Neither the man nor his friends responded, so Newt set off for the outskirts of the Palace again, feeling their eyes on his back as he walked. We’ll always be right around the bend, the stranger known as Jonesy had said.
Maybe that was the best news yet for Newt since arriving at the Crank Palace.
Or maybe it was the worst. One of those two, for certain.
He walked a little faster.
Chapter Ten
No one else bothered him or talked to him as he made his way back to the pathetic little cabin in which they’d slept the night before. He barely saw anyone at all, even in the peripherals. When he swung by the shack of Terry and Maria, they were sitting in ragged chairs just outside the front door. Maria had been bandaged on her arms and legs with something that looked like a bedsheet torn into strips. Terry gave Newt a half-hearted wave but then stared at the ground; Maria had her eyes closed. The message was clear: you’re not invited.
When Newt finally reached his own little hut, he saw Dante—composed, quiet, playing with a rock—sitting by himself on the grass-patchy dirt, the door closed behind him. A terrifying thrill of panic leaped in Newt’s nerves, knowing for certain that Keisha would never leave the kid alone like this. Newt sprinted for the door, ripped it open, saw with a sinking heart that it was empty. Even his backpack was gone. His journal. His Launcher. Keisha’s things. All of it. Gone.
He lost his balance, felt like he might faint. Leaning against the edge of the doorframe, he forced himself to breathe. Where in the hell had she gone? No, idiot, he told himself. Someone took her, took your things. He sucked in a lungful of air, then turned to Dante. Although he’d never heard the boy speak, he asked him the question anyway.
“Dante, do you know where your mum is? Your mom? Where’d she go?”
No answer, but the kid looked up at him with the saddest look of hope in his eyes. Probably just hearing the word mom had stirred something on the inside. Newt tried to shake some reason into his head, felt like the world was literally splitting apart around him, an earthquake, the big one, shaking the whole planet just to make things perfectly apocalyptic.
He made a quick run around the hut to see if she lingered somewhere close. Maybe she’d found a better home for them. Or was looking for one.
No, idiot, he chided himself again. He’d never once seen her—even though it had been only a day or so—never seen her let the boy out of her sight. He walked back to Dante, picked him up, hefted him in his arms until it felt comfortable.
“Don’t worry, mate,” he said. “We’re gonna find your mom.”
He allowed himself five seconds to consider in which direction he should go. Toward the Central Zone? Toward the gate that exited the Crank Palace? The latter, he thought. If for no other reason than it was closer and it’d be a good place to start canvassing his way back through the rings of huts and hovels and tents.
“Come on, kid. Let’s go.”
* * *
The anxiety cinching up his insides with each and every step proved to be almost unbearable. The maddening uncertainty of it was enough to make his heart strain for every single beat. He had to know where she was, what had happened, an outcome, any outcome. He almost dropped Dante with the anguish that consumed him. What in the bloody hell was he going to do if he didn’t find her?
But then, there she was.
It was a sight that did a strange thing. In the same moment, he felt an overwhelming relief even while his hopes for the future sunk to the depths of the Earth.
Keisha was fine, at least physically. Keisha was alone.
She walked along, her back to him, slowly and with a lurch in each step, about 200 yards or so from the gate in the huge wooden wall. She had Newt’s backpack strapped to her shoulders, her own pack slung in the crook of her left elbow, and with her right hand she dragged along a canvas bag full of what, he didn’t know. It had been easy to catch up with her because she moved at a snail’s pace, taking a strange little pause to pull on the canvas bag between every two steps, as if the stuff in there weighed more than she did.
“Keisha!” he yelled. She either didn’t hear him or pretended not to. He quickened his gait to a run. “Keisha! Stop!” She didn’t.
Newt caught up with her, went past her, until he was directly in her path and stood there, facing back, feet planted, holding Dante in front of him like an omen to shame her for the outrageous decision she’d made to leave. She saw them and stopped, although the expression on her face didn’t change—she looked exhausted and weary, void of emotion, sweat soaking her hair and skin.
