Gone

surface, Sam let his emotions play out on his face. Right now he was sad and weary and concerned.
    “I wonder if L. P. could sit with Edilio in the other room.”
    “That sounds ominous,” Astrid said. The expression on Sam’s face did not contradict her.
    She managed to get Little Pete to move, though not without a struggle. Edilio stayed with him.
    Sam had a DVD in his hand. He said, “Yesterday I sent Edilio to the power plant to get two things. First, a cache of automatic weapons from the guardhouse.”
    “Machine guns?”
    “Yeah. Not just for us to have, but to make sure the other side doesn’t get them.”
    “Now we have an arms race,” Astrid said.
    Her tone seemed to irritate Sam. “You want me to leave them for Caine?”
    “I wasn’t criticizing, just…you know. Ninth graders with machine guns: it’s hard to make that a happy story.”
    Sam relented. He even grinned. “Yeah. The phrase ‘ninth graders with machine guns’ isn’t exactly followed by ‘have a nice day.’”
    “No wonder you looked so grim.” As soon as she said it, she knew she was wrong. He had something else to tell her. Something worse. The DVD.
    “I’ve been wondering, like you, why the FAYZ seems to be centered on the power plant. Ten miles in every direction. Why? So Edilio went through some of the security video at the plant.”
    Astrid stood up so suddenly, she surprised herself. “I really shouldn’t leave Petey alone.”
    “You know what this DVD will show, don’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “You guessed it that first night. I remember, we were looking at the video map. You put your arm around Little Pete and you gave me a very weird look. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of that look.”
    “I didn’t know you then,” Astrid said. “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
    Sam slid the DVD into the player and switched on the TV. “The sound quality is pretty bad.”
    Astrid saw the control room of the power plant from a high vantage point with a wide angle.
    The camera showed the control room. Five adults, threemen and two women. One of them was Astrid’s father. The image brought a lump to her throat. There he was, her father, rocking in his chair, joking with the woman at the next station, leaning forward to fill out some paperwork.
    And sitting in a chair against the far wall, his face lit by the glow of his omnipresent Game Boy, was Little Pete.
    The only sound was muddy, unintelligible conversation.
    “Here it comes,” Sam said.
    Suddenly a Klaxon sounded, harsh and distorted on the audio.
    Everyone in the control room jumped. People rushed to the monitors, to the instrument readouts. Astrid’s father shot a worried glance at his son, but then leaned into his monitor, staring.
    Other people swept into the room and moved with practiced efficiency to the untended monitors.
    Panicky instructions were shouted back and forth.
    A second alarm went off, more shrill than the first.
    A strobe warning light was flashing.
    Fear on every face.
    And Little Pete was rocking frantically, his hands pressed over his ears. He had a look of pain on his innocent face.
    The ten adults now in the room were a terrifying pantomime of controlled desperation. Keyboards were punched, switches thrown. Her father grabbed a thick manual and began snapping through the pages, and all the while people shouted and the alarms blared and Little Pete was screaming, screaming, hands over his ears.
    “I don’t want to see this,” Astrid said, but she couldn’t look away.
    Little Pete jumped to his feet.
    He ran to his father, but his father, frantic, pushed him away. Little Pete went sprawling against a chair. He ended up flung against the long table, staring at a monitor that flashed, flashed, flashed a warning in bright red.
    The number fourteen.
    “Code one-four,” Astrid said dully. “I heard my dad say that one time. It’s the code for a core meltdown. He would make a joke out of it. Code one-one, that was minor trouble, code one-two, you worry, code one-three, you call the governor, code one-four, you pray. The next stage, code one-five, is…obliteration.”
    On the tape, Little Pete pulled his hands from his ears.
    The Klaxon was relentless.
    There was a flash that blanked out the tape. Several seconds of static.
    When the picture stabilized, the warning alarm was silent.
    And Little Pete was alone.
    “Astrid, you’ll notice that the time signature on the tape says November tenth, ten eighteen