The Garden of Darkness (25 page)

“She doesn’t mess around,” said Jem when Ramah and Bird Boy strode out the door. There was admiration in his voice, and Clare looked over at him thoughtfully.

A little while later, Clare checked on the Cured. And she discovered that sometime, while they had all been thinking and talking and planning, the Cured had quietly died. Perhaps the Cured had been more badly hurt than they had realized; perhaps she needed the patch to live; perhaps, simply, her time had come. That last thought scared Clare more than anything else.

T
HEY HITCHED UP
Sheba in the dawn frost. Sarai and Mirri were both yawning. Clare’s throat hurt, and she was still hoarse. Jem looked at her, concerned. Ramah and Bird Boy watched with great interest as they put the harness on Sheba.

“That must be complicated,” said Bird Boy.

“You make it look easy,” said Ramah.

“You have no idea,” said Clare.

“I wonder what would happen if we used the Cured’s patch on
ourselves
,” said Mirri.

“Very bad things,” said Ramah.

“There’s nothing worse than being a Cured,” announced Sarai.

“There’s
Pest
,” said Mirri.

“Pest is better than being a Cured,” said Jem. And Ramah nodded her head in agreement.

“But then you’d be
dead
,” said Mirri.

“Some things are worse than dead, Mirri,” said Jem.

Ramah and Bird Boy went into the house to collect their bundles, leaving the four of them alone.

Mirri and Sarai looked at Jem anxiously.

“Now that you know Ramah,” asked Mirri, “am I still your favorite?”

“That’s not nice, Mirri,” said Sarai. “What about me?”

“You and Sarai are both my favorites,” said Jem. “And nothing’s going to change that.”

“What about Clare?” asked Sarai. “Is she your favorite, too?”

“Also,” said Jem.

“It’s different with
them
,” said Mirri to Sarai. “
You
know.”

They talked and waited for Ramah and Bird Boy. Finally Sarai and Mirri tired of the conversation, and went to the shed in the front yard.

It wasn’t long before Jem and Clare heard a cry. Jem was in the yard in an instant, with Clare close behind him. Bear lolloped along by Clare’s side; his ears were pricked forward, but he showed no signs of aggression. They burst into the shed.

Sarai and Mirri were squatting in front of an open trunk.

“What is it?” asked Jem. “Are you all right?”

“Board games!” said Sarai.

“They even have Chutes and Ladders,” said Mirri happily. “I’ve been looking for Chutes and Ladders
everywhere
.”

“Please don’t yell like that again,” said Jem. He left them setting up Chutes and Ladders and went back to the cart with Clare.

“They wear me out,” said Jem.

“You love them,” said Clare.

That evening on the trail again, this time with Ramah and Bird Boy and the goat, Clare took out her tablet of paper and sat for a long time looking at a blank page. She couldn’t think of anything to write at all. Instead, she thought of sitting on the rock in the garden she had, half-awake, dreamt about. She hadn’t told Jem about the aching sadness of the vision—an ache so deep that even its echo made her want to weep. She thought of how someone had walked towards her and how the pain had lessened. Then Clare looked up at the sliver of moon, and the sliver of moon, sailing in and out of the clouds, seemed to look back at her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WASTELAND

T
HEY CAME TO
the place where the dirt track converged with the old highway to the city, the road that had been neglected ever since the new highway had been built. The new highway was a wide four-lane ribbon of asphalt with elegant clover leaves that provided exits and entrances: a transport system dotted with service areas and rest stops. But now the old way seemed the safer way. Once the only wide road in the area, now this highway was obscure, a place marked by decaying motels and abandoned gas stations. A wasteland, thought Clare.

Sheba took a step forward and paused as though surveying the way ahead before she pulled the wagon down onto the road.

“Not far to the city now,” said Jem. “After that all we can do is go by Rick’s map.”

As they walked by the side of the cart, Bird Boy gave an occasional excited leap, which startled Sheba, though she soon enough grew used to it. The road—ill-maintained as it was, marked by pot holes and frost heaves and littered with empty, rotting cars—seemed full of promise.

