Mary Terrafino was there with a girl who looked like she was maybe four.
“Hi, Mary,” Dahra said. “What do we have here?”
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” Mary said. “I know how busy you are. But she has some kind of pain in her stomach.”
The two girls hugged. They hadn’t known each other well before the FAYZ, but now they were like sisters.
Dahra knelt down to eye level with the little girl. “Hi, honey. What’s your name?”
“Ashley.”
“Okay, Ashley, let’s get your temperature and see what’s going on. Can you come over and sit on the table?”
Dahra slid the electronic thermometer into a fresh plastic cover and popped the thermometer into the little girl’s mouth.
“You have the moves down,” Mary said, and smiled.
Cookie bellowed suddenly, so loudly and so obscenely that Ashley almost swallowed the thermometer.
“I’m running out of pain pills,” Dahra said. “I don’t know what to do. We’ve emptied out the doctor’s office and sometimes we get some meds that people have found when they’re doing house searches. But he’s in so much pain.”
“Is it getting any better? His shoulder, I mean?”
“No,” Dahra said. “It’s not going to get better. All I can do is keep it clean.” She examined the thermometer. “Ninety-eight point nine. That’s well within the normal range. Lie back and let me check something. I’m going to push on your tummy. It might tickle a little.”
“Are you going to give me a shot?” the little girl asked.
“No, honey. I just want to push on your tummy.” Dahra pressed down with her fingertips, pressed the girl’s belly pretty far down and then released suddenly. “Did that hurt?”
“It tickled.”
“What are you checking for?” Mary asked.
“Appendicitis.” Dahra shrugged. “It’s about all I know, Mary. When I look up ‘stomach pain,’ I get everything from constipation to stomach cancer. Probably she needs to poop.” To the little girl she said, “Have you pooped today?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ll sit her on the toilet,” Mary said.
“Make her drink some water. You know, like a couple of cups.”
Mary squeezed her hand. “I know you’re not a doctor, but it’s good to have you.”
Dahra sighed. “I’m trying to read that book. But mostly all it does is scare me. I mean, there are a million diseases I’ve never even heard of and I don’t want to even think about.”
“Yeah. I can imagine.”
Mary was stalling. Dahra asked her if there was something else.
“Listen, um, I know this is weird and all,” Mary said, lowering her voice to a confidential level. “But anything I tell you…”
“I don’t talk to anyone about what goes on here,” Dahra said a little stiffly.
“I know. Sorry. It’s not…I mean, it’s something embarrassing.”
“Mary. I am so past embarrassing. I am way into humiliating and disgusting now, so nothing you tell me is going to bother me.”
Mary nodded. She twisted her fingers together and said in a rush, “Look, I take Prozac.”
“What for?”
“Just some, you know, some issues. The thing is, I ran out. I know it’s not as important as a lot of what you’re doing.” She glanced at Cookie. “It’s just, when I don’t have the pills, I get…” She sucked in sharply and let go of a sigh that was almost a sob.
“No problem,” Dahra said. She wanted to push for further information, but instinct told her to drop it. “Let me see what I have. Do you know what strength of pill you take?”
“Forty milligrams, once a day.”
“I have to pee,” Cookie moaned pitiably.
Dahra went to the cupboard where she kept the medications. Some were in large white pharmacy bottles, some in smaller brown twist-top bottles. And she had some sample packs taken from the doctor’s office.
Elwood woke up with a snort. “Oh. Man. I fell asleep.”
“Hi, Elwood,” Mary said.
“Uh-huh,” Elwood said, and rested his head on his hand and fell back to sleep.
“He’s nice to stay with you,” Mary said.
“He’s useless,” Dahra said sharply. But then she relented. “But at least he’s here. I guess I can give you some twenty-milligram pills and let you take two.” She tapped the capsules into her palm. “Here’s enough for a week. Sorry, I don’t have a bottle or anything.”
Mary took the pills gratefully.
