Dead and floating in the lake or on its shores.
Dead in the desert.
In the fields.
Dead of battles old and recent. Of starvation and accident, suicide and murder.
It was a fatality rate of just over 40 percent.
AFTERMATH 1
SAM TEMPLE WAS taken by helicopter to a hospital in Los Angeles, where there were specialists there in burn injuries. He wasn’t consulted: he was found on his knees, obviously in shock, extensively burned. EMTs took over.
Astrid Ellison was taken to a hospital in Santa Barbara, as was Diana Ladris.
Other kids were shared out among half a dozen hospitals. Some specialized in plastic surgery, others in the effects of starvation.
Over the next week all were seen by psychiatrists once their immediate physical injuries were addressed. Lots of psychiatrists. And when they weren’t being seen by psychiatrists, they were being seen by FBI agents, and California Highway Patrol investigators, and lawyers from the district attorney’s office.
The consensus seemed to be that a number of the Perdido survivors, as they were now known, would be prosecuted for crimes ranging from simple assault to murder.
First on that list was Sam Temple.
Astrid tried many times to phone him from her hospital room, but calls to his hospital were being blocked. No, the nurses explained each time, they could not get him to the phone. No, they could not deliver a message. Not their fault. Talk to the district attorney’s office.
Astrid was able to visit Diana, who she found out was being cared for in the same hall, just three doors down.
Astrid walked slowly, cautiously, her body stiff from bruises and stiffer still from the bandages on her whip burns. They’d given her a cane to use.
She was not going to walk with a cane.
They’d offered her heavy-duty painkillers.
She’d rejected them, restricting herself to a few ibuprofen. The last thing she wanted was to be out of her mind, off in la-la land, when shrinks and cops and family were forever questioning her.
She had not told her parents about her own role in her brother’s death. She had only told them that he had died a very good death.
Astrid had seen their pain. She had also seen their hidden but still-visible relief. They would not have to readjust to their out-of-control autistic son. That had hurt the most. But who was she to judge?
She found Diana’s room. Diana was sitting in her bed using a remote control to idly flip through the channels on the wall-mounted TV.
“You,” Diana said by way of greeting.
“Me,” Astrid said.
“Can’t believe it,” Diana said. “All this time. And there’s still nothing on.”
Astrid laughed and lowered herself slowly into a chair. “You know how they say hospital food is so awful? Somehow I’m not having that reaction.”
“Tapioca beats rat,” Diana said.
“I never minded rat as much as that dog jerky we were getting for a while. The stuff Albert had them flavor with celery salt? That was the culinary low point for me.”
“Yeah, well, I had a lower low point,” Diana said, sounding angry. Or maybe not angry, maybe hurt.
A
strid put a hand on Diana’s arm, and Diana did not shake it off.