They soon fell into an easy, steady pace. Jem handed Clare a Slim Jim. Mirri slipped her small warm hand into Clare’s. Bird Boy sang a song about pretty little horses. And it occurred to Clare then that she might be perfectly content if they were never to reach the Master, if they were never to enter the city. She would be content to just walk—chewing a Slim Jim, talking with her friends—down the long road into forever.

But she still couldn’t let go of the old world completely. Michael was part of the old world. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She turned it over and over in her hands.

“What’s that?” asked Jem.

“I found this poem in my pocket the other day.”

“It looks like it went through the wash.”

“It did. I meant to give it to Michael, but I never got round to it. It doesn’t matter. He didn’t like poetry.”

“I’m sure he would have liked it.” Jem was being his most polite. “Did you write it?”

“No.”

“Poetry’s a nice gift.”

“Remember Robin?”

“The Robin everyone wondered why you bothered with? The National Merit Scholarship Finalist Robin?”

“Yes. Robin would say I tried too hard to please him.”

“I wish I’d gotten to know Robin. We might’ve been friends.”

“Oh, Jem.”

“Why don’t you stop waving it around and waste a little poetry on me? I like poetry.” Jem took the piece of paper from her. “This isn’t easy to read. What with going through the wash and all.”

“I know.”

“‘I am half-sick of shadows.’ I like
The Lady of Shalott
: ‘she hath no loyal knight and true.’”

“That’s not on there.”

“No,” said Jem. “But I like that part. What an optimist you were—giving poetry to Michael.”

Clare found she wasn’t angry. In fact, part of her wanted to laugh.

Tennyson and Michael. Perhaps not.

The buildings that bordered the highway were broken and desolate. Gutters had pulled away from the side of one house; a tree had broken through the roof of another. They passed an old motel that had been left to rot long ago, after the road lost its traffic to the new highway. The walls in the front of the motel had fallen away, revealing old plumbing, some toilets, washed-out looking graffiti. The sign in front of it still stood: ‘Wayside Motel—No V ca cy.’

When they found a small farm with a barn set back between two houses, Clare urged Sheba off the road.

The farmhouse was small, but it had a large larder full of canned goods, as well as candles and matches and a stack of mousetraps. There were also mattresses and blankets and quilts and pillows in all the bedrooms. Curled up on one of the beds and partially under the covers was a small woman. Her eyes and mouth, or what was left of them, were frozen open.

“I still can’t get used to it,” said Clare.

“Come on,” said Jem. “We’ll seal off the room from the others. I love Mirri, but I don’t think I could stand another funeral.”

Outside, in a small corral, they found a horse carcass. There wasn’t much horse left, just a sheeting of hide over bone.

“It had nowhere to go,” said Jem.

“Poor thing,” said Bird Boy. Bear went over and nuzzled Bird Boy before returning to Clare.

The loft of the barn was filled with hay, and Clare found the granary still dry and stocked with useable grain. The rest stop became a work stop, as they took corn, oats, horse nuggets and hay back to the cart. Ramah tested the horse nuggets on the goat, who found them very satisfactory. And Clare found some extra large bags of dog food to supplement Bear’s hunting. On one trip, Bird Boy noticed a brood of chickens disappearing under the porch as he tried to approach.

“Pets?” asked Bird Boy hopefully.

“Sorry,” said Jem. “Probably dinner.”

“Okay. Can I have the feathers?”

“All yours. Once Clare catches them.”

“Me?”

“Sure,” said Jem. “I’m going to have fun watching you running down those chickens. And fun is hard to come by these days.”

Ramah carefully and quickly wrung the necks of the chickens that Clare caught.

“Tonight’s dinner,” she said.

They put a bale of hay on the very back of the cart. The goat pulled at wisps of it as they moved on. The road had the same hypnotic effect on Clare as it had before. She felt as if she were shedding parts of herself as she walked—the cheerleader, the princess of the spring dance, the gymnast who practiced back flips on her front lawn. All aspects were peeling away to reveal a hard core of being that she wasn’t sure she recognized.

