Gone Series Complete Collection (7 page)

The barrier went up and up, but faded against the background of the night sky. It extended as far as they could see to the left and right. No stars shone through it, but eventually, farther up, the stars reappeared.

“What is it?” Quinn asked. There was awe in his tone.

Astrid just shook her head.

“What is it?” Quinn repeated more urgently.

They approached the barrier with slow steps, ready to run away, but needing to get closer.

They entered the chain-link enclosure and crossed the tennis court. The barrier cut right through the net. The net started from a vertical pole and ended in the shimmering blankness of the barrier.

Sam pulled on the net. It stayed firmly in place. No matter how much he yanked, no more net came through the barrier.

“Careful,” Astrid whispered.

Quinn dropped back, letting Sam take the lead. “She’s right, brah, careful.”

Sam was just a few feet away from the barrier, hand outstretched. He hesitated. He spotted a green tennis ball on the ground and picked it up.

He tossed it toward the barrier.

It bounced back.

He caught the ball on the bounce and looked at it. No marks. No sign it had done anything but bounce.

He took the last three steps and, this time, without hesitating, pressed his fingertips against the barrier.

“Aaah.” He yanked his hand away and looked at it.

“What?” Quinn yelled.

“It burned. Oh, man. That hurt.” Sam shook his hand to throw off the pain.

“Let me look at it,” Astrid said.

Sam extended his hand. “It feels okay now.”

“I don’t see any burn mark,” Astrid said, turning his hand with hers.

“No,” Sam agreed. “But, trust me, you don’t want to touch that thing.”

Even now, even with all that was happening, he registered her touch like a very different sort of electric shock. Her hand was cold. He liked that.

Quinn picked up a chair that sat on one of the sidelines. It was a substantial wrought-iron chair. Quinn lifted it high, held it in front of him, and slammed the legs into the barrier.

The barrier did not yield.

Quinn hit it again, even harder, hard enough that the recoil spun him back.

The barrier did not yield.

Suddenly Quinn was screaming, cursing, slamming the chair wildly again and again against the barrier.

Sam couldn’t step close enough to stop him without getting hit. He placed a restraining hand on Astrid’s arm. “Let him get it out.”

Again and again Quinn hurled the chair against the barrier. It left no mark.

Finally Quinn dropped the chair, sat down on the tarmac, put his head in his hands, and howled.

The lights were burning bright inside the McDonald’s when Albert Hillsborough walked in. A smoke alarm was blaring. A separate beep, beep, beep called urgently for attention between the louder, angrier bleats of the alarm.

Kids had gone behind the counter and taken the cookies and Danish pastries from the display case. A box of Happy Meal toys, tie-ins to a movie Albert hadn’t seen yet, was open, the toys scattered. There were no fries in the bin but plenty were on the floor.

Feeling self-conscious, Albert walked around to the kitchen door and tried to open it. It was locked. He went back and hopped the counter.

It felt illegal somehow, being on the far side of the counter.

A basket of burned, black fries sat resting in the hot oil. Albert found a towel, grabbed the basket handle, and lifted it out of the oil. He hooked it in place so that the oil drained properly. The fries had been cooking since that morning.

“I guess those are about done,” Albert said to himself.

The fry timer continued to beep. It took him a second, but he found the right button and pushed it. That killed one noise.

Three tiny, black cookies were on the grill. Hamburgers that, like the fries, were about ten hours past done.

Albert found a spatula, scooped up the burgers, and tossed them into the trash. The burgers had long since stopped smoking, but no one had been around to reset the smoke alarm. It took Albert a few minutes to figure out how to climb up without landing on the searing hot grill so he could push the reset.

The silence was a physical relief.

“That’s better.” Albert climbed down. He wondered if he should turn off the fryers and the grill. That would be the safest thing to do. Turn everything off and go outside. Out into the dark of the plaza, where kids were gathering, scared, looking for a rescue that was very late in coming. But he didn’t really know anyone out there.

