Gone

building.” Or, “See, he said it would be okay.”
    The knot in his stomach was growing more painful. It would be a relief to walk out into the night. He wanted to get away from all those frightened faces looking to him, expecting something from him.
    They walked close to Orc’s intersection encampment. The lame fire was sputtering, melting the tarmac beneath the embers. A six-pack of Coors beer rested in an ice-filled cooler. One of Orc’s friends, a big baby-faced lump called Cookie, was looking green and woozy.
    “Hey. Where do you guys think you’re going?” Howard demanded as they approached.
    “For a walk,” Sam said.
    “Two dumb surfers and a genius?”
    “That’s right. We’re going to teach Astrid how to surf. You have a problem with that?”
    Howard laughed and looked Sam up and down. “You think you’re the man, don’t you, Sam? School Bus Sam. Big deal. You don’t impress me.”
    “That’s a shame, because I live my entire life in hopes of impressing you, Howard,” Sam said.
    Howard’s face grew shrewd. “You need to bring us back something.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I don’t want Orc’s feelings to be hurt,” Howard said. “I think whatever you’re going to get, you should bring him back some.”
    Orc was sprawled in a looted chair, legs spread, paying only slight attention. His never-very-focused eyes were wandering. But he grunted, “Yeah.” The moment he spoke, several of his crew discovered an interest in Sam’s group. One, a tall, skinny kid nicknamed Panda because of his dark-ringed eyes, tapped his metal bat on the blacktop, menacing.
    “So you’re a big hero or something, huh?” Panda said.
    “You’re wearing that line out,” Sam said.
    “No, no, not Sammy, he doesn’t think he’s better than the rest of us,” Howard sneered. He did a rough parody of Sam at the fire. “You get a hose, you get the kids, do this, do that, I’m in charge here, I’m…Sam Sam the Surfer Man.”
    “We’re going to go now,” Sam said.
    “Ah ah ah,” Howard said, and pointed upward with a flourish to the stoplight. “Wait till it turns green.”
    For a tense few seconds Sam considered whether he should have this fight now, or avoid it. Then the light changed and Howard laughed and waved them past.

SIX
    290 HOURS , 07 MINUTES
    NO ONE SPOKE for several blocks.
    The streets grew emptier and darker as they joined the beach road.
    “The surf sounds strange,” Quinn observed.
    “Flat,” Sam agreed. He felt like eyes were following him, even though he was out of sight of the plaza.
    “Fo-flat, brah,” Quinn said. “Glassy. But there’s a low-pressure front just out there. Supposed to be a long period swell. Instead it sounds like a lake.”
    “Weatherman isn’t always right,” Sam said. He listened carefully. Quinn was better at reading the conditions. Something sounded like it might be strange in the rhythm, but Sam wasn’t sure.
    Lights twinkled here and there, from houses off to the left, from streetlights, but it was far darker than normal. It was still early evening, barely dinnertime. Houses should have been lit up. Instead, the only lights were those on timers or those left on throughout the day. In one house, blue TV lightflickered. When Sam peeked in the window he saw two kids eating chips and staring at the static.
    All the little background noises, all the little sounds you barely registered—phones ringing, car engines, voices—were gone. They could hear each footstep they made. Each breath they took. When a dog erupted in frenzied barking, they all jumped.
    “Who’s going to feed that dog?” Quinn wondered.
    No one had an answer for that. There would be dogs and cats all over town. And there were almost certainly babies in empty homes right now, too. It was all too much. Too much to think about.
    Sam peered toward the hills, squinted to shut out the lights of town. Sometimes, if they had the stadium lights of the athletic field turned on, you could see a distant twinkle of light from Coates Academy. But not tonight. Just darkness from that direction.
    A part of Sam denied that his mother was gone. A part of him wanted to believe she was up there, at work, like any other night.
    “The stars are still there,” Astrid said. Then she said, “Wait. No. The stars are up, but not the ones just above the horizon. I think Venus should be almost setting. It’s not there.”
    The three of them stopped and stared out over the ocean.