The Garden of Darkness (29 page)

Clare rolled up her sleeping bag. She had to pee, too. When they had all been travelling together it had astonished her how much waste four—and then six—people could produce. She didn’t know why the old world hadn’t been swimming—everywhere and all the time—in crap. Maybe it had been.

She put her rolled sleeping bag in the back of the tent. She had grown a little shy of Jem since he had turned fourteen. Thirteen, to her, didn’t really seem to count. But fourteen—she thought back to the night she had curled up in Jem’s bed with him, and it seemed long ago. It felt as if they had been a lot younger then. She remembered how warm he had been. His arms around her. And yet it had been odd being curled up together by the fire when they were staying with Tork and Myra. It was odd now, sleeping side-by-side—even if they were kept apart by separate sleeping bags. She couldn’t say that such physical proximity was unpleasant—she was too close to Jem for that. But odd.

Jem and Clare sat in the warmth of the tent and ate granola bars. The flap was open, and they gazed out at a world that was rapidly being overtaken by nature.

“What flavor’s yours?” asked Clare as she chewed.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Jem. “Chocolate banana.”

“Chocolate banana granola?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s disgusting.”

They finished eating. Clare pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs.

“You look like you’re trying to disappear,” said Jem.

“I wouldn’t leave you alone. Otherwise,
poof
.”

Later, they passed farms and fields, and stopped at one horse farm to replenish the feed they’d already given to Sheba. The barn was silent, and the air was still. They found the granary with no difficulty, but not without first having to pass the body of a man hanging from a beam. A chair was overturned beneath him. Jem righted the chair, and they moved on.

W
HEN THE FIRST
three stars had appeared in the sky, they came across two delayed-onset children—a boy and a girl. They sat on a porch. They were, at first, so still that Clare and Jem almost went right by them. When one of them moved, even Sheba shied. And then the boy spoke.

“You’re not Cured, are you?” The boy who spoke was maybe as old as seventeen.

“They’re way too organized to be Cured, Sam,” said the girl. “And they’ve got a horse. And a dog. I’ve never seen a Cured with animals.”

Clare tried not to stare at the girl. Her shirt was cut low enough that Clare could see the dappling of the Pest rash, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. The girl looked to be about fourteen. And she was very obviously pregnant.

She saw Clare looking at her.

“Two months to go,” she said, and she actually smiled. “The baby’s not Sam’s—we got together after Pest. But he’s going to be the father. I’m Becca.”

Becca heaved herself out of chair with the help of Sam, who carefully took her arm.

“I’ll get started on dinner,” said Sam. “We have enough for all of us. For tonight, anyway. We don’t get many visitors.”

“We don’t get
any
visitors,” said Becca. “I hope you’ll stay for the night?”

Becca spoke tentatively, and Clare suddenly realized that she was shy.

“We’d love to,” said Jem. He and Clare exchanged a look.

“But after tonight,” said Clare, “we’re headed towards a place that may have the cure, and we’re moving fast. Would you like to join with us? It’s not just Jem and me. We’re meeting up with others. You could come.”

Both Sam and Becca smiled.

“That’s kind,” said Sam.

“But we’re not going anywhere until after the baby,” Becca said.

“It’s still wonderful that you’ve found your way to us,” said Sam. “I’ll just go out back and send a chicken to its doom. Chicken’s good for Becca. We found a book on what to expect when you’re expecting, and it was pretty firm on what to eat.”

They ate together in a small dining room. The wallpaper had a pattern of alternating daisies and cornflowers. Sam and Becca provided dinner—the chicken, potatoes, beets. In exchange, Jem and Clare gave them a bag of beans and some fine flour. Jem helped carry everything to the table, while Sam set out the dishes. Jem treated Becca as if she might break.

Sam and pregnant Becca. They would have to live a lifetime in a couple of years. Or less. And then, Clare thought, Becca would need to find another, younger, child to mother her child.

