No Passengers Beyond This Point(58)

“Bing says to ask Finn’s little screen.”

“What little screen?” India’s eyes dart back to Finn.

Finn slips it out of his pocket.

“No way! I can’t believe you have a wrist screen!” India shouts.

“How do I make it work? It doesn’t do what I want it to,” he says.

“It calls up what you want the most. Just look into it and think about the black box.”

Finn’s face is whiter than his arms. He whisks the hair out of his eyes and looks into the tiny screen. “Where’s the black box? The black box?” he says.

Nothing happens.

“What does the black box mean to you?” India asks Finn. “Why do you want it?”

Finn looks at India like she’s crazy, but he puts his mouth close to the screen and says, “Inside the black box is my own room, my own bed, my basketball, my mom, a hot shower, chocolate chip cookies, my playlist, my future, and Uncle Red.”

Suddenly the screen lights up with a picture as clear as our TV. It shows a bright orange box in a junkyard.

“India, it’s orange!” I yell so she can hear.

“It’s okay, Mouse,” Finn says. “I saw a program once. The black box is always orange.”

“Where is it?” India shouts

“In a junk pile,” Finn answers.

“Ask it where.”

“How will it know?” I ask as the screen starts to talk like Jimmy’s mommy’s car when we went on that field trip. “Prepare to turn left,” the voice in the little screen says.

“It has a GPS!” Finn shouts.

Helicopters have landed near us, but the screen is in Finn’s hand. It’s telling us where to go.





CHAPTER 34

FIREBALL

Right turn in fifty feet,” the calm authoritative voice of the GPS tells us, oblivious to the helicopters all around.

I’m looking at the speedometer on the cart when my eyes suddenly register the brass plate on the dashboard: Property of Falling Bird.

“Abandon the cart,” I tell India. “That’s what they want, not us.”

“We need it. We can’t walk that far.”

“Left turn in ten feet,” the GPS commands.

The clock is ticking. I have thirty-nine minutes left. Mouse and India have more. We don’t have time for this and then suddenly: “You have arrived at your destination.”

Boom shoots out of the cart and scrambles up the hillside, where the cart can’t go.

“C’mon!” I say, and we all jump out, leaving the vehicle.

Boom is running so fast, it’s all we can do to keep pace. We’re headed into the wind. Mouse is staying with Boom. India is close behind. It’s me who can’t keep up.

My legs aren’t working. There’s a disconnect between my head and my feet. My head is telling my feet to run, but my feet can’t hear.

Inside I’m running like crazy, but my body feels heavy, like my legs are thick bags of sand. My eyelids are magnets. My body is shutting down, quitting out.

My teeth aren’t chattering. I’m not warm or cold. I can’t feel my chest. The urgency of the clock ticks on in my mind, but my mind can’t control my body. The ticking is comforting like a lullaby; a clock singing for me. My mind is fighting to get control, but everything is slipping away.

“C’mon, Finn!” India shouts in my ear. “We can’t do this without you.”

“Finn,” Mouse calls, her voice soft as if it’s penetrating acres of gauze. Minutes go by or maybe they don’t. I can’t tell. The minutes are floating around me. The clock is still ticking, but I can’t move anymore. Boom is licking my face. Boom has her jaws gently around my wrists, tugging me up. Mouse is several places at the same time. Once she yanks my arm. Then she slaps me. But my body is like a metal blanket too heavy to lift. I can see Mouse’s hand, hear the noise of the slap, but I feel nothing. Boom shoves me with her cold wet nose. This I feel.

We are down to minutes, and we don’t have the black box.

India hoists me, carrying my front half. Mouse tries to drag my legs with her one good arm. It isn’t storming out anymore. The sky is overcast, a dull gloomy gray, but it’s calm like we are in our own tinted glass room. The weather can’t reach us. Nothing can reach us. We follow Boom through the field with my sisters half carrying me.

Boom barks. She’s agitated. She runs around in circles half whining, half howling.

“India!” Mouse shouts. “How much time do we have?”

We follow the dog. The blue-eyed dog with one trailing bandage. There’s a beep, beep, beep, I hear it now.

She leads us to a landslide of rubble. Metal springs, dust, dirt, smoking pieces of a motor still running, an overhead compartment, a suitcase burst at the seams, a man sleeping with his eyes open. His clock is still in his hand. It says 0:00.