Euros? Francs? Doubloons? Marks? Chits? Crowns?
Alberts?
No. Over the top.
Units?
It was functional. It meant what it said.
“The problem is, whatever we call them, we don’t have
enough,” Albert muttered. If there were going to be just
four thousand of the new . . . whatevers . . . they’d obviously
have to be worth a lot, each one. Like, to start with, ten slugs
should . . .
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Slugs?
They were slugs, after all.
To start with, if a kid had the original ten slugs he was
given, then each slug would have to be worth more than, say,
a single one-can meal. So he needed, in addition to the slugs,
smaller units. A currency that would be worth, say, one tenth
of a slug.
But any attempt to make up paper currency would just
send everyone running to find a copier. He needed something that could not be duplicated.
An idea hit him. A memory. He ran for the storeroom
that had long since been cleaned out of food. There were two
boxes on the wire shelves. Each was filled with McDonald’s
Monopoly game pieces—tickets—from some long-forgotten
promotion.
Twelve thousand pieces per box. Hard to counterfeit.
He would have enough to make change for four thousand
slugs at a rate of six Monopoly pieces per slug.
“A slug equals six tickets,” Albert said. “Six tickets equals
a slug.”
It was a beautiful thing, Albert thought. Tears came to
his eyes. It was a truly beautiful thing. He was reinventing
money.
THIRTY-TWO
09 HOURS, 3 MINUTES
B U G W A S L E E R Y now. Sam’s people knew about him.
They had since the big battle of Perdido Beach. But now they
had begun to take countermeasures. The sudden attack with
spray paint had shaken Bug’s self-confidence.
So when Caine drew him aside, careful not to let Drake
overhear, and gave him a new assignment, Bug was dubious.
“They’re out there waiting for anyone who comes out,”
Bug argued. “Dekka’s out there for sure. Bunch of kids with
guns. And probably Sam, hiding somewhere maybe.”
“Keep your voice down,” Caine said. “Listen, Bug, you’re
doing this: the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”
So Bug was doing it. Not liking it, but doing it.
He began by drifting into invisibility. Even when he was
visible, kids tended to overlook him. They would forget he
was there. Once he’d faded, they seldom seemed to remember him.
He stood in the corner of the control room for a while, out
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of sight. Making sure no one—by which he meant Drake—
was going to miss him.
Things had calmed down a little since it became clear that
Sam’s people were not going to rush in, guns and laser hands
blazing.
But the room was still tense. Drake and Caine paranoid,
waiting for attack from outside, or from each other. Diana
sullen, sleepy. Computer Jack obviously in pain from his injuries, popping Advil like crazy, but still pecking away at the keyboard. Drake’s bully boys had found some guy’s handheld
game and were taking turns playing it till the batteries failed.
Then they’d go off in search of more batteries.
No one missed Bug.
So he slipped out of the room, inches away from Drake,
fearing the sudden lash of his whip as he held his breath.
Outside, things were better than he’d expected. Dekka was
sitting in the front seat of a car, half dozing, half arguing with
Taylor and Howard. Orc was at the far edge of the parking
lot idly smashing car windshields with a tire iron. And two,
no three, kids with guns, concealed behind cars, around corners, all waiting for trouble. All bored, too.
And in very bad moods. Bug heard fragments of grousing
as he passed.
“. . . Sam just takes off and leaves us here and . . .”
“. . . if you’re not some powerful freak, no one gives a . . .”
“ . . . I swear I am going to cut off my own leg and eat it,
I’m so hungry . . .”
“ . . . rat doesn’t taste as bad as you’d think. The trouble is,
finding a rat . . .”
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3
Bug slipped past them and reached the road. Easy-peasy,
as they used to say back in kindergarten.
From there it was a long, long walk. With nothing to eat.
Bug felt like his stomach was trying to kill him. Like it had
become this enemy inside him. Like cancer or whatever. It
just hurt all the time. He’d found his mouth watering when
he heard the kid talking about eating a rat.
Bug would eat a rat. In a heartbeat. Maybe he wouldn’t
have even the day before, but now, he hadn’t eaten in a very
long time. Maybe the time had come to start eating bugs
again. Not as a dare, but simply for a meal.
He wondered how long you could go without food before
you died. Well, one way or another, he was going to get some
food. He’d managed to slip into Ralph’s before, and it was
kind of on the way to Coates.
Had to eat, man. Caine had to understand that.
He’d get to Coates and find the freaky dream girl in plenty
of time.
