Chapter 3
Light was creeping back over the world, filtering through steely gray clouds and the odd snow flurry. Waves crashed and rumbled, as if in complaint of the sudden drop in temperature.
Three teenagers were sleeping on the beach, propriety forgotten in favor of warmth. They were huddled together beside what remained of the previous night's fire, shivering in their sleep.
One of them let out a sharp cry and sat up, trembling from more than just cold. She clenched her fist in the sand, using the sensation to pull herself back into reality.
Knuckles took a deep breath, wincing as the chill air bit into her lungs. She ran a hand through her tangled out, simultaneously trying sort out the equally tangled threads of her dream.
"Weird..." Knuckles muttered, standing up and trying not to jostle DJ too much. They'd slept spooned, the three of them, curled up like kittens in a basket. Warmth took precedent over appropriateness. It was odd, being squashed up like that, but she was rather beyond caring.
Knuckles found a few sticks and set about trying to coax the coals into flame, all the while thinking at a break-neck pace.
Let's see... I saw Morgan and DJ, and I could hear their thoughts... Morgan was ready to just give up, she had no hope left... then I saw Never-Land vanish into nothing...
But what does it mean? Or am I just being ridiculous?
After a moment she decided that yes, she was being silly, and that other things were more important than her garbled dreams. Like breakfast.
Not that she was going to find any on a rock in the middle of the ocean, especially in thirty degree weather. But she left the fire crackling merrily and went in search of nibbles.
When Morgan awoke, Knuckles was trying rather haphazardly to cook what looked like a scrawny rabbit over the fire. She was mumbling to herself in a verbal stream of consciousness.
"I hope this turns out okay... TK always said I was a terrible cook- wonder where TK is, for that matter... or everyone else... maybe they're all over the place... I could really go for a joke with Mad, or some of Amanda's amazing baked truffles... heck, I'd even be happy if I saw Scrabble, never mind my friends..."
"What're you rambling on about?" asked Morgan, sitting up and scooting closer to the fire. Knuckles jumped, and for half an instant she looked more like a spooked cat, her blonde hair going every-which-way, than a teenage girl. Then she relaxed.
"Everything, anything, and nothing, in that order," said Knuckles primly. "Hungry?"
"Starved," DJ said groggily, arising from slumber with his nose twitching. "That smells wonderful. Where'd you get a rabbit?"
"In the woods. Dead easy to snag if you can aim aright." Knuckles poked the coals, which immediately spat up sparks.
DJ grinned at his sister, eyes dancing. "See, Morgan? I found us an Amazon warrior!"
"Huh?" Knuckles gave the pair a puzzled glance. DJ waved her off. "Nothing. American thing."
"DJ's weird," said Morgan confidentially. "Just so you know." But her hazel eyes flickered with amusement.
"Am not!" DJ retorted, feigning insult, dramatically tossing his head and making his crazily tangled dark hair do even more complicated acrobatics. "You're the oddity here."
Knuckles laughed. "You look just like Mad and me."
"Who's that?"
"My chum," she replied easily. "His real name's Omar, but he's color-blind and can't tell plaid from polka-dot, so we all call him Mad. He's great. Me, him, and Levi- we're like this." She held up her hand, showing the two siblings her crossed fingers. "Great goobers, the lot of us."
"They die?" asked DJ. At that moment the great chasm between his life and Knuckles' was painfully obvious.
Knuckles snorted. "No. Why?"
"You're not with them."
"We got separated when the island vanished," said Knuckles hotly. "I've a mind to find the others and even if we have to steal one of those crazy air-plane things, we're going to get home."
Morgan tilted her head to one side and considered the other girl, some odd tingling of half-forgotten memory coming to life in the back of her mind. "Where might that be?"
Knuckles plopped down in the sand, staring moodily into the flames. "Never-Land- I told you last night. I think. Anyway, it's this big island right on the edge of this reality and the next. I live there, along with the other Lost, and any foundlings Peter picks up-which is pretty much everyone except Peter-and the redskins and the mer-folk. Used to be pirates and Fae, but they vanished about ten years ago."
