Gone (Gone 1)

She looked for a long time at the snake’s head. It was a snake without any doubt. And yet she was sure she had seen it fly.

Lana put that out of her mind. And along with it she dismissed the whisper she had heard because flying snakes and whispering coyotes the size of Great Danes, well, none of that was possible. There was a word for people who believed impossible things: crazy.

“I guess Grandpa wasn’t that big an expert on desert wildlife after all,” she said to Patrick.

NINETEEN

132 HOURS, 46 MINUTES

“YOU DON’T HAVE to like the dude, brah, but he’s doing good stuff.” Quinn was poised to knock on the door of their third house that morning. It was Sam and Quinn and a Coates kid, a girl named Brooke. They were “search team three.”

It was day eight of the FAYZ. The fifth day since Caine had moved in and taken over.

The second day since Sam had kissed Astrid beside a freshly dug grave.

Caine had organized ten search teams to move through the town, each covering a square block to start. The idea was to go into each house on each of the four streets that formed the block. They were to make sure the stove was off, the air-conditioning was off, the TV was off, interior lights were off, and the porch lights lit. They were to turn off automatic

irrigation systems and turn off hot water heaters.

If they couldn’t figure any of that out, they would add it to a list for Edilio to follow up on. Edilio always seemed able to figure out mechanical things. He was running around Perdido Beach with a tool belt and two Coates kids as “helpers.”

The search teams were also to search for lost kids, babies who might have been abandoned, might be trapped in cribs. And pets, too.

In each house they made a list of anything useful, like computers, and anything dangerous, like guns or drugs. They were to note how much food there was and collect all the medicines so they could be sent to Dahra. Diapers and formula went to the day care.

It was a good plan. It was a good idea.

Caine had some good ideas, no question. Caine had tasked Computer Jack to come up with an emergency communication system. Computer Jack had the idea of going old school: he’d set up short-wave radios in the town hall, the fire station, the day care, and the abandoned house Drake used for himself and some of his sheriffs.

But Caine had taken no action against Orc.

Sam had gone to him to demand action.

“What am I supposed to do?” Caine had asked reasonably. “Bette was breaking the rules, and Orc is a sheriff. It was a tragedy for everyone involved. Orc feels very bad.”

So Orc still prowled the streets of Perdido Beach. For all Sam knew, Bette’s blood was still on the bully’s bat. And now the fear of the so-called sheriffs was magnified ten times over.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Sam said. He wasn’t going to get into a discussion of Caine in front of Brooke. He assumed the ten-year-old was a spy. In any case, he was in a foul mood because one of the houses they were to visit later was his own.

Quinn knocked. He rang the bell. “Nada.” He tried the door. It was locked. “Bring on the hammer,” Quinn said.

Each search team had a wagon, either taken from the hardware store or borrowed from someone’s yard. They carried a heavy sledgehammer in the wagon.

It had taken them two hours to deal with the first two houses. It was going to be a while before every home in Perdido Beach had been searched and rendered safe.

“You want to do the hammer?” Sam asked, deferring to Quinn.

“I live for the hammer, brah.”

Quinn hefted the hammer and swung it against the door, just below the doorknob. The wood splintered, and Quinn pushed the door back.

The smell hit them hard.

“Oh, man, what died in here?” Quinn said, like it was a joke.

The joke fell flat.

Just inside the door, on the hardwood floor lay a baby’s pacifier. The three of them stared at it.