“Let’s go find a house to break into,” Sarai said.
Her suggestion met with instant approval. It had been a slow day, and they were bored.
“Maybe I can find some more Breyer horses,” said Mirri. Mirri scavenged horses and unicorns, ranging from cheap plastic models as small as the tip of her little finger, to bronze sculptures heavy enough to bring down a strong Cured. Sarai collected children’s books, which she would sometimes read aloud to Mirri. They were in the middle of Tuck Everlasting and Mirri was very doubtful about the way the plot was going.
“Eternal life is the right choice,” she told Sarai. “And I plan on living forever no matter what.”
Mirri and Sarai kept their collections by the side of their beds. Clare sometimes kept treats for Bear next to hers, but she had never seen much by Jem’s, except for an earring that at first she thought must have belonged to his mother, but that turned out to be hers. He had found it on the floor.
Today, it was Mirri’s turn to pick the house they were going to pillage. They walked into Fallon, and she chose one near the playground where they had all first met. Sarai heaved a rock through the windowpane.
“Maybe we’re letting them run a little too wild,” said Clare to Jem.
“Could be.”
The Cured-in-the-blue-dress watched all this from the edge of the playground.
“Have you noticed how close she’s getting to us?” said Jem.
“Yes. But Bear seems to think she’s all right.”
The house was empty of food. Bear sniffed around the kitchen and then lay down on the floor.
“I’m going to look at the garden,” said Mirri. “Maybe there’s fresh stuff.”
“Wrong time of year,” Jem said.
“Not for pumpkins. We could have pumpkin pie. My mother—” Mirri trailed off. She looked at each of them as if, for a moment, she didn’t know where she was. Then she went out the door.
“Jem!” Mirri came running back a second later, barging into Sarai, who almost fell. “You’re not going to believe this. I found a pig! There’s a real live pig digging around in the garden. It’s eating the squash.”
They all went to see and, sure enough, there it was, a huge pink thing rooting through the garden.
“Let’s catch it,” said Jem.
Mirri, Sarai and Clare stayed in the garden while Jem went into the house to look for a rope. Clare kept one hand firmly entwined in Bear’s fur. The dog was trembling with excitement, intent on the pig, and quietly and steadily drooling.
“I read somewhere,” said Sarai, “that you can eat every part of a pig. Except the squeal. That’s a joke, of course—about eating the squeal, I mean. Because of course you can’t eat a squeal. A squeal’s a sound.”
“I don’t want to try to eat a whole pig,” said Mirri. “Especially this pig. I want a pet pig.”
“What about bacon?” asked Sarai.
“I’d eat bacon,” admitted Mirri.
“It’s lucky I was raised Hindu,” said Sarai. “We eat pork, but not beef. I bet my parents would relax the rules, though. If they were here.”
“They wouldn’t begrudge you a steak—if we could come up with one,” said Clare.
“Well,” said Sarai dubiously. “A steak. I don’t know.”
“What about you, Clare?” asked Mirri. “What can’t you eat?”
“Supposedly no pork,” said Clare. “But we ate it anyway. And we ate an unfortunate dessert called kugel.”
“I eat anything,” said Mirri.
Jem returned with the rope.
“Here we go,” he said.
“I’m taking Bear inside,” said Clare. “He’s way too excited about the pig.”
Jem nodded. The others were already approaching the big pink sow. Clare saw Sarai slip in the muddy garden and almost go down.
Inside the house, for a reason she couldn’t articulate, Clare decided to go up the stairs. Bear was close by her side. At the top, there was a door on the right.
Clare opened the door. She saw a vase with a tangle of dead flowers in it. A gilded mirror. Part of a bed. She opened the door wider.
There was a dead little girl on the bed.
The girl carried no mark of Pest, but she was terribly wasted away, and her lips were cracked and parched. There was something odd about the shape of her legs under the covers. Clare lifted the sheets and saw that the girl was wearing leg braces. When she saw the crutches in a corner of the room, she realized that the girl had probably been left behind to die when everyone else was fleeing Pest. She may even have still been alive when Clare was in the Loskey cabin. Clare suddenly felt weak.
She heard footsteps on the stairs, and Jem entered the room.
“We’ve got the pig. Then we found Bear, but not you.”
She watched him take in the scene. She heard yet more footsteps, and then saw Sarai and Mirri standing behind Jem.
There was a flutter of blue outside the door, and then it was gone.
“Someone left her. Just left her,” Clare said. “And she didn’t have Pest. We could have saved her. We could have—”
Jem pulled a sheet over the girl’s face and put his arm around Clare.
“Let’s go home. Come on, Clare.”
“We could have done something.”
“No. We couldn’t have. We didn’t know.”
They went down the stairs, into the garden, and started herding the pig into the road.
“Do you like the pig?” Mirri asked Clare shyly. Clare was too shaken to answer her, but Sarai did.
“I like it,” said Sarai. “It trundles along like a big pink barrel, don’t you think, Clare?”
“We could call it ‘Barrel,’” said Mirri. “Or maybe ‘Wilbur.’”
When they got home, Sarai and Mirri went to pen up the pig while Jem took Clare into the bedroom.
