Astrid started to say something, but stopped herself. She took a couple of calming breaths. Then, in a more measured tone, she said, “Sam, I figured you had enough on your shoulders. I’m worried about you.”
He dropped his hands to his sides. His voice dropped as well. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” Astrid said. “You don’t sleep. You never have a minute to yourself. You act like everything that goes wrong is your fault. You’re worried.”
“Yeah, I’m worried,” he said. “Last night we had a kid who killed and ate a cat. The whole time he’s telling me about it he’s weeping. He’s sobbing. He used to have a cat himself. He likes cats. But he was so hungry, he grabbed it and . . .”
Sam had to stop. He bit his lip and tried to shake off the despair that swept over him. “Astrid, we’re losing. We’re losing. Everyone is . . .” He looked at her and felt tears threaten. “How long before we have kids doing worse than killing cats?”
When Astrid didn’t answer, Sam said, “Yeah, so I’m worried. You look around the plaza here. Two weeks from now? Two weeks from now it’s Darfur, or whatever, if we don’t figure something out. Three weeks from now? I don’t want to think about it.”
He started toward his office but plowed into two kids absorbed in yelling at each other. They were brothers, Alton and Dalton. It was clear they’d been fighting for a while.
Under normal circumstances it might not have been a big deal—fights were breaking out all the time—but both boys had submachine guns hanging from their shoulders. Sam lived in fear of one of Edilio’s soldiers doing something stupid with the guns they carried. Ten-, eleven-, twelve-year-old kids with guns weren’t exactly the U.S. Army.
“What now?” Sam snapped at them.
Dalton stabbed an accusing finger at his brother. “He stole my Junior Mints.”
The mere mention of Junior Mints made Sam’s stomach rumble.
“You had . . .” He had to stop himself from focusing on the candy. Candy! How had Dalton managed to hoard actual candy? “Deal with it,” Sam said and kept moving. Then he stopped. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you two supposed to be out at the power plant?”
Alton answered. “No, our shift was last night. We came back this morning in the van. And I did not steal his stupid Junior Mints. I didn’t even know he had Junior Mints.”
“Then who stole them?” his brother demanded hotly. “I ate two each shift. One at the beginning, one at the end. I ate one when I got there last night and I counted them all. I had seven left. And then this morning when I went to have another one, the box was empty.”
Sam said, “Did it ever occur to you it might be one of the other kids standing guard?”
“No,” Dalton said. “Heather B and Mike J were at the guardhouse. And Josh was asleep the whole time.”
“What do you mean Josh was asleep?” Sam said.
The brothers exchanged nearly identical guilty looks. Dalton shrugged. “Sometimes Josh sleeps. It’s no big deal—he’ll wake up if anything happens.”
“Doesn’t Josh watch the security cameras?”
“He says he can’t see anything. Nothing ever happens. It’s just like pictures of the road and the hills and the parking lot and all.”
“We stayed up. Mostly,” Alton said.
“Mostly. How much is ‘mostly’?” Sam got no answer. “Get going. Go ahead. And stop fighting. You weren’t supposed to be hoarding food, anyway, Dalton. Serves you right.” He wanted badly to ask where the kid had found candy, and ask if there was more, but that would have been the wrong message. Bad example.
Still, Sam thought, what if there was still candy? Somewhere? Somewhere in the FAYZ?
Edilio’s bus began to pull away. Ellen was onboard and Sam figured Edilio would stop off and grab a couple of his soldiers to help with the drafting of workers for the fields.
Sam could imagine the scenes that would be played out house by house. The whining. The complaining. The running away. Followed by a lazy, mostly wasted effort to pick fruit by kids who didn’t want to work in the hot sun for hours.
He thought briefly of E.Z. Of the worms. Albert was taking Orc to the cabbage field this morning, to test Howard’s suggestion that he would be invulnerable. Hopefully, that would work.
For a brief moment he worried that the worms might have spread. But even if they had, surely not to the melon field. It was a mile from the cabbages.