That night Clare and Jem shared the only other bedroom in the house. Jem slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. Clare had won the bed after a coin toss. But after Clare heard Jem tossing and turning on the hardwood floor, she pulled back the covers, pointedly. He climbed in next to her, sleeping bag and all. It had felt more odd to Clare having him on the floor than having him in the bed.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night,” said Jem. There was a pause.

“What’s going to happen to Becca?” Clare whispered to Jem.

“She’ll do the best she can.”

“But Sam must be only a few months from Pest. Maybe a year.”

“I know.”

“And Becca’s just a baby herself.”

“Go to sleep. You’ll feel better. All this whispering is worse than my sister’s slumber parties.”

They hitched up Sheba at dawn. Bear stayed close to Clare.

“You really won’t come with us?” Clare asked Sam and Becca.

“Becca and I are fine,” said Sam. “We’re going to be fine.” And he put a hand on her round belly.

“You really could come with us to the Master’s,” said Clare. “Think of the difference it would make to your baby if there were a real cure.”

“If Pest comes, it comes,” said Sam. “But I don’t really think it’s going to come. We have to be immune, or we would be dead by now, don’t you think?”

“Actually, Sam,” said Clare. “I don’t think so. I
don’t
think we’re immune.”

He smiled at her indulgently. “Don’t worry so much,” he said. “I’m going to be here, and I’m going to take excellent care of Becca both before and after the baby comes. I won’t let her down by dying.”

“Oh, Sam,” said Clare.

But he just smiled and put his hand on her shoulder, as if to comfort her.

Clare could hear Becca saying goodbye to Jem. Becca laughed.

“He’s kicking,” she said. “Want to feel?”

Jem put his hand on her belly gently. “Wow. When my cousin was going to have a baby, it never kicked this much. This is great.”

Becca looked pleased. Sam went back to the porch, but Becca lingered.

“If you find the cure for Pest,” she said to Jem, “come back.”

“Why don’t you let me show you our route?” Jem said to her. He pulled out the map, and they bent their heads together over it. Sam didn’t seem interested.

Then it was time to move on. “Come and find us if you need to,” said Jem.

“I will,” said Becca. Then she paused. “
We
will.”

“T
HEY DON’T BELIEVE
they’re infected,” said Clare when the old farmhouse was behind them.

“
She
does,” said Jem. “I can tell.”

“Maybe they’ll follow us.”

“Strange to think about. A baby, I mean. I guess it’s all starting over again. Still. Fourteen years old. My age.”

“When you put it that way, it’s kind of scary.”

Jem seemed thoughtful, even sad, as they walked, and Clare saw him looking at her from time to time. She looked away. There were no words, but she understood.

The terrain had leveled out, and Sheba didn’t have to work as hard. Her ears flicked back and forth as though she were listening to something none of them could hear.

MASTER

“I
WANT TO
hunt them Cured, too,” said Charlie.

“You haven’t even been debriefed yet,” said the Master. “You haven’t met the other children properly. We need to know you before you go on this hunt.”

“I bet I’d be good at killing them Cured. Undo me now.”

“Debrief you.”

“That. Then we’ll hunt them Cured.”

They had begun to sight the Cured more and more frequently. The Cured had pilfered from their stores, and one of them had approached a toddler, Ryan. Ryan was unhurt, but the Master thought it was just a matter of time before one of the children was taken or killed. All the children wanted to help with the hunt, although they had no real idea of what he had in mind. But this Charlie seemed like a canny child. A child who might prove useful. What in the Master’s youth had been called a Forward Child. He was a new arrival, but he was eager, very eager.

“Give me the details of your past,” said the Master. He sat back, prepared to hear yet another version of what was essentially the same story. Mother dead. Father dead. Sisters dead. Brothers dead. He had felt for a while now that debriefings were unnecessary, but he wanted to appear concerned, fatherly—and very much in charge. Besides, there was always the chance that he would hear something important. Because something was nagging at him; it was as if he had forgotten something; it was as if there were something he should know, but didn’t, or something that was coming that he should be aware of. That unsettling feeling sometimes made him roam the woods at night. Then he would return, powerful in the thought that he was the most frightening thing out there.

