The Annihilation of Foreverland (21 page)

Zin finished the sandwich and opened the pudding. “Maybe I can help.”

He was behind on the conversation.

“You want to see these?”

Zin shrugged.

Danny went into a wind-up – an exaggerated kick – and threw a fastball right at him. It was a trick throw. When he brought his arm back, he flipped the paperball behind
his
back and threw an empty hand. Zin still didn’t flinch.

Instead a fastball hitting him square in the face, it gently lobbed from behind his back and bounced off
Zin’s
chest.

Danny stared at it. Something happened. It was déjà-vu, he’d seen someone do that before. He learned it… from his father? He used to do that when he was a kid and it scared him the first time. The fake fastball, he called it. And when Danny’s cousins came over, he’d do it to them and they’d laugh when they flinched. The fake fastball always tricked them. Always hit them right in the face. They never saw it coming.

It wasn’t Danny’s memory, but it didn’t matter.

“That’s what I’m going to do,” Danny muttered. “Only I’m going to hit them right in the face with the fastball.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Danny nodded at the empty desk. “You finished?”

“If you say so.”

“Let’s go, then. First, the Yard. After that, Sid-city.”

Zin pushed himself out of the chair and took his time getting dressed in autopilot. Danny picked up the paperball.
Was it my father, really?

Didn’t matter. Danny was going to hit the island with something the
United States
military would notice.

The moon was just a sliver.

Danny didn’t sleep that night. He lay in bed, working through the details of what he’d need to do when he got inside the needle. He’d have one chance. If he blew it, he’d be headed for the Chimney, and probably not to graduate.

No pressure.

He got dressed, stopped at Zin’s room. It wasn’t locked anymore, not unless Danny locked it on the way out. Danny didn’t bother turning on the lights. He sat on the edge of the bed, felt a little like one of the Investors. Zin was on his back, mouth open, ripping wind through his throat.

“Zin.” He shook him, over and over. “Zin, wake up.”

Zin’s eyes opened but remained unfocused. Danny gently slapped his cheek. He ended up dripping water on his face. “What the…” He looked around the room and couldn’t see Danny right next to him. “What’re you doing?”

“Two things.” Danny held up two fingers. “First, I got to fight Sid when we get inside the needle so don’t get in the way.”

Zin nodded, sleepily.

“Repeat it,” Danny said.

“You got to fight, got it. What’s the other thing?”

“Let me in the Mansion when you get there.”

Zin was thinking about it. Moments later, he got it. He nodded.
All right.

Danny went to the door. Zin was still up on one elbow. It was the longest he’d stayed lucid in the last days. He watched Danny leave.

Danny stepped onto the dune. Black waves roared onto shore with white foam on top. The tide was high; the water skimming across the hardpacked sand.

He gripped the paper sack against the tug of the wind. It was too dark to see down the beach. Reed was usually on the left end. A hundred yards proved him correct. His knees were pulled up to his chest, hair fluttering.

Danny had been on the island almost two months. In that time, Reed had become a withered camp survivor. Every bone was visible from the waist up. Danny sat next to him and pulled out two bananas and passed one to him. Reed took it. He held it for several moments before peeling it.

“You got to eat, Reed.”

Reed chewed, slowly. “It only makes me feel better.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.”

“And that makes it harder.”

When the bananas were gone, Danny handed him an apple. “You know what they say about apples.”

“They don’t say that here, Danny Boy. Besides, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Reed pushed up his lip, revealed the black gap of a missing tooth. Danny hadn’t noticed it when they were at the doctor’s office. His teeth were falling out.

Danny bit a chunk and handed it to him. “Yeah, it’s gross but there are worse things. You got to eat. I can’t have you petering out before the next round ends.”

Reed eyeballed the slice. Danny swore he could see him smile before taking it. Danny took another bite and held it out. He ate the entire apple that way.

“I’m going to drop a satellite, Reed.”

Reed didn’t respond.

“I’ll hack the United States Air Force, direct one their Milstar satellites to make an emergency landing in the middle of the island. The government will be here before it lands.”

“You think you can do that?”

Danny recalled the processing speed and the ease at which he maneuvered through the global communications network the last time. It had become more an effort of will than skill.

“I can.”

Reed just nodded.

They listened to the ocean, to the rise and fall of the water.

Danny leaned back on his elbows. The sky was filled with a thousand points of light. He located the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. He put his head down and closed his eyes. And the water lulled him to sleep.

A bird woke him. The waves glittered with morning light.

Reed was gone.

The fourth round was near.

Mr. Jones was waiting at the Haystack. The gongs had already passed.

He led Danny inside with a few encouraging words. The rest of the camp was in their cells, still dressed, waiting for Danny. They were glad he arrived but not happy to see him.

Reed was already nude with his back to Danny. He could count all the vertebrae.

Mr. Jones took Danny’s clothes. Zin was the last to arrive. His Investor guided him inside with a hand on his shoulder. He was vacant, spastically swallowing. The Investor asked him three times for his clothes before he caught on. The boys grew impatient.

When the doors closed and the skylights darkened, Zin stood in the middle of his cell, shoulders slumped. Head down.

“Bye, Zin,” Danny whispered.

He wasn’t sure he heard him. But didn’t expect him to.

The Director watched the sun set.

He awoke completely refreshed. He had not slept well until recently. He never slept well in the face of uncertainty. That was over now. He knew what needed to be done. And how to do it.

