Free Destination Unknown by Katherine Applegate Page A

The ones who had been cratered, the cheesers, the facelifts, the wormers. All gone.

    Jobs and Mo’Steel went to the two newlyemerging Wakers. They were groggy, confused, scared. Jobs filled them in on the basic facts: the vertical landing, the artwork landscape, the five-hundred years, the deaths. He left out the vicious aliens, the freakish baby, the silent Billy Weir, the deaths of Doctor Huerta and Errol.

    Plenty of time for that later.

    Of the two Wakers, one was a kid, one an adult. They were father and son. The father was Alberto DiSalvo, an engineer who had worked on the solar sails. His son, age fifteen, called himself Kubrick.

    Jobs motioned Mo’Steel to follow him out of hearing of the new Wakers who, in any event, seemed to be falling back to sleep in the familiar pattern.

    “How many does that make?” Jobs asked Mo’Steel.

    “Twenty-three Wakers. Minus the doctor and old Errol. Twenty-one up and running.”

    “Three more still on ice,” Jobs said. “Where’d the others go?”

    “The dead ones?”

    “Uh-uh. Twenty-one awake, plus the doctor and Errol, plus three asleep, right? Twenty-six? We counted thirty-four we thought were alive. That leaves eight people gone who we thought were alive who aren’t here or back outside.”

    Olga was up above them, watching from the entryway. She leaned over to call down the stairwell. “You kids okay in there?”

    “Yeah, Mom,” Mo’Steel yelled. “Got two more live ones coming around.”

    “Eight live ones gone,” Jobs muttered. “What’s going on here? The Deaders are all vacuumed out and so are eight live ones, but five are left behind, undisturbed. Seven left behind, actually, because it was T.R. who told us the dead were gone. So at that point we had seven people on board. The aliens — or whoever — take the dead and eight live ones. Why?”

    Mo’Steel shrugged. “You got me, Duck.”

    “This is unnecessarily weird,” Jobs muttered. “I’m not getting a picture. Maybe my brain is still fuzzy.”

    “Maybe reality is fuzzy,” Mo’Steel said.

    “Some aliens bring us neatly down for an easy landing. They invent this bizarre landscape. They or some other bunch come by and kill Errol. Then the Riders or the first aliens or some totally new bunch of aliens, or some combination of them, carry off all the bodies plus probably eight people still coming out of hibernation. And leave seven behind. What’s the game?”

    “Maybe games. Plural.”

    “Yeah. And maybe we’re ants trying to figure outa picnic. Wait a minute. When did they do it? When none of us was looking this way? When the Riders attacked?”

    “Or else any time since we hauled butt for the river and it got dark.”

    “Still, the Riders could have been a diversion.”

    “Yeah. Kind of a mystery, huh?” Mo’Steel said. “Kind of thing you like to climb all over. You love to try and figure out stuff.”

    Jobs smiled. His friend was not subtle. “You can stop worrying about me, Mo. I’m not going to go nuts or whatever.”

    “That’s good. What are we going to do?”

    “You and me, or all of us?”

    Mo’Steel shrugged. “Big picture. I mean, it’s like we have problems inside and out. Aliens and all, like the ones who killed old Errol. But the serious stuff is like in us, you know? People losing it from sadness. People fighting over who’s going to rule. That baby, too.”

    “Billy Weir,” Jobs said.

    “Yeah, he’s strange but he’s not bothering anyone at least.”

    “I think he’s —”

    Mo’Steel’s mother interrupted, “Kids! Something is happening. Back at the camp.”

    Jobs glanced at the two Wakers. Both dozing still. “Come on.”

    The three of them were almost back at camp when they saw Big Bill Weir staggering away from the fire. Daniel Burroway, Yago, and Anamull were wielding burning brands. The bright tips drew lurid arcs in the night.

    Someone threw a stone or a chunk of wood and hit Bill Weir in the