Later, after they managed to get out of the city, she began to think of the ring as a good-luck talisman and so began to wear it on her finger. The fit was right.
Jem and Clare spoke mostly in whispers. The city was huge around them. Bear seemed restless; he looked at Clare and gave a low whine.
“Go,” she said, and Bear was a nimble black streak down the road.
“Would Bear stay if you asked him to?” asked Jem.
“Of course. Do you think I should? He’s hungry; I thought he should look for food before nightfall.”
“We might want him close. You know.”
“Just in case.”
“Yeah, just in case.”
“We’ll keep him with us when he comes back,” said Clare.
But Bear wasn’t with them when, soon after, they found a prime foraging place. Working in perfect synchrony, they loaded up sacks of flour, cornmeal and beans that they had found in the back of a Mexican restaurant. Jem heaved up a sack to Clare. Clare turned to secure it in the wagon when Sheba shied sideways. Clare, trying to keep her balance, turned towards Jem.
The attack took them by surprise.
Running towards them from the shadows of an alley came a group of children, all about eleven or twelve, all armed with sticks.
“Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!” the largest of them yelled. Before Clare could think about moving, she found herself alone in the wagon as Jem was pulled under the pack of wild children. Their hair was filthy and their clothes were little more than rags.
“Meat tonight,” the largest boy screamed.
“Tork says ‘meat tonight!’” said the others. They were jabbing at Jem with their sticks, ignoring Clare altogether. She didn’t know if Tork meant they were going to eat Sheba or Jem. Perhaps he had plans to eat all of them. Jem was trying to shake them off. Clare took the spade they had found in a hardware store and jumped into the melee. Sheba, no longer held in place, started into a tentative lope before coming to a stop a few yards away. The one named Tork jabbed at Jem and opened an ugly wound on his face.
“I’ll get you!” Clare yelled and swung the spade. With a dull thud, she connected with Tork’s stomach. She then drove the flat of the blade into his face. Tork fell and didn’t get up.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” yelled one of the older girls. “Tork’s down.”
The children ceased fighting as suddenly as they had begun.
“That ain’t fair,” said one of them, addressing Clare.
“You were going to kill us,” she said.
“Not for real. And now you kilt Tork.”
“I don’t think Tork’s dead.”
“Looks dead.” But then Tork groaned.
Jem staggered to his feet. “We’re just here to get supplies. We don’t mean you any harm. And you can’t eat our horse. Or us.” He limped over to the wagon.
A girl with a dirty face and long tangled hair looked hard at them.
“Well, then,” she said. “Welcome to the dark place. But you didn’t start real good by playing for real.”
“What’s the dark place?” asked Jem.
“Here. All around you.”
As they spoke, some of the others were giving Tork small slaps to raise him. One of the smaller children was stroking his arm. Tork seemed to be coming around.
“They won,” the girl said to Tork casually, as soon as it was apparent that he was alive.
Tork sat up. His nose was skewed to one side, but he seemed otherwise undamaged. The girl with matted hair sat next to him and, without any preliminaries, snapped the nose more-or-less back into place.
“Thanks much,” said Tork to the girl. He touched his nose gingerly and flinched. Then he looked at Jem. When he got to his feet, he staggered for a moment. Clare had, after all, swung the spade hard. She was surprised he could get up at all.
“Now what do we do?” asked Clare. “I don’t want to fight again.”
“Now we eat,” said Tork, as if the answer were obvious.
And so they ended up down an alley in the children’s homemade shelter.
“I kind of wish Bear had found us by now,” said Clare. “It’s getting late.”
“He’ll find us tomorrow, if not tonight,” said Jem.
They left the cart at the end of the alley, brought Sheba to the shelter and tethered her outside.
“The Cured probably won’t steal your wagon,” said Tork. “They’d just tip it over.”
Cardboard lined most of the shelter, and holes were plugged with plastic and pieces of metal and even the skins of cats, heads still on.
