Gone

still and yet ready to jump into action.
    “This is stupid when you think about it. People on the other side of the barrier, they know what’s happened,” Quinnsaid. “I mean, it’s not like they haven’t noticed that we’re behind this wall all of a sudden.”
    “So?” Sam asked.
    “So they have better equipment and stuff than we do, right? They can dig a lot deeper, get under the barrier. Or go around it. Or fly over it. This is a waste of time here.”
    “We don’t know how far down or high up the barrier extends,” Astrid said. “It looks like it stops a couple hundred feet up, but maybe that’s an optical illusion.”
    “Over, under, around, or through,” Edilio said. “There’s got to be a way.”
    “Kind of like when your folks came over the border from Mexico, huh?” Quinn said.
    Sam and Astrid both aimed shocked looks at Quinn.
    Edilio stood even straighter and, despite being six inches shorter than Quinn, seemed to be looking down at him. In a calm, quiet voice Edilio said, “Honduras is where my folks are from. They had to come all the way through Mexico before they even reached the border. My mom works as a maid. My father is a farmhand. We live in a trailer and drive an old beater. I still have a little accent because I learned Spanish before I learned English. Anything else you need to know, man?”
    Quinn said, “I wasn’t trying to start anything, amigo.”
    “That’s good,” Edilio said.
    It wasn’t a threat, not really. And in any case, Quinn had twenty pounds on Edilio. But it was Quinn who took a step back.
    “We have to go,” Sam said. To Edilio, he explained, “We’re looking for Astrid’s little brother. He’s…he needs someone to look after him. Astrid thinks he may be up at the power plant.”
    “My father’s an engineer there,” Astrid explained. “But it’s about ten miles from here.”
    Sam hesitated before asking Edilio to join them. It would annoy Quinn. Quinn wasn’t acting like himself, which wasn’t really strange, given what was going on, but Sam found it unsettling. Edilio, on the other hand, had kept his head together at the fire. He’d stepped up.
    Astrid made the decision for him. “Edilio? Would you like to come with us?”
    Now Sam was a little peeved. Did Astrid think Sam couldn’t take care of things? She needed Edilio?
    Astrid rolled her eyes at Sam. “I thought I would cut to the chase and avoid more male posturing.”
    “I wasn’t posturing,” Sam grumbled.
    “How are you going to travel?” Edilio asked.
    “I don’t think we should try to drive a car, if that’s what you mean,” Sam said.
    “I maybe got something. Not a car, but better than walking ten miles.” Edilio led them to a garage door hidden away around the back of the pool changing room. He raised the garage door, revealing two golf carts with the logo of Clifftop Resort on the sides. “The groundskeepers and the security guys use them to get around and go over to the golf course on the other side of the highway.”
    “Have you driven one of these before?” Sam asked.
    “Yeah. My dad picks up a shift sometimes at the golf course. Groundskeeping. I go with him, help out.”
    That simplified the decision. Even Quinn had to see the logic. “Okay,” Quinn said grudgingly. “You drive.”
    Sam said, “We can try the direct road to the highway. It’s the first right.”
    “You’re avoiding downtown,” Astrid said. “You don’t want kids coming up to you, asking you what they should do.”
    “You want to get to PBNP?” Sam asked. “Or do you want to watch me stand around telling people they have nothing to fear but fear itself?”
    Astrid laughed, and it was, in Sam’s opinion, probably the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
    “You remember,” Astrid said.
    “Yeah. I remember. Roosevelt. The Great Depression. Sometimes, if I really strain my brain, I can even do multiplication.”
    “Defensive humor,” Astrid teased.
    They motored across the parking lot and onto the road. There they took a sharp cut-back right turn onto a narrow, newly paved section. The golf cart slowed going uphill to barely better than walking speed. They soon saw that the road dead-ended into the barrier. They stopped and stared solemnly at the abrupt end of the pavement.
    “It’s like a Road Runner cartoon,” Quinn said. “If you go paint a tunnel onto it, we can go through, but Wile E. Coyote will smash into it.”
    “Okay. Back down to the cliff road then, but cut