The Night Children

by Kit Reed

  Burt’s in big trouble, she’s sure of it. Time is running out, and they are stuck down here. “Guys,” Mag calls, but nobody listens. “Guys!”

  “Doakie.” Their voices fill the dark service tunnel: Tick, James, Willie and Jule, calling, “Are you down here, Doak?”

  “Come on, guys,” Mag says, “He’s probably sitting at home right now—”

  They rush on as if she hasn’t even spoken. “Doakie? If you can hear me, yell!”

  “—laughing at you. He’ll wait,” Mag says, running along at Tick’s elbow. “The Zozzpeople have Burt and that can’t wait.” Her breath hits a bump and she gulps. “If we don’t hurry . . .”

  “Later.” Turning, Tick shouts, “Doakie, if you can’t talk, bang on the rail!”

  Mag trails off. “. . . they could torture him.”

  Tick’s voice hits like a rap on the knuckles. “I said, later.”

  “Fine!”

  Jule falls back, crouching to peek under loading platforms, while Willie and James shine their lights into side tunnels, calling, “Doak!”

  “Girl,” Mag says. “Talk to them. They won’t listen to me.”

  Jule says curtly, “Burt can take care of himself.”

  “You don’t know Zozzpeople.”

  Now Jule’s voice hits a strange, dark note that surprises Mag. “That’s what you think. Doakie comes first, so help us do this. Then we help Burt.”

  Mag blames this girl for escaping, which messed her up with the Dingos, but never mind. They are in the same boat now. The two girls run along together, calling, “Doakie? Doak?”

  For a long time there are only the tunnels, long and silent and dark. Then they hear loud bark-barking. It’s Puppy. He’s stopped in the middle of the tracks. He’s perched on the rail, barking at them over a blob that could be anything from a ruptured party balloon to a captured rat.

  “What’s that?”

  Grinning, the puppy wags as if he’s found something terribly important and is waiting to be praised. Tick turns his light on Puppy’s prize. It’s Doakie’s purple canvas shoe.

  Mag says, “Now will you listen? They’ve got Doakie too.”

  “Right.” Tick whirls so fast that his face blurs.

  Jule groans. “The Dark Hall.”

  Shaken, Tick says, “Or worse. OK, Mag. You’re in charge.”

  “The river starts there,” Mag says. “We’d better hurry.”

  Jule scoops up the puppy. “OK, Mag. Show us the way.”

  Pushing rafts, paddles, everything that floats, down the well at the Hall of Beauty fountain, the Castertown Crazies set out on the hidden river. Bravely, they push off, with no idea what lies ahead.

  TWENTY

  THESE ARE HARD TIMES for Lance the Loner. There are places in the mall that Lance is sworn, signed and sealed never to go and there are places he isn’t supposed to know about, but he is here.

  As always, he is alone. He’s been this way ever since he got old enough to make it on his own. Going it alone is his choice, but he’s never felt so alone.

  To get his freedom from the family, the Zozzco Corporation and everything that it stands for, Lance signed an agreement, and until tonight, he has honored it. He has honored it for all these years. Lance honors the agreement and the people in charge of operations in the MegaMall let him come and go as he likes. All he has to do is flash the key card, but now . . .

  He is in one of those places he promised never to be.

  He is sitting here thinking.

  Push has come to shove, and Lance has to make a choice.

  Everything comes down to what he does next.

  Where the family is concerned, Lance doesn’t exist. He is as good as dead to them and he thinks his mother is glad. “Remember,” she used to say, taking him to events because it was expected, “if anybody asks, you’re my baby brother. I’m much too young and pretty to be a mother.” If he gripped her hand, she pushed him away, and Lance was powerless because he was too little to live on his own. Well, he isn’t powerless now.

  They have no idea how powerful he has become.

