“What are you up to?” she asked. “What do you want?”
But of course there was no answer. And she could sense the Darkness turning its attention away.
Lana got up and padded over to her balcony. The moon was high overhead. It was either very late or very early.
The barrier was so close, she felt as if she could almost touch it.
Was it true that the world was just on the other side of that barrier? Was it really so close that she’d have been able to smell the french fries at the Carl’s Jr. they built for gawkers who came to see the dome?
Or was that just another lie in this small universe of deceptions?
What if it came down? Right now, just pop: no more barrier? Or what if it cracked, like a gigantic egg?
Her mom and dad . . .
She closed her eyes and bit her lip. The pain of memory had snuck up on her, hit her when she wasn’t ready.
Tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away impatiently.
Suddenly, just down on the cliff above the beach, an eruption of blazing green-white light. Sam stood silhouetted by his own light show. She heard him yelling, roaring in frustration.
He was trying to burn his way out of the FAYZ.
It went on for a while and then stopped. Darkness returned. Sam was invisible to her now.
Lana turned away.
So, she was not the only one fantasizing about cracking the shell and emerging like a newborn chick.
Strange, Lana thought as she stubbed out the end of her cigarette, I’ve never thought of it as an egg before.
A gust of breeze blew her smoke before her.
Chapter Four
63 HOURS, 41 MINUTES
SAM WOKE UP in the last place he’d have expected: his bedroom.
He hadn’t been to his former house in ages.
He’d hated it when he lived here with his mother. Connie Temple. Nurse Temple.
He barely remembered her. She was from another world.
He sat up on the bed and smelled the sick. He’d thrown up on the bed. “Nice,” he said with thick tongue.
His head exploded in supernovas of pain.
He wiped his mouth on the blanket. This was one house no one had raided or vandalized or moved into. It was still his, he supposed. There might still be drugs in the bathroom.
He staggered there. Leaned against the sink and threw up again. Not much came up.
In the medicine cabinet nothing but a small bottle of generic ibuprofen.
“Oh,” Sam moaned. “Why do people drink?”
Then he remembered. Taylor.