Текст книги "Darwin's children"

Автор книги: Грег Бир

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The secretary knocked on the door jamb. “Congressman, is Mr. Rafelson here?” She looked right at Mitch, one eyebrow cocked.

Gianelli asked, “Who wants to know?”

“Won't use her name and sounds upset. System board says she's on a disposable cell phone using an offshore line. That's no longer legal, sir.”

“You don't say,” Wickham said, looking out the window.

“My wife knows I'm here. No one else,” Mitch said.

“Get her number and call her back, Connie,” Wickham said. “Put it on the puzzler, and route it through, oh, Tom Haney's office in Boca Raton.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wickham gestured toward his desk phone. “We can link her line to a special scrambler for congressional office communications,” he said, but tapped his wristwatch. “Starts and ends with garbage, and unless you know the key, it all sounds like garbage. We change the key every call. Takes NSA about a minute or so to break it, so keep it short.”

The secretary made the connection. Mitch stared between the two men, his heart sinking, and picked up the receiver on the desk.

11

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY

Stella sat in the shade of an old wooden bus shelter, clutching her book to her chest. She had been sitting there for an hour and a half. The Gatorade bottle was long since empty and she was thirsty. The morning heat was stifling and the sky was clouding over. The air had thickened with that spooky electric dampness that meant a big storm was brewing. All of her emotions had flip-flopped. “I've been really stupid,” she told herself. “Kaye will be so mad.”

Kaye seldom showed her anger. Mitch, when he was home, was the one who paced and shook his head and clenched his fists when things got tense. But Stella could tell when Kaye was angry. Her mother could get just as angry as Mitch, though in a quiet way.

Stella hated anger in the house. It smelled like old cockroaches.

Kaye and Mitch never took it out on Stella. Both treated her with patient tenderness, even when they clearly did not want to, and that made Stella feel what she called steepy,odd and different and apart.

Stella had made up that word, steepy,and lots of others, most of which she kept to herself.

It was tough to be responsible for a lot, and maybe all, of their anger. Hard to know she was to blame for Mitch not being able to go dig up pottery and middens, old garbage dumps, and for Kaye not being able to work in a lab or teach or do anything but write articles and books that somehow never got published or even finished.

Stella knit her long fingers and raised her knee, filling the hollow of the fingers and tugging her arms straight. She heard a vehicle and pushed back into the shadow of the enclosure, lifting her feet into the gloom. A red Ford pickup drove slowly by, clean, new, with a smooth white plastic camper on the back. The camper had a square shiny little door made of smoky plastic in the rear. It looked expensive, much nicer than the little Toyota truck or Mitch's old Dodge Intrepid.

The red truck slowed, stopped, shifted smoothly into reverse, and backed up. Stella tried to squeeze into the corner, her back pressed against splintery wood. She suddenly just wanted to go home. She could find her way back, she was sure of it; she could find it by the smell of the trees. But car exhaust and pretty soon rain would make that harder. The rain would make it much harder.

The truck stopped and the engine switched off. The driver opened his door and got out on the side away from Stella. She could only see a little bit of him through the truck's tinted windows. He had gray hair and a beard. He walked slowly around the truck bed and camper, the shadows of his legs visible under the frame.

“Hello, Miss,” he said, stopping a respectful four or five yards from where she was trying to hide. He put his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. In his mouth he clenched an unlit pipe. He adjusted the pipe with one hand, removed it, pointed it at her. “You live around here?”

Stella nodded in the shadow.

His goatee was all gray and neatly trimmed. He was potbellied but dressed neatly, and his calf-high socks and running shoes were clean and white. He smelled confident, what she could smell behind thick swipes of deodorant and the rum-and-cherry-scented tobacco tamped into the pipe.

“You should be with your family and friends,” he said.

“I'm heading home,” Stella said.

“Bus won't come by again until this evening. Only two stops a day here.”

“I'm walking.”

“Well, that's fine. You shouldn't take rides with strangers.”

“I know.”

“Can I help? Make a phone call to your folks?”

Stella said nothing. They had one secure phone at home, strictly for emergencies, and they bought disposable cell phones for occasional use. They always used a kind of family code when they talked, even with the disposables, but Mitch said they could identify your voice no matter how much you tried to change it.

She wanted the man in shorts to go away.

“Are your folks at home, Miss?”

Stella looked up at the sun peeking through the clouds.

“If you're alone, I know some people who can help,” he said. “Special friends. Listen. I made a recording of them.” He dug in his back pocket and pulled out a small recorder. He pressed a button and held out the machine for her to listen.

