No Passengers Beyond This Point(59)

“That’s the man with the green socks,” Mouse says.

I look down at his ankles—Mouse is right, they are green—and up again at his eyes. I remember my father that day. But now I’m older. I know what this means. I hope Mouse does not.

Boom stands barking next to a big piece of twisted aluminum. Under it I see the corner of an orange box.

My eyesight is hazy, dipping in and out. I fight to stay clear. Mouse shakes me and for a minute that helps.

I try to understand, but there’s a roaring river in my head that is washing the words away. I need to let go, let the river take me down. India slaps me. Hard, stinging slaps. “Finn, you have eleven minutes left. DO YOU HEAR ME?” she shouts.

I am moving. They are trying to carry me. My sisters love me. They love me very much.

I try to focus on Mouse’s curly red hair. Her freckles look funny, like they are jumping out at me. The orange box is sitting on the ground exactly as the wrist screen showed it would be.

“It’s here!” Mouse shouts.

How do we get it open? It’s as solid and tightly closed as a brick.

“Maybe we could bang it against the ground,” India cries.

But Boom is barking again—barking at another box.

This box is cracked in two, revealing a small black box inside.

I force my eyes open. I see the box, but just beyond I see the white courtesy phone, sitting on a heap of rubble.

I have seven minutes left. I could pick up the phone. I could go to work for Sparky. He has all the facts I will ever need. His world makes sense. There are no surprises. I wouldn’t have to worry again.

But there would be nothing worth worrying about. No Mom, no India, no Mouse, no Uncle Red. Nothing that mattered at all.

Inside the orange box, the small black box has buttons. I push the one that says play. Nothing happens. India pushes rewind and a squeaking noise like weird Martian syllables breaks the silence. They pick up speed, then click to a stop. She pushes play again.

It sounds like cockpit noise, like an airplane flying, like a man’s voice. Slowly the sounds sort themselves into words.

“Push up! Way up! Climb! Climb! Climb! Now, now, now!”

My head is clear. I focus with everything I have inside me. Force my mind to get a grip on my body.

“We have to climb!” I shout.

India turns around, her eyes full of shock. Her voice is shaking like she’s hyperventilating. “A tree?”

“A tree big enough for all of us.” My voice is coming through loudly now.

There are trees everywhere, but the branches are so high India can’t reach them.

Three minutes left. She hasn’t found one yet. She’s running around crazy, checking the same trees she’s already checked.

Two minutes now.

“That one!” I shout. I’m pointing to a tree with one low branch and a huge spread of branches and leaves up top—a canopy with room for all of us. I make it there, but Mouse’s arm is broken. She can’t climb. She makes little pained squeaks as she tries to pull herself up with her good arm. I breathe down deep into strength I didn’t know I had and together India and I heave her up. “Up farther,” India shouts, shoving Mouse’s blue corduroy pockets. Mouse pulls and we get her all the way up.

I climb after her, just as I start to lose control of my arms. They begin to wobble as if they’re turning to liquid, but with the whole force of what matters to me, I get them back.

India is next to me now. Mouse folds my hand around the branch and then India’s hand binds us all three to the tree.

“Hold on.” I force the words out of my throat, when a deafening boom blows my ear canals out of my head. “Hold on!” I yell as heat rolls in suddenly, unbearably.

The trees sway wildly from the great torch of heat. My skin can’t drip sweat fast enough. Mouse huddles against the trunk. India is barely gripping the branch, her legs hanging down. With a great heave, she swings them up.

And then a fireball is unleashed, racing toward us—the size of a house and headed straight for our tree.

“Farther . . . go up farther!” I scream, but the fire is a blinding ball, a yellow-orange explosion of flame ballooning toward us. I grab Mouse, my arm shaking wildly.

The branches will catch fire. The tree will go up in flames. The embers crackle and fly, trying like evil fingers to touch our tree. The tree to the left bursts into a blue, then yellow, explosion of flame. The fire hisses. The tree to the right explodes like a firecracker, a star exploding in the smoky light.

Mouse’s shoe slips off. It drops into the smoky abyss. We do not hear it land.





CHAPTER 35

BLUE SHOE

It was the dog that found those kids. The shepherd I’d been trying to get rid of. Scrawny and too smart for her own good. Not much of a farm dog either. She showed up one day, paws all dinged up. I didn’t much want her, got my three already—so I bandaged her real good and found a town family to take her in, but by nightfall she was back. Every time I’d get her all set with a new home she’d run to our place, hurt paws and all. Nice homes too—the kind that gives their dogs collars with fancy jewels and every kind of doggy treat. But no, she’d be back in a day, maybe two.