Bug reached into his pocket and pulled out the map Caine
had drawn onto a piece of printer paper. It was pretty good,
pretty clear. It led from Coates, down around the hills, out
into the desert. An “X” marked something Caine had labeled
“Ghost Town.” A second “X,” almost on top of the town, was
labeled “Mine.”
On the map was a written message to anyone who challenged Bug. It read:
Bug is following my orders. Do what he says. Anyone
who tries to stop him deals with me. Caine.
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Bug was to gather up the dreamer, Orsay, and, using whatever guys he could round up at Coates, get her to the “X”
labeled “Mine.”
“I don’t know if it dreams or not,” Caine had said. “But
I think maybe all its thoughts are dreams, kind of. I think
maybe Orsay can get inside its head.”
Bug had nodded like he understood, though he didn’t.
“I want to know what it plans for me,” Caine instructed
Bug. “You tell her that. If I bring it food, what will it do to me?
You tell Orsay that if she can tell me the dreams of the Darkness, the gaiaphage, I will cut her loose. She’ll be free.”
Then Caine had added, “Free from me, anyway.”
It was an important mission. Caine had promised Bug first
choice of any food they got in the future. And Bug knew he’d
better succeed. People who failed Caine came to bad, bad
ends.
It was a very long walk to Ralph’s. The place was still
guarded. Bug could see two armed kids on the roof, two by
the front door, two by the loading dock in back. And the
place was hopping, kids crowding at the door, pushing and
yelling.
Many
were there to get their daily ration of a couple of
cans of horrible food, doled out by bored fourth graders who
had already grown cynical.
“Dude, don’t try and play me,” one was saying as he turned
a girl away. “You were here two hours ago getting food. You
can’t just change clothes and trick me.”
Others were not there to get food but electricity. Ralph’s
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5
was on the highway, outside of the town proper. Obviously it
still had electricity, because extension cords had been strung
through the front door and power strips attached. Kids were
lined up charging iPods, rechargeable flashlights, and lap-
tops.
Bug would tell Caine about the electricity at the store. That
would earn him some brownie points. Caine would get Jack
to find a way to cut it off.
The fact that the power was still on meant that the automatic door also still worked. Bug had to be careful to follow someone else in.
The store was an eerie place. The produce section, which
was the first thing he saw, was empty. Most of the rotting
produce had been shoveled out, but they had not done a thorough job. A big squash was so rotted, it had been reduced to a liquid smear. There were corn-on-the-cob leaves scattered,
onion skins, and on the floors a sticky gray goo that was the
residue of the cleanup effort.
The meat section stank, but it was empty nonetheless.
Shelves were acres of emptiness. All the remaining food
was gathered into a single aisle in the middle of the store.
Careful to avoid brushing against any of the half dozen or
so workers, Bug walked along the aisle.
Jars of gravy. Packets of powdered chili mix. Jars of pimentos and pickled onions. Artificial sweetener. Clam juice.
Canned sauerkraut. Wax beans.
In a separate section with its own guard was a slightly more
inviting shelf. A sign read, “Day Care Only.” Here, there were
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cylinders of oatmeal, cans of condensed milk, boiled potatoes, and cans of V8 juice, though not many.
Things were bad in Perdido Beach, Bug reflected. The days
of candy and chips were definitely gone. Not even a cracker
to be seen, let alone a cookie. He’d been really lucky to score
that handful of Junior Mints on his spy mission to the power
plant.
That was luck. And now, Bug had some more luck. It was
purely by chance that he discovered the secret of Ralph’s. He
had dodged aside to avoid a couple of kids and ended up cowering in front of the swinging doors that led to the storeroom area. A swing of the door had revealed two kids manhandling a plastic tub filled with ice.
Bug couldn’t enter the storeroom without pushing the
door and risking discovery. But he figured it might be worth
it: anything someone else wanted to hide was something Bug
wanted to find out about.
He took a deep breath, ready to run for it if necessary. He
pushed the swinging door open and slid through. The kids
with the bin were gone. But he heard movement around the
corner, behind a wall of cartons marked “plastic cups.”
There was the work area that had once belonged to the
butchers. Now four kids, in rubber aprons that dragged to the
floor, were wielding knives.
They were cutting up fish.
Bug stood and stared, not believing what he was seeing.
Some of the fish were big—maybe three feet long—silver and
gray, with white and pink insides. Other fish were smaller,
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brown, flat. One of the fish looked so ugly, Bug figured it
must be deformed. And two of the fish didn’t look like fish
at all, but rather like soggy, featherless blue birds, or maybe
like bats.
The aproned kids were chatting happily—like people who
were eating well, Bug thought bitterly—as they sliced open
the fish and, with many cries of, “Ewww, this is so gross,”
sluiced the fish guts into big, white plastic tubs.
