There was an impressive stone guardhouse at the turnoff, and a red-striped gate, like the ones at a railroad crossing. It was lowered to bar the way. They pedaled around it.
The road wound through hillsides carpeted in desiccated grass and wilting yellow wildflowers. There were no homes or businesses near the plant. It was surrounded by hundreds of acres of emptiness in all directions. Steep hillsides and infrequent stands of trees, meadows and dry creeks.
Eventually the road veered down to the tumbled rock shoreline. The view was stunning, but the surf, normally explosive, was gentle, tamed. The road rose and fell, wound back on itself a couple of times, hid behind hills, and then opened on a new panorama of the ocean.
“There’s another security gate up ahead,” Astrid said.
“If there’s a guard there, I’ll kiss him,” Quinn said.
“This is all constantly watched and patrolled,” Astrid said. “They have almost a private army that protects the plant.”
“Not anymore,” Sam said.
They came to a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The fence extended down to the rocks on the left, and disappeared up into the hills on the right. There was a much more serious guardhouse here, almost a fortress. It looked like it could handle a major attack. The gate was a tall section of chain link that could roll back and forth at the push of a button.
They stopped pedaling and stood looking up at the obstacle.
“How do we get in?” Astrid wondered.
“Someone climbs the gate,” Sam said. “Rock, paper, scissors?”
The three boys did rock, paper, scissors, and Sam lost.
“Dude. Paper? Come on,” Quinn teased. “Everybody knows you go with scissors on the first round.”
Sam scaled the chain link quickly, but the razor wire gave him pause. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the most troublesome strand of wire. He carefully swung a leg over and yelped as the wire nicked his thigh. Then he was over. He dropped to the ground, leaving his shirt behind on the wire.
He entered the guardhouse. The air-conditioning was on full blast, making him instantly regret the loss of his shirt.
A bank of color monitors showed the road they had just come down, as well as a rotating array of outdoor scenes: ocean and rock and mountain. It also showed several passcard-protected doors to the plant.
In the restroom he spotted an electronic passcard on a lanyard, hanging from a hook. Some guy had been using the can when he disappeared. Sam hung the lanyard around his neck.
In a closet off the main room he found a gray-green military-style uniform shirt, many sizes too large. Against the wall was a locked rack of automatic weapons, machine pistols. The room smelled of oil and sulfur.
He looked for a long time at the guns. Automatic weapons versus baseball bats.
“Don’t go down that road,” Sam muttered.
He left the gun closet and closed the door firmly. But his hand rested on the knob awhile. Then he shook his head. No. It had not gotten to that point.
Not yet.
The force of the temptation made him queasy. What was the matter with him that he had even considered it for a second?
He pushed the button to open the gate.
“What took you so long?” Quinn asked suspiciously.
“I was looking around for a shirt.”
The power plant stood in perfect isolation, a vast, imposing complex of warehouselike buildings dominated by two immense, concrete bell-jar domes.