“Keisha,” Newt said, trying to dampen the sudden anger he felt. “What on Earth?”
She dropped the end of the canvas sack she’d been dragging. Then she let the pack hitched in her elbow slide down her forearm and into the dirt with a puff of dust. Finally, with an air of defeat, she slipped Newt’s backpack off each shoulder and let it slump to the ground. Newt heard the clank of his Launcher, and had the intense hope that his journal was safely inside. She stood there, hunched over a bit, catching her breath.
“I knew he’d be safe with you,” she whispered.
The look that then came to her face melted away Newt’s anger. A purity of sadness. Her eyes, her mouth, her ears, her cheeks, they all dropped toward the ground, as if they’d just remembered the law of gravity.
“What’s going on?” Newt asked. “Where are you going? How could you leave Dante?”
The boy was squirming and Newt finally let him down. He ran to his mom, who overcame her madness long enough to drop to her knees and embrace her only living child in this world. She hugged him fiercely and he hugged her back. Tears poured from her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” She said it over and over.
Newt didn’t know what else to do but sit on the ground, himself. How was he supposed to approach this incomprehensible situation? What was he supposed to say? Nothing came to mind so he stayed silent, watched the reunion that never should’ve happened. She’d left her kid. Could her mind really have slipped so much, so quickly?
A minute or two passed. Nothing changed. Keisha finally broke the silence, with a sentence so unexpected and void of context that she had to say it twice.
“I have a cell phone.”
“Huh?”
“I have a cell phone.”
Chapter Eleven
Newt had never had a cell phone. Like many things in his weird, swiped mind, he knew what it was, of course, that it had been extremely common in the world before the apocalypse. But it had become almost a thing of the past, something forcefully replaced by physical landline or radio communications in a broken world.
Keisha seemed to think her answer sufficient to explain why she’d left her kid behind, stolen Newt’s things, and headed for the exit.
“Okay,” Newt said, leaning forward on his elbows, their bony tips pressed into his folded legs beneath him. “You have a cell phone. So... what? Does that mean you work for WICKED? You’re some kind of evil agent for some evil doctor that’s come to study me? One of the infamous Gladers? Is that it?”
The questions were enough to snap Keisha back to reality a little. “Huh? What in the world are you talking about?”
“Why do you have a cell phone?” Newt asked with swelling impatience.
Keisha shrugged. “My husband stole it. A month or so before he... Nevermind. I swore I’d never tell you that story, didn’t I?”
“Not really. You just made me promise never to ask about it. I haven’t.”
“Right.” She looked at him for a long time. Dante did as well, something like a smirk on his face, which made Newt feel the slightest bit better. “Anyway, the point is that I have a cell phone.”
Newt threw his hands up in frustration. “Why is that the point, Keisha?”
“Because it works. I only turn it on once a day to save the battery, then turn it right back off again. Times have been few and far between when I’ve been able
to charge the damn thing.”
Newt had something build in his chest, a physical lump of awareness, making it hard to get a full breath. “Someone called you? Sent you a message?”
Keisha nodded with overt exaggeration. “Yes, someone did, Newt. Someone most certainly did.”
When she didn’t add anything to that, he threw his hands up again. “Who?”
Keisha sighed, bent down to kiss Dante on the head. When she looked back up at Newt, it seemed to him like she was trying to make an important decision in her mind. He tried to remember that the mind in which she was working so hard might not be firing on all cylinders, something his dad used to—
Something his dad used to say. Images began flashing through Newt’s mind, blurry glimpses of people. His dad, his mum, his... sister. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head violently. He couldn’t do this right now. He didn’t even know if they were sane thoughts. He didn’t want to go mad, yet.
“You okay?” Keisha asked. It could almost be funny—now she was worried about him. Crazy worrying about crazy.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah.”