“I come from the city,” Charlie said.

“Go on. You’re the first to come from the city.”

“I heared you on radio, and I dint want to die of Pest.”

“Quite right,” said the Master. “Are there others coming?”

“Don’t think so. There’s kids there right enough. There’s Tork and Myra who runs everybody. They ain’t coming. But I dint want to get run by no kids anymore. Or get Pest, like the Connor kid did.”

“One of them died?”

“Yeah.”

“They should all have come with you.”

“They likes it free,” said Charlie. “They wouldn’t have no room for grownups.”

“You need to work on your grammar.”

“Don’t care, and I’m guessing you don’t care neither. Not really.”

“
Either
. Don’t care
either
. And you’re right. I don’t.”

“You’re after something.”

“But not anything you can think of. That’s the beauty of it.”

Charlie smiled. Maybe he understood more than the Master had thought. There it was again—a Forward Child.

The Master and Charlie were in the library with the overstuffed furniture and the ebony paneling. The room smelled like old furniture polish and the dust of a thousand books. Books lined an entire wall. The Master had investigated most of them. There were field guides to birds, plants, animals. Classics were displayed in old leather Victorian bindings. This was where Britta and Doug had found
David Copperfield
and
Middlemarch
. Britta was in a corner now, reading
Emma
. The Master didn’t care what Britta overheard: Britta was to be trusted absolutely.

He liked to debrief the children here. He found that the room overawed them. Of course, they were always even more overawed by him.

The Master considered Charlie. He liked the idea of him, and the news about the children left in the city was useful. Those children would swell his numbers and, once at the mansion, they would soon fit in—and would then pose no outside threat to his authority. There would be useful ones among them—ones carrying those lovely recessive genes. And he could always use more children to tend the farm and clean the fountain and beat the dirt out of the tapestries that hung in some of the rooms. He wondered, since the offer of a cure from SitkaAZ13 hadn’t been enough to bring them, what kind of incentive he could offer to these city children. Perhaps they would simply tire of playing at being adults.

He looked closely at Charlie, who was disheveled and needed a bath.

“Did they try and stop you from coming here?” the Master asked.

“Naw. They don’t care none what a kid do. I could even have left more early and come with the ones what passed through. The girl what had the dog. And that boy what scairt me. But I thought they wasn’t right for me. Thought they’d be here before me, though.”

“Things happen,” said the Master, wondering what might have happened.

“Things does. And them two made things happen.”

“It’s too bad you couldn’t all come.” The Master’s thoughts were half with Charlie and half on the upcoming hunt.

“I almost dint come at all. And I tell you—I dint want to go with that girl and dog. That dog were scary. I nairt seen a dog so big.”

The Master discounted some of what the children told him and sometimes—not often, but sometimes—by so doing he missed crucial bits of information—bits of information that could have changed everything.

This was one of those times. He simply didn’t think much more about the boy and the girl and the dog. If they were coming to him, he would watch for them. That’s all. After all, a girl. One never knew. He might need to find out a little more about her.

But had he drawn Charlie out on the subject, the entire trajectory of events might have been changed. He would have moved more quickly. And if he hadn’t managed to get the girl to come with him alone, he would have been at the mansion when she arrived with the others.

“I’m glad you decided to join us,” the Master said to Charlie. He decided that Charlie would, after all, be an appropriate participant in the hunt and sent him to the kitchen to get something to eat. Charlie may have had shallow brown eyes, but he had his uses too.

D
OUG,
C
HARLIE AND
Dante were the children who finally set out with the Master to hunt the Cured.

The going was hard at first. The Cured retreated in front of them, and soon they found themselves stumbling through the razor-sharp head-high grasses at the edge of a marsh. The Master could see the deserted nests of red-winged blackbirds, and he thought to himself that the marsh would be teeming with life come the spring.

As a child, he had once killed some songbirds and nailed them to the garage door. His ferocious blue-eyed Mama had hit him, and he had never done it again. Now he found he looked forward to seeing the black and red birds building their nests, keeping their tasty little eggs warm.