Gone Series Complete Collection by Michael Grant Page A

there was traffic. Now, only silence and emptiness.
    Edilio laughed a little shakily. “I’m still expecting some big old truck to come barreling down on us, run us over.”
    “It would almost be a relief,” Quinn muttered.
    Edilio stepped on the pedal, the electric motor whirred, and they eased out onto the highway, skirting around the overturned UPS trailer.
    It was an eerie experience. They were going slower than a strong cyclist on a highway where no one ever traveled at less than sixty miles an hour. They crept past a muffler shop and the Jiffy Lube, past a squat office building that housed a lawyer and an accountant. In several places cars from the highway had plowed into parked cars. A convertible was all the way inside the dry cleaner’s. It had taken out the plate-glass window. Clothing in plastic wrap lay strewn across the car’s hood and into the passenger compartment.
    There was a graveyard silence as they drove. The only sound came from the soft rubber tires and the strained whirring of the electric motor.
    The town lay to their left. To the right the land rose sharply to a high ridge. The ridge loomed above Perdido Beach, its own sort of wall. The thought had never occurred to Sam so forcefully before that Perdido Beach was already bounded by barriers, by mountains on the north and east, by ocean to the south and west. This road, this silent, empty road, was just about the only way in or out.
    Ahead was the Chevron station. Sam thought he saw movement there.
    “What do you guys think?” he asked.
    “Maybe they have food. It’s a mini-mart, right?” Quinn said. “I’m hungry.”
    “We should keep going,” Astrid said.
    “Edilio?” Sam pressed.
    He shrugged. “I don’t want to be paranoid. But, man, who knows?”
    Sam said, “I guess I vote for keeping going.”
    Edilio nodded and eased the golf cart to the left side of the road.
    “If there are kids there, we smile and wave and say we’re in a hurry,” Sam said.
    “Yes, sir,” Quinn said.
    “Don’t pull that, brah. We took a vote,” Sam said.
    “Yeah. Right.”
    There were clearly people at the Chevron station. A slight breeze carried a torn Doritos bag down the highway toward them, a red and gold tumbleweed.
    As the golf cart approached, one kid, then another, stepped out into the road. Cookie was the first. The second kid Sam didn’t recognize.
    “T’sup, Cookie,” Sam called out as they drew within twenty yards.
    “T’sup, Sam?” Cookie replied.
    “Looking for Astrid’s little brother, man.”
    “Hold up,” Cookie said. He was carrying a metal baseball bat. The other kid beside him had a croquet mallet with green stripes.
    “Nah, man, we’re on a mission, we’ll catch you later,” Sam said. He waved, and Edilio kept his foot on the pedal. They were within a couple of feet and would soon be past.
    “Stop them,” a voice yelled from the Chevron station. Howard was running and behind him, Orc. Cookie stepped in front of the cart.
    “Don’t stop,” Sam hissed.
    “Man, look out,” Edilio warned Cookie.
    Cookie jumped aside at the last second. The other kid swung his mallet hard. The wood shaft hit the steel pole that supported the cart’s awning. The mallet head snapped off and narrowly missed Quinn’s head.
    Then they were past and Quinn yelled back, “Hey, you almost knocked my head in, jerkwad.”
    They were maybe thirty feet on and pulling away when Orc yelled, “Catch them, you morons.”
    Cookie was a big kid, not fast. But the other kid, the one holding the broken mallet, was smaller and quicker. He broke into a sprint. Howard and Orc were farther back, running full out, but Orc was heavy and slow and Howard pulled away from him.
    The kid with the mallet caught up to them. “You better stop,” he said, panting, running alongside.
    “I don’t think so,” Sam said.
    “Dude, I’ll stab you with this stick,” the kid threatened, but he was panting harder. He made a weak stab with the shattered end of