“This meeting is adjourned till we can help our wounded friend…what is his name? Cookie?”

Cookie’s voice was even more urgent, demanding help, edging toward hysteria. “It really hurts, it really hurts bad, oh, God.”

Caine led Drake and Diana down the aisle, past Sam, following Astrid and Little Pete from the church.

Drake paused halfway, turned back, and spoke for the first time. In an amused voice he said, “Oh, um, Captain Orc? Have your people—the ones who aren’t injured—line up outside. We’ll work out your…um, duties.”

With a grin that was almost a snarl, Drake added a cheerful, “Later.”

FIFTEEN

251 HOURS, 32 MINUTES

JACK WAS SLOW to realize that he should follow Caine and the rest out of the church. He jumped up too suddenly and banged into the pew, making a noise that drew the attention of the quiet boy Caine had called a hero.

“Sorry,” Jack said.

Jack walked quickly outside. At first he couldn’t see any of the other Coates kids. A lot of people were outside the church, milling around, talking about what had happened inside. Cookie’s cries of pain were only slightly muffled.

Jack spotted the tall blond girl he’d seen inside, and her little brother.

“Excuse me, do you know where Caine and everybody went?”

The girl, he didn’t remember her name, looked him in the eye. “He’s in the town hall. Where else would our new leader be?”

Jack often missed nuance when people talked. But he didn’t miss her cold sarcasm.

“Sorry to bother you.” He pushed his glasses back up on his nose and tried to smile at the same time. He bobbed his head and looked around for the town hall.

“It’s right there.” The girl pointed. Then she said, “My name is Astrid. Do you really think you can get the phones working?”

“Sure. It will take time, though. Right now the signal goes from your phone to the tower, right?” His tone was condescending and he formed his hands into a schematic of a tower with beams radiating toward it. “Then it gets sent on to a satellite, then down to a router. But we can’t send signals to the satellite now, so—”

He was interrupted by a shockingly loud cry of pain from inside the church. It made him flinch.

“How do you know we can’t reach a satellite?” Astrid asked.

He blinked in surprise and made the smug face he made whenever someone questioned his technological expertise. “I doubt you would understand.”

Astrid said, “Try me, kid.”

To Jack’s surprise, she seemed to follow everything he said. So he went on to explain how he could reprogram a few good desktop computers to serve as a primitive router for the phone system. “It wouldn’t be fast. I mean, it couldn’t handle more than, say, a dozen calls simultaneously, but it should work at a basic level.”

Astrid’s little brother seemed to be staring at Jack’s hands, which he was now twisting nervously. Jack was anxious being away from Caine. Before they had come down from Coates Academy, Drake Merwin had warned everyone that they should keep talk with the Perdido Beach kids to a minimum.

A warning from Drake was serious.

“Well, I better go,” Jack said.

Astrid stopped him. “So you’re into computers.”

“Yeah. I’m kind of a tech guy.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“That’s young to have those skills.”

He laughed dismissively. “Nothing I’ve been talking about is hard to do. It’s not something most people could do, but it’s not hard for me.”

Jack had never been shy when it came to his tech skills. He’d gotten his first real computer for his fourth Christmas. His parents still told the story of how he had spent fourteen hours on the machine that first day, pausing only for Nutri-Grain bars and juice boxes.

By the time he was five he could easily install programs and navigate the web. By age six his parents were turning to him for computer help. By eight he had his own website and was acting as his school’s unofficial tech support.

At nine, Jack had hacked into the computer system of his local police department to erase a speeding ticket for a friend’s father.

His own parents found out and panicked. The next semester he was at Coates Academy, which was known as a place to send smart, difficult children.

But Jack wasn’t difficult, and he resented it. In any case, it didn’t help him stay out of trouble. On the contrary, there were kids at Coates whom Jack’s parents would have called bad influences. Some of them, very bad influences.

And some were just bad.

“So, what would be hard for you, Jack?” Astrid asked.

“Almost nothing,” he answered truthfully. “But what I would like to do is get some kind of internet working. Here in the…in whatever this is.”

“It seems we’re calling it the FAYZ.”

“Yeah. Here in the FAYZ. I mean, I’d estimate there are two hundred and twenty-five or so decent computers, based on the number of homes and businesses. The land area is pretty small, so it would be fairly simple to set up Wi-Fi. That’s easy. And if I had even a pair of old G5s to work with, I think I could stand up a limited local system.”

He smiled happily at the thought.

“That would be great. So, tell me, Comp—should I really call you Computer Jack?”

“That’s what everyone calls me. Or sometimes just Jack.”