She had heard such songs and whistles before, on TV and on the radio. When she had been three, she had heard a boy sing songs like that, too. And a few years ago, in the house in Richmond, the big brick house with the iron gate and the guard dogs and four couples, nervous, thin people who seemed to have a lot of money, bringing their children together to play around an indoor swimming pool. She vividly remembered listening to their singing and being too shy to join in. Sweet interweaves of tunes, like meadowlarks singing their hearts out in a berry patch, as Mitch had said.

That was what she heard coming from the recorder.

Voices like hers.

Big drops of rain left crayon-jabs of wetness on the road and in the dirt. The sky and trees behind the man with the goatee flared icy white against the charcoal gray of the sky.

“It's going to get wet,” the man said. “Miss, it isn't good to be out here by yourself. Heck, this shelter could even attract lightning, who knows?” He pulled a cell phone from his back pocket. “Can I call someone for you? Your mom or dad?”

He didn't smell bad. In fact, he did not smell of much at all except for the rum-and-cherry tobacco. She had to learn how to judge people and even take chances. It was the only way to get along. She made a decision. “Could you call?” Stella asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Just tell me their number.”

12

LEESBURG

Mark Augustine placed his hand on the back of Rachel Browning's chair. The room was quiet except for the hum of equipment fans and a faint clicking noise.

They were watching the plump man in khaki shorts, the red truck, the lanky, awkward girl that was Kaye Lang Rafelson's daughter.

A virus child.

“Is that your stringer, Rachel?”

“I don't know,” Browning said.

“A good Samaritan, maybe?” Augustine asked. Internally, he was furious, but would not give Browning the satisfaction of showing it. “He could be a child molester.”

For the first time, Browning revealed uncertainty. “Any suggestions?” she asked.

Augustine felt no relief that she was asking his advice. This would simply involve him in her chain of decisions, and that was the last thing he wanted. Let her hang herself, all by herself.

“If things are going wrong, I need to make some calls,” he said.

“We should wait,” Browning said. “It's probably okay.”

The Little Bird hovered about thirty feet above the red truck and the bus stop, the paunchy middle-aged man and the young girl.

Augustine's hand tightened on the back of the chair.

13

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY

The rain fell heavily and the air got darker as they climbed into the truck. Too late Stella noticed that the man had stuffed waxed cotton up his nose. He sat on the bench seat behind the wheel and offered her a mint Tic-Tac, but she hated mint. He popped two into his mouth and gestured with the phone. “Nobody answers,” he said. “Daddy at work?”

She turned away.

“I can drop you at your house, but maybe, if it's okay with you, I know some people would like to meet you,” he said.

She was going against everything her parents had ever told her, to give him the house number, to sit in his truck. But she had to do something, and it looked as if today was the day.

She had never walked so far from home. The rain would change everything about the air and the smells. “What's your name?” she asked.

“Fred,” the man answered. “Fred Trinket. I know you'd like to meet them, and they surely would like to meet you.”

“Stop talking that way,” Stella said.

“What way?”

“I'm not an idiot.”

Fred Trinket had clogged his nose with cotton and his mouth sang with shrill mint.

“Of course,” he said reasonably. “I know that, honey. I have a shelter. A place for kids in trouble. Would you like to see some pictures?” Trinket asked. “They're in the glove box.” He watched her, still smiling. He had a kind enough face, she decided. A little sad. He seemed concerned about how she felt. “Pictures of my kids, the ones on the recorder.”

Stella felt intensely curious. “Like me?” she asked.

“Just like you,” Fred said. “You're sparking real pretty, you know that? The others spark the same way when they're curious. Something to see.”

“What's sparking?”

“Your freckles,” Fred said, pointing. “They spread out on your cheeks like butterfly wings. I'm used to seeing that at my shelter. I could call your house again, see if somebody's home, tell your daddy or mama to meet us. Should I?”

He was getting nervous. She could smell that much, not that it meant anything. Everybody was nervous these days. He did not want to hurt her, she was pretty sure; there was nothing horny about his scent or his manner, and he did not smell of cigarettes or alcohol.

He did not smell anything like the young men in the convenience store.

She told herself again she would have to take chances if she wanted to get anywhere, if she wanted anything to change. “Yes,” she said.

Fred pushed redial. The cell phone beeped the tune of the house number. Still no answer. Her mother was probably out looking for her.

“Let's go to my house,” Fred said. “It's not far and there are cold drinks in the ice chest. Strawberry soda. Genuine Nehi in long-necked bottles. I'll call your mama again when we get there.”