A mile was a long distance to cover if you were a worm.
“Beer me,” Orc bellowed.
Albert handed Howard a red and blue can of beer. A Budweiser. That’s what Albert had the most of, and Orc didn’t seem to have any particular brand loyalty.
Howard popped the tab and extended it out of the driver’s side window, reaching back. Orc snatched it as they drove down the pitted dirt road.
Orc sat in the bed of the pickup truck. He was too big to fit in anything smaller, too big to fit inside the truck’s cab. Howard was driving. Albert was in the front seat, squeezed in beside a large polystyrene cooler. The cooler had the logo of the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was full of beer.
“You know, we should have hung out more, back in the old days,” Howard said to Albert.
“You didn’t know I existed, back in the old days,” Albert said.
“What? Come on, man. There’s, like, a dozen brothers in the whole school and I didn’t notice one?”
“We’re the same shade, Howard. That doesn’t make us friends,” Albert said coolly.
Howard laughed. “Yeah, you were always a grind. Reading too much. Thinking too much. Not having much fun. Good little family boy, make your momma proud. Now look at you: you’re a big man in the FAYZ.”
Albert ignored that. He wasn’t interested in reminiscing. Not with Howard, for sure, not really with anyone. The old world was dead and gone. Albert was all about the future.
As if reading his mind, Howard said, “You’re always planning, aren’t you? You know it’s true. You are all business.”
“I’m just like everyone else: trying to figure out how to make it,” Albert said.
Howard didn’t respond directly. “The way I see it? It’s Sam, top dog. No question. Astrid and Edilio? They’re only something because they’re in Sam’s crew. But you, man, you are your own thing.”
“What thing is that?” Albert asked, keeping his tone neutral.
“You got two dozen kids working under you, man. You’re in charge of the food. Between you and me? I know you have a food stash somewhere.”
Albert did not so much as blink. “If I have a secret food stash, why am I so hungry?”
Howard laughed. “Because you are a smart little uptight dude, that’s why. I’m smart, too. In my own way.”
Albert said nothing. He knew where the conversation was going. He wasn’t going to help Howard lay it out.
“Both of us are smart. Both of us are brothers in a very white town. You with the food. Me with Orc.” He jerked a thumb back toward the monster. “Time may come you need some muscle to go along with all that planning and ambition of yours.”
Albert turned to face Howard, wanting to send the signal clearly, unambiguously. “Howard?”
“Yeah?”
“I am loyal to Sam.”
Howard threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, man, I’m just messing with you. We are all of us loyal to Sam. Sam, Sam the laser-shooting surfer man.”
They had reached the deadly cabbage field. Howard pulled over and turned off the engine.
“Beer me,” Orc yelled.
Albert dug in the cooler, hand plunged into ice water. He handed the can to Howard. “Last one till he does some work.”
Howard handed it back to Orc.
Orc yelled, “Open it, moron, you know I can’t pop the tab.”
Howard took the beer back and popped the tab. It made a sound just like a soda, but the smell was sour. “Sorry, Orc,” Howard said.
Orc took the beer in a fist the size of a bow
ling ball and drained it down his throat.
Orc’s fingers were too big to handle anything delicate. Each finger was the size of a kosher salami. Each joint was made of what looked, and felt, a lot like wet gravel. Gray stones that fitted loosely together
His entire body, except for a last few square inches of his sullen mouth and the left side of his face, and a little bit of his cheek and neck, were covered—or made of—the same slimy gray gravel. He had always been a big kid, but now he was a foot taller and several feet wider.
The tiny human portion of him seemed like the creepier part. Like someone had cut the flesh off a living person and glued it onto a stone statue.
“Another,” Orc growled.
“No,” Albert answered firmly. “First we see if you can really do this.”
Orc rolled himself over the side of the truck and stood up. Albert felt the entire truck rock back and forth. Orc came around to the door and stuck his hideous face in the window, forcing Albert to shrink back and to clutch the cooler.
“I can take the beer,” Orc said. “You can’t stop me.”
