It was midafternoon when Hollis announced that it was time to leave the road and turn north. Peter had begun to doubt that they would ever make it to the bunker. The heat was simply overwhelming. A blazing wind was blowing from the east, pushing dust into their faces and eyes. Since the line of cars, no one had said much of anything. Michael seemed the worst off; he’d begun, discernibly, to limp. When Peter questioned him, Michael removed his boot without comment to show him a fat, blood-filled blister on his heel.

They paused to rest in the sparse shadow of a yucca grove. “How much farther?” Michael asked. He’d taken off his boot for Sara to attend to his blister; he winced as she pierced it with a small scalpel from the med kit she had found at the station. From the incision came forth a single bead of blood.

“From here, about fifteen kilometers,” Hollis said. He was standing away from them, at the edge of the shade. “See that line of mountains? That’s what we’re looking for.”

Caleb and Mausami had fallen asleep, their heads propped on their packs. Sara wrapped Michael’s foot in a bandage; he wedged it back into his boot, grimacing with pain. Only Amy seemed little worse for the wear. She was sitting apart from the others, her skinny legs folded under her, watching them warily from behind her dark glasses.

Peter went to where Hollis was standing. “Will we make it?” he asked quietly.

“It’ll be close.”

“Let’s give everyone half a hand.”

“I wouldn’t go longer.”

Peter’s first canteen was empty. He allowed himself a sip from his second, vowing to hold the rest in reserve. He lay down with the others in the shade. It was as if he’d only just closed his eyes when he heard his name and opened them again to find Alicia standing over him.

“You said half a hand.”

He rose on his elbows. “Right. Time to go.”

Another hand had passed before they saw the sign, rising out of the wavering heat. First a long line of fencing, tall chain-link with coils of barbed wire at the top, and then, a hundred meters inside the open gate, the small sentry house and the sign standing beside it.

YOU ARE ENTERING THE TWENTYNINE PALMS

MARINE CORPS AIR GROUND COMBAT CENTER.

DANGER. UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE.

DO NOT LEAVE THE ROAD.

“Unexploded ordnance.” Michael’s face was compacted in a fierce squint. “What does that mean?”

“It means watch your step, Circuit.” Alicia directed her voice to everyone. “It could be bombs, or maybe mines. Single file, try to step in the footprints of the person in front of you.”

“What’s that?” Mausami was pointing with one hand, the other held over her brow against the glare. “Are they buildings?”

They were buses: thirty-two of them parked in two closely spaced lines, their yellow paint almost entirely rubbed away. Peter stepped toward the closest bus, at the rear of the line. The breeze had died; the only sound came from their footsteps on the hardpan. Below windows covered in heavy-gauge wire were the words DESERT CENTER UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT. He clambered up the dune of sand that was pushed against it and peered inside. More sand had blown through, subsuming the benches in wavelike drifts. Birds had roosted in the ceiling, staining the walls with the white paint of their droppings.

“Hey! Look at this!” Caleb called.

They followed his voice around to the far side. Tipped onto its side was the shell of some kind of small aircraft.

“It’s a helicopter,” said Michael.

Caleb was standing on top of the fuselage. Before Peter could speak, Caleb had pulled the door open, like a hatch, and dropped down inside it.

“Hightop,” Alicia called, “be careful!”

“It’s okay! It’s empty!” They heard him rummaging around the interior; a moment later, his head popped through the hatch. “Nothing here, just a couple of slims.” He chinned himself up. He slid down the fuselage and showed them what he’d found. “They were wearing these.”

A pair of necklaces, tarnished from exposure. To each was attached a silver disk. Peter used some of his water to rinse the tags clean.

Sullivan, Joseph D. O+ 098879254 USMC Rom. Cath. Gomez, Manuel R. AB- 859720152 USMC No pref.

“USMC-that’s Marine Corps,” Hollis said. “You should put these back where you found them, Caleb.”

Caleb snatched the necklaces from Peter’s hand, clutching them protectively against his chest. “No way. I’m keeping these. I found them, fair and square.”

“Hightop, they were soldiers.”

Caleb’s voice was suddenly shrill. “So what? They never came back, did they? The soldiers were supposed to come back for us, and they never did.”

For a moment, no one spoke. “That’s what this place is, isn’t it?” Sara said. “Auntie used to tell stories about it. How the First Ones came from the cities, to ride the buses up the mountain.”

Peter had heard these stories, too. He’d always thought of them as just that, stories. But Sara was right; that’s what this place was. More than the buses themselves, or the fallen helicopter with its dead soldiers inside, the stillness told him so. It was more than the simple absence of sound; it was the silence of something stopped.

A feeling jarred him then, a prickling alertness. Something was wrong.

“Where’s Amy?”

They fanned out through the lines of buses, calling her name. By the time Michael found her, Peter was completely frantic. He had never considered that she might wander off like this.

Michael was standing beside one of the sunken buses, peering through an open window.

“What’s she doing?” Sara said.

“I think she’s just sitting there,” said Michael.

Peter clambered up and pulled himself inside. The wind had pushed the sand to the rear of the vehicle; the first few lines of benches were exposed. Amy was sitting on the bench directly behind the driver’s seat, holding her pack on her lap. She had removed her glasses and hat.

“Amy, it’ll be dark soon. We have to go.”

But the girl made no move to leave. She appeared to be waiting for something. She glanced around, her eyes pulled into a squint, as if noticing for the first time that the bus was empty, a ruin. Then she rose, drawing her pack onto her shoulders, and climbed out through the window.

The bunker was just where Hollis had promised.

He led them to a spot where the third mountain stood between the other two, turned east again, and in half a click he stopped. “This is it,” he announced.

They were facing a wall of rock. Behind them, the setting sun cut a final sliver of light across the horizon.

“I don’t see anything,” Alicia said.

“You’re not supposed to.”

Hollis slung his rifle and began to scramble up the wall. Peter watched him with a hand over his eyes against the reflected glare. Ten meters up he disappeared.

“Where did he go?” Michael said.

The face of the mountain began to move. A pair of doors, Peter realized, made to blend with the surface as camouflage: they backed into the face of the hillside, revealing a dark cavern and the figure of Hollis standing before them.

It took Peter a moment to absorb the full dimensions of what he was seeing: a vast vault, carved from the mountain itself. Rows of shelving extended into its dark recesses, stacked with pallets of crates that reached high above their heads. A forklift was parked near the entrance, where Hollis had opened a metal panel in the wall. As the group moved inside, he flipped a switch and the room suddenly thrummed with light, issuing from a network of glowing ropes on the walls and ceiling. Peter heard the airy hum of mechanical ventilation coming on.

“Hollis, these are fiber optics,” Michael said, his voice lit with amazement. “What’s the power source?”

Hollis flipped a second switch. A yellow warning beacon sprang to life, swiveling with a mad urgency over the doors. With a clunk of gears engaging, the doors began to slide from their pockets, dragging blades of shadow across the floor.