Others then took the cleaned fish, cut off their heads
and tails, and scraped the scales from them under running
water.
Bug hated fish. Really, really hated it. But he would have
given anything, done anything, to have a plate full of fried
fish. Ketchup would have helped, but even without it, even
knowing that ketchup might never be seen again, the idea of
a big plate of hot anything seemed wonderful.
It made Bug want to swoon. Fish! Fried, steamed, microwaved, he didn’t care.
Bug considered his options. He could grab a fish and run.
But although people couldn’t see him easily, they’d sure be
able to see a fish flying through the store and out the door.
And those kids at the door and on the roof probably weren’t
good shots, but they didn’t have to be when they were firing
machine guns.
He could try to conceal a fish down his pants or under his
shirt. But that assumed the kids with the gutting knives were
slow to react.
A kid Bug recognized came in: Quinn. One of Sam’s
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friends, although at one point, he’d been with Caine.
“Hey, guys,” Quinn said. “How’s it going?”
“We’re almost done,” one answered.
“We had a good day, huh?” Quinn said. There was obvious
pride in his tone. “Did you guys all get some to eat?”
“It was, like, the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my
entire life,” a girl said fervently. She almost choked up with
emotion. “I never even used to like fish.”
Quinn patted her on the shoulder. “Amazing what tastes
good when you get hungry enough.”
“Can I take some home for my little brother?”
Quinn looked pained. “Albert says no. I know this looks
like a lot of fish, but it wouldn’t even be a mouthful per person in the FAYZ. We want to wait till we have some more frozen. And . . .”
“And what?”
Quinn shrugged. “Nothing. Albert just has a little project
he’s working on. When he’s ready, we’ll tell everyone that we
have a little fish available.”
“You’ll catch more, though, right?”
“I’m not counting on anything. Listen, though, guys, you
know you have to keep this to yourselves, right? Albert says
anyone tells about this, they lose their job.”
All four nodded vigorously. The price of disobedience was
losing access to a fried-fish meal. That would be enough to
scare most kids into behaving.
One of the guys looked around, like he was suspicious. He
looked right at Bug, though his eyes slid right over him. Like
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he sensed something but couldn’t put his finger on it.
The hunger was terrible. It had been bad when all Bug
hoped to get was a can of beets. But the mere existence of
fresh fish . . . he was imagining the smell. He was imagining
the flavor. He was slavering, drooling, his stomach . . .
“If you give me some fish, I’ll te
ll you a secret,” Bug said
suddenly.
Quinn jumped about a foot.
Bug turned off his camouflage.
Quinn reached for one of the knives and yelled, “Guards!
Guards, in here!”
Bug held out his hands, showing he had no weapon. “I’m
just hungry. I’m just so hungry.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I want some fish. Give me some fish,” Bug pleaded. “I’ll
tell you everything. I’ll tell what Caine’s doing. I am so hungry.”
Quinn looked profoundly uncomfortable. Even nervous.
Two armed kids rushed into the room. They looked to Quinn
for direction, and pointed their guns without any real conviction.
Quinn said, “Oh, man. Oh, man.”
“I just want to eat,” Bug said. He broke down crying. Sobbing like a baby. “I want some fish.”
“I have to take you to Sam,” Quinn said. He didn’t seem to
be happy about the idea.
Bug fell to his knees. “Fish,” he begged.
“Give him one bite,” Quinn said, making his decision.
420 M I C H A E L
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“One single bite. One of you go and bring Sam and Astrid.
They can decide whether to give this little creep any more.”
One of the guards took off.
Quinn looked down at the weeping Bug. “Man, you have
picked a bad time to switch sides.”
His surfboard was still leaning against the washing machine
in the tiny room off the kitchen. A Channel Island MBM.
Sam wanted to touch it, but couldn’t bring himself to. It
was everything he had lost in the FAYZ.
His wetsuit hung from a peg. The can of wax was on the
rickety shelf next to the laundry detergent and the fabric softener.
The ball of light was still there in his bedroom. Still floating in the air, just outside of Sam’s bedroom closet.
He hadn’t been back to his old home in a long time. He’d
forgotten the light would be there.
Strange.
He passed his hand through it. Not much of a sensation.
He remembered when it first happened. He’d been scared
of the dark. Back then. Back when he was Sam Temple, some
kid, some random kid who just wanted to surf.
No. That wasn’t true, either. He’d already stopped being
just some random kid. He’d already been School Bus Sam,
the quick-thinking seventh grader who had taken the wheel
when the bus driver had had a heart attack.
He’d been that.
And he’d been the kid who had freaked out, not
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