The Annihilation of Foreverland

scrubby palms. The boys crawled out in time to see the cart come to a stop at the bottom step.
    Perfect landing.

    “What are we doing?” Zin asked.
    They were crou ched just inside the tree line, watching the front doors. “We’re going to see what the old men got inside there.”
    “No, I mean why are we hiding? It’s not against the rules to be here.”
    “We hijacked a cart. There’s a really pissed-off Investor back at the dorm.”
    They waited another five minutes.
    When nothing happened, they stepped into the opening. The Mansion was more intimidating in the real than it was flying overhead when it was Foreverland. It was only one story tall. The walls were white and smooth with a wide soffit that would keep anyone from climbing on top. The trees were kept twenty feet away, preventing anyone from climbing up one and leaping to the roof. The infrequent windows were a hundred feet apart, interspersed with single garage doors for the golf carts.
    But it was long.
    In both directions, the building was a solid barrier that extended all the way to each coast, cutting off the southern tip from the rest of the island. That much he had seen in Foreverland, and it was dead-on.
    “You believe this?” Danny said. “It looks like a prison wall to keep us out.”
    “Or keep them in. You got any ideas besides bum-rushing the front door?”
    They stared at the doors. There was nothing but the sounds of the jungle all around.
    “If we time it right—”
    “I’m kidding. That idea sucks,” Zin said. “They’ll jolt our trackers before we’re two steps inside.”
    “How do you know?”
    “You want to try it?” Zin stepped to the side and gestured.
    Danny hadn’t given it much thought. He wasn’t serious about getting inside, but now that they were on the doorstep, it didn’t sound so bad. Danny looked in both directions. He started to his left.
    “Where you going?” Zin asked.
    “Looking for a mouse hole. What else?”

    “You scared of getting smoked?” Danny asked.
    They’d been walking for twenty minutes. Zin faded in and out, not like he was deep in thought but more like he was just absent, staring at the ground while his body was on autopilot. Then he’d come back and they’d be talking again. Danny wasn’t all that sure Zin even knew it was happening.
    He didn’t snap his fingers or clap. That was something Sid would do. Danny just gave him space because Zin always came back and then they’d pick up where they left off. Most of the time, they just walked. The Mansion was nothing but a long wall with an occasional window and not one of them accidentally left open.
    Danny was about to ask the question again when Zin answered.
    “No,” he said. “I’m not. I just want it to be over.”
    Danny gave that answer a good twenty steps. “You giving up hope?”
    “Since when was there hope? Like it or not, Danny Boy, we all get sucked into the needle. You want to swim against the current, you’re just going to get tired. Just sit back and enjoy the ride, that’s all you can do, son. And hope you come out the other side.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “The Chimney, where else?”
    They reached the end of the building. It dropped off a shear cliff about thirty feet. The Mansion was built flush against it. And just in case someone figured out a way to get down, tangles of barbed wire extended down to the water.
    “Figured as much,” Zin said.
    “Man, they don’t want us in there. Think there’s any reason to go to the other side?”
    “Not unless you want to see a mirror image of this.”
    The breeze was nice. They stayed there until the sweat evaporated from their cheeks. Five minutes back down the trail, they were wiping sweat off their brows. Zin seemed present, although he wasn’t talking.
    “What’d you think they’re doing in there?” Danny asked.
    “Healing, I guess.”
    “How, though?”
    “Who knows?”
    “That’s what I mean,” Danny said. “They tell us their healing, but we don’t see anyone after they’ve graduated.”
    “Maybe we’re all infected with something, it’s a quarantine.”
    “You believe that?”
    “Hell, I don’t know, Danny Boy. You think salmon wonder why they’re swimming up stream?”
    “They should. Bears eat them.”
    Zin shrugged. A few seconds later, he glazed over. He’d been on the island much longer than Danny and asked all the same questio ns, made all the same arguments when he first woke up in the Chimney. But you bang your