Tork saw Clare looking at the dead cats.
“They were stealing food from us,” Tork said. “So we kilt them.”
“I’m not sure we should have,” said the girl. “The rats is worse.”
“Get the jinormous pots, Myra,” said Tork. “It’s feast time.” And Clare realized that, despite the oddity of the situation, she was hungry.
The wild children used some of the supplies that Clare and Jem had found, but they took only what they needed. Soon they were cooking beans in a big pot over a fire and, in another pot, they had the makings of a cornmeal porridge.
Clare and Jem looked around the shelter, and they found that the wild pack of children didn’t consist only of eleven and twelve year olds after all. The really young ones had stayed back in the sheltered alley. Most of them had runny noses; some had sores on their heads and faces.
“Your little ones look like they’re ailing,” said Clare.
“We do stuff for ’em,” said Myra. “But the city is like a big dead thing, and the stench of it makes you sick. That’s why we call it the dark place. Least the littles don’t have Pest, and they don’t have the fever.”
“We seen Pest again, though,” said Tork. “It ain’t dead. Connor died of it. He was our leader then, but Pest got him. Not the fever—it was Pest.”
“What’s the fever?” asked Jem.
“You might see,” said Tork. “It’s not starvation we’re dying of. It’s fever what kills us.”
“Maybe you should boil your water,” Clare said thoughtfully. Myra and Tork just stared at her.
“Messing with the water won’t stop fever,” Tork said. “We think it comes from the bodies. The rotting gets up your nose and gives you fever.”
“Why don’t you leave the city?” asked Jem. “You could go anywhere.”
“Maybe we could help you,” said Clare.
Myra and Tork looked at them with something like pity.
“You’re the ones needed to come here,” Tork said.
WHEN THEY FINISHED dinner, they stacked the dirty dishes in a corner.
“Look at us gettin’ along,” said Tork. “Like fambly.”
“Will you help us load the wagon with supplies?” asked Jem. “It’d sure make it go faster.”
“Course,” said Tork. “I ain’t got no plans for tomorrow. You, Myra?”
“Nope.”
“Not next day, neither,” said Tork.
“Nope,” said Myra.
Tork and Myra tended the fire and started banking it down for the night.
While Jem was feeding Sheba, Clare sat with a small boy called Stuffo on her lap, combing his hair with her fingers. He smelled as only an unwashed child can smell. While there was no stench, he exuded an unpleasant, greasy, over-ripe smell.
“Ouch,” he said as her fingers snagged in his hair. “Too hard.” But when Clare finally, in the dim light, noticed the nits in the hair, and when she thought she saw the quick movement of a full-grown louse, she declared the session over.
“You’re done. Maybe I’ll brush it out more later.”
The children were readying for the night when Bear came loping down the alley. There was a general panic.
“It’s okay,” said Clare. “He’s mine. His name’s Bear.”
When Bear nuzzled up to Clare, the children seemed to relax.
“He don’t bite?” asked Tork.
&nb
sp; Clare put her arm around the dog. “Apparently not today.”
Tork did not look fully reassured.
“Well,” said Myra. “Bring him in, then. It’ll be all the warmer.”
When Jem returned from feeding Sheba, he found Bear lying at Clare’s feet. The children let Jem in before closing up the shelter. From the outside, Clare thought, it must now look like only so much refuse at the end of the alley.
The inside of the shelter was stuffy with a distinct odor of decay and unwashed humanity, but there was an air of safety and comfort there too. The little ones were already curled up in what looked like piles of rags.
“You can have Connor’s bed,” Myra said to Clare. “And you can sleep on the rag heap,” she said to Jem. “It’s comfortable.”
“We’ll just huddle up against the fire,” said Jem. Clare was grateful. She couldn’t have slept in the dead boy’s bed.
“Well, that’s all right,” said Tork. “Myra and me share bedding too. S’warmer. And sometimes the little ones crawl in with us.”