Albert was fourteen, the youngest of six kids. The smallest, too. His three brothers and two sisters ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-seven. Albert had already checked his home: none of them were there. His mother’s wheelchair was empty. The couch where she would normally be lying and watching TV and eating and complaining about the pain in her back was abandoned. Her blanket was there, nothing else.

It was weird to be alone, even for a while. Weird not to have some bossy sibling telling him what to do. He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t being bossed around.

Now Albert walked the McDonald’s kitchen more alone than he could ever have imagined being.

He found the walk-in freezer. He yanked on the big chrome handle and the steel door opened with a gasp and a breath of cold steam.

Inside were metal racks and box upon box of clearly labeled hamburgers, big plastic bags of chicken nuggets, chicken strips, fries. A smaller number of boxes of sausage patties. But mostly, lots of burgers.

He moved on to the walk-in refrigerator, not so cold and pristine, more interesting. There were plastic-covered trays of sliced tomato, bags of shredded lettuce, big plastic tubs of Big Mac sauce and mayonnaise and ketchup, blocks and blocks of sliced yellow cheese.

He found a tiny break room festooned with posters about safety and the Heimlich maneuver, all in both English and Spanish. The dry goods were stacked against the walls of the break room: giant boxes of paper cups and boxes of waxed-paper wraps. Dull metal cylinders loaded with Coca-Cola syrup.

In the back, near the rear door, were tall, wheeled racks of buns and muffins.

Everything had a place. Everything was organized. Everything was clean, albeit with a sheen of grease.

At some point, and he hadn’t really noticed the exact moment, Albert had stopped just seeing it all as interesting, and started seeing it as inventory. He was mentally translating the separate ingredients into Big Macs, chicken sandwiches, Egg McMuffins.

Albert’s sister, Rowena, had taught him to cook. With their mom incapacitated, the kids had always had to fend for themselves. Rowena had been the unofficial cook until Albert hit his twelfth birthday, and then part of the kitchen duties had devolved to him.

He could make red beans and rice, his mother’s favorite dish. He could make hot dogs. He could make French toast and bacon. He had never admitted it to Rowena, but Albert enjoyed cooking. It was a lot better than just doing the cleanup, which, unfortunately, he still had to do even though he was now responsible for the evening meal on Fridays and Sundays.

The manager had a tiny office. The door was ajar. Inside was a cramped desk, a locked safe, a phone, a computer, and a wall shelf straining under the weight of several thick operator’s manuals.

He heard sound: voices, and someone banging into a straw dispenser, then apologizing. Two seventh graders were leaning on the counter, staring up at the overhead menu like they were waiting to order.

Albert hesitated, but not for long. He could do it, he told himself, almost surprised by the thought.

“Welcome to McDonald’s,” Albert said. “May I help you?”

“Are you open?”

“What would you like?”

The kids shrugged. “Two number-one combos?”

Albert stared at the computer console. It was a maze of color-coded buttons. That would have to wait.

“What kind of drink? I mean beverage?”

“Orange soda?”

“Coming right up,” Albert said. He found burger patties in a refrigerator drawer below the grill. They made a satisfying sound as he slapped them onto the grill.

He spotted a paper hat resting on a shelf. He put it on.

While the burger patties sizzled, he opened the thick manual and searched the index for French fries.

SEVEN

289
HOURS
, 45
MINUTES

LANA LAY
IN
the dark, staring up at the stars.

She couldn’t see the vultures anymore, but they weren’t far off. Several had tried to land nearby, and Patrick had scared them off. But she knew they were still out there.

She was scared. Scared of dying. Scared of never seeing her mom and dad again. Her mom and dad, who probably didn’t even know she was missing. They called Grandpa Luke every night and talked to her, told her they loved her . . . and refused to let her come home.

“We want you to have a break from the city, sweetheart,” her mother would say. “We want you to have some time to think and clear your head.”

Lana burned with fury at her parents. Especially her mother. If she let it, the anger could burn so hot, it almost blanked out her pain.

But not quite. Not really. Not for long. The pain was her whole world now. Pain and fear.

She wondered what she looked like right now. She had never been pretty, really—her eyes, she felt, were too small, her dark hair too lank to do more with than let hang there. But now, with her face a mass of bruises, cuts, and caked-on blood, she probably looked like something from a horror movie.

Where was Grandpa Luke? She only half remembered the seconds before the crash, and the crash itself was just a blur, fractured images of space twirling around her as her body was bludgeoned.

It was confusing. Made no sense. Her grandfather had simply disappeared from the truck: one minute there, and the next not there. She had no memory of the truck door opening or closing, and why would the old man have jumped out?

Crazy.

Impossible.

She was sure of one thing: There had been no word of warning from her grandfather. In a heartbeat he was gone and she was plunging down the ravine.

Lana was desperately thirsty. The closest place she knew where she could get a drink was the ranch. It was probably no more than a mile away. If she could somehow get up to the road . . . but even in daylight, even healthy, the climb would have been nearly impossible.

She raised her throbbing head a little and twisted till she saw the truck. It was just a few feet away, wheels up, silhouetted against the stars.

Something scuttled across her neck. Patrick sat up, focused on the faint sound.

“Don’t let anything get me, boy,” she begged.

Patrick woofed, the way he did when he wanted to play.

“I don’t have any food for you, boy,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

Patrick settled back down, head on paws.

“I guess Mom will be happy,” Lana said. “I guess she’ll be really happy she made me come here.”

She would not have noticed the eyes glittering in the dark, except that Patrick was up all at once, bristling and growling like nothing she had ever heard before.

“What is it, boy?”

Green eyes, hovering, disembodied. Staring straight at her. The eyes blinked at a lazy speed, opened again.

Patrick was barking like crazy now, prancing back and forth.

The mountain lion roared. It was a hoarse, deep-throated, snarling sound.

Lana yelled, “Go away! Leave me alone!” Her voice was pathetic—weak, and aware of its own weakness.

Patrick ran back to Lana, then turned, finding his courage again, and faced the mountain lion.

In a flash, battle was joined, an explosion of snarling, canine and feline, deep, terrible sounds. In half a minute it was over and the mountain lion’s glittering eyes reappeared farther away. They blinked once, stared, then were gone.

Patrick came back slowly. He slouched heavily beside Lana.

“Good boy, good boy,” Lana cooed. “You scared off that old lion, didn’t you, boy? Oh, my good dog. Good boy.”

Patrick wagged his tail weakly.

“Did he hurt you, boy? Did he hurt you, my good boy?”

She ran her one usable hand over her dog. His ruff was wet, slick to the touch. It could only be blood. She probed, and Patrick whimpered in pain.

Then she felt the flow. There was a deep cut in Patrick’s neck. The blood was pumping out, surging with each heartbeat, draining the dog’s life away.

“No, no, no,” Lana cried. “You can’t die. You can’t die.”

If he died, she would be alone in the desert, unable to move. Alone.

The mountain lion would come back.

Then the vultures.

No. No. That wasn’t going to happen.

No.

The fear was too much to contain, it couldn’t be reasoned with, it couldn’t be resisted. Lana cried out in terror, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. I want my mom! Help me, someone help me! Mommy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I want to go home, I want to go home.”

She sobbed and babbled, and the pain of loneliness and fear felt even greater than the agony of her battered body. It choked the air from her lungs.

She was alone. Alone with pain. And soon the mountain lion’s teeth . . .

Patrick had to live. He had to live. He was all she had.

She cuddled her dog as close as she could without her own pain obliterating consciousness. She placed her palm over his wound, pressing as hard as she dared.

She would stop the blood.

She would hold him and stop his life from escaping.

She would hold life inside him and he wouldn’t die.

But blood still drained through her fingers.

She held on and focused all her will on staying awake to hold the wound, to keep her friend alive.

“Good boy,” she whispered through parched lips.

She fought to stay awake. But thirst and hunger, pain and fear, loneliness and horror were too much for her. After a long while Lana fell asleep.

And her hand slipped from the dog’s neck.