Mills followed him, then Levi and Bunny. Jolie went next, and I took up the rear, scanning the grass with my binoculars. Nothing.
“Ulp!”
“What?” I demanded, snapping back to look at the team.
“Nate’s gone,” Mills said, sounding freaked.
43
“WHAT THE HELL?” BUNNY SAID, then she, too, disappeared.
I dropped to my knees and clicked off my rifle’s safety. Then I tapped my comm and hissed, “Nate! Report!”
Nate’s voice came back, angry and embarrassed. “I tripped on a rock.” The grass ahead rustled and he stood up.
“It was a big rock,” Bunny said, standing up, brushing dried grass off herself.
“A rock?” I said, standing up and clicking my safety back on. My heart pounded and my brain swirled with now-unneeded rescue plans.
“They’re everywhere,” Mills said, pushing his boot through the grass and almost immediately hitting a tall stone.
It turned out that the field was littered with hundreds and hundreds of these big weird stones. Some were maybe knee-high, some almost to the top of the grass. They were rounded, and weathered. We threaded our way through agonizingly slowly—sometimes there was barely room enough to walk between them.
Ahead of me, Jolie followed Bunny but she paused and pulled some grass away from a stone. Her quick blue eyes met mine as her sensitive fingers rubbed the stone, left and right. She held up a hand.
“Wait,” I said, and the team stopped and turned.
Jolie rubbed the rock harder and once the lichen was mostly gone she pointed to words cut deeply into the worn stone.
I leaned closer to look. It said ANNA-LEIGH WESTON, BORN JANUARY 26, 2025, DIED MARCH 7, 2037.
“These are all tombstones!” I said, staring at the huge field.
Now everyone pushed grass aside and rubbed lichen and dirt off the weathered stones. They weren’t like cell gravestones—those were flat slabs. These stood upright and went on as far as we could see—waves of golden grass with thousands of stones barely peeking through like mountains through clouds.
I looked up to see Nate watching me.
“This was from some catastrophe,” he said. “Every person died the same year—2037. And there are thousands of stones.”
“What the hell happened?” I exclaimed. “I mean, the skeletons, the tree-boats, and now this. It’s like one huge mystery—are they connected? None of it makes sense!”
44
CASSIE
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, PLAGUE?” Tim demanded.
I drew in a deep breath. “Okay—so the other paper said that the New World party had released organophosphates into everything, right? It’s some kind of poison. Almost a year later, this paper says that the organophosphates killed about sixty million people, right off the bat.”
“Sixty mill—that can’t be true,” he said.
“But I guess sixty million wasn’t enough,” I said, feeling my hands tremble. “This paper says that there’s also some kind of plague infecting people.” Again I looked around at the stacks of papers, food wrappers, and magazines lining the walls of the attic.
A sharp rapping on the trapdoor made us both jump.
“Open this door!” Ms. Strepp said.
Slowly I got up and walked over to it, then knelt so I could speak through its cracks. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.