  See, Lance alone knows the MegaMall by heart. He was here before Tick Stiles, before the architects and designers, before the construction crews. Lance and Nanny lived in their own trailer in the prairie while the Mega-Mall was still in the planning stage. They were parked far away from Isabella’s silver bubble because his mother was busy, and he would only get in the way. Once he tried to crawl into his grandfather’s lap. Amos pushed him off with a shudder. “Go away! You look like that picture.” Lance knows the one. A little boy with golden curls. He just doesn’t know what it means. From that day, the old man kept him at arm’s length.

  Amos never liked him, but he needed him. Lance found out the day Amos handed him the golden shovel and shoved him out the door. It was Groundbreaking Day at the Mega-Mall. As Lance made the first cut in the prairie sand, Amos gloated. “We are partners now.” He watched the honeycomb grow; in the inner sanctum he watched the old man, and he knew in his heart that the spirit behind the Mega-Mall was bad.

  Then Amos tried to give him a special job. “Find children,” he said, “make friends.” Grabbing Lance’s arm with knotty fingers, he laughed a mad laugh. “Bring them to me.”

  “I’d rather die.” Lance ran away. He was twelve.

  Security caught him and brought him back. His mother looked disappointed to see him again, but the old man! His rage rattled Lance all the way down to the heels. “After all that I put into you . . .” He tried wheedling. “Money, power. Don’t you want—?”

  Lance exploded. “I want freedom. I want you to rot and die!” In exchange for this freedom, Lance had to make certain promises. The terms are spelled out like commandments on the document he signed. Keep certain things secret. Don’t go here. Don’t go there. Tell no one. In exchange for his pledge, Amos turned him loose. Zozzco provided food and supplies. They gave him the handcar.

  He was probably too young to be on his own, but scurrying along behind the scenes from the time he turned twelve, he watched the WhirlyFunRide rise at the heart of the MegaMall. He saw artisans putting the last piece into the great glass dome that crowns the biggest shopping center in the known world. He watched the Special Employee Preview ceremonies and the Grand Opening from hiding, which means that he knows about certain things that happened on those days. He was too young to do anything about it, but he thought: some day.

  Over the years since then Lance has ridden the length and breadth of all the tunnels on his handcar. He has climbed every exit ladder in every sector of the MegaMall. The tools and equipment Zozzco provided have been put to good use, although Lance will never say how. Workmen don’t notice when bits of material go missing, so Lance has fortified his quarters and passed on materials to the night children.

  The people in charge won’t know that the food and supplies Lance argued for are really for the night children, like so much of what he does. Regular shipments arrive at the designated spot. Lance buzzes from sector to sector, leaving cartons of food for the gangs to “find.”

  The people in charge can’t possibly guess how far Lance has traveled or how much he knows. They don’t speak, and if they did, he wouldn’t tell them any more than he tells you. He doesn’t cause trouble. He doesn’t protest. In fact, they don’t see Lance any more—not even a glimpse.

  Alone in the MegaMall, silent and better than invisible, Lance is the ultimate insider. He alone knows the size and shape of the territory. Although he steers clear of forbidden places, Lance has been through every sector in the growing MegaMall.

  More important, Lance knows the night children. All of them.

  There are more gangs in the MegaMall than Tick can guess. Because the lives of the night children are lived in secret, they keep to themselves. The growing honeycomb of galleries and courtyards and plazas that makes up the MegaMall is so vast that at night the children can roam freely without ever crossing paths. Or they could until Burt came. From the day
the big lout and his posse blundered into the mall, Lance knew they meant trouble. A born bully, burly Burt was too lazy to find a new sector for his Dingos to colonize. He wanted to set up housekeeping where he landed, in the Romanesque Sector of the Mega-Mall, never mind who lived there, no matter what.

  Burt thought he could drive Tick and the Castertown Crazies out of the MegaMall, but he was wrong. It began with petty skirmishes—safe enough, until the mess over the girl. Woolly-headed Burt is a captive now. Worse. He stampeded Tick into that foolish, gallant rescue attempt. If Amos didn’t know about the night children, he knows now.

  Now they are all at risk.

  There is a flurry of activity in the Dark Hall. Something bad is about to come down.

  Lance has work to do.