It seemed to Clare that in a world of grownups, Tork and Myra might have drowned in a sea of neglected children. Here, they seemed like the matriarch and the patriarch of a lost, but in its way noble, clan.
So Jem and Clare curled up close to the fire. Jem slept first. In his sleep, he cast a protective arm around her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE RUNNING OF THE DEER
MYRA WOKE UP Jem and Clare as she bent over them to get the fire going. Bear gave a sigh and got to his feet. Then he leaned down so that Clare could scratch his head.
“Sleep all right?” Jem asked Clare.
“I dreamed I was washing my hair,” she said.
“It’s still pretty clean from last time.”
“This time I was washing it in hot water.”
“Hedonist.”
When Tork opened the shelter, the fresh air was like a gift, but the others seemed not to notice the difference. The smallest children split into two groups: one went with Tork and one with Myra. When they returned some minutes later, they looked quizzically at Jem and Clare.
“Well, aren’t you going to go and do your business?” Myra asked.
“Go where?” asked Clare. “What business?”
Jem nudged her in the ribs.
“Bowel business,” said Myra. “It’s the rule: If you need to go, you need to check. If it’s runny, you might be headed towards fever, and then you take the Pepto-Bismol.”
“You ask them exactly where we’re supposed to go,” whispered Jem. “I am not going to discuss ‘bowel business’ with Myra and Tork.”
“Well, Myra’s right about checking if it’s runny,” said Clare. “That’s a good idea.”
“I am not discussing this with you, either.”
Myra and Tork stood there looking at them patiently.
“Well, where do we go to do ‘bowel business’?” Clare asked them.
“Anywhere not too close to the shelter, of course,” said Tork. “We don’t want poop near the shelter. That’s messy. But go together—you never know what’s out there. The Cured are always around. We seen wild dogs, too.” Tork looked closely at Jem, as if assessing his ability to deal with wild dogs.
“You should of come with us,” said Myra.
“If you see wild dogs,” said Tork, “be careful. You don’t want your dog tangling with them. Rabies. And don’t leave fresh dead animals in the street. The rabies’ll cook right out, and meat’s always welcome.”
Jem and Clare hurried out of the shelter.
“I miss Sarai and Mirri,” said Clare. “And Ramah. All of them.”
“I miss the latrine,” said Jem. “Nobody ever has to do this in the movies.”
No place seemed quite right, and they were getting farther from the alley.
“Jem,” Clare said finally. “I just can’t do this with you standing there.”
“I’m glad you said that,” said Jem. “We’ll check out a perimeter and stay inside it. But not too close to each other. Bear should keep us safe.”
ON THE WAY back, they caught sight of three dogs gnawing at the bones of what looked like a man. The largest dog looked up; the other two used the moment to drag their prize further away.
As Clare and Jem were about to turn into the alley leading to the shelter, the big dog snarled and began to run towards them. It didn’t have Bear’s bulk, but it was fast.
Bear collided with the dog in mid-air. The wild dog whined and tried to get away from Bear, but Bear had his teeth in the animal’s throat. He shook the dog back and forth until Clare heard a crack that she was sure was the sound of the dog’s spine breaking.
Bear finally dropped his kill.
“Bear seems to have one setting when he’s annoyed,” said Jem. His words were light, but he looked pale.
“That other dog would have been at our throats.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“How do you know if an animal has rabies?” Clare asked.
“You don’t. Not without a lab. Check to see if Bear was bitten, or if he did all the biting.”
“He seems clean. The blood on his coat isn’t his.”
“Try not to touch that blood.”
The dead dog’s teeth, bared in death, were still studded with flesh from the nearby corpse. Despite Tork’s confidence that rabies cooked out, they left its carcass behind. The other two dogs had kept feeding throughout and displayed no interest in Clare or Jem.
When they got back to the shelter, Tork looked at them appraisingly.
“We should go on a romp,” said Tork. “Before you leave.”
“In the houses of the dead?” asked the little one called Leaf.
