Until that night. The night Cassie held his hand and told him Mommy was just one of billions. That almost everybody on Earth was dead. That they would never live in their house again. That he would never go to school again. That all his friends were dead.
“It isn’t right,” Megan whispers now in the dark of the bus. “It isn’t right.” She is staring at Sammy’s face. “My whole family’s gone, and your father and your sister? It isn’t right!”
Parker has gotten up again. He’s stopping at each seat, speaking softly to each child, and then he’s touching their foreheads. When he touches them, a light glows in the gloom. Sometimes the light is green. Sometimes it’s red. After the light fades away, Parker stamps the child’s hand. Red light, red stamp. Green light, green stamp.
“My little brother was around your age,” Megan says to Sammy. It sounds like an accusation: How come you’re alive and he isn’t?
“What’s his name?” Sammy asks.
“What’s that matter? Why do you want to know his name?”
He wishes Cassie were here. Cassie would know what to say to make Megan feel better. She always knew the right thing to say.
“His name was Michael, okay? Michael Joseph, and he was six years old and he never did anything to anybody. Is that okay? Are you happy now? Michael Joseph was my brother’s name. You want to know everybody else’s?”
She is looking over Sammy’s shoulder at Parker, who has stopped at their row.
“Well, hello, sleepyhead,” the medic says to Megan.
“She’s sick, Parker,” Sammy tells him. “You need to make her better.”
“We’re going to make everybody better,” Parker says with a smile.
“I’m not sick,” Megan says, then shivers violently beneath Parker’s green jacket.
“Heck no,” Parker says with a nod and a big grin. “But maybe I should check your temperature, just to make sure. Okay?”
He holds up a quarter-size silver disk. “Anything over a hundred degrees glows green.” He leans over Sammy and presses the disk against Megan’s forehead. It lights up green. “Uh-oh,” Parker says. “Lemme check you, Sam.”
The metal is warm against his forehead. Parker’s face is bathed for a second in red light. Parker rolls the stamp over the back of Megan’s hand. The green ink shines wetly in the dimness. It’s a smiley face. Then a red smiley face for Sammy.
“Wait for them to call your color, okay?” Parker says to Megan. “Greens are going straight to the hospital.”
“I’m not sick,” Megan shouts hoarsely. Her voice cracks. She doubles over, coughing, and Sammy instinctively recoils.
Parker pats him on the shoulder. “It’s just a bad cold, Sam,” he whispers. “She’s gonna be okay.”
“I’m not going to the hospital,” Megan tells Sammy after Parker returns to the front of the bus. She furiously rubs the back of her hand against the jacket, smearing the ink. The smiley face is now just a green blob.
“You have to,” Sammy says. “Don’t you want to get better?”
She shakes her head sharply. He doesn’t get it. “Hospitals aren’t where you go to get better. Hospitals are where you go to die.”
After his mother got sick, he asked Daddy, “Aren’t you going to take Mommy to the hospital?” And his father said that it wasn’t safe. Too many sick people, not enough doctors, and not anything the doctors could do for her, anyway. Cassie told him the hospital was broken, just like the TV and the lights and the cars and everything else.
“Everything’s broken?” he asked Cassie. “Everything?”
“No, not everything, Sams,” she answered. “Not this.”
She took his hand and put it against his chest, and his pounding heart pushed fiercely against his open palm.
“Unbroken,” she said.
HIS MOTHER WILL only come to him in the in-between space, the gray time between waking and sleeping. She stays away from his dreams, as if she knows not to go there, because dreams are not real but feel more than real when you’re dreaming them. She loves him too much to do that.
Sometimes he can see her face, though most of the time he can’t, just her shape, a little darker than the gray behind his lids, and he can smell her and touch her hair, feel it trail through his fingers. If he tries too hard to see her face, she fades into the dark. And if he tries to hold her too tightly, she slips away like her hair between his fingers.
The hum of the wheels on the dark road. The stale warm air and the swaying of the bus beneath the cold stars. How much farther to Camp Heaven? It seems like they’ve been on the dark road beneath the cold stars forever. He waits for his mother in the in-between space, his eyes closed, while Megan watches him with those big, round, owly eyes.
He falls asleep waiting.
He is still asleep when the three school buses pull up to the gates of Camp Haven. High above in the watchtower, the sentry pushes a button, the electronic lock releases, and the gate slides open. The buses pull in and the gate slides shut behind them.
He doesn’t wake up until the buses roll to a stop with a final, angry hiss of their brakes. Two soldiers are moving down the aisle, waking the children who have fallen asleep. The soldiers are heavily armed, but they smile and their voices are gentle. It’s okay. Time to get up. You’re perfectly safe now.
Sammy sits up, squinting in the sudden blaze of light flooding through the windows, and looks outside. They have stopped in front of a large airplane hangar. The big bay doors are closed, so he can’t see inside. For a moment he isn’t worried about being in a strange place without Daddy or Cassie or Bear. He knows what the bright light means: The aliens couldn’t kill the power here. It also means Parker told the truth: The camp does have a force field. It has to. They don’t care if the Others know about the camp.
They are perfectly safe.
Megan’s breath is heavy in his ear, and he turns to look at her. Her eyes are huge in the glare of the floodlights. She grabs his hand.
“Don’t leave me,” she begs.
A big man heaves himself onto the bus. He stands beside the driver, hands on hips. He has a wide, fleshy face and very small eyes.
“Good morning, boys and girls, and welcome to Camp Haven! My name is Major Bob. I know you’re tired and hungry and maybe a little scared…Who’s a little scared right now? Raise your hand.” No hands go up. Twenty-six pairs of eyes stare blankly at him, and Major Bob grins. His teeth are small, like his eyes. “That’s outstanding. And you know what? You shouldn’t be scared! Our camp is the safest place in the whole ding-dong world right now, I kid you not. You’re all perfectly safe.” He turns to one of the smiling soldiers, who hands him a clipboard. “Now there are only two rules here at Camp Haven. Rule number one: Remember your colors. Everybody hold up your colors!” Twenty-five fists fly into the air. The twenty-sixth, Megan’s, remains in her lap. “Reds, in a couple of minutes you’ll be escorted into Hangar Number One for processing. Greens, sit tight, you’ve got a little farther to go.”
“I’m not going,” Megan whispers in Sammy’s ear.
“Rule number two!” Major Bob booms. “Rule two is two words: Listen and follow. That’s easy to remember, right? Rule two, two words. Listen to your group leader. Follow every instruction your group leader gives you. Don’t question and don’t talk back. They are—we all are—here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to keep you guys safe. And we can’t keep you guys safe unless you guys listen and follow all instructions, right away, no questions.” He hands the clipboard back to the smiling soldier, claps his pudgy hands, and says, “Any questions?”
“He just said don’t ask questions,” Megan whispers. “And then he asks if we have any questions.”