On the next day they passed two derelict shacks half leaning against each other like a couple of drunks. The tin roofing was dark with rust and moss; the door of one shack opened into darkness, the door of the other was missing entirely, leaving a gap that reminded Clare of a mouth.

“They’re a little creepy,” said Clare.

“There’s a fetid smell coming from them,” said Ramah.

“‘Fetid,’” said Clare. “That’s one for Sarai’s vocab list.”

“We didn’t have many books at my house,” said Ramah. “One day I took to going through the dictionary.”

“Was it fun?”

“No.”

They began to continue to move on when Clare saw a movement from the corner of her eye.

“There’s someone there,” she said. “Should we hide?”

“Well,” said Jem. “Horse. Goat. Dog. Six people. A large wagon. The hiding options are not good.”

“I’m
scared
,” said Mirri.

“Clare and Jem’ll take care of us,” said Sarai. “And Ramah, too. And I bet Bird Boy’ll scare whoever’s there.”

“I’ll try,” said Bird Boy. He made a serious face but ended up smiling.

“The movement came from the second shack,” said Clare.

“Whatever it is,” said Ramah, “Bear’s noticed it, too.”

Clare looked at Bear and saw that he had come to attention. He was trembling as he focused on the window of the shack.

“It’s not a Cured,” said Clare. “Bear would be a lot more aggressive if it were. Particularly after the last attack.”

Just then the dirty face of a young boy peeked out from an empty window frame.

“Don’t come closer,” he said in a small voice.

Bear began to bark; he wasn’t growling, but even so, Clare could tell he was straining to be gone, to leap at the boy.

“Stay here,” she said to Bear, and he lay down, still trembling.

“What are you doing there?” called out Clare.

“Hiding from you.”

The boy came out of the shack. He was bundled up in clothes that were much too large for him, and he, or someone else, had tried to sew some kind of blanket onto the poncho that hung over his shoulders. The blanket was a lurid pink. There was straw in his hair. A little bit of snow fell from the roof onto his head.

He brushed the straw and snow out of his hair and rubbed quickly at his dirty face.

“Are you hungry?” asked Clare.

“Yes,” he said.

He didn’t move while she dug in her pack for some biscuits. When she held them out, he darted forward to take them.

“Do you have good water you can share?” he asked.

Ramah handed him her water bottle. Clare could tell he was trying not to drink it all, but he was eager, and some of it fell on his poncho as he lifted the bottle to his mouth.

“I’ve been melting snow before now,” he explained. “It takes time. And it’s not always clean.”

“You haven’t told us who you are,” said Ramah.

“My name’s Abel.”

“I’m Clare,” Clare said. Sarai and Mirri clambered out of the wagon, their fear gone. Abel’s gloom, however, seemed to increase with the attention they paid to him.

“I’m actually doing fine,” he said. Another dribble of snow fell onto his head.

“You don’t have any food,” said Ramah.

“I know. You don’t need to harp on about it. Things are lousy enough as it is. If you want me to say ‘thanks for the food,’ then thanks for the food.”

“Just skulking around that shack,” said Clare, “isn’t a good idea.” She looked at him critically. He pulled at the shapeless poncho.

“I’m safe enough here.”

“I doubt it.”

“Hunger will get you,” said Ramah. Her tone was neutral. “Or the Cured.”

He brushed some more straw out of his hair and pulled at the pink poncho.

“I’m used to taking care of myself. Even before Pest.”

“What about your parents?” asked Clare.

Abel’s face darkened. “Don’t ask. Pest was a good enough end for them.” He then said, “wait a minute,” and he went back into the shack before emerging a moment later.

“I needed my satchel. I’ve got canned sardines left,” he said. “That’s all. I was saving them for right before starvation. At least the satchel gets lighter the more I eat. I don’t suppose you’d want to trade for anything?”