  People to reach. Over the years, he has been in all the places the many tribes of night children have set up housekeeping. He’s slept in their hideouts and eaten in front of their underground fires. Only Lance knows for sure where in the mall night children are living; only Lance has visited them in far-flung sectors, listening to their troubles and bringing back whatever they need—tools for the builders, splints and bandages for the ones who get hurt and medicine for children who are sick. They all love Lance. When he gets up from their secret campfires and turns to go they try to follow him, but for their safety, he can’t allow it.

  He likes these children, but they can’t be friends. Lance keeps to himself for their own protection. This is why he chooses not to talk. Let slip any of the things he knows about this place and the people who control it, and kids will start exploring where they aren’t supposed to go. Lance knows better than anyone that there’s nothing more dangerous than a bunch of children running scared. There’s no telling what Amos will do to children careless enough to get caught. Lance spends his days and nights here preventing it.

  This is why Lance says nothing to anybody, but helps where he can. This is why, when he helps you, he disappears before you can say thanks. Sometimes you don’t even know he is leaving. You turn around and Lance is gone. In his time, he’s made several last-minute rescues, which he did for Jule. Tonight he came into the tunnel too late to save two: Doakie. Burt. Two more rescues to mastermind. For years he’s helped the night children stay under cover, off-camera, far from Security, out of sight.

  For years they’ve managed, but Lance is up against it now.

  This is what brings the Loner into the forbidden area he agreed never to enter. Oh, yes he has kept his side of the agreement. Until now. Tonight he overheard certain things. To win his freedom, Lance made many promises, but he never promised not to explore.

  How could Amos know that in his travels Lance discovered the hidden river that runs deep under the Mega-Mall, or that he built a boat and followed it to its source? That he found water rolling out of the earth in an underground cavern far below the Dark Hall? Who in Zozzco could guess what Lance has been doing, or how much he knows?

  The Zozzpeople think the river is their secret, but they’re wrong. They don’t know that the grotto under the Dark Hall is a giant echo chamber, either, or that from his hideout on the riverbank, Lance hears everything. They don’t think about the river at all, except to be sure that technicians keep emptying barrels of tranquilizers into the water that flows out of the MegaMall and on and on for miles, into downtown Castertown.

  They’ll never guess that unseen and unheard, Lance lingers for hours at the head of the hidden river, with his boat moored underneath the Dark Hall. How could they know that in the grotto, everything said in the Great Room above comes through loud and clear?

  He heard them scheming. They’re poisoning the town!

  This is what brings him into forbidden territory tonight. He entered the secret precincts with the master key: the extra protection he slipped into his pocket the day they set him free. He is inside the deserted Communications Center, sitting at the Universal Console. He is trying to figure out what to do.

  As agreed, he does not cause trouble, or he hasn’t.

  Now everything has changed. Tonight he heard Amos and his chief of Security pacing, arguing. Then Amos boomed in a voice that filled the Dark Hall and rocked the cavern below: “ROUND UP ALL CHILDREN. FIND THE LITTLE BRUTES!”

  Amos has ordered a Security sweep.

  Lance has to warn the night children.

  All of them.

  Only Lance knows how.

  The responsibility is tremendous.

  But he has the means.

  The trouble now is that all the parts of Lance’s life are in the middle of a personal war. There are the promises he made. There are his loyalties. Whether or not she likes you, your mother is your mother.

  There is as well the strange, sad loneliness that links him to the hideous old man, who can’t bear the fact that Lance looks like Amos, but handsome. Unscarred. The hint of that likeness underneath his grotesque lumps and disfiguring scabs.

  Lance the Loner has lived free for years. He is up against it now.

  Right now his loyalties are pulling him eight ways to Sunday but looking at Lance in his ski mask and his neat camo, you’d never know. He is very good at hiding what he feels. He learned from the best. His mother taught him every time she shook off his hand or pushed him away, beginning when he was very small. To keep his dignity, he had to pretend this didn’t hurt. He was an expert even before he put on the mask.