“You’re a good person, Dahra. When this is all over someday, you know, when we grow up, you can become a doctor.”
Dahra laughed bitterly. “After this, Mary, that’s the last thing I’d want to be.”
The doors of the hospital pushed in suddenly. Both girls turned sharply to see Bouncing Bette. She staggered in with her right hand pressed against her head. “My head hurts,” Bette said. She was barely comprehensible. She spoke with noticeable slurring. Her left arm seemed to be lifeless, hanging limp by her side. Her left leg trailed as she took several steps closer.
Dahra ran to catch her as Bette collapsed.
“Elwood, wake up,” Dahra yelled.
Dahra, Elwood, and Mary half dragged, half carried Bette to the bed where Ashley had been examined.
“I have to poop now,” Ashley said.
“Oh, God, I need some more pills!” Cookie howled.
“Shut up!” Dahra shouted. She put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. “Everyone shut up.”
Bette was on the table now, whispering, “I’m sorry.” It came out, “Mm shrree.”
“I didn’t mean you, Bette,” Dahra apologized. “Just lie back.” Dahra looked at her face and said to Elwood, “Get the book.”
She propped the Physicians’ Desk Reference open on Bette’s stomach and began thumbing quickly through the index.
“Mm het hur,” Bette said. She raised her good arm to touch the bloody lump on the side of her head.
“Did someone hit you, Bette?” Elwood asked.
Bette seemed confused by the question. She frowned as if the question made no sense. She moaned in pain.
“One side of her body isn’t working right,” Dahra said. “Look at the way her mouth is drooping. And her eyes. They don’t match.”
“Mmm het hur bad,” Bette moaned.
“I think she’s saying her head hurts,” Mary said. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know, how about if I just cut open her head and see if I can fix it?” Dahra was shrill. “Then I’ll just do some quick surgery on Cookie. No problem. I mean, I have this stupid book.” She snatched the book up and threw it across the room. It skidded across the polished linoleum floor.
Dahra tried taking several deep breaths. The little girl, Ashley, was crying. Mary was looking at Dahra like she had lost her mind. Cookie was alternating between crying for pills and crying that he needed to pee.
“Ta care mm buh er,” Bette said. She grabbed Mary’s arm. “Mmm il buh.”
Bette’s face contorted in pain. And then her features relaxed.
“Bette,” Dahra said.
“Bette. Uh-uh, don’t do this, Bette.”
“Bette,” Dahra whispered.
She placed two fingers against Bette’s throat.
“What did she say?” Elwood asked.
Mary answered. “I think she was asking us to take care of her brother.”
Dahra lifted her fingers from Bette’s neck. She stroked the girl’s face once, a lingering good-bye.
“Is she…” Mary couldn’t finish the question.
“Yes,” Dahra whispered. “There was probably bleeding inside her head, not just outside. Whoever hit her in the head killed her. Elwood, go find Edilio at the firehouse. Tell him we have to bury Bette.”
“She’s with God now,” Mary said.
“I’m not sure there is a God in the FAYZ,” Dahra said.
Th
ey buried Bette next to the firestarter in the plaza at one o’clock in the morning. There was no place to keep dead bodies, and no way to prepare the bodies for the grave.
Edilio dug the hole with his backhoe. The sound of it, the straining of the engine, the sudden jerks of the shovel, seemed horribly loud and horribly out of place.
Sam was there, along with Astrid and Little Pete; Mary; Albert, who came over from the McDonald’s; Elwood, standing in for Dahra, who had to stay with Cookie; and the twins Anna and Emma. Bette’s little brother was there too, nine years old, sobbing with Mary’s arm around him. Quinn opted not to attend.
Sam and Edilio had carried Bette’s body the few dozen feet from the church basement to the plaza.
They couldn’t figure out a gentle or dignified way to lower Bette into the hole, so in the end they just rolled her in. She made a sound like a dropped backpack.
“We should say something,” Anna suggested. “Maybe things we remember about Bette.”