“Yes, you can take it,” Albert agreed. “But you made a promise to Sam.”
Orc digested that. He was slow and stupid, but not so stupid he didn’t understand the implied threat. Orc did not want to tangle with Sam.
“All right. I’ll see about them worms.” Orc belched and lurched toward the field. He was wearing what he usually wore, a pair of very rough-sewn canvas shorts. Albert assumed Howard had made them for his friend. There was no such thing as pants or shirts in Orc’s size.
Howard held his breath as Orc stomped into the field. So, for that matter, did Albert. Every hideous detail of the memory of E.Z.’s death was permanently imprinted on Albert’s brain.
The attack was immediate.
The worms seethed from the dirt, slithered with impossible speed toward Orc’s stone feet and threw themselves against his unnatural flesh.
Orc stopped. He gaped down at the creatures.
He turned with creaky slowness back toward Albert and Howard and said, “Kinda tickles.”
“Pick a cabbage,” Howard called out encouragingly.
Orc bent down and dug his stone fingers into the dirt and scooped up a cabbage. He looked at it for a minute, then tossed it toward the truck.
Albert opened the door of the truck and bent cautiously down toward the cabbage. He refused to step down. Not yet. Not until they were sure.
“Howard, I need a stick or something,” Albert said.
“What for?”
“I want to poke that cabbage, make sure there’s no worm in it.”
In the field the worms continued their assault on the creature whose rock flesh broke their teeth. Orc scooped up three more cabbages. Then he came stomping back.
The worms did not follow. At the edge of the field they slithered off Orc and retreated into the ground.
“Beer me,” Orc demanded.
Albert did.
He wondered how Sam was doing with lining up kids to work in the field. “Not very well, I’d guess,” he muttered to himself.
The answer to the problem of food was so simple, really: farms needed farmers. Then the farmers needed motivation. They needed to get paid. Like anyone. People didn’t do things just because it was right: people did things for money, for profit. But Sam and Astrid were too foolish to see it.
No, not foolish, Albert told himself. Sam was the main reason they weren’t all under Caine’s control. Sam was great. And Astrid was probably the smartest person in the FAYZ.
But Albert was smart, too, about some things. And he had gone to the trouble of educating himself, sitting in the dusty, dark town library reading books that made his eyelids droop.
“My boy’s going to need another beer pretty soon,” Howard said, yawning behind his hand.
“Your boy gets a beer for every one hundred cabbages he picks,” Albert said.
Howard gave him a dirty look. “Man, you act like you paid for those cans with your own money.”
“Nope,” Albert said. “They are community property. For now. But the rate is still one per hundred.”
For the next two hours Orc picked cabbages. And drank beer. Howard played some game on a handheld. Albert thought.
Howard was right about that: Albert had thought a lot since the day he walked into the abandoned McDonald’s and began grilling hamburgers. He had a lot of standing in the community because of that. And the Thanksgiving feast he’d organized, and pulled off without a hitch, had made him a minor hero. He wasn’t Sam, of course; there was only one Sam. He wasn’t even Edilio or Brianna or anything like the big heroes of that terrible battle between Caine’s people and the Perdido Beach kids.
But at that moment Albert wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was thinking about toilet paper and batteries.
Then Orc screamed.
Howard sat up. He jumped from the car.
Albert froze.
Orc was shrieking, slapping at his face, at the still-human part of his face.
Howard ran toward him.
“Howard, no!” Albert yelled.
“They got him, they got him,” Howard cried, anguished.
Orc was struggling, staggering, then running toward the truck, his great stone feet pounding six-inch-deep impressions into the dirt.
One of the worms was on his face.
In his face.
He tripped at the edge of the field and fell hard onto neutral territory.
“Help me. Howard, man, help me!” Orc cried.
Albert broke his trance and ran. Up close he could see the worm, just one, but its black snake’s head was buried in pink flesh, boring through Orc’s cheek.
Up close Albert could see the blur of the tiny paddle feet driving the worm into strained flesh.
