Plague

said.
    “No, he’s not nuts, the Sam boy,” Toto said and he shook his head back and forth. Then, slyly, he added, “Anyway, he doesn’t think he is.”
    “We’re looking for a big lake. Lake Tramonto. You know how to get there?”
    “We don’t know how to get anywhere,” Toto said. Suddenly he looked as if he might cry. “Where’s Spidey?”
    “How long have you been here?” Sam asked impatiently.
    It was Jack who answered. “A little more than a year. The start date for subject 1-01 was several months before the FAYZ.”
    Sam thought it over for a few seconds. Wondering what to do. He couldn’t just dump the kid and walk away. Could he? Especially after he’d impatiently burned Spidey.
    On the other hand, the very last thing he needed was another person to keep track of. And it didn’t look like this kid was going anywhere. Sam could always pick him up later. And in any case, if they found the lake then the whole town would probably be moving, and they’d pass this way again.
    “Listen, Toto, I’m going to pretend you’re not completely crazy. I’m going to leave it up to you. So you either come with us and start acting at least a little bit normal, or you stay here. Your choice.”
    Toto kept glancing back at the brown and black magma that had been the Styrofoam head. But in between he looked at Sam and Dekka and even Jack.
    “What do you have to eat?” Toto asked.
    “Dried fish. Cabbage. Artichokes.”
    To Sam’s amazement Toto literally licked his lips. “You have some other things, too, but you don’t want to share. That’s okay. I’ve only had Nutella. Ever since.”
    “You must have a whole lot of Nutella,” Dekka said, unable to conceal her greedy hope.
    “Yes.”
    “Show us,” Sam said. “Show us what you’ve got. Then we’ll go find this lake.”
    Sam led the way outside. Jack and Dekka fell in beside him. “They knew, didn’t they?” he asked Jack.
    Jack still had a fistful of papers scooped up from one of the desks.
    “Yes,” Jack said, still fascinated, reading through printed sheets of data as he walked. “I don’t think they knew what, or knew what was causing it. But they knew.”
    “What did they know?” Dekka asked.
    “Whoever was running this place,” Sam said angrily. “They knew something was going on with kids in Perdido Beach.”
    Jack caught up to him, grabbed his shoulder, and handed him a piece of paper. “A list of names.”
    Sam’s eyes went directly to his own name, third on a list of five names. “Toto, Darla, me, Caine, and Taylor.” He shoved the paper angrily back at Jack. “Not all of the freaks, but some of us, anyway.”
    He didn’t know what to say or think. It made him angry, but he didn’t even know why it should. Of course they would want to learn about kids who suddenly developed supernatural powers.
    And of course they would want to keep it secret.
    But still it made him angry and uneasy. “This means they know. People on the outside, they’ve been able to guess some of what happened.”
    “The real data are on those computers,” Jack said. “This printout is just a small file. If the power was back on . . .”
    Sam glared at the barrier near at hand. And wondered, not for the first time, what kind of welcome they would get if that barrier ever came down.

Chapter Eighteen
32 HOURS, 36 MINUTES

    TOTO LED THEM from the facility to the train.
    It was farther than Sam had thought. It had been a trick of perspective in the desert emptiness that had made the train seem to be right beside the building. In fact, they were a ten-minute walk away.
    There were two yellow and black Union Pacific diesel engines. Both still stood upright on the track.
    Behind the engines was a rust-colored boxcar, also still on the track.
    Behind these came a jumbled mess. There were seven derailed flatbed railcars. Each had spilled two containers— massive steel rectangles—onto the dirt and stunted bushes.
    At the far end, the barrier had sliced a boxcar in half. The barrier had snapped into place, bisecting the burnt-orange boxcar, and the sudden shift must have derailed the other cars.
    But Sam, Dekka, and Jack were not very interested in such speculation. Dozens of plastic-wrapped pallets had been flung across the tracks and the ground, spilled from the sliced-open boxcar.
    Each of the pallets was piled high with flats of Nutella.
    “That’s, like, hundreds and hundreds of jars,” Sam said.
    “Thousands,” Jack said. “Thousands.