So they did, telling what few stories they could remember. None of them had been close friends of hers.
Astrid began the Lord’s Prayer. “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Little Pete said it along with her. More words than anyone had ever heard him speak. The others, all but Sam, joined in.
Then they each shoveled a spadeful of dirt over her and stood back while Edilio used the backhoe to finish the job.
“I’ll make her a cross tomorrow,” Edilio said when he was finished.
As the ceremony was breaking up, Orc and Howard appeared, ghosts in the mist, watching. No one spoke to them. They left after a few minutes.
“I shouldn’t have let her go home,” Sam said to Astrid.
“You’re not a doctor. There was no way you could know she had internal bleeding. And, anyway, what could you have done? The question is, what are we going to do now?”
“What do you want to do?” Sam asked.
“Orc murdered Bette,” Astrid said flatly. “Maybe he didn’t mean to, but it’s still murder.”
“Yes. He killed her. So what do you want to do?”
“At least we can demand that something be done to Orc.”
“Demand of who?” Sam said. He zipped his jacket. It was chilly. “You want to go demand justice from Caine?”
“Rhetorical question,” Astrid commented.
“Does that mean it’s a question I don’t expect you to be able to answer?”
Astrid nodded. Neither of them had anything to say for a while. Mary and the twins, with Bette’s little brother in tow, headed back to the day care.
Elwood said, speaking to no one in particular, “I don’t know if Dahra can keep this up much longer.” Then he squared his shoulders and marched back toward the hospital.
Edilio came and stood with Sam and Astrid. “This can’t just be something that happened,” he said. “You hear me? We let this go, where does it stop? People can’t be beating each other up so bad, they die.”
“You have a suggestion?” Sam asked coldly.
“Me? I’m the wetback, remember? I’m not from around here, I don’t even know these people. I’m not the big genius, and I’m not the one with this power thing, man.” He kicked at the dirt, hard, like it was someone he wanted to hurt. He seemed like he might say more, but he bit his lip, spun, and strode away.
Sam said, “Caine has Drake and Orc, Panda and Chaz, and I hear Mallet has made peace with him. And maybe a half dozen other guys.”
“Are you afraid of them?” Astrid asked him.
“Yeah, Astrid, I am.”
“Okay,” she said. “But you were scared of going into a burning building, too.”
“You don’t get this, do you?” Sam demanded with enough heat that Astrid took a step back. “I know what you want, okay? I know what you and a bunch of other people want. You want me to be the anti-Caine. You don’t like the way he’s doing things and you want me to go kick him out. Well, here’s what you don’t know: even if I could do all that, I wouldn’t be any better than him.”
“You’re wrong about that, Sam. You’re—”
“That night when I first used the power? When I hurt my stepfather? How do you think I felt?”
“Sad. Regretful.” Astrid looked at his face like the answer would be written there. “Scared, probably.”
“Yeah. All that. And one more thing.” He held up his hand and inches from her nose squeezed his fingers into a tight fist. “I also felt a rush, Astrid. A rush. I thought, oh my God, look at the power I have. Look what I can do. A huge, crazy rush.”
“Power corrupts,” Astrid said softly.
“Yeah,” Sam said sarcastically. “I’ve heard that.”
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I forget who said it.”
“I make a lot of mistakes, Astrid. I don’t want to make that mistake. I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be Caine. I want to…” He spread his arms wide, a gesture of helplessness. “I just want to go surfing.”
“You won’t be corrupted, Sam. You wouldn’t do those things.” He had moved back. She moved to close the distance.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well, two reasons. First, it’s not your character. Of course you felt a rush from the power. Then, you pushed it away. You didn’t grab at it, you pushed it away. That’s reason number one. You’re you, you’re not Caine or Drake or Orc.”
Sam wanted to agree, wanted to accept that, but he felt he knew better. “Don’t be so sure.”
“And reason number two: you have me,” Astrid said.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
That drained the anger and frustration from him like someone had pulled a plug. For a long moment he was lost, gazing into her eyes. She was very close. His heart shifted to a deeper rhythm that vibrated his whole body.