She swallowed hard, opened the glove box, and pulled out a packet of color photos, five by sevens. The kids in the first photo, seven of them, were having a party, a birthday party, with a bright red cake. Fred stood in the background beside a plump older woman with a blank look. Other than Fred and the older woman, the kids at the party were all about her age. One boy might have been older, but he was standing in the background.

All like her. SHEVA children.

“Jesus,” Stella said.

“Easy on that,” Fred said amiably. “Jesus is Lord.”

The bumper sticker on Fred's truck said that. On the tailgate was glued a golden plastic fish. The fish, labeled “Truth,” was eating another fish with legs, labeled “Darwin.”

Fred turned on the motor and put the truck in gear. The rain was falling in big hard drops, tapping on the roof and the hood like a million bored fingers.

“Battle of the Wilderness took place not far from here,” Fred said as he drove. He turned right carefully, as if worried about jostling precious cargo. “Civil War. Holy place in its way. Real quiet. I love it out this way. Less traffic, fewer condo-minimums, right?”

Stella leafed through the pictures again, found some more stuck in a plastic pocket. Seven different kids, mugging for the camera or staring at it seriously, some sitting in big chairs in a big house.

One boy had no expression at all. “Who's this?” she asked Fred.

Fred spared a quick look. “That is Will. Strong Will, Mother calls him. He lived off snakes and squirrels before he came to our shelter.” Fred Trinket smiled and shook his head at the thought. “You'll like him. And the others, too.”

14

The red truck pulled up to a two-story house with tall white columns. Two long brick planters filled with scrawny, dripping oleanders bordered the white steps. Fred Trinket had done nothing overt to upset Stella, but now they were at his house.

“It's about lunchtime,” Trinket said. “The others will be eating. Mother feeds them about now. I eat later. It's my digestion. None too good.”

“You eat oatmeal,” Stella said.

Trinket beamed. “That is right, young lady. I eat oatmeal for breakfast. Sometimes a single slice of bacon. What else?”

“You like garlic.”

“For dinner, I have spaghetti with garlic, that's right.” Trinket shook his head happily. “Marvelous. You smell all that.”

He opened his door and came around. Stella got out and he pointed up the porch steps to the house. A big white door stood there, solid and patient, flanked by two tall, skinny windows. The paint was new. The doorknob reeked of Brasso, a smell she did not like. She did not touch the door. Trinket opened it for her. The door was not locked.

“We trust people,” Trinket said. “Mother!” he called. “We have a guest.”

15

Mitch pulled into the dirt driveway beneath a sodden gray sky. Kaye was not in the house when he arrived. She honked at him from the road as he came out after searching the empty house. His long legs took him in five quick strides to the old truck.

“How long?” Mitch asked, leaning in. He touched her wet cheeks through the driver's side window.

“Three or four hours,” Kaye said. “I took a nap and she was gone.”

He got in beside her. Just as she put the truck in gear, Mitch held up his hand. “Phone,” he said. She cut the engine and they both listened. From the house came a faint ringing.

Mitch ran to the house. The screen door slammed behind him and he picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Bailey?” a man asked.

That was the name they had told Stella to use.

“Yeah,” Mitch said, wiping rain from his brow and eyes. “Who's this?”

“My name is Fred Trinket. I did not know you were living so near, Mr. Bailey.”

“I'm in a hurry, Mr. Trinket. Where's my daughter?”

“Please don't be upset. She's in my house right now, and she's very worried about you.”

“We're worried about her. Where are you?”

“She's fine, Mr. Rafelson. We'd like you to come and see something we think is interesting and important. Something you may very well find fascinating.” The man who called himself Trinket gave directions.

Mitch rejoined Kaye in the truck. “Someone has Stella,” he said.

“Emergency Action?”

“A teacher, a crank, somebody,” Mitch said. No time now to mention the man knew his real name. He did not think Stella would have told anyone that. “About ten miles from here.”

Kaye was already spinning the truck around on the road.

16

“There,” Trinket said, putting away the phone and drying his short hair with a towel. “Have you ever met with more than one or two of the children at a time?”

Stella did not answer for a moment, it was such an odd question. She wanted to think it over, even though she knew what he meant. She looked around the living room of the big house. The furniture was colonial, she knew from reading catalogs and magazines: maple with antique print fabric—butter churns, horse tack, plows. It was really ugly. The wallpaper was dark green flocked velvet with floral patterns that looked like sad faces. The entire room smelled of a citronella candle burning on a small side table, too sweet even for Stella's tastes. There had been chicken cooking in the past hour, and broccoli.

