Gone (Gone #1)(84)

Sam froze, "Excuse me?"

"Just step lightly."

Sam crept closer. And there it was. At first he just saw the triangular head peeking up from the bottom of a foot-deep hole padded with fallen leaves."Is that a rattlesnake?"

"Not anymore" Astrid said. "Come around behind me" When Sam was in position she said, "Look. About six inches below his head "

"What is that?" Flaps of leathery skin, not covered with scales, but gray and ribbed with what looked like pink veins, hung Hat against the snake's body.

"They look like vestigial wings," Astrid said.

"Snakes don't have wings" Sam said.

"They didn't used to" she said darkly.

The two of them drew slowly back. They rejoined Edilio, Quinn, and Little Pete, who was gazing up at the sky like he was expecting someone from that direction.

"What was it?" Quinn asked.

"A rattlesnake with wings* Sam said.

"Ah. That's good, because I was thinking we didn't have quite enough to be worried about" Quinn said.

"I'm not surprised " Astrid said. When the others stared at her she explained."! mean, it's obvious that there's some sort of accelerated mutation at work in the FAYZ. In fact, given Petey and Sam and the others, the mutation must have preceded the FAYZ. But I suspect the FAYZ is accelerating the process. We saw the gull that had mutated. Then there was Albert's teleporting cat. Now this."

"LeFs get moving," Sam said, mostly because there was no point standing around moping. Everyone walked more carefully now, eyes down, very aware of what they might step on.

They stopped for lunch when Little Pete started losing it and staged a sit-down strike. Sam helped make the food, then took his can of peaches and his Power Bar and sat alone at a distance from the others. He needed to think. They were all waiting for him to come up with a plan, he could feel it.

They were a little bit above the valley Iloor still, out in the open with no shade. The ground was rocky. The sun beat down. It didn't look like there was much in the way of shelter or shade ahead of them. Just the harrier extending on and on, forever and ever. From this height he should have been able to see over the top of it, but Astrid was right: no matter where you stood, the barrier seemed to be equally tall, equally impenetrable.

It glowed a little in the sunlight, but mostly the barrier never changed, day or night. It was always the same faintly shimmering gray. It was just reflective enough that some-t imes you could almost believe you saw an opening, trees that extended beyond the barrier, or a feature of the land that seemed to pass through a hole in the barrier But it was always an optical illusion, a trick of the light.

He felt rather than heard Astrid come up behind him.

"It's a sphere, isn't it?" he said. "It goes all the way around us. All the way under us and all the way over us"

"I think so," she said.

"Why do we see the stars at night? Why can we see the sun?"

"Pm not sure we're seeing the sun," Astrid said. "It may be an illusion. It may be some kind of reflection. I don't know." She stepped deliberately on a small twig and snapped it in half. "I really don't know."

"You hate saying 'I don't know,' don't you?"

Astrid laughed. "You noticed."

Sam sighed and hung his head. "This is a waste of time, isn't it? I mean, trying to find a gate. Trying to find a way out"

"There may not be an out" Astrid confirmed.

"Is the world still there? I mean, on the other side of the barrier?"

She sat beside him, close enough to be companionable, but not touching. Tve been thinking a lot about it. I liked your egg idea. But to tell you the truth, Sam, I don't think the barrier is just a wall. A wall doesn't explain what's happening to us. To you and Petey and the birds and Albert's cat and the snakes. And it doesn't explain why everyone over fourteen disappeared all at once. And keeps disappearing"

"What would explain all that?'' He held up a hand. "Wait, I don't want to make you say it again: you don't know"

"Remember when Quinn saic 'someone hacked the universe'?"

"YouVe getting your ideas from Quinn now? What happened to you being a genius?"

She ignored the gibe. "The un verse has certain rules. Like the operating system software for a computer. None of what we're seeing can be happening under the software of our universe. The way Caine can move things with his mind. The way you can make light come from your hands. These aren't just mutations: they are violations of the laws of nature. At least the laws of nature as we understand them "

"Yeah. So?"

"So." She shook her head ruefully, disbelieving her own words as she said them. "So I think it means -.. we're not in the old universe anvmore"

Sam stared at her. "There's only one universe" "The theory of multiple universes has been around for a long time" Astrid said. "But maybe something happened that began altering the rules of the old universe, lust a little, just in a small area. But the effect spread, and at some point it became impossible for ihe old universe to contain this new reality. A new universe was created. A very small universe" She look a deep breath, a relieved sound, like she'd just set down a heavy !oad."But you know what, Sam? Pm smart, but Pm not exactly Stephen Hawking"