Astrid, weary, said, “Radiation doesn’t cause barriers to appear or people to disappear.”
“It’s deadly stuff, right?” Edilio pressed.
Quinn sighed and pushed his gurney toward a dark corner, bored by the discussion. Sam waited to hear Astrid’s answer.
“Radiation can kill you,” Astrid agreed. “It can kill you quickly, it can kill you slowly, it can give you cancer, it can just make you sick, or it can do nothing. And it can cause mutations.”
“Mutation like a seagull that suddenly has a hawk’s talons?” Edilio asked pointedly.
“Yes, but only over a long, long time. Not overnight.” She stood up and took Little Pete’s hand. “I have to get him to bed.” Over her shoulder she said, “Don’t worry, you won’t mutate in the night, Edilio.”
Sam stretched out on his gurney. The control room had muted lighting that went almost but not quite to dark once Astrid found the switches. The computer monitors and the LCD readouts glowed.
Sam might have chosen to leave more of the lights on. He doubted he would be able to sleep.
He lay remembering the last time he’d gone surfing with Quinn. Day after Halloween. It had only been early November sun, but in memory it was very bright, every rock and pebble and sand crab outlined in gold. In his memory the waves were wondrous, almost living things, blue and green and white, calling to him, challenging him to leave his worries behind and come out and play.
Then the scene shifted and his mother was at the top of the cliff, smiling and waving down to him. He remembered that day. She was almost always asleep during the morning hours when he surfed. But this day she came to watch.
She’d been wearing her blue and white flowery wraparound skirt and a white blouse. Her hair, much lighter than his own, blew in the stiff breeze, and she seemed frail and vulnerable up there. He wanted to yell to her to step back from the edge.
But she couldn’t hear him.
He yelled up to her, but she couldn’t hear him.
He woke suddenly from the memory that had become a dream. There were no windows, no way to see if it was day or night outside. But no one else was awake.
He slid off the gurney and stood up, careful to make no sound. One by one he checked on the others. Quinn silent for once, no sleep-talking; Edilio snoring on the cushions Astrid had given him; Astrid curled on one end of the couch in the office; and Little Pete asleep at the other end.
Their second night without parents. That first night in a hotel, and now here, in this nuclear power plant.
Where tomorrow night?
Sam did not want to go back to living in his home. He wanted his mother back, but not their home.
On the desk in the plant manager’s office Sam spotted an iPod. He wasn’t optimistic about the musical taste of the manager, who, judging by the family photo on his desk, was about sixty years old. But he didn’t think he could go back to sleep.
He crept as silently as he could across the office, almost brushing Astrid’s hand. Around the desk, s
hifting the chair ever so slightly, leaning carefully away from a shelf of trophies—golf, mostly.
A sudden movement at his feet, a rat. He jumped back and slammed into the glass-shelf trophy display.
There was a tremendous crash.
Little Pete’s eyes flew open.
“Sorry,” Sam said, but before he could speak another syllable, Little Pete began to screech. It was a primitive sound. An earsplitting, insistent, repetitive, panicky baboon sound.
“It’s okay,” Sam said. “It’s—”
His throat seized and choked off any sound. He couldn’t speak.
He couldn’t breathe.
Sam clutched at his throat. He felt invisible hands wrapped around his neck, steel fingers choking off his air. He slapped and pried at the fingers, and all the while Little Pete screeched and flapped his arms like a bird trying to fly.
Little Pete shrieked.