There were just inches between them. He closed the distance by half, stopped.
“I can’t kiss you with your little brother watching,” he said.
Astrid stepped back, took Little Pete by the shoulders, and turned him so he was facing away.
“How about now?”
EIGHTEEN
164 HOURS, 32 MINUTES
ALBERT LEFT THE funeral ceremony and crossed the plaza toward the McDonald’s. He wished he had someone to talk to. Maybe if he flipped the lights on, someone would come in for a very late burger.
But the small crowd dispersed before he could unlock the front door of the McDonald’s—his McDonald’s—and the plaza was left empty and silent but for a faint hum from power lines overhead.
Albert stood with his keys in one hand and his McDonald’s-issue cap in his other hand—he had taken it off out of respect for the dead—and let a sense of gloom and foreboding wash over him. He was a naturally optimistic person, but a nighttime funeral of a young girl murdered by bullies…that wasn’t something that exactly perked up your mood.
Albert had enjoyed being alone since the fall of the FAYZ. He worried about his brothers and sisters. He missed his mom. But he had gone in an instant from being the youngest of six, the goat, the victim, the overworked and underappreciated youngster, to being a responsible and respected person in this strange new community.
None of which changed the fact that right now, with the smell of fresh-turned earth in his nostrils and disquiet boring holes in his brain, he would have loved to be watching one of his mother’s favorite gruesome crime shows and sneaking popcorn out of the bowl on her lap.
The big issues in the FAYZ—the what and the why and the how—didn’t bother Albert much. He was a practical person, and, anyway, those were things for someone like Astrid to ponder. As for the events of this night, the killing of Bette, that was for Sam and Caine and those guys to work out.
What had Albert worried was something entirely different: No one was working. No one but Mary and Dahra and occasionally Edilio. Everyone else was moping or wandering or fighting or else just sitting around and playing video games or
watching DVDs. They were all like rats living in an abandoned house: they ate what they found, messed wherever they liked, and left things dirtier and more rundown than they found them.
It couldn’t last. Everyone was just killing time. But if all they did was kill time, time would end up killing them.
Albert believed that. Knew that. But he couldn’t explain it to anyone and make them listen. He couldn’t talk with the smooth assurance of a Caine, or the knowing detachment of an Astrid. When Albert spoke, people didn’t pay attention the way they did to Sam.
He needed someone else’s words to explain what his instincts told him must be true.
Albert dropped his keys into his pocket and marched up the street with a determined stride that echoed off dark storefronts. The smart thing to do would be to head home, get a few hours of sleep. It would be dawn soon. But he wasn’t going to sleep, he knew that. Sam and Caine and Astrid and Computer Jack all had their things they did, their things they knew, but this was Albert’s.
“We can’t be rats,” he muttered to himself. “We have to be…” But even trying to explain it to himself, he didn’t know the right words.
The county library branch in Perdido Beach wasn’t an impressive place. It was a dusty, gloomy, low-ceilinged storefront that hit him with a whiff of mildew when he swung the door open. He had never entered the place before and was a little surprised to find it unlocked with the overhead fluorescent tubes still flickering and buzzing.
Albert looked around and laughed. “No one’s been here since the FAYZ,” he said to a rack of yellowed paperbacks.
He looked in the librarian’s old oaken desk. You never knew where a candy bar might be hiding. He found a can of peppermints. They looked like they’d been there quite a while, treats to be handed out to kids who never came.
He popped one in his mouth and began to walk the meager stacks. He knew he needed to know something, but he didn’t know what he needed to know. Most of the books looked like they’d been there, undisturbed, since before Albert was born.
He found a set of encyclopedias—like Wikipedia, but paper and very bulky. He plopped down on the ratty carpet and opened the first book. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew where to start. He slid out the volume for “W” and turned to the entry for “work.” There were two main entries. One had to do with work in terms of physics.