DJ scoffed. "You're nuts."
"Maybe so," Knuckles snapped. "But I would rather live in a dream-world than this one. Where is everyone? Why are the big cities deserted? I know it shouldn't be like this- I might not have been off the island since eighteen fifty-nine, but I know what your world should be like. What happened?"
Morgan stared blankly at Knuckles. "You really are nuts."
"Just tell me," said Knuckles, anger vanished and replaced by a heavy feeling of depression.
The siblings exchanged uncertain glances. DJ nodded slowly, blue eyes unreadable. Morgan sighed explosively and looked back at the blonde girl.
"The Plague happened, that's what. Just about everyone under fifteen is dead. It only attacks kids. You're dead within two weeks, and there's no cure, no getting rid of it. And it's so contagious it's not even funny."
"How does it kill?" Knuckles asked in a small, childlike voice borne of sudden fright.
"It starts with a cough, stuffy nose, chills- typical cold symptoms," said Morgan harshly, trying to banish the images from her mind and not doing too well.
"The skin gets dry and cracks terribly, and sometimes they get bad nosebleeds. The internal systems shut down, starting with motor control. Once that starts they're dead within a day." She swallowed hard, remembering despite her best efforts. Remembering seeing Kendall and Janice huddled together, hacking and crying with pain. All her friends, dying so slowly... so slowly. Being horrified at herself- young enough to catch it, should have caught it, but survived to watch almost everyone she loved fall prey to a silent, unseen attacker.
DJ grasped her hand. She squeezed it hard, bringing herself back to the here and now.
"Just younger kids?" Knuckles asked softly. Morgan nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
"All of Never-Land is here now," Knuckles muttered, horror growing in her mind. "Half of them haven't aged yet, are still fourteen and under on the outside." She looked up at the unforgiving sky, trying not to panic. "And Griffin... Levi's baby..."
"Who?"
Knuckles looked back at her newfound companions. "Peter and Levi's little boy. He's five."
"Peter and Levi?" DJ asked, looking at her oddly. "How can two guys have a kid?"
"Levi's a she, and her real name is Levity," said Knuckles dismissively. "But that's not the point! Griffin and Scrabble and TK and Slightly... they're all goners." She dropped her head into her hands, trembling with fear for her friends.
* * *
Griffin shivered inside the monstrous leather jacket, trying not to show his discomfort and failing terribly. He was the only one awake, but that was besides the point. He had his pint-sized dignity, after all.
Even huddled between his parents as he was, he was still cold. Terribly so. He breathed on his hands, trying to stay warm. Terrible images of his fingers freezing and falling off filled his five-year-old mind with terror.
He let out a little "eep" at the thought and stuck his hands in his armpits. This movement was entirely too much for his current bed-mates.
Levi felt something pointy jab her in the ribs and she opened one eye, trying to figure out what had happened without actually waking up. It wasn't that she was warm or comfortable, she just figured sleeping was preferable to getting up.
On Griffin's other side, Peter was doing the same thing. Their eyes met and they traded rather exasperated smiles. Griffin's wriggling again they said, without ever uttering a word.
"'Fin, what's the matter with you?" Peter grumbled.
"Cold," Griffin mumbled. "If my fingers get too cold will they fall off? Dean said so!"
Levi groaned and sat up, making sure she sent a baleful glance in Dean's general direction. He was a lump of ragged, dusty blanket that occasionally mumbled something, curled up in a corner of the abandoned store they had taken up residence in.
"No, Griffin, nothing will happen to your fingers," said Levi obligingly. "Keep rubbing them together and you'll be fine."
Griffin nodded vaguely and clambered into Levi's lap. Sighing at the loss of further sleep, Levi held him tightly there. "Wow, you are cold," she said, tapping his nose with one finger. "I guess 'cause you're littler than us and give off more body-heat."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Just science." She ruffled his hair. "Sleep okay?"
