Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

rock.

  He flinched away and the rock hit the paving hard enough tobounce. Marci whirled around, but David was gone, high up in the leaves,invisible, malicious, biding.

  "What was that?"

  "I dunno," Alan lied, and groaned.

  #

  Kurt and Alan examined every gap between every storefront on Augusta, nomatter how narrow. Kurt kept silent as Alan fished his arm up to theshoulder along miniature alleys that were just wide enough toaccommodate the rain gutters depending from the roof.

  They found the alley that Frederick had been dragged down near the endof the block, between a mattress store and an egg wholesaler. It wasnarrow enough that they had to traverse it sideways, but there, at theentrance, were two smears of skin and blood, just above the ground,stretching off into the sulfurous, rotty-egg depths of the alleyway.

  They slid along the alley's length, headed for the gloom of theback. Something skittered away from Alan's shoe and he bent down, butcouldn't see it. He ran his hands along the ground and the walls andthey came back with a rime of dried blood and a single strand of long,oily hair stuck to them. He wiped his palms off on the bricks.

  "I can't see," he said.

  "Here," Kurt said, handing him a miniature maglight whose handle wascorrugated by hundreds of toothmarks. Alan saw that he was intense,watching.

  Alan twisted the light on. "Thanks," he said, and Kurt smiled at him,seemed a little taller. Alan looked again. There, on the ground, was asharpened black tooth, pierced by a piece of pipe-cleaner wire.

  He pocketed the tooth before Kurt saw it and delved farther, approachingthe alley's end, which was carpeted with a humus of moldering cardboard,leaves, and road turds blown or washed there. He kicked it aside as besthe could, then crouched down to examine the sewer grating beneath. Thegreenish brass screws that anchored it to the ground had sharp cuts intheir old grooves where they had been recently removed. He rattled thegrating, which was about half a meter square, then slipped his multitoolout of his belt holster. He flipped out the Phillips driver and went towork on the screws, unconsciously putting Kurt's flashlight in hismouth, his front teeth finding purchase in the dents that Kurt's own hadleft there.

  He realized with a brief shudder that Kurt probably used this flashlightwhile nipple-deep in dumpsters, had an image of Kurt transferring itfrom his gloved hands to his mouth and back again as he dug through bagsof kitchen and toilet waste, looking for discarded technology. But themetal was cool and clean against his teeth and so he bit down and workedthe four screws loose, worked his fingers into the mossy slots in thegrate, lifted it out, and set it to one side.

  He shone the light down the hole and found another fingerbone, the tipof a thumb, desiccated to the size of a large raisin, and he pocketedthat, too. There was a lot of blood here, a little puddle that was stillwet in the crusted middle. Frederick's blood.

  He stepped over the grating and shone the light back down the hole,inviting Kurt to have a look.

  "That's where they went," he said as Kurt bent down.

  "That hole?"

  "That hole," he said.

  "Is that blood?"

  "That's blood. It's not easy to fit someone my brother's size down ahole like that." He set the grate back, screwed it into place, andpassed the torch back to Kurt. "Let's get out of here," he said.

  On the street, Alan looked at his blood and moss-grimed palms. Kurtpushed back his floppy, frizzed-out, bleach-white mohawk and scratchedvigorously at the downy brown fuzz growing in on the sides of his skull.

  "You think I'm a nut," Alan said. "It's okay, that's natural."

  Kurt smiled sheepishly. "If it's any consolation, I think you're a*harmless* nut, okay? I like you."

  "You don't have to believe me, so long as you don't get in my way," Alansaid. "But it's easier if you believe me."

  "Easier to do what?"

  "Oh, to get along," Alan said.

  #

  Davey leapt down from a rock outcropping as Alan made his way home thatnight, landing on his back. Alan stumbled and dropped his school bag. Hegrabbed at the choking arm around his neck, then dropped to his knees asDavey bounced a fist-sized stone off his head, right over his ear.

  He slammed himself back, pinning Davey between himself and the sharpstones on the walkway up to the cave entrance, then mashed backward withhis elbows, his head ringing like a gong from the stone's blow. His leftelbow connected with Davey's solar plexus and the arm around his throatwent slack.