“You need to lie down,” he said. “I don’t think you’re okay yet. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I just need to settle Mirri and Sarai and do something with that damn pig before your dog eats it.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t faint on me.”
“I’m not the fainting type.”
He closed the door behind him. And standing there behind the door, half hidden in the murky light, was the Cured-in-a-blue-dress.
Clare was terrified.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
The Cured-in-a-blue-dress seemed to be struggling. Her contorted face looked tortured as she worked her mouth.
“Watch Mirri,” she said.
Clare stared at her.
“I know Mirri gives you food,” Clare said. “I know you must care for her. We won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Promise.” A muscle in the woman’s forehead pulsed.
“I promise. Now please go away.” But the Cured-in-a-blue-dress crept closer to her. “Don’t hurt me,” said Clare. The woman with the ravaged face shook her head, but Clare, truly rattled, began to plead. “Please keep back. Please go away.”
“The bad man.” The woman’s voice was hoarse.
Somehow Clare knew immediately whom she was talking about. The Cured from the gold house.
“He’s dead,” said Clare.
The Cured-in-a-blue-dress reached over and put a hand on Clare’s shoulder. She spoke softly and clearly.
“I killed him.”
Then she slipped out of the room and was gone.
MASTER
THE MASTER FOUND it curious the things that children chose to travel with. They arrived at the mansion cold and starving—but among the cans of food and bits of blanket and clothing, they also had teddy bears and stuffed hippos and piglets and photographs of their parents and their brothers and sisters. They carried old newspaper clippings, and one of them had a ribbon from a horse show, and one of them had an old dog collar, and—this surprised the Master most of all—some of them carried their parents’ wedding rings.
It was just junk, designed to pull them b
ack into a world that was dead, that was no part of the living world he was building. So there were room checks. Children who had rid themselves of their personal effects received praise. The others—not.
The children came to him, but not as many as he had hoped. There weren’t many people left, he reminded himself, child or Cured. But the Master wanted more children. He needed more children. So he would sometimes leave the charges he did have in the hands of Britta and Doug (the oldest boy of the arrivals), and he would go out looking for survivors. He had confidence in Britta. There wasn’t much to Doug, but he listened to everything that Britta said, and that was good enough for the Master. Britta was sound to the core.
THE MASTER’S PACK was heavy as he moved through the woods. It was filled with blankets, medicine and bandages, as well as enticements: bottles of juice, candy bars, stuffed animals—both pink and blue—and jewelry: gold necklaces, brooches studded with winking emeralds and rubies. It had been easier to break into jewelry stores than to find good-looking jewelry at a WalMart. He also carried plastic trucks and Star Wars figurines and a Cinderella Barbie with blue, blue eyes.
He shifted the pack. It wasn’t easy to find children who had not yet grown into Pest, but it was of paramount importance. He would give them a life, and they—well, the right ones—would keep him cured. He knew that SitkaAZ13 hadn’t given up on him yet, but the blood of the right kind of little girl would keep him alive. He was sure of it. But there were things one just didn’t tell the children. Quite a number of things. Not until they were ready.
He was making an inventory of his supplies in his head when he heard the sound. He was caught off guard. Usually he was well aware of a child in his vicinity before he heard it. He could smell their youth, he really could, or maybe he could just smell a human smell—the same way he knew when an animal was near, and what kind. The sharp smell of fox; the benign scent of hay that belonged to deer; the diseased smell of the raccoon.
He moved closer until he could hear the low chant:
“We all fall down. We all fall down.”
The child just kept chanting, in a low and monotonous tone, “We all fall down. We all fall down.” The Master slipped off his pack and got down onto the leaf litter. The child was obviously young; he needed to see it.
He crept forward. If it were too young, or if it were on the verge of death, there was no point in taking it back with him. He crept forward. A low stone wall was between him and the child.
“We all fall down.”
He slowly raised his head above the wall.
It was a girl child, foul with dirt that now offended his nose, her long hair slick with grease, her body rail thin. She must have been about eight. She was singing to the plastic head of a doll. Next to her was a stained sleeping bag covered with a pattern of carousel horses. A couple of plastic bags lay on top of it.
A little further on, he saw a body. Even at that distance, he could tell SitkaAZ13 had taken it. The smell of the body was sweet and strong.
The chanting went on. “We all fall down.” She had her back to the body, and he didn’t have to wonder why. Decay had already set in, and the corpse was rotting quickly, in the way that SitkaAZ13 corpses did. He understood that she probably couldn’t bear to look at her companion, but he felt no empathy. He never did.
The Master picked up a pebble and threw it a short distance away from her.
She looked up
Cornflower blue eyes.
She was going to be very useful.
“Hey. Don’t be afraid,” he said.
At the sound of his voice she scrambled away, first towards the body, and then, as if surprised to find it dead, towards the woods.
He ran after her and caught her by the arms; she began to scream.
“I’m not a Cured,” he said. “I’m all right. I’m here to bring you someplace safe. I’m here to bring you home.”
She landed a good kick on his shin; he swore, but he held her tightly, and she began to settle down. He let her go, and she looked at him appraisingly.
