Sam raised his own binoculars and managed to get them sighted in. The magnification brought the barn door a lot closer, but the image shook and wavered; it was impossible to see anything clearly. He knelt on the deck surface and set the binoculars onto the flat board atop the railing, then angled them left and right until he once again had the barn door centered in his view.

The image was rock-steady—and far more detailed than he had expected. He could easily resolve the shapes of men moving in and out of the barn, carrying boxes, setting them down in the dirt just outside the door. Getting ready to leave.

There was no sign of Lauren Coleman.

Sam heard Dani stoop down beside him; she braced her own binoculars on the railing and sighted them in.

Behind them, the deck boards creaked again. Pierce had stepped out through the French doors. He wandered to the railing off to Sam’s right, and stood staring off at the distant barn.

For thirty seconds, nobody spoke. Sam watched the men in the barn going about their frantic work. Beside him, Dani did the same. At last Sam took his eyes from the binoculars and stood. He turned to Pierce, barely a shape in the darkness.

“What is Rigel?” Sam asked. “What is it exactly?”

Next to him, Dani gave up on her own binoculars and stood. She turned and stared at Pierce, too, waiting for the answer.

“You don’t want to know,” Pierce said. “Kids shouldn’t have to think about things like that.”

“We’ve already seen what it can do,” Dani said. “We were in Station Nine. We saw the baboon—the one that was still alive.”

“We saw the newspaper, too,” Sam said. “The article about the bailarines terribles, in the jungle outside Wells Town. We know Rigel is based on something that goes back hundreds of years.”

“Millions of years,” Pierce said. “And you haven’t seen half of what it can do. Just leave it at that. The rest of it would only scare you more.”

“We’re already scared all the way,” Dani said. “We want to know the whole story.”

“It’s technically a crime to tell you. State secrets. They hand out capital punishment over those.”

“That’s a strange thing to say to people who saved your life,” Sam said.

Pierce exhaled, not quite laughing. He leaned down and braced his hands on the deck rail, and lowered his head.

“You really want to know?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dani said.

“Start with the bailarines,” Sam said. “What are they?”

Pierce straightened up again. He turned his head and looked at the two of them. “If you ask the locals in Wells Town, the bailarines are the living dead.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE