Gone

she wanted to go with him and Quinn. It felt presumptuous to ask her, and wrong not to ask.
    She looked at Sam, looked like she was hoping to find something in his face. Sam suddenly realized that Astrid theGenius didn’t know what to do, or where to go, any better than he did. That seemed impossible.
    From the hallway they heard a rising cacophony of voices. Loud, scared, some babbling, as if it would be okay as long as they didn’t stop talking. Some voices were just wild.
    It wasn’t a good sound. It was frightening all by itself, that sound.
    “Come with us, Astrid, okay?” Sam said. “We’ll be safer together.”
    Astrid flinched at the word “safer.” But she nodded.
    This school was dangerous now. Scared people did scary things sometimes, even kids. Sam knew that from personal experience. Fear could be dangerous. Fear could get people hurt. And there was nothing but fear running crazy through the school.
    Life in Perdido Beach had changed. Something big and terrible had happened.
    Sam hoped he was not the cause.

TWO
    298 HOURS , 38 MINUTES
    KIDS POURED OUT of the school, alone or in small groups. Some of the girls walked in threes, hugging each other, tears streaming down their faces. Some boys walked hunched over, cringing as if the sky might fall on them, not hugging anyone. A lot of them were crying, too.
    Sam flashed on news videos he’d seen of school shootings. It had that kind of feel to it. Kids were bewildered, scared, hysterical, or hiding hysteria beneath laughter and bold displays of rowdiness.
    Brothers and sisters were together. Friends were together. Some of the really little kids, the kindergarteners, the first graders, were wandering on the grounds, not really going anywhere. They weren’t old enough to know their way home.
    Preschoolers in Perdido Beach mostly went to Barbara’s Day Care, a downtown building decorated with faded appliqués of cartoon characters. It was next to the Ace hardware store and across the plaza from the McDonald’s.
    Sam wondered if they were okay, the littles down at Barbara’s. Probably. Not his responsibility. But he had to say something.
    “What about all these little kids?” Sam said. “They’ll wander into the street and get run over.”
    Quinn stopped and stared. Not at the little kids, but down the street. “You see any cars moving?”
    The stoplight changed from red to green. There were no cars waiting to go. The sound of car alarms was louder now, maybe three or four different alarms. Maybe more.
    “First we see about our parents,” Astrid said. “It’s not like there aren’t any adults anywhere.” She didn’t seem sure of that, so she amended it. “I mean, it’s unlikely there are no adults.”
    “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “There must be adults. Right?”
    “My mom will most likely either be home or playing tennis,” Astrid said. “Unless she has an appointment or something. My mom or dad will have my little brother. My dad’s at work. He works at PBNP.”
    PBNP was Perdido Beach Nuclear Power. The power plant was just ten miles from the school. No one in the town thought about it much anymore, but a long time ago, in the nineties, there had been an accident. A freak accident, they called it. A once-in-a-million-years coincidence. Nothing to worry about.
    People said that’s why Perdido Beach was still a small town, why it hadn’t ever gotten really big like Santa Barbara down the coast. The nickname for Perdido Beach was FalloutAlley. Not very many people wanted to move to a place called Fallout Alley, even though all the radioactive fallout had been cleaned up.
    The three of them, with Quinn a few steps ahead, walking fast on his long legs, headed down Sheridan Avenue and turned right on Alameda.
    At the corner of Sheridan Avenue and Alameda Avenue was a car with the engine running. The car had smashed into a parked SUV, a Toyota. The Toyota’s alarm came and went, screeching one minute, then falling silent.
    The air bags in the Toyota had deployed: limp, deflated white balloons drooped from the steering wheel and the dashboard.
    No one was in the SUV. Steam came from beneath the crumpled hood.
    Sam noticed something, but he didn’t want to say it out loud.
    Astrid said it: “The doors are still locked. See the knobs? If anyone had been inside and gotten out, the doors would be unlocked.”
    “Someone was driving and blinked out,” Quinn said. He wasn’t saying it like it was supposed to be funny. Funny was