“Ma’am,” said Jason.
She looked from Jason to Nick. “Have you eaten? I can sneak you a little food, I think.”
“We had some canned stuff,” Jason said.
“If you’ve actually eaten,” Manon said, “I guess I shouldn’t give you something till mealtime. Food isn’t—it’s kind of scarce, to tell the truth.”
“Unclean spirits like frogs!” called the loudspeakers. “Frogs from the mouth of the dragon!”
“Manon,” Nick said, and then a lump came up in his throat, and he had to start again. “Manon, are there any more of your family around? Because I need to talk to them. I’ve come from Toussaint and… there are things you need to know.”
The men, it turned out, were all away from the camp, assigned to gangs scavenging for supplies or looking for refugees. The women were present, either in the kitchens or working elsewhere, and Manon brought them together under the awnings, at one of the dining tables. Nick looked at the faces of the women that circled him, saw the queenly bearing of the three David women, and the less assured faces of the two others, born into less exalted circles, who had married David men.
“It’s bad news,” Nick said, and for a moment he hesitated. “The people at Toussaint,” he said finally.
“Gros-Papa, Penelope, Gilly—they’ve been killed.”
He looked at them, saw the shock and pain move in waves across their faces. Saw tears tremble in Arlette’s eyes. He took his daughter’s hand.
He and Gros-Papa hadn’t been friends—the old man had made it clear from the start that Nick wasn’t good enough to marry his youngest daughter—but Gilly and Penelope had been kind to him when he and Manon traveled to Toussaint for the obligatory David family reunion every August. But the old man was such a fixture, a kind of immovable pillar of firmness and probity and old-fashioned righteousness. A world without Gros-Papa was a different world, even for Nick.
“What happened?” Manon asked. “Was it the big quake the other night?”
“No.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “They were killed. Murderers, robbers—I don’t know.”
The women looked at him in horror. “No!” Manon’s sister turned away with a sob.
“It looked like the—the killers were following you down the bayou,” Nick went on. “I was trying to catch up—either to protect you or—or fight them off, somehow.”
My God, Nick thought to his own immense astonishment, he had been chasing after murderers, in an open boat, armed with guns he’d swiped from the general store. Now that he’d actually spoken his intentions aloud, it sounded like the most insane thing in the world.
“That was good of you, Nick,” Manon said. Then her eyes brimmed over with tears, and she reached for the stunned Arlette, drew her daughter’s head to her shoulder.
And then the wailing and crying began, the spontaneous flood of grief and mourning that swept over the David women and their kin. Nick watched helplessly, unable to think of anything that would help, anything that would com-fort them—anything except to hang onto Arlette’s hand, to let his daughter know that she mattered to him.
At least they were together, he thought. At least they were a family again, even if they were a family in mourning.
Jason was surprised by the intensity of the grief, by the way that Nick’s family—or ex-family, he supposed—gave way to tears and cries and utter misery. After a while he began to feel uncomfortable. He wanted to be sympathetic, but he didn’t know these people, and it looked as if they weren’t going to stop anytime soon. He quietly told Nick he would go check out their belongings, and slipped away. Jason crossed the chasm on the wooden bridge. The Reverend Frankland’s voice bellowed out of loudspeakers, but between the loudspeakers’ distortion and Jason’s ignorance of the subject matter, he couldn’t make out what the reverend was talking about. Whatever it was, Jason wished Frankland would save it for Sunday.
He returned to the highway to find that Conroy and his truck were gone. The guns had been taken to wherever guns were taken here, and the food had been added to the food store. The rest of their belongings, such as they were, had been laid on the grass by the side of the road. The two armed men at the entrance, loafing under their picnic umbrella, were presumably standing guard over their possessions. The earth shivered with an aftershock. Jason balanced warily, then began to breathe again.
“The Reverend’s assigned you to the young men’s camp,” one of the men said. He rose from his lawn chair. “I’ll take you there when you’re ready.”
Jason shrugged. “Might as well go now,” he said. All he had to take with him was the Astroscan, a blanket, and some mess gear. He took the spare bottle of sunscreen and left behind other medical supplies like aspirin and bandages, figuring that Captain Joe had given them to Nick. He slung the Astroscan over one shoulder.
“Son?” the man asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What is that thing?”
“A telescope.”
“It don’t look like a telescope.”
Jason sighed. “I know.”
He followed the man over some planks thrown across a pair of fissures—not the elaborate plank bridges he’d used before, but then these fissures weren’t as impressive, either—and to an area marked off with string. Inside were rows of tents and awnings, and one large awning, with a plastic ground cover beneath it, where bedrolls, blankets, mattresses, sheets of plastic, and pillows had been piled.
“That’s where the boys put their stuff in the daytime,” the guard said. “You can put your gear there, and it’ll be all right. When people get back, you’ll be given a place to sleep.” Jason looked at the site, at the trampled grass and orderly rows of tents. Welcome to your future, he thought.
“Thanks.”
“Ain’t any boys here right now,” the man said, looking around. “They’re out on a work party.” Jason frowned. “What kind of work party are we talking about, exactly?”
“The boys your age mostly work at salvage. Sorting through rubble, getting food and other useful stuff out of ruins. Some are working with livestock or at planting food crops.” The guard rubbed his chin, looked down at Jason. “I don’t suppose you know much about farming?”
“I’m a city boy,” Jason said. “You want an Internet connection, or a computer upgraded, you talk to me.”
“Uh-huh.” The man looked blank, as if he’d never heard the word “computer” in his life. He hawked and spat onto the grassy ground. “Well,” he said, “I’ll do that. In the meantime, you just make yourself at home till the other boys come back.”
“Right. Thanks again.”
The guard made his way back to the gate. Jason walked under the big awning, plastic crinkling under his feet, and he found a place for his belongings in the shade. Then he went for a walk along the lines of empty tents. Frankland’s voice boomed out from loudspeakers. Large wooden crosses were set out at intervals in case of earthquake.
There was nothing to do and no one to talk to. During a moment when the reverend paused in his address, Jason heard a girl’s laugh on the breeze, and he remembered that even if there were no boys here, he could maybe talk to a girl or two. He walked toward the borders of the camp, then thought about his telescope. He didn’t want to leave it behind in an unguarded place. So he picked it up by its sling, then headed toward the church.
There were a series of camps, he found, laid out along the highway, each with posts and string as boundaries, with wide grassy lanes between them. He passed through another camp, also deserted, that was much like his own, then entered the one with women and children, around the church. The other camps, Jason thought, were set out as if to protect this one.