Orc had the tail of the thing in his fist and was pulling hard. But the worm wasn’t letting go. Orc was pulling so hard, it seemed he might pull the last of his living flesh away from the rock skin surrounding it.
Howard grabbed on, too, and he was pulling. Weeping and cursing and pulling, despite the danger to himself if the worm should release its grip on Orc and turn against Howard.
“Bite it!” Albert shouted.
“My tongue!” Orc wailed, his speech garbled as the worm slid another inch through his cheek.
“Bite it, Orc,” Albert yelled. Then he knelt, and with all his might delivered an uppercut under Orc’s chin.
It was like punching a brick wall.
Albert yelled and fell back on his behind in the dirt. He was sure his hand was broken.
Orc had stopped screaming. He opened his mouth and spit out the worm’s head, along with a gob of blood and saliva.
The rest of the worm came free. Orc smashed it onto the ground.
There was a one-inch hole in Orc’s face.
Blood spread down his neck and disappeared like rain on parched soil as it hit the rock flesh.
“You hit me,” Orc said dully, staring at Albert.
“Brother saved your life, Orc,” Howard said. “The brother just saved your life.”
“I think I broke my hand,” Albert said.
“Beer me,” Orc said.
Howard raced to comply.
Orc tilted his head back and squeezed the can until the tab burst. Yellow liquid shot from the can and gushed into his mouth.
At least half of it ran, foaming pink, from the bloody hole in his cheek.
TEN
81 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
“SHE WAS IN my dreams, in my head. I saw her,” Drake said.
“You’ve lost what little mind you had left,” Diana said.
They were in the dining hall. No one was dining. Meals at Coates amounted to a few cans put out for kids to fight over. There were kids who had eaten boiled grass to ease the hunger pangs.
In the echoing, abandoned, damaged dining hall it was Caine, Drake, Bug, Diana, and the girl who said her name was Orsay.
The girl w
as maybe twelve, Diana figured.
Diana had noticed a look in the girl’s eyes. Fear, of course, she’d been hauled in by Drake once Bug got back from the power plant. But that wasn’t all of it: the girl, Orsay, looked at Diana like she recognized her.
It was not a good look. Her expression made the hairs on the back of Diana’s neck tingle.
“I never saw her before in my life, but I saw her in this dream I was having.” Drake glared hatred at the girl. “Then I woke up and found her skulking around, hiding.”
It was an unusual feeling for Diana, being in a room with Drake where she was not the main object of his hatred.
Caine said, “Okay, Drake, we get it. Back before all this started I’d have said you were nuts. Now?” He waved a languid hand at Diana. “Diana, read her. Let’s see.”
Diana went and stood beside the girl, who looked up at her with frightened, protruding eyes.
“Don’t be scared. Of me,” Diana said. “I just need to hold your hand.”
“What’s happened? Why won’t anybody tell me anything? Where are all the adults? Where are your teachers?” Orsay had a voice with a built-in tremble to it, like she’d always been nervous and always would be.
“We call it the FAYZ. Fallout Alley Youth Zone,” Diana said. “You know about the accident at the power plant back in the day, right? Fallout Alley?”
“Hey, Caine told you to read her, not give her a history lesson,” Drake snapped.
Diana wanted to argue, but Orsay’s expression, her look of terror mixed with pity for Diana, was weirding her out. It was as if Orsay knew something about Diana, like she was a doctor with a fatal diagnosis she hadn’t quite nerved herself up to deliver yet. Diana took Orsay’s hand.
As soon as she took Orsay’s hand she knew her power level. The question was whether she should tell Caine the truth. In Caine’s universe there were only two possible categories of mutants: those who were unquestioningly loyal to Caine, and those who needed to be disposed of.
At least Orsay wasn’t a four bar. If she had been, there was little doubt in Diana’s mind that Caine would have turned her over to Drake.
“Quit stalling,” Drake growled.
Diana released the girl’s hand. She ignored Drake and spoke to Caine. “She’s a three bar.”
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