“You’re a grownup,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t anyone come before? Why didn’t anyone come when Pest killed my parents and my brother?” A hank of hair had fallen into her face. He reached forward to pushed it back; she flinched, and then she let him touch her.
“It’s been a busy time,” he said.
“Yeah. I guess it has. Are you Child Services?”
“You could say that. You could say I’m all that’s left of it.”
She gestured towards the body. “Well, now we’re going to have to do something about Luthe.”
His full name had been Luther, she told the Master. They had only just met. She had seen that his face was flushed, but she hadn’t expected him to die.
“He was nice,” she said.
“Have some apple juice,” said the Master. “You’ll feel better.”
He shuffled through his pack until he found two little boxes of apple juice. He could tell she was dehydrated.
They drank juice together solemnly. He gave her a choice of the toys in his pack, and she picked out the Princess Leia Star Wars figurine.
“I haven’t had apple juice in forever,” she said. She quietly began to cry.
“I have more apple juice,” he said. “I have more everything at the mansion. There’re animals, too. Ducks and baby ducks. We just found a nanny goat—she’s very friendly; she’ll nibble at your clothes. And there are children there who’ll be happy to see you.”
“I haven’t seen any other children.”
“There aren’t many around.”
“Luthe saw one.”
“He did? How close? Where?”
“Near a cabin in the woods, not these woods, but far away. He saw a girl and a dog, but the dog was huge and black, and Luthe didn’t like it.”
“I don’t know your name,” said the Master.
“Eliza.”
“Let’s go, Eliza. Don’t worry about any girls with black dogs. You’ll be safe with me.”
As they left the clearing, the Master heard the sound of a crow. He could smell it, too. He thought of Luthe’s eyes. Crows always went for the soft parts first.
He began telling Eliza more about life at the mansion, and about Britta and Doug and the others. He kept her too busy to think about burying Luthe.
He took her hand.
“Time to go, my blue-eyed girl.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DARIAN
THEY HAD JUST finished breakfast, and the table was littered with the remains: three small boxes of cereal, two little white donuts, an empty bag of Cheetos, a bowl of oatmeal that Sarai had rejected. Jem surveyed the damage ruefully.
“I hope we don’t get scurvy,” he said.
“When we go to the next place,” said Mirri, “we can look for vitamins.”
They were almost completely packed and ready to go. There simply wasn’t enough food in Fallon left to support all four of them for the long term. The pig was coming with them on the hoof.
Jem took the last donut. “We’d better feed the pig.”
“It’s Mirri’s turn,” said Sarai.
“Go on, Mirri,” said Jem. “The stuff for the pig’s in the bucket next to the kitchen door.”
Mirri wrinkled her nose and hauled the bucket out the side door, slopping some of the leftovers on the floor.
“I’ll get that later,” she said. And then Mirri was gone for a long while.
“You think she’s all right?” asked Clare. “Maybe Bear and I should go and take a look.” But a moment later, Mirri walked back in the door.
“You took forever,” Sarai said.
“Don’t forget to wipe the floor,” Jem said automatically.
Mirri was silent, and Jem looked up at her. She looked afraid.
“What is it?” asked Jem.
“The pig got out.” Mirri started weeping big, wet little girl tears.
“What?” Jem was on
his feet.
“The pig got out and it’s all my fault.” She hiccupped. “I opened the gate too wide.”
“Honey,” said Clare. “Stuff like this happens. We’ll catch the pig.”
“Let’s go,” said Jem. “Bear should be able to follow its scent. Bear won’t kill the pig, will he, Clare?”
“No,” said Clare. Doubtfully.
“The boy who was hanging around the pig pen said he’d help us, too,” said Mirri. “So maybe it won’t take so long.”
“What boy?” asked Jem.
“The boy. The boy I found.”
“Explain,” Jem said.
“He was watching our pig.”
It took a while to get the details out of Mirri. “He was eating cookies,” she said, tearful again. “He offered me one, but I said ‘no’ because he was a stranger. Then I opened the gate, and the pig slipped out, right past both of us. The boy’s already chasing it.”
“All right,” said Jem. “But I’m going after the pig alone. And if you argue, Clare, I’m just going to have to pull rank.”
“You must be kidding,” Clare said. “You must absolutely positively be joking.”
“Someone needs to stay with the kids.”
“You are joking.”
“I’ll take Bear.”
“Bear won’t listen to you. Without me, Bear probably will eat the pig. Or you.”
Clare and Jem started the search at the pig pen. Bear knew the pig’s scent, but, from his excitement, Clare was pretty sure he had picked up the boy’s as well. Following both, they set off into the meadow. The Cured-in-a-blue-dress was by the barn, close enough that Clare could see her face, and, although it seemed an impossible emotion for a Cured, Clare thought she detected fear in those dark and shadowed eyes.
The boy and the pig had cut a wide swath through the long wheat-colored grass of the hay meadow. Clare felt the early morning dew soaking into her shoes and jeans as they ran. She could tell that Bear wanted to race ahead, but she kept him at close range. At the edge of the forest, they came to a place where the grass was flattened in a wide circle.
“It looks like deer spent the night here,” said Clare.
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