  What he is feeling right now is anxious and a little scared, but he keeps his head high and his shoulders squared. Inside, he is shaking. Can he do this? How? What will happen to his world if he does?

  So far in his life in the MegaMall, Lance has done as told. Agreed. After all, obedience is one of the conditions of his freedom, but the forces in the Dark Hall—his people—are planning something unspeakable, and this is Lance’s dirty secret. Like Isabella Zozz and the terrible Amos, he is responsible for everything they do. Tonight he heard them talking. Honor or no honor, loyalty or no loyalty, pledges or not, he can’t let it go on.

  It’s time to act.

  He will, of course, but what will become of everybody then?

  There are places Lance is not supposed to go under any circumstances, and this is one.

  There are also things Lance is pledged not to do.

  What Lance is doing now, for instance, is absolutely forbidden. It was agreed along with a lot of other things when the powerful Zozz family let him separate from them and walk free.

  This is Lance the Loner, considering.

  Do not ask Lance what he’s going to do. If he doesn’t know, he won’t tell you.

  If he knows, he will definitely not tell you. He won’t tell you anything.

  It all depends on how this next part comes down.

  Like Lance, you will have to wait.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THEY HAVE BEEN PADDLING upstream for what seems like forever. Then with a thud, Tick’s raft noses into a dock.

  All his breath rushes out. “We’re here.”

  Jule whispers, “What are we going to do?”

  For a long minute Tick plays his flashlight on the ceiling of the grotto here at the head of the hidden river, considering. The place is cavernous. The ceiling arches far above. Finally he answers, “Wait.”

  Jule is half-crazy with impatience. Standing, she hisses, “We can’t just sit here and wait!”

  He does what he has to; roughly, he pulls her down. “Yes we can. Until the others come.”

  She can’t hold still. “Do something!”

  “Not until we know what to do.”

  They are directly under the Dark Hall. The river comes rushing out of a cavernous hole in the earth. The current’s strong. With an effort, Tick has pulled his raft out of the mainstream and into a little backwater carved into the rock. It’s been a long, hard trip from the Hall of Beauty, with Tick’s little flotilla rowing against the current all the way.

  By the time they set out on this expedition, all his Crazies were assembled; there are others coming, but
he hasn’t told Jule.

  Together, the Crazies swarmed down the well in the Hall of Beauty, hard on Mag’s heels. They went through the hatch at the bottom and down the ladder to the banks of the hidden river, handing along the light equipment and lowering the rest on ropes. They were still coming long after Tick and Jule got on the first raft and pushed off from shore. On the riverbank far below the fountain in the Hall of Beauty, Jule saw kids she knows and kids she wishes she didn’t know launching their boats. They are still coming in.

  One by one, the other rafts emerge from the flow and nose in, nudging the dock like so many whales. Tick steps up, onto the dock. The others move to follow but he raises his hand like a school crossing guard. “There are more people coming,” he says. “Wait for the rest.”

  Grumbling, they settle back. Tick leaves redheaded Mag posted on the dock, squinting into the dimness like an angry troll. Behind her, the great river stretches. With Willie and James, she will guide the stragglers in to the dock, where they will wait for Tick’s signal. Until it comes, it is their job to stand watch.

  “OK,” he says, holding out a hand to Jule.

  Ignoring it, she scrambles onto the dock. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  She follows Tick onto the narrow bank. Bolted to the wall of the cavern beyond the dock is a ladder leading up. Tick sweeps it with his light. Overhead the ladder fits neatly into a chute cut out of solid rock, leading up into Zozzco’s secret places. At the bottom, Tick stands with one hand on the first rung.

  Jule is impatient; they have been still for much too long. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Tick shakes his head. “Not yet.”

  Behind them, boys and girls are still coming on rafts and in kayaks and aluminum canoes, gliding in without making a sound. Somebody gasps. It’s the Dingo tribe.

  Jule is outraged. “The Dingos!”

  “Quiet.”

  She is sputtering. “But we can’t let them . . .”

  Tick doesn’t respond. On the dock, Mag raises her arm. He raises his like a starter’s flag.