  He climbed to his knees and looked Davey in the face. He was blue andgasping, but Alan couldn't work up a lot of sympathy for him as hereached up to the side of his head and felt the goose egg wellingthere. His fingertips came back with a few strands of hair blood-gluedto them.

  He'd been in a few schoolyard scraps and this was always the moment whena teacher intervened -- one combatant pinned, the other atop him. Whatcould you do after this? Was he going to take the rock from Davey's handand smash him in the face with it, knocking out his teeth, breaking hisnose, blacking his eyes? Could he get off of Davey without getting backinto the fight?

  He pinned Davey's shoulders under his knees and took him by the chinwith one hand. "You can't do this, Danny," he said, looking into hishazel eyes, which had gone green as they did when he was angry.

  "Do *what*?"

  "Spy on me. Try to hurt me. Try to hurt my friends. Tease me all thetime. You can't do it, okay?"

  "I'll stab you in your sleep, Andy. I'll break your fingers with abrick. I'll poke your eyes out with a fork." He was fizzling like abaking-soda volcano, saliva slicking his cheeks and nostrils and chin,his eyes rolling.

  Alan felt helplessness settle on him, weighing down his limbs. How couldhe let him go? What else could he do? Was he going to have to sit onDavey's shoulders until they were both old men?

  "Please, Davey. I'm sorry about what I said. I just can't bring herhome, you understand," he said.

  "Pervert. She's a slut and you're a pervert. I'll tear her titties off."

  "Don't, Danny, please. Stop, okay?"

  Darren bared his teeth and growled, jerking his head forward andsnapping at Alan's crotch, heedless of the painful thuds his head madewhen it hit the ground after each lunge.

  Alan waited to see if he would tire himself out, but when it was clearthat he would not tire, Alan waited for his head to thud to the groundand then, abruptly, he popped him in the chin, leapt off of him turnedhim on his belly, and wrenched him to his knees, twisting one arm behindhis back and pulling his head back by the hair. He brought Davey to hisfeet, under his control, before he'd recovered from the punch.

  "I'm telling Dad," he said in Davey's ear, and began to frog-march himthrough to the cave mouth and down into the lake in the middle of themountain. He didn't even slow down when they reached the smooth shore ofthe lake, just pushed on, sloshing in up to his chest, Davey's headbarely above the water.

  "He won't stop," Alan said, to the winds, to the water, to the vaultedceiling, to the scurrying retreat of the goblin. "I think he'll kill meif he goes on. He's torturing me. You've seen it. Look at him!"

  Davey was thrashing in the water, his face swollen and bloody, his eyesrattling like dried peas in a maraca. Alan's fingers, still buried inDavey's shiny blond hair, kept brushing up against the swollen bruisesthere, getting bigger by the moment. "I'll *fucking* kill you!" Daveyhowled, screaming inchoate into the echo that came back from his call.

  "Shhh," Alan said into his ear. "Shhh. Listen, Davey, please, shhh."

  Davey's roar did not abate. Alan thought he could hear the whispers andgroans of their father in the wind, but he couldn't make itout. "Please, shhh," he said, gathering Davey in a hug that pinned hisarms to his sides, putting his lips up against Davey's ear, holding himstill.

  "Shhh," he said, and Davey stopped twitching against him, stopped histerrible roar, and they listened.

  At first the sound was barely audible, a soughing through the tunnels,but gradually the echoes chased each other round the great cavern and
across the still, dark surface of the lake, and then a voice, illusiveas a face in the clouds.

  "My boys," the voice said, their father said. "My sons. David, Alan. Youmust not fight like this."

  "He --!" Davey began, the echoes of his outburst scattering theirfather's voice.

  "Shhh," Alan said again.

  "Daniel, you must love your brother. He loves you. I love you. Trusthim. He won't hurt you. I won't let you come to any harm. I love you,son."

  Alan felt Danny tremble in his arms, and he was trembling, too, from theicy cold of the lake and from