Then ten months later an angry kid with a candy craving kicks the poor bastard’s skull clean off. Funny old world, huh?
Like a darting insect Boy snatched sticks from the ground.
“Don’t forget the fence,” he said without looking at me. “Get as many palings as you can carry.”
I kicked off the palings, then gathered them up as best I could with the rifle slipping forward off my shoulder. Sweating in the sun, we made our way back to the barn. “Remember the thing we found in the apartment?”
He didn’t answer. He walked sullenly with his arms stretched ’round a huge bundle of sticks.
“It was an ugly bitch, wasn’t it?” I said, trying to get him to speak.
Boy still kept clammed tight.
“You said it was a hive. Have you seen them before?”
“Yeah, lots.” He spoke as if he didn’t want to go into detail.
“Do you know what they are?”
“Yeah.”
“What are they?”
“They’re trouble. Capital T Trouble. You just want to stay clear of them. Once… once I saw them suck a girl dry. Sue and me went into this house and opened a bathroom door, just like you did in the apartment.” His eyes became glistening and wet-looking. From not wanting to talk at all the words started to shoot out like he was spitting them because they tasted bad in his mouth. “We’d just gone in there because we thought there’d be food in the kitchen. We hadn’t eaten for days. ’Course the bastards had cleaned out the cupboards, but we found this little piece of chocolate in the back of the refrigerator. Just one little square. Sue cut it in half and we licked it so we could make it last a long time. God, it tasted lovely. Really lovely.” He licked his lips. “I can taste it now. Then we went up-stairs to see if there was anything worth taking, or if someone had hidden any food. Sue was twenty. She only kept one thing from home. It was gold medal she’d won for running. She told me it was because she could run so fast that she was still alive. She could run faster than the hornets. Then she opened the bath-room door. And there was all this pink stuff like in the apartment. She wasn’t afraid; she looked into it… you know? Really into it, like she was looking into a pool of water. She said she could see hands and arms and legs and things. But then she screamed. She was shouting that it had got hold of her face. I don’t know how, but her face was stuck to it. I tried to get her away, but it held on to her; it glued her there or something. I couldn’t run away. I don’t know why, but I just stood there… I thought it would let her go after a while. But then I saw these things come through that jelly, like they were swimming through it. They came right up to her. I was there for hours. I watched as they sucked everything out of her. She wrinkled up and just kept getting smaller, like she was a balloon that was going down bit by bit. That thing sucked her dry! That’s what hives do. They’ll suck me dry if they get me.”
“You mean the hive sucked the blood out of her?”
He looked at me in fury. “Why did you have to go talking about it? I didn’t want to remember! You dirty rotten bastard! I’m going to tell Michaela about what you’ve gone and done to me!”
With that he ran back to the barn. But he kept clinging to that bundle of sticks like a lost child clinging to a teddy bear.
Twenty-three
“What did you have to go upsetting the kid for?” Zak’s bald head turned pink. He glared at me. And with those eyes that had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, there was a snakelike quality to his looks. To top it all off, the angry way he locked his eyes onto me made me think of a rattlesnake getting ready to strike.
“I didn’t intend to upset Boy. I was only talking to him.”
“About what?”
“I asked him if he knew anything about these hives.”
“What did you have to cross-examine the kid about it for? Why didn’t you ask me or Tony or Michaela? Why interrogate a little kid?”
We were standing arguing in the barn. Michaela stood with her arms ’round Boy while he hid his face in her chest. He might have been crying, but I couldn’t tell.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but my tone was angry rather than remorseful.
“You should be sorry.” Michaela’s expression was pretty ferocious, too. “Dear God, Valdiva, don’t you think we’ve all been pushed to the edge here? We’re hanging on by our fingernails above an almighty crevasse. We don’t need you blundering ’round pounding questions at us.”
“But you said that if I got you the food, you’d tell me-”
“Tell you about the hive? Yes, I will, but when we’re ready.” Then she added in a way that was stiff and formal-sounding, “And thank you for the food. Just in case you think we haven’t been grateful enough.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know I was gonna upset the kid. Like I said, I was just talking to him.”
Zak shot me a suddenly shrewd look. “Why’re you so fascinated with the hive?”
I shrugged. “Just curious, I suppose. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” The moment I spoke the words I felt those cold spider feet across my back. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Why did that sentence feel like a lie in my mouth? And why was I so curious about the hive? OK, it was bizarre. Something completely alien. But when I thought about the hive it worked its way under my skin. It became an itch I wanted to scratch. I don’t know why, but I wanted to find out more. Maybe deep down I was getting obsessive about it. Unhealthily obsessive at that.
Ben stood by the tractor while this fiery scene played itself out. His hands trembled, his face the picture of unhappiness. You could tell he didn’t want to be here with a gang of strangers. He didn’t like their straggly hair. He detested their worn-out clothes. He despised the gaunt faces hardened by hunger and daily battles for survival. Old Ben, my buddy of nine months, hated everything; was scared of everything. All he craved right now was to be home in Sullivan.
Michaela looked at me. She seemed calmer. “We’ll talk about the Hive when we’ve finished establishing the camp. People need to eat and rest first. You get to learn what your priorities-Greg? Where are you going?”
I was pissed. But was I pissed at them? Or at the little kid who ran back blabbing like he was going to tell his mom because I’d played rough with him? Or was I pissed at myself for maybe lacking tact? Maybe I thought that when I delivered food to this bunch they’d sit down to explain what the hive was. So was I pissed at not getting the answers I expected? Because there was something about the hive. It was more than the shock-and disgust-of seeing that repulsive thing. There was something else I just couldn’t put my finger on. Like seeing a face in a crowd that you’re sure you’ve seen before. You find yourself ransacking your memory for a name. It bugs you. You keep thinking about it. Oh, hell, Valdiva, go do something useful.
I walked uphill from the barn through blazing sun-light. Passed the striped pajamas that skeleton boy was wearing. Then I kicked the crap out of the fence. I was telling myself I was procuring a little more firewood. The truth? I poured my anger and frustrations into that fence through the steel toe cap of my boot. Pow! A paling burst into splinters. Crash! A post snapped in two. Crack! A railing busted to hell.
Anger roared through my blood. Why did the nice bastards of Sullivan murder Lynne? Why did they have to be so fucking brutal they crushed the life out of her? Why did the whole town participate? Why did they keep their smiling heads stuck in the goddam sand? Why did they pretend that they could keep their little isolated society running like it always had forever? Didn’t they know that somewhere down the line, in ten or twenty years, the gasoline would run out? And sure as hell they’d run out of canned food long before then, or it would eventually spoil in the tins. They were like Adolf Hitler in his bunker way back, when he sent orders to armies that no longer existed and the Russians were overrunning Berlin. Sullivan shut out the inevitable. They were like people suffering from terminal cancer who were saving for a retirement condo they’d never live to see.