“Director,” the intercom said. “We’ll be dropping the lucid gear in thirty minutes.”

“Thank you.”

He changed into a clean shirt and settled into his reclining chair. The kneading rollers adjusted to his shifting weight, allowing him to settle into a comfortable position. The Director stared at the ceiling. Deep breath.

The network technician that monitored Foreverland showed him how Danny had somehow circumvented the security like some sort of science fiction mind meld. He became one with the environment and rode it into the Ethernet, around the world and all the way to the satellites.

He wouldn’t do it again. They were ready for him.

In fact, he was hoping he would try.

He would watch closely this time. Even though he couldn’t see into the Nowhere, there were ways to watch how Foreverland was being manipulated. It was a risk to let the kid’s mind run free, but they were ready. But it was still a risk
. A risk worth taking
. The reward was far beyond his imagination.

Danny Boy was a jewel.

There was still the girl and there was Reed. They would be dealt with. For now, he needed to discover the potential Danny Boy had unveiled.

The Director reached for a tray next to the chair with two glass tubes. One contained a needle – two inches long – soaking in a solution with a thin cable extending from the end of it that went all the way to the third floor where rows of computers would help transform his mind into Foreverland. The boys – when they took the needle – would come to the Director’s mind. Foreverland wasn’t a computer program, that was too artificial. It had to be organic. But the Director needed the assistance of his computer network to keep his mind stable, so that he could create the world of Foreverland, where the boys would find their thoughts.
Where he would eat their souls.

Well, to say he ate their souls was a little dramatic. Their identities – whoever they are – were absorbed by the Director’s mind. It made him bigger, stronger. It made him
more.

And he liked that.

And his mind would continue to expand. Once the girl was gone.

The Director pulled the needle out and punctured the second glass tube that greased it with electrolytic salve. Careful not to touch it with his fingers, he lifted it to the hole in his forehead. The tip made contact with the stent just below the skin.

The Director took a deep breath. He pushed it through the stent and into his frontal lobe.

His vision quivered.

His body quaked.

He laid his arm at his side and closed his eyes.

Foreverland.

The grainy world was all that Lucinda knew.

There was no land to walk, no object… for her to lay her head. She existed in its endless vacuum. In the swirling gray of… voices.

The sound of static.

It was continuous in the Nowhere.

It was lonely.

Until a shockwave began.

It rippled outward, stimulating the grains of gray… excited atoms. The voices began to chatter, fleeing from an object that began to take shape. It was the color of sandstone, a pedestal with a triangular fin atop a circular disc. It was always the first to appear before Foreverland was reborn.

The gray scattered around it like insects. Colors bled from the base of the sundial. Lucinda hid deep in the Nowhere as… grass and trees and buildings and sky was born. She prepared to find her savior, hoping that he might bring her peace.

That he might bring them all peace.

Danny floated in the bodiless darkness. He escaped the suffering, forsaking his body for the needle. But he carried the image of Reed’s naked body shivering in the cold.

The fan would blow on him. The sprinklers would mist.

But Mr. Smith would arrive with something much worse.

Danny couldn’t fail.

Solid ground formed beneath him. He was next to the sundial. The entire camp had arrived, forming a half-circle around him.

“Welcome, dirtbag.” Sid was a monster of fleshy muscle and blue, snaky veins. “I’m dedicating this round to your misery. I’m going to invent ways of torture, invent things even the Director wouldn’t dream of doing to another human being, Danny Boy. There’s going to burning, there’s going to be cutting and ripping… just, all sorts of fun stuff.”

He popped his knuckles like snapping timber.

“I’m going to do those things to you, Danny Boy. I’m going to do them all night long.”

Foreverland was quiet. No one flying in the blue sky or miniature warriors racing across the Yard. They were all around the sundial to watch Sid perform surgery. Whether they wanted to watch or Sid told them to, they were there.

“Try to run, Danny Boy, and we’ll catch you. Call for help, we’ll shred whoever shows up.”

Does he mean Zin?

“It’s going to be the longest day of your life, my friend. You’ll beg me to stop, but you missed that chance, son. You already sold your soul to devil.” Big toothy grin. “And I bought it.”

He paced around the semi-circle, rolling his head like a mixed martial artist warming up for a big fight. He glared down at Danny. He was nearly twenty feet tall, and growing. Muscles writhed like snakes. He pulled a long breath through his nostrils. It came out like exhaust, blowing hotly in Danny’s face.

Danny looked around.

“No one’s coming, Danny Boy.” Sid’s voice dropped an octave, filled with gravel. “No one is here to save you, it’s just us, punk. Just us.”

Sid filled his chest with another deep breath. His shoulders bulged, his arms rippled. His skin turned a shade redder. Talons emerged from the tips of his fingers with razor edges.

“I’m really going to dig this,” he blurted with a slight lisp as sharpened incisors bit into his lower lip. “I only wish Reed was here to make it double-dip ass whipping.”

The others were growing, too. It would be like a pride of lions feeding on the lone antelope. Danny was not a lion. He closed his eyes, focused on a tiny point.

Stay numb. Until she comes.

Breathe, in and out.

“I love this place, Danny Boy,” Sid stated, deeply. “I’m afraid you’re really going to hate it.”

Sid took one more long breath and let out a roar. He lifted his tree trunk arms, flexed the dagger-tipped claws, and slashed downward. He would dice Danny into cubes. He would put him back together and do it again. And again.