Gone

everything fell into place. Caine. “C.” What were the odds that “C” was some other kid from Coates?
    Sooner or later, C or one of the others will do something serious. Someone will get hurt. Just like S with T.
    “Okay,” Sam said. “If that’s what people want.”
    A few other names were mentioned, and Sam halfheartedly, but loyally, named Quinn.
    Caine’s eyes flickered from Sam to Quinn, and for just a millisecond there flashed a cynical, knowing look. But it was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by Caine’s practiced expression of humility and resolve.
    “Then let’s go in together,” Caine said. He turned and marched purposefully up the church steps. The rest of the chosen fell in behind him.
    One of the Coates kids, a dark-eyed, very beautiful girl, waylaid Sam and held out her hand. Sam took it.
    “I’m Diana,” she said, not letting his hand go. “Diana Ladris.”
    “Sam Temple.”
    Her midnight eyes met his and he wanted to look away, feeling awkward, but somehow could not.
    “Ah,” she said, as if someone had told her something fascinating. Then she let him go and smirked. “Well, well. I guess we’d better go in. We don’t want to leave Fearless Leader without followers.”
    It was a Catholic church, built a hundred years earlier by the rich man who had owned the cannery that now lay rusting and abandoned, a tin-plated eyesore by the marina.
    With soaring arches, half a dozen statues of saints, and wonderful well-worn wooden pews, the church was much grander than the small town of Perdido Beach probably deserved. Of the six tall, peaked windows, three retained their original stained-glass representations of Jesus in various parables. The other three had been lost over time to vandals or weather or earthquakes and had been replaced with cheaper, abstract-patterned stained glass.
    When Astrid entered the church she dipped to one knee and made the sign of the cross while looking up at the intimidatingly large crucifix above the altar.
    “Is this where you go to church?” Sam asked in a whisper.
    “Yes. You?”
    He shook his head. It was Sam’s first time inside. His mother was a nonobservant Jew, no one spoke about what his father was, and Sam himself had only a vague interest in religion. The church made him feel small and definitely out of place.
    Caine had moved confidently toward the altar. The altar itself was not very grand, just a pale marble rectangle up three maroon-carpeted steps. Caine did not go to the old-fashioned raised pulpit, but stood on the second of the three steps.
    In all, fifteen kids were there, including Sam Temple, Quinn, Astrid and Little Pete, Albert Hillsborough, and Mary Terrafino; Elwood Booker, the best ninth-grade athlete, and his girlfriend, Dahra Baidoo; Orc, whose real name was rumored to be Charles Merriman; Howard Bassem; and Cookie, whose real name was Tony Gilder.
    From Coates Academy, in addition to Caine Soren, there was Drake Merwin, a smiling, playful, mean-eyed kid with shaggy, sandy-colored hair; Diana Ladris; and a lost-looking fifth grader with big glasses and a blond bed-head introduced by Caine as Computer Jack.
    All of the Perdido Beach kids sat in pews, with Orc and his crew sprawling across the front pew. Computer Jack sat down as far to one side as he could. Drake Merwin stood smirking, arms across his chest, on Caine’s left, and Diana Ladris watched the crowd from Caine’s right.
    It was again brought home to Sam that the Coates kids had rehearsed everything about this morning, from the staged motorcade—which must have taken hours of driving practice to master—to this presentation. They must have started planning and practicing right after the FAYZ came.
    That was a troubling thought.
    After all the introductions were done, Caine moved briskly to explain his plan.
    “We need to work together,” he announced. “I think we should organize so that things aren’t destroyed, and problems can be handled. I think our goal should be to maintain. So that once the barrier comes down, and once the disappeared people come back, they will find that we’ve done a pretty darn good job of keeping things together.”
    “The Captain is already maintaining,” Howard said.
    “He’s obviously done an excellent job,” Caine allowed, walking down the steps and toward Orc as he spoke. “But it’s a burden. Why should Captain Orc have to do all the work? I think we need a system, and I think we need a plan. Captain Orc,” he