“You need to take care of Dante for me.”
Newt glared. “Take care of him? I’d ask if you’d gone insane but I already know the answer.”
“I knew you wouldn’t agree to it if I just asked like this. That’s why I fed him and left him, knowing you’d be back soon. If not you, then Terry and Maria. I also scrounged up a lot of food and left a bag of it buried right behind the cabin. You probably didn’t see my note to you. That’s plain as day.”
“Nope,” Newt replied, his voice listless. “Not nary a note to be seen.” He nodded at the canvas bag she’d been dragging. “Is that food, too?”
Keisha nodded.
“Can you please just tell me what’s going on? I can’t see any explanation of you leaving him behind that could possibly make sense. Not to mention why you’d steal my stuff.”
Keisha stared at him, chewing on that for a few seconds. “Fair enough. Let’s go over to those trees so that we don’t have nosy Munies with Launchers come by asking questions dumber than yours.”
Newt agreed, helping her carry all the stuff to a shady spot mostly hidden from the path.
“If you think my questions are dumb,” he said, throwing all the snark he could into the words, “then that proves you’ve lost it. You left your own kid, Keisha. I think I have a right to ask you any stupid question I want.”
“I know, I was just kidding. Really. I can’t help being a smart-ass, even when the world’s gone to pot. I’m sorry.”
Newt set their things against a thick tree then plopped to the ground, leaning against the clunky backpacks. Keisha sat nearby, Dante in her lap. The day was warm and bright, offset by a breeze that cooled any sweat popping through Newt’s skin.
“I left you some clothes and your journal,” Keisha said. “It’s all in the bag that I buried.”
Newt shook his head. “That’s great, but it doesn’t quite make up for leaving Dante behind. It makes it worse, actually! Shows that you were thinking straight enough to worry about me. But not Dante? I mean... I don’t even know what to say.”
“Fine, I get it Newt. I’m horrible. Can I tell you my story, now?”
“Yes, Keisha. Please tell me your story. I’m all ears.”
She eyed him at that but let it go—she hardly had room to complain at his sarcasm.
“Listen. I came up here with Dante earlier today. They told me I couldn’t leave, obviously. I begged and begged. They said no, and quite honestly seemed to have a good time doing it. They kept making the point that if their bosses found out a child was freed from here, every last one of ’em would be fired and probably thrown in jail. Kids are the future and all that crap. Pure BS. I was pretty distraught by this point, Newt. Pretty desperate. I asked if they’d let me go if I left the kid behind and promised to come back. Collateral, I guess.”
“Collateral.”
She nodded. “But they said I’d have to... earn it. Do them a favor or pay them money, something. That’s why I went around like a damned burglar and stole as much food as I could find from every hole of a home I had time to sneak into. And brought as many of our belongings I thought we could do without. I left you your knife and your journal, some clothes, but hopefully I can buy my way out with the rest of this crap, the food, the Launcher, whatever.” She gestured at the backpacks and canvas bag that lay piled behind Newt’s back.
He didn’t like the implications behind some of Keisha’s words but also knew it wasn’t his place to interfere. But leaving Dante with him without even asking... He decided to leave that for now.
“Okay, I get all that,” he said. “But why, Keisha. What’s going on? Where exactly are you trying to go?”
“It’s a sad story, Newt. It’s the saddest story I can imagine. I sure wouldn’t be able to make up such a thing. You sure you wanna hear it?”
A few seconds earlier, Newt had been insisting on it. Now he wasn’t so certain. But he had no choice. “Maybe just give me the short version.”
She snorted a laugh. “The short version, huh? Okay, that’s a deal. Here it is—my bastard of a husband killed almost every person I’ve ever loved in my entire sorry life. How’s that for short and sweet?”