Griffin wrinkled his nose. "Da drooled on me!"
Peter's protests were drowned out by Levi's laughter. Over in the corner, Dean gave a snort and glared at them from under the ratty blanket scrounged from an alleyway.
"Quiet!"
"Oh, be quiet yourself, Dean," said Peter, running both hands through his unruly hair. "We need to get up and get moving anyway."
Grumbling, Dean crawled out of his cocoon. While Griffin watched the others jury-rigged the blankets into cloaks with some rope and safety pins. Griffin kept the ancient jacket, but everyone else got to sport the medieval look.
"Better than going without," said Levi diplomatically, wrapping the blanket around herself. "Where do we start looking?"
"Right outside," said Peter instantly, struggling to fix his own winter gear on straight. "There have to be some more- if we four were that close together, then the rest of us can't have been scattered too far out."
"Makes sense," Dean commented. "But then, it might have been coincidence."
Peter raised an eyebrow at his friend. "There are no such things as coincidences, Dean. Either events were arranged by people or by Fate, but they're never let lie like that."
"What's a coincidence?" Griffin asked curiously.
"Something that no one arranged for but happens right when you need it to," Levi replied. "Let's go, then. We need to stay close- don't let go of my hand, Griffin."
The four set out into the snow-dusted streets, clutching their rather smelly, ragged, but surprisingly warm blankets about them. Griffin suffered the most from the cold, but after a while Levi slung him over her hip and he took shelter under her blanket/cloak.
By noon they had found three others. By nightfall the group of four had grown to twelve, ranging from eight-year-old Fisher to Nibs to Amanda, who instantly gravitated to Dean and held his hand in a death-grip. By some miracle they managed to get some sort of cloak or coat for everyone, although it was a close thing.
The city was empty, abandoned but for the Lost. They hadn't seen anyone besides their own people. Yet it was a recent abandonment- there was no dust inside the buildings, no cobwebs. It was as if everyone had vanished, leaving the biggest possible mess in their wake. Levi kept thinking of riots she'd seen on television, all those years ago- the kind of destruction they could cause. Somehow what they were seeing here seemed to be that kind of chaos, the devastation terrified and angry people could cause when they got out of control. When humans gave in to the animal inside, became feral.
The thought made her wonder. What would have caused such an event? Why would people be that upset so as to decimate an entire city in a instinct-driven panic?
It didn't add up. None of it did. It would be quite a while before they learned what, and by then it wouldn't matter anymore.
The enemy was among them...
* * *
Knuckles brushed the sand off her hands, staring across the steely waves to the distant mainland. DJ caught her looking and shook his head.
"Nearly killed Morgan and me, getting across that thing. I wouldn't advise trying it again."
Knuckles wasn't listening. All she could think of was finding the others. Finding the rest of the Lost and then finding a way home, out of this mad reality that didn't make sense anymore.
It hadn't made sense when she was an eight-year-old street urchin in penal colony Australia. And it still didn't, not after three hundred years and a whole hemisphere of distance.
"How long did you swim?" Knuckles asked slowly, her thoughts still worlds away.
"Over an hour."
The water was bitingly cold. Knuckles figured if two malnourished, scrawny, physically unimpressive wretches could pull it off and survive, then she-who was at the peak of her teenage vigor-could do it easily.
"I have to find the others," Knuckles said, more to herself than DJ. Morgan was asleep again, and only DJ was there to protest against her stupidity. "Maybe I can help."
"You really are nuts."
"Probably." Without looking back, Knuckles braced herself and went crashing into the water. The sudden jar made her tense, suck in a mixed mouthful of air and ocean. She sputtered, then started swimming with strong, broad freestyle strokes.
DJ watched her, shocked that she would do such a ridiculous thing. Without thinking about it, he roused his sister and went plowing into the ocean after the new kid. Morgan, flabbergasted, had no choice but to follow.
And so they swam back to the mainland, back to the world that hated them. And hoped they wouldn't be shot in the process.