“I’m not . . . That’s not . . . ,” Albert said. “Please. Please don’t kill me.”

Turk looked offended. “Did we say we were going to kill you?” He turned to Lance. “Where did he get that idea?”

Lance played along. “I have no idea, Turk.”

“Maybe because of this,” Turk said. He leveled his rifle at Albert’s face.

Something exploded.

Albert heard no sound.

He was on his side.

Blood covered his right eye, blinding him. Or maybe his eye wasn’t there anymore, he didn’t know.

He tried to breathe and heard gurgling in his lungs. Heard his heart slow . . .

Turk looked at once alarmed and ecstatic. Lance’s face became sullen. The two younger kids backed away, tripping over each other, and ran.

Lance punched Turk’s shoulder in rough congratulations. Albert’s one good eye went dark.

Chapter Twenty-Two

12 HOURS, 48 MINUTES

“THAT IS A lake,” Sam said. “That is definitely a lake.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t even know this was here,” Dekka said.

The sun was still not up, but a pearly gray light showed a long slope heading down to a vast body of water. Bigger than anything Sam had seen outside of the ocean.

Dry grass grew in tufts. Amazingly scraggly, stunted pine trees showed here and there, but the shore itself was formed by a line of large jumbled rocks broken up by narrow, halfhearted sand beaches.

At the limits of their vision was a small marina with perhaps two dozen boats at the dock.

The barrier sliced right across the lake, but the part on the inside was more water than the kids of Perdido Beach could ever need or want.

“You think it’s drinkable?” Dekka wondered.

“Let’s find out,” Sam said. He jogged downhill toward the shore, careful not to trip, but anxious to see and taste. It would be too cruel to get here and find that it was salt water. That would be one more dirty trick, one more disappointment. Not to mention the fact that it might doom them all.

He reached the lakeshore with the others close behind. The pale rock was shifting and unsteady, so he felt his way gingerly.

He pulled off his shoes and then impulsively dived in a flat arc into the water.

It was shallow near the shore and he scraped his chest on submerged rocks, but with two strokes he was out in water over his head.

Sam gulped a mouthful. Treading water he looked back to see Jack, Dekka, and Toto standing uncertainly on the rocks. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Sam said, his face split by a huge grin, “we have fresh water.”

In something less than five seconds, the three of them splashed in after him.

“It’s water!” Jack cried.

“It is so totally water!” Dekka agreed.

“She’s telling the truth, Spidey!” Toto said.

Sam turned a joyful somersault. The lake was cold but not bone-chilling. The surfer part of his brain calculated he’d have been warm and toasty enough with a 3/2 wetsuit.

He gulped some more water and swam over to his friends.

“Fresh water,” Dekka said. “Cold fresh water. Brrr.”

Sam scanned the shore. “This isn’t a great place to set up a new town, really. We’d need something flatter. And then we’d have to be careful about not having everyone’s sewage end up flowing into our drinking water. I guess we . . .” He stopped himself. Albert and Edilio could figure out the details. He had done what he needed to do.

“I saw boats,” Jack remarked. “I wonder if there are fish.”

Toto said, “Fish, yes, fish.”

“You know something?” Sam asked him.

“My dad used to take me fishing.” Then, as if puzzled by his own words, he looked for the Spidey head that wasn’t there and said, “This isn’t that lake, is it? No, that was Lake Isabella.”

“Okay,” Dekka said patiently. “Were there fish in that lake?”

“Trout,” Toto said. “Bass. Also crappie. Fish.”

“If we find fishing poles and stuff on the boats, it means there are fish,” Jack pointed out.

“It’s only, like, half a mile. We could swim,” Sam said.

“You could swim half a mile,” Dekka said. “Me, I’ll walk.”

They climbed out, Sam with great reluctance. It was invigorating, this new and unexplored body of water. Who knew what might be found on or around the lake?

But he understood that Dekka and the others might not be thrilled by a long, cold swim.

The shore was a series of curves, like the edge of a lace doily made with sketchy sand beaches and rocky promontories. They soon came upon a trail and were laughing and chatting lightheartedly.

Sam knew logically that without gas—and a lot of it—they’d never get enough water down to—

He stopped dead. “Marinas,” he said. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. “Marinas. You know what they have?”

“Boats?” Jack suggested, like he was afraid it was the wrong answer.

“Boats.” Sam grinned. “Sailboats, maybe. But you know what else? Motorboats. Jet skis.”

“You want to jet ski?”

“What do jet skis run on, my friend?”

“I want to say water,” Dekka said.

“Gas!” Jack cried.

Sam slapped him on the shoulder. “Yes! A marina isn’t a marina if they don’t have fuel.”