The Annihilation of Foreverland (24 page)

Eleven of the children have been placed in the custody of other families. The oldest child, Eric Zinder, 16, was reported missing. Cynthia and John Halner claimed he had run away several months earlier and failed to report it, although they continued to receive support for his care.

It felt like his brains got pulled out of his head.

The Director had to yank the needle out. His hands were still shaking. He lay in the chair, his breathing shallow, staring at the needle in his forehead for too long. Foreverland had closed but he was afraid to reach for it. Each time he did, his hand quivered violently. It would be dangerous if the needle shook inside the stent and scrambled his frontal lobe like a lobotomy knife. He took a deep breath and ripped it out like a loose tooth.

It was several minutes before he stopped seeing double.

She shook Foreverland.

He’d never seen anything like it.

The boys were gathered around the sundial where the Director could see them very clearly. He didn’t even sense her nearing, she just appeared out of nowhere. Before he could act, she struck the sundial and let loose tremors that never ended. They were still inside his head.

The Director threw the needle on the floor.

He put his feet down
. He needed some water, maybe something to settle his stomach. He’d already been on the recliner far too long. The room felt like it was turning ten times as fast as it should’ve been. He was imagining it.

He stood slowly, hand on the armrest. He let go, took a step and another, quickly leaning over. The floor felt tilted. The Director went several more steps and crashed into the telescope. He rolled to his back, swallowed back bile bitterly surging upward.

Relax, you idiot. This will pass.

Foreverland needed to be shut down for awhile. He had to admit, that would be the best thing after what he saw. It was getting too risky. He’d never become paralyzed inside the needle. Not only had he lost track of Danny and the girl, he didn’t see anything after she belted the sundial. He didn’t know where they went or what they were doing. He was half-baked until the day finally ended and he returned to the chair.

But he couldn’t shut things down. That would require starting everything over. He’d lose the confidence of the Investors. He might not get it back up and running. Besides, the girl… she was out in the open.

She was getting too strong. For that reason, Foreverland needed to continue, full speed ahead.

The Director decided right there – staring at the ceiling, swallowing foul gulps of saliva – he would follow Danny into the next round and put an end to this madness once and for all. He’d set a trap for the little bitch and be done with it. He had to do something. Soon.

But who’s trapping who?

“Director?” the intercom called. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes.” He rolled to his side and spent some time on his hands and knees. He decided to sit on the floor a bit longer. “I want Jones and Smith up here.”

“They are with the boys right now.”

“Well, send for them.”

“I think we have bigger problems, Director.”

Oh, you have no idea.
“What would that be?”

“You’ll need to come down to the network floor. I think we need to consider suspending the program until we can—”

“No.”

The Director pulled himself up. He saw the cart driving away from the Haystack with someone lying in the back. He assumed the boy Zin had finally crossed over for graduation and was being transferred to the Chimney.

“What would you like to do?” the intercom spoke.

“Right now, I want Smith and Jones in my office.” He filled a glass with water and drank. “Afterwards, I want to see what Danny Boy was up to.”

“I’m not comfortable with the risk you’re suggesting.”

“Life is a risk.”

“You’re risking everything.”

The world settled around the Director. He smoothed the front of his floral-designed shirt, brushing away the fear that, seconds earlier, churned inside him. He poured Scotch over the water.

“Get Smith and Jones up here. Now.”

Danny woke in his bed.

His room was lit up. He pulled open the curtain. The sun was high enough to be noon. The Yard was active. Dozens of campers were playing soccer. Others were hanging out at the tables.

Something is wrong.

When the sleep-fog cleared, he remembered. The satellite!

It should have landed. The impact would’ve been like a bomb. There wouldn’t be much of the Mansion left and there sure as hell wouldn’t be a soccer game. Unless it was off the mark, landing a mile or two in the water. That was possible.

Maybe the Trojan horses were quarantined. Possible, sure. There was always a chance a security scan picked them up while they lay dormant. Still, they would find him. Eventually. One day.

He cursed.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, STUPID. He should’ve pulled the trigger while he was there, sent them all hurtling toward the island. That way, at least, he could battle off security snoopers and if they caught him they would trace him back to the island.

Stupid.

He needed to get dressed, get over to the Mansion and see if anything had landed. Maybe there would
be
some debris that would indicate an off-target crash. Even if the satellite was fifty miles off, the military would cruise by the island. There was still going to be an investigation.

He threw on some clothes and noticed someone sitting at the card table. The camp wasn’t down there throwing cards like usual. It was just one person. One he didn’t expect.

Zin was lying on the table, hands folded over his stomach. Taking in the sun.

“Zin?” Danny approached, warily. “Is that you?”

Stupid question. But after seeing Parker not recognizing them, he worried that Zin would be absent. But then he turned his head and smiled. His eyes were bright and focused.

“Danny Boy,” he said.

Danny wanted to hug him. They slapped hands, instead. Zin sat up, stretched. “Man, the sun never felt so good.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I woke up in the Haystack before you did. You should’ve seen the look on my Investor’s face! He looked like he dropped a ten pound load in his trousers when I stood up and hugged him while I was still full on naked. The old man was speechless. I wanted to wait until you woke up but the old men were running everyone out of the Haystack.”

“I don’t get it. What happened?”

Zin rubbed his face, looked out to the Yard, thinking. “I don’t really remember anything about the last… week, I guess. I mean, I don’t even remember going inside the needle. It just felt like I was… floating, I suppose. Like, I was out in the Nowhere just floating around and coming apart.”

