Gone

streetlights turned on automatically, doing little to push back the darkness, doing a lot to cast deep shadows on frightened faces.
    Close to a hundred kids milled around the plaza. Everyone seemed to have a candy bar and a soda. The little store, the one that sold mostly beer and corn chips, had been looted. Sam had snagged a PayDay and a Dr Pepper. The Reese’s and Twix and Snickers were all gone by the time he got there. He’d left two dollars on the counter as payment. The money was gone within seconds.
    The apartment building had burned half away before the fire had run out of energy. The roof had collapsed. Half the upper floor was gone. The ground floor looked like it would survive, though the shop windows were smoke-blackened on the inside. Smoke rose now in tendrils, not billows, and the stench was everywhere.
    But the hardware store and the day care had been saved.
    The body of the little girl still lay on the sidewalk. Someone had put a blanket over her. Sam was grateful for that.
    Sam and Quinn sat on the grass, toward the center of the plaza, near the dead fountain. Quinn rocked back and forth, hugging his knees.
    Bouncing Bette came over and stood awkwardly in front of Sam. She had her little brother with her. “Sam, do you think it’s safe to go to my house? We have to get something.”
    Sam shrugged. “Bette, I don’t know any more than you do.”
    Bette nodded, hesitated, and walked away.
    All the park benches were taken. Some little family units draped sheets over the few benches, making limp pup tents. Many kids went home to their empty houses, but others needed people around them. Some found comfort in the crowd. Some just needed to see what was going on.
    Two kids Sam didn’t know, probably fifth graders, came up and said, “Do you know what’s going to happen?”
    Sam shook his head. “No, guys, I don’t.”
    “Well, what should we do?”
    “I guess just hang out for a while, you know?”
    “Hang out here, you mean?”
    “Or else go to your house. Sleep in your own bed. Whatever feels right.”
    “We’re not scared or anything.”
    “You’re not?” Sam asked dubiously. “I’m so scared, I wet myself.”
    One kid grinned. “No, you didn’t.”
    “Nah. You’re right. But it’s okay to be scared, man. Every single person here is scared.”
    It was happening a lot. Kids coming to Sam, asking him questions for which he had no answers.
    He wished they would stop.
    Orc and his friends dragged lawn chairs out of the hardware store and set themselves up right in the middle of what had once been Perdido Beach’s busiest intersection. They were just beneath the stoplight, which continued changing from green to yellow to red.
    Howard was berating some lower-ranking toady who had lit a Prest-O log and was trying to get it to grow into a bonfire. Orc’s crew brought a couple of wood axe handles and wooden baseball bats out of the hardware store and tried unsuccessfully to burn them.
    They also carried metal bats and small sledgehammers from the hardware store. Those they kept.
    Sam didn’t bring up the little girl, the way she was just lying there. If he brought it up, then it would become his job to do something. To dig a grave and bury her. To read the Bible or say words. He didn’t even know her name. No one seemed to.
    “I can’t find him.” It was Astrid, reappearing after an absence of at least an hour. She had gone to hunt for her little brother. “Petey’s not here. Nobody has seen him.”
    Sam handed her a soda. “Here. I paid for it. Tried to, anyway.”
    “I don’t usually drink this stuff.”
    “You see any ‘usually’ around here?” Quinn snapped.
    Quinn didn’t look at her. His eyes were restless, going from person to person, thing to thing, like a nervous bird, never making direct eye contact. He looked strangely naked without his shades and fedora.
    Sam was worried about him. Of the two of them, it was Sam who was usually too serious.
    Astrid let Quinn’s rudeness slide and said, “Thanks, Sam.” She drank half the can but didn’t sit down. “Kids are saying it’s some military thing gone wrong. Or else terrorists. Or aliens. Or God. Lots of theories. No answers.”
    “Do you even believe in God?” Quinn demanded. He was looking for an argument.
    “Yes, I do,” Astrid said. “I just don’t believe in the kind of God who disappears people for no reason. God is supposed to be love. This doesn’t look like love.”
    “It looks like the