“No,” she finally said.

“That is sad, isn't it?”

The old woman, the same as in the photos, entered the room and looked at Stella with little interest. She walked in rubber-soled slippers with hardly any sound and held out a long-necked bottle of Nehi strawberry soda, brilliant red in the room's warm glow.

Trinket was at least fifty. Stella guessed his mother might be seventy, plump, with strong-looking, corded arms, peach-colored skin with only a few wrinkles, and thin white hair arranged neatly on a pallid, taut scalp, like the worn head of a much-loved doll.

Stella was thirsty, but she did not take the bottle.

“Mother,” Trinket said, “I've called Stella's parents.”

“No need,” the woman said, her tone flat. “We have groceries.”

Trinket winked at Stella. “We do indeed,” he said. “And chicken for lunch. What else, Stella?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“What else do we have to eat?”

“It's not a game,” Stella said huffily.

“Broccoli, I'd guess,” Trinket answered for her, his lips forming a little bow. “Mother is a good cook, but predictable. Still, she helps me with the children.”

“I do,” the woman said.

“Where are they?” Stella asked.

“Mother does her best, but my wife was a better cook.”

“She died,” the old woman said, touching her hair with her free hand.

Stella looked at the floor in frustration. She heard someone talking, far off in the back.

“Is that them?” she asked, fascinated despite herself. She made a move toward the long, picture-lined hall on the right, following the sound of voices.

“Yes,” Trinket said. He shot a quick glance at the book in her hands. “Your parents kept you secluded, didn't they? How selfish. Don't we know, Mother, how selfish that would be for someone like Stella?”

“Alone,” his mother said, and abruptly turned and set the bottle down on the small table beside the candle. She rubbed her hands on her apron and waddled down the hallway. The combined sweetness of candle and Nehi threatened to make Stella dizzy. She had seen dogs whining to be with other dogs, to sniff them and exchange doggy greetings. That memory brought her up short.

She thought of the two men in the Texaco minimart.

You smell as good as a dog.

She shivered.

“Your parents were protecting you, but it was still cruel,” Trinket said, watching her. Stella kept her eyes on the hallway. The wish that had haunted her for weeks now, months if she thought back that far, was suddenly strong in her, making her dull and steepy.

“Not to be with your own kind, not to bathe in the air of another, and not to speak the way you all do, such lovely doubling, that is painfully lonely-making, isn't it?”

Her cheeks felt hot. Trinket studied her cheeks. “Your people are so beautiful,” he said, his eyes going soft. “I could watch you all day.”

“Why?” Stella asked sharply.

“Beg pardon?” Trinket smiled, and this time there was something in the smile that was wrong. Stella did not like being the center of attention. But she wanted to meet the others, more than anything on Earth or in the heavens, as Mitch's father might have said.

Stella's grandfather, Sam, had died five years ago.

“I do not run an accredited school, nor a day care, nor a center of learning,” Trinket said. “I try to teach what I can, but mostly I—Mother and I—create a brief refuge, away from the cruel people who hate and fear. We neither hate nor fear. We admire. In my way, I'm an anthropologist.”

“Can I meet them now?” Stella asked.

Trinket sat on the couch with a radiant grin. “Tell me more about your mother and father. They're well known in some circles. Your mother discovered the virus, right? And your father found the famous mummies in the Alps. The harbingers of our own fate.”

The sweet scents in the room blocked some human odors, but not aggression, not fear. Those she would still be able to smell, like a steel spoon stuck in vanilla ice cream. Trinket did not smell mean or fearful, so she did not feel she was in immediate danger. Still, he wore nose plugs. And how did he know so much about Kaye and Mitch?

Trinket leaned forward on the couch and touched his nostrils. “You're worried about these.”

Stella turned away. “Let me see the others,” she said.

Trinket snorted a laugh. “I can't be in a crowd of you without these,” Trinket said. “I'm sensitive, oh yes. I had a daughter like you. My wife and I acquired the masks and knew the special scents my daughter made. Then, my wife died. She died in pain.” He stared at the ceiling, his eyes wet pools of sentiment. “I miss her,” Trinket said, and slapped his hand suddenly on the bolster of the couch. “Mother!”

The blank-faced woman returned.

“See if they've finished their lunch,” Trinket said. “Then let's introduce Stella.”

“Will she eat?” the older woman asked, her eyes unconcerned either way.