He stalled.

“It’s weird, I don’t know how to describe it. I just felt like I was being pulled in a hundred directions, like I was being stretched. It didn’t hurt, really. It was all rather numb. And I just didn’t care.”

Zin looked good. He was more present. Healthy, somehow.

“The weird thing? I remember everything, Danny Boy. You know how we remember more when we go inside the needle? I’m Eric Zinder. My parents died when I was little and I ended up in foster care. I ran away and lived on the streets. I was homeless, dude. I was some street rat jacking cars and… and… no good, man.”

He looked sick.

“I was no good.”

Zin recalled robbing some tourists on their way to the theater, some old man and a woman way too young. He remembered getting hauled into a van and a sack over his head. Something over his mouth and vapors in his head.

And then he woke up in the Chimney.

But the weird thing was, Danny was remembering, too. He didn’t know his whole life, not like Zin was reciting. But he remembered the stuff he knew inside Foreverland. He forgot things when
he
came out before, but now he was remembering it.

“She did it,” Zin said.

“Who?” Danny said. “Your girlfriend?”

“A girl with this…” He chopped at his ears. “She had
long
red hair, these big eyes. She sent me back.”

“Lucinda?”

Zin shook his head. “She didn’t say her name, she just came out of the fog and then she was standing in front of me.”

He put his hand on Danny’s shoulder and bowed his head.

“‘You don’t belong here’ she said to me, Danny Boy. And then I felt all pulled back together. The fog lifted and I woke up in the cell.”

She sent him back. Zin was fading from his body, he was heading for Foreverland and she had the power to send him back. Of course, she did. And maybe that’s what she did to Danny, gave him the ability to remember in the flesh. She did the opposite to—
“Sid!” Danny said. “What happened to him?”

“You didn’t hear?” Zin threw his arm over Danny’s shoulders. “Our man Sid set the record for smoking out, brother. He went into that round all normal and came out empty. The Investors were more baffled by Sid then they were watching me walk out of there. I think the rest of our camp thinks I’m possessed, they think maybe I did something. They’re not talking to me.”

They had to know it wasn’t Zin. They saw Lucinda come out of the ground and hammer the sundial, stick her arm in Sid’s chest. Right? Or did they not see any of that? Maybe they didn’t even see her.

The sky was nothing but blue. No clouds or streaks or smoke.

Untouched.

There was no point going to the Mansion. Nothing was coming. The good guys would never arrive. They were truly alone, now. The Director would figure out what he did in the last round, there was no way they were letting him inside the needle again. Maybe they already knew.

“What’s going on, Danny Boy?” Zin calmly said. “You expecting someone to parachute into the Yard?”

Danny shook his head.

“None of this was supposed to happen,” Zin said. “I shouldn’t be here and Sid shouldn’t be wherever he is. Did you do something?”

“No. Not really.”

“Well, what did you do?”

Danny sat down, rested his elbows on the tabletop. All the dorm windows were open except Reed’s. The curtains were drawn. He was probably curled up in the dark recovering from God-knows-what they did to him. And now Danny had to tell him that he had another round to go.

“I blew it, man.”

“Ah, yes. You’ve got the world by the balls here on the island. You can do whatever you want, as long as you go to the Haystack and let them drill your head. Yeah, how could you blow that?”

“You really want to know?”

“I’m all about knowing.” He held out his hands and smiled, typical Zin fashion.

Danny sat nodding and thinking. He got up, walked around. The sundial was fifty feet away. It was the center of Foreverland. Maybe it meant nothing in the real world, but he didn’t like being that close to it, not when he was about to tell Zin everything.

“Let’s go see Reed,” he said.

The Director draped his floral shirt over the back of a chair and button
ed
up a beige long sleeved one. He had not been for a walk on his island for quite some time. Lately, it had been all work, work, work.

When he first arrived on the island some thirty years earlier, he hiked every day. He could also see his abs. Now he couldn’t see what color flip-flops he was wearing. It was the price of intelligence, he often told himself. That, and becoming a lazy slob
.

It was an abandoned resort when he first arrived. Most of the buildings were in severe disrepair. The jungle was taking them back. It wasn’t worth much. So he bought it.

He didn’t know why he was so hasty. At the time, he just wanted to escape the world. He’d seen his share of heartbreak (his fiancé was having an affair) and disappointment (his business partner died of a stroke at the age of 41) and wanted to heed the advice of a famous philosopher, one Henry David Thoreau.

Simplify.

He planned on living out his life on that island. But nothing stays the same. That was the only guarantee life gave you: things change.

Yes, they do.

He needed to get out. He was nearing the most critical point of the program, of his life, and he needed to be thinking with a clear head. He had just returned from the fourth floor and had seen what Danny had done.

He spent some time contemplating it, but his penthouse was suddenly suffocating. Now he was lacing up snake boots to get outside for awhile. He shirked the flip-flops and shorts. He wasn’t opposed to risk, just not when there
wasn’t
a payoff. And what he’d seen on the fourth floor was a risk, indeed.

But
the
payoff was worth it.

The boy became data.

The fourth floor analyst, Mr. Jackson, advised him to remove Danny from the program. When boys went inside the needle, they needed a digital body. Once that was gone, the identity would scatter into the Nowhere, bodiless. Lost. Nothing.