“It’s me, Ben. I’ve been waiting for you. I have food.”
Ben swallowed and turned his face back. I could see someone move in the dimness of the garage. It was Griffin.
But he kept his spear pointed toward me. “Is it really you?”
I said, “Mind the gap, Ben. Remember? Mind the gap.”
He opened the door.
* * *
As miserable as Ben Miller and Griffin Goodrich looked when I first woke up here—lost, sharing the floor of their garage with a dead soldier—they looked that much worse, weaker and sick, now. They hadn’t been eating; I could tell. They didn’t have any water to drink.
That was bad.
And they backed away from me, scared, when I came inside.
Once I shut the door, it was almost too dark to see anything in the garage. I smelled the decaying rot of the dead soldier lying at the bottom of the main door, and I could sense by how they backed away from me that Ben and Griffin didn’t know whether I was even real or not.
Dripping on the floor, I waited for them to do something.
I put the package of things I’d stolen from Quinn Cahill down next to my feet.
The rain roared against the outside of the house.
“Thanks for letting me in.”
Ben’s spear was still angled in my direction.
“Where you been, Jack?” he said.
“Fuck, Ben. Where do you think I’ve been?”
Griffin stood beside his older brother. “You’re not sick, are you? You don’t have—you know—don’t have the bug?”
“I’m not sick, Griff.”
“Show us,” Ben said.
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“What?”
“Show us you don’t have a mark,” Griffin said. “There was an Odd came here yesterday, looking for help. He had it. We didn’t let him go. We couldn’t. So, you better prove it.”
Ben and Griffin had to kill a kid.
“Take everything off, Jack,” Ben said. “That’s how it’s got to be. Then we’ll know it’s you.”
I sighed. “Fuck it, Ben. I brought you guys food and water.”
“You want to go back outside?”
“Okay, Ben. Okay.”
It made me feel like I was under arrest.
Marbury was a prison, anyway. So nothing mattered.
Fuck this place.
So I did what he said. I stood there, naked, with my arms raised, turned around.
Prison.
“There. Are you satisfied I’m not one of them, Ben?”
“Sorry, Jack.”
And Griffin said, “Is it really you?”
“Fuck.”
I picked up my pants. They dripped metal-smelling rainwater. I wrung them out and managed to squeeze back into them without tearing them too much more than they already were. I put the sock with my glasses inside the bundle of food, and left everything else I’d been wearing on the floor of their garage.
Then Griffin pushed past Ben and grabbed me around my chest.
“I’m sorry, too, Jack,” he said. “This place is really fucked up.”
“I got some stuff,” I said. “You need to get something in you.”
* * *
I followed the boys back inside their house.
It was dark; the windows had all been covered by anything that could obscure their frames: upended furniture, mattresses that coughed tufts of stuffing from gashes, even strips of flooring that had been ripped up from the back of the kitchen, where naked joists lay exposed above nothing but dirt and trash that looked like it had been piling up there for years. And all the wall sockets and light fixtures had scorched burns around them.
Ben said, “I know you’re the prisoner the Rangers came tearing through here, looking for, three days ago. They said they were after you, and they said Conner’s name, and another guy, too.”
“Jay Pittman.”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
I remembered the number on my shirt.
“When did you get here?” I asked.
“That same morning, before the Rangers came.” Ben stopped right there in the hallway. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, Jack. I thought we were home.”
“I was here once before that. You threw me out, Ben.”
He knew it, too.
“Right. I … I’m sorry, Jack. It’s just, I didn’t think me and Griff were going to make it. We never thought we’d find our way back without you.” Ben turned down the hallway beneath the stairs.
“Well, it wasn’t you, Ben. Or Griffin. Not really.” I swallowed. “And I went back to Glenbrook. But everything there is different now, too. It’s all fucked up.”
“Like how?” Griffin said.
Like you’re dead inside a fucking trash barrel, Griff.
“It’s … It’s not real,” I said. “It’s not really Glenbrook.”
“Well, in that case, welcome home, Jack,” Ben said.
Yeah.
The boys’ house was laid out the same, just as I’d expected, but it looked like it had been through an earthquake. Worse.
At the end of the hall, where it teed into Ben’s and Griffin’s rooms, Ben pulled back a baseboard. There was a handle there, and he lifted a hatch door that had been perfectly invisible.
I could see the top of a ladder that dropped down into the blackness beneath the house. This was new.
Or something.
“We’re going down in there,” Ben said.
Griffin climbed down first, and I lowered my bundle of food to him after he’d gotten a weak flame burning on some sort of candle. I followed him, and finally, Ben sealed us inside with a four-by-four post that deadbolted the hatch.
“This is the box,” Griffin said. “This is where we spend our nights. You know. That’s when the Hunters come through.”
“Here,” I said, opening the blanket. “I have good water.”
The box was something like a bomb shelter. Griffin’s dad built it at the beginning of the war. The walls were concrete, but they seeped water along the upper corners. Nothing substantial, though. At least it was safe from the worms.
That was about all there was to it, and it was aptly named.
There were two narrow sets of bunk beds against one wall, a wooden bench, and a card table that held the boys’ little candle. I figured they didn’t burn it too often; that today was like a birthday party or something.
A stained plastic five-gallon pail sat in one corner. I didn’t need to ask what that was for.
Both the boys looked like skeletons, like the gruesome images of prisoners you’d see from ancient wars.
Ben half squatted against the ladder and watched while I unscrewed the top to the old milk jug and passed it over to Griffin.
Ben watched Griffin drink. He rubbed his eyes. I thought he was crying.
He said, “It’s good—lucky—you found us, Jack. I’m sorry about your clothes. After what we seen, I was scared it wasn’t really you.”
“Don’t worry about it, dude. We’re here now. It’s okay.”
Griffin handed the jug to me, but I passed it over to Ben without taking a sip.
“What happened to Conner?” Griffin asked.
“I know where he is, Griff. He’s going to be okay.”
I heard every swallow Ben took from the water in the plastic jug, how he exhaled a sigh when he tipped it down.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Another Odd. A kid named Quinn Cahill.”
“Did you have to kill him?” Griffin asked.
I shook my head. “I stole it from him. He’s going to be pissed about it, but he’s got plenty. Here. You guys need some food.”
I began placing the things I’d taken from Quinn out onto the table. I had a can of evaporated milk, some mandarin orange sections, beans, a small ham, and at least a dozen more cans that had no labels. I figured we’d save the ones without labels until we were really desperate. Desperate enough to maybe eat dog food.
“Well, whoever he is, thanks and Merry Christmas to Quinn Cahill,” Ben said.
I smiled. “Yeah. Thanks and Merry Christmas to the wack job, wherever he is right now.”