“I don't know. That depends,” Fred Trinket said. He looked at his watch. “I hope your parents haven't lost their way. Maybe you should call them . . . in a few minutes, just to make sure?”

17

Kaye pulled the Toyota truck to the side of the rutted dirt road and dropped her head onto the wheel. The rain had stopped, but they had nearly gotten their wheels stuck in mud several times. She moaned.

Mitch threw open the door. “This is the road. This is the address. Shit!”

He flung the crumpled piece of paper into a wet ditch. The only house here had been boarded up for a long time, and half of it had slumped into cinders after a fire. Five or six acres of weed-grown farm ground surrounded them, sullen behind a veil of low mist. Streamers of cloud played hide-and-seek with a watery sun. The house was bright, then dark, beneath the coming and going of those wide gray fingers.

“Maybe he doesn't have her.” Kaye looked at Mitch through the open door.

“I could have transposed a number,” Mitch said, leaning against the cab.

His cell phone rang. They both jerked as if stuck with pins. Mitch pulled the phone out and said, “Yes.” The phone recognized his voice and announced that the calling party's number was blocked, then asked if he would take the call anyway.

“Yes,” he said, without thinking.

“Daddy?” The voice on the other end was tense, high-pitched, but it sounded like Stella's.

“Where are you?”

“Is that you? Daddy?” The voice went through a digital bird fight and steadied. He had never heard that sort of sound before and it worried him.

“It's me, honey. Where are you?”

“I'm at this house. I saw the house number on the mail box.”

Mitch pulled a pen and pad from his inside coat pocket and wrote down the number and road.

“Stay tight, Stella, and don't let anyone touch you,” he said, working to steady his voice. “We're on our way.” He reluctantly said good-bye and closed the phone. His face was like red sandstone, he was so furious.

“Is she okay?”

Mitch nodded, then opened the phone again and punched in another number.

“Who are you calling?”

“State police,” he said.

“We can't!” Kaye cried. “They'll take her!”

“It's too late to worry about that,” Mitch said. “This guy's going for bounty, and he wants all of us.”

18

So many pictures in the hall leading to the back of the house. Generation after generation of Trinkets, Stella assumed, from faded color snapshots clustered in a single frame to larger, sepia-colored prints showing men and women and children wearing stiff brown clothes and peering with pinched expressions, as if the eyes of the future scared them.

“Our legacy,” Fred Trinket told her. “Old genes. All those arrangements, gone!” He grinned and walked ahead, his shoulders rolling with each step. He had a fat back, Stella saw. Fat neck and fat back. His calves were taut, however, as if he did a lot of walking, but pale and hairy. Perhaps he walked at night.

Trinket pushed open a screen door.

“Let me know if she wants lunch,” the mother said from the kitchen, halfway up the hall and to the left. As Mrs. Trinket dried a dish, Stella saw a dark, damp towel flick out of the kitchen like a snake's tongue.

“Yes, Mother,” Trinket murmured. “This way, Miss Rafelson.”

He descended a short flight of wooden steps and walked across the gravel path to a long, dark building about ten paces beyond. Stella saw a doghouse but no dog, and a small orchard of clothes trees spinning slowly in the wind after the storm, their lines empty.

Along would come Mother Trinket,Stella thought, and pin up the laundry, and it would be clothes tree springtime. When the clothes were dry she would pull them down and stuff them in her basket and it would be winter again. Expressionless Mother Trinket was the seasonal heart of the old house, mistress of the backyard.

Stella's mouth was dry. Her nose hurt. She touched behind her ears where it itched when she was nervous. Her finger came away waxy. She wanted to take a washcloth and remove all the old scents, clean herself for the people in the long outbuilding. A word came to her: prensing,preening and cleansing. It was a lovely word and it made her tremble like a leaf.

Trinket unlocked the door to the rear building. Inside, Stella saw fluorescent lights sputter on, bright and blue, over workbenches, an old refrigerator, stacked cardboard boxes, and, to the right, a strong wire mesh door.

The voices grew louder. Stella thought she heard three or four. They were speaking in a way she could not understand—low, guttural, with piping high exclamations. Someone coughed.

“They're inside,” Trinket said. He unlocked the wire door with a brass key tied to a dirty length of twine. “They just finished eating. We'll fetch the trays for Mother.” He pulled the mesh door open.

Stella did not move. Not even the promise of the voices, the promise that had brought her this far, could persuade her to take another step.

“There are four inside, just like you. They need your help. I'll go in with you.”

“Why the lock?” Stella asked.