“In the houses of the dead,” said Tork.
“Yes!” said Stuffo.
“What about the supplies?” asked Jem.
“The supplies,” said Tork. “I think I’m tryin’ to forget you’re leavin’. But the houses of the dead are prime. We find all kinds of stuff in them. We found a music box with a dancing bear on it just a couple days ago. And a bunch of china statues—girls with sheep and princesses and stuff.”
“They were seriously fun to smash,” said Myra.
“Maybe next time,” said Jem.
Tork perked up. “Next time,” he said.
Clare and Jem followed the wild children to what they said was a prime warehouse for what Tork called “things you eat what don’t go bad.”
In a while, Clare noted that they seemed to be on the fringes of Chinatown. Huge Chinese letters, fallen from some of the buildings, lay in the street, and at one end of the road was a structure that looked like a pagoda.
“The warehouse’s not too far from here,” said Myra. “We should be able to fill up your wagon with stuff from there.”
“We thought warehouses might have too much of one thing,” said Jem. “Like a mountain of tires. Or a thousand pounds of beef jerky.”
“This one’s got everything,” said Tork.
The day was warm. Myra helped Clare out of some of her warmer garments, and Jem went sleeveless. One of the children gave Clare some bangles, and soon she jingled as she walked.
“Almost there,” announced Tork. “I’m sayin’—this warehouse is prime. You’ll see.”
And it was. They loaded the cart until the sun was high in the sky.
Afterwards they made their way back to the alley, joking and laughing, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. They turned a corner.
And there was a deer standing utterly still, staring at them.
When it saw Sheba, it snuffed the air before giving a great leap and springing away. It ran down the center of the street. Clare couldn’t hold Bear back. He ran, eating up the ground with his long stride.
Tork yelled “meat!” and the children grabbed their sticks out of the back of the wagon and gave chase.
“They don’t have a chance of catching it,” said Clare.
“Bear might,” said Jem. They c
ould hear shouts and hoots in the distance.
They waited. And then, not so very far away, they heard a huge crash, as if an enormous pane of glass had shattered. There was silence for a moment, and then howls from the children.
Minutes later, Myra came running up the street.
“You got one great dog,” she said. “But we need the wagon.”
“What happened?” asked Jem.
“I think Clare’s dog scairt that deer almost out of his skin; he jumped through a store window, clear through, and then Tork cut its throat with a big piece of glass. Bear’s eatin’ his share. Very messy.” She stopped, meditatively. “Tork cut himself on the glass too. There’s blood everywhere.”
Myra, Clare and Jem got up on the cart, and Myra guided them.
The wild pack was standing around the front of a store; shattered glass gleamed on the road. The deer lay on a display table, and blood dripped from its throat adding to the red pool already on the floor. Tork stood over the deer, a cloth, already soaked through with blood, wrapped around his hand.
“I should have put the cloth on my hand before I kilt the deer with that glass,” he said.
But then they had their hands full, because Sheba, scenting blood, began backing away, and the cart began to twist sideways.
“Easy,” Clare said. “Easy does it.” She turned to the others. “If you want to load up the deer,” she said, “you’ll have to wipe off as much blood as you can.”
“Okay,” said Tork. “But first I got to stop bleeding. That glass just slices right through everything.”
“Let me look,” said Jem.
Clare couldn’t see Tork’s expression, but she heard Myra say, “Go on, let him look. He’s no traitor.”
Jem took Tork’s hand in his own. The cut, Clare could see, was deep and gaping, and Jem bound it tight. “You’ll carry the scar,” he said. “And you need an antibiotic called penicillin. I’ll get it for you at a pharmacy on the way back.”
“Can you remember to take the medication ten days in a row?” asked Clare.
“I can do that,” said Tork. “I’ve took medicine before. When I were little. My mom—” He fell silent.
They wiped as much blood as they could from the deer and then dragged it to the cart. Sheba was skittish, but didn’t try to back away again.
The Garden of Darkness Page 20