Newt couldn’t look her in the eyes. Why didn’t she just leave Dante with someone else or throw him over the wall? Something. Anything. He didn’t think he had the capacity to take on this story. He didn’t want to know another thing. If it wasn’t for Dante, the ultimate wild card in this ridiculous game, he’d have stood up and walked away, wanting no part of yet another person’s pain.
He forced himself to speak. “So isn’t that even more reason not to leave Dante? No matter what?”
“My daughter is alive, Newt. Do you hear me? She’s with my brother, and up until a few hours ago I thought they’d both been dead for weeks. I don’t even like saying it out loud, just in case the universe is as whacked as I think it is and somehow I’m jinxing the whole thing, devil laughing his ass off, God himself giggling up above. Lord have mercy, amen, hallelujah.”
“Keisha?”
She looked at him, tears brimming her eyes. “What.”
“You’re saying some weird stuff. How’s your mind?”
“My mind is a big pile of crap, Newt. But I have to get out of this place and go get my daughter. There are no other options under the heavens. Hear me? None. It should only take a day, probably less. Even if Dante was all by himself, he could survive that. It’s worth the risk so that I can bring my daughter back here and we can... live out our days.”
He didn’t understand—much less agree—with her plan. He didn’t fully believe she was of sound mind, talking sense. And no matter what lay behind this giant story, which had only been cracked, he could not bring himself to support the idea that it had been okay to leave Dante behind. But hadn’t Newt’s life been a long series of impossible choices? Yes, it had.
“So you’re hoping to buy your way out,” he said, “go find your brother, who has your daughter, then bring her back here? You think she’ll have a better life here than with your brother?”
It was the wrong thing to say. The pain that came over her face almost physically hurt him. How could he expect her to be rational in an irrational world, especially one in which she had the bloody Flare and was going crazy, day by day. Maybe hour by hour.
“I’m glad things are so straight-forward for you,” she said, the bitterness hard. “But I’ll make my own decisions when it comes to my children, thank you very much. Now, will you take care of Dante until I get back or not? If not, please take him to Terry and Maria. I’m leaving.”
She stood up, holding her son uncertainly. For all her brave words, she obviously didn’t know quite how to hand the kid over and abandon him again. Newt hoped he didn’t regret his next words, his mind having run a series of thoughts faster then he would’ve guessed possible based on the last few days.
She raised her eyebrows, no doubt not in the mood for his harebrained ideas. “Her name is Jackie and she’s 10 years old. Now what’s going on?”
“Please,” he said. “Just sit down and give me one minute. Maybe two. Then if you still wanna go, I swear on my life I’ll watch the little guy until you make it back.”
It took her a few seconds, maybe holding onto some pride, but she finally did as he asked.
“Okay. A minute and a half, then. Go.” She smiled with fake, exaggerated politeness.
He spoke as fast as his mind could keep up. “I know this story of yours is a thousand times worse than it even sounds, and it sounds horrible. And I’m sorry. Truly. And I have no right to tell you your business, especially when it comes to your kids. But... it’d be so much better if you could reunite and live with your brother and Jackie out there instead of in here. And I need something to live for, especially after seeing the bloody Central Zone—don’t ask, I’ll tell you later. We all need this. I think I can get us some help, figure things out, and bust our way out of here. A whole group of us. Then we’ll get you and Dante back with your family, and take it from there. But getting you to your daughter will be our number one priority. I know it seems like I haven’t had time to think this through, but I want to do this. For you. For Dante. For me. For Jackie.”
He paused, not sure he’d taken a single breath while rattling all of that out. “I just need a little time to make a plan. What do you think?” He wasn’t entirely sure his stream of consciousness had made a lick of sense.
Keisha didn’t answer right away. She smoothed a hand over Dante’s head, a distant look in her eyes as she considered what Newt had offered. He was, of course, thinking of the man with greasy hair outside the entrance to the Central Zone. Jonesy. He’d almost seemed fanatical in wanting to protect him. Newt planned to take him up on it. He waited for Keisha to respond. She finally did.
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