“People drive around, sometimes they have guns . . . take potshots. Just not safe,” Trinket said. “It's not safe for your kind. Since my wife's death, I've made it one of my jobs, my duty, to protect those I come across on the road. Youngsters like you.”

“Where's your daughter?” Stella asked.

“She's in Idaho.”

“I don't believe you,” Stella said.

“Oh, it's true. They took her away last year. I've never been to visit her.”

“They let parents visit sometimes.”

“I just can't bear the thought of going.” His expression had changed, and his smell, too.

“You're lying,” Stella said. She could feel her glands working, itching. Stella could not smell it herself, could not in fact smell anything her nose was so dry, but she knew the room was thick with her persuasion scent.

Trinket seemed to deflate, arms dropping, hands relaxing. He pointed to the wire mesh door. He was thinking, or waiting. Stella moved away. The key dangled from the rope in his hand. “Your people,” he said, and scratched his nose.

“Let us go,” Stella said. It was more than a suggestion.

Trinket shook his head slowly, then lifted his eyes. She thought she might be having an effect on him, despite his nose plugs and the mints.

“Let us all go,” Stella said.

The old woman came in so quietly Stella did not hear her. She was surprisingly strong. She grabbed Stella around the ribs, pinning her arms and making her squeak like a mouse, and shoved her through the door. Her book fell to the floor. Trinket swung up and caught the key on its string, then slammed and locked the gate before Stella could turn around.

“They're lonely in there,” Trinket's mother told Stella. She wore a clothespin on her nose and her eyes were watering. “Let my son do his work. Fred, maybe now she'd like some lunch.”

Trinket took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, expelling the plugs. He looked at them in disgust, then pushed a button mounted on the wall. A lock clicked and buzzed and another wire door behind her popped open. Stella faced them through the mesh of the first door. She could not make a sound at first, she was so startled and so angry.

Trinket rubbed his eyes and shook his head. He gave a little kick and spun her book into the far corner. “Damn,” he said. “She's good. She almost had me. Hellish little skunk.”

She stood shivering in the little cubicle. Trinket turned out the fluorescent lights. That left only the reflected glow from the rooms behind her.

A hand touched her elbow.

Stella screamed.

“What?”

She backed up against the mesh and stared at a boy. He was ten or eleven, taller than her by a couple of inches, and, if anything, skinnier. He had scratches on his face and his hair was unkempt and tufty.

“I didn't mean to scare you,” the boy said. His cheeks flushed in little spots of pink and brown. His gold-flecked eyes followed her as she sidled to the left, into the corner, and held up her fists.

The boy's nose wrinkled. “Wow,” he said. “You're really shook.”

“What's your name?” she asked, her voice high.

“What sort of name?” he asked. He leaned over, twisted his head, inhaled the air in front of her, and made a sour face.

“They scared me,” she explained, embarrassed.

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Look,” he said, leaning forward, and his cheeks freckled again.

“So?”

He looked disappointed. “Some can do it.”

“What do your parents call you?”

“I don't know. Kids call me Kevin. We live out in the woods. Mixed group. Not anymore. Trinket got me. I was stupid.”

Stella straightened and lowered her fists. “How many are in here?”

“Four, including me. Now, five.”

She heard the coughing again. “Somebody sick?”

“Yeah.”

“I've never been sick,” Stella said.

“Neither have I. Free Shape is sick.”

“Who?”

“I call her Free Shape. It's not her name, probably. She's almost as old as me.”

“Is Strong Will still here?”

“He doesn't like that name. They call us names like that because they say we stink. Come on back. Nobody's going anywhere soon, right? They sent me out here to see who else old Fred snared.”

Stella followed Kevin to the back of the long building. They passed four empty rooms equipped with cots and folding chairs and cheap old dressers.

At the very back, three young people sat around a small portable television. Stella hated television, never watched it. She saw that the television's control panel had been covered with a metal plate. Two—an older boy, Will, Stella guessed, and a younger girl, no more than seven—sat on a battered gray couch. The third, a girl of nine or ten, curled up on a blanket on the floor.

The girl smelled bad. She smelled sick. She coughed into her palm and wiped it on her T-shirt without taking her eyes away from the television.

Will pushed off the couch and stood. He looked Stella over cautiously, then stuck his hands in his pockets. “This is Mabel,” he said, introducing the younger girl. “Or Maybelle. She doesn't know. Girl on the floor doesn't say much. I'm Will. I'm the oldest. I'm always the oldest. I may be the oldest alive.”