Dust City (4 page)

Jack hammers the remote on his palm. “Damn! Seriously, Henry, you know how to work this thing?”

Before I can offer Jack any help, my ears instinctively prick up. I hear the doors at the end of the corridor slam open. A whole menagerie of sound is barreling toward the rec center. A moment later, Roy and the others roll in.

Roy’s grinning a mouthful of fangs. “Nice try at the end there, Jim, but you oughta know you’ll never outfox me. I’m too fast.”

Jim shrugs. “We’ll see.”

Roy goes straight for Jack. “Gimme that!” He snatches the remote out of his hand and shoves the boy backward. It’s enough to throw Jack into a somersault, but it’s hard to truly shove him off balance. He wads himself into a ball and rolls with it, coming up beside the defunct pool table, hopping up on the edge and swinging his legs. He even whistles a tune, like it was all part of the show.

Roy mashes every button on the remote before he figures out it’s broken. He growls angrily and throws it backward. It soars straight for Jack’s head but he dodges left and brings his hand up to catch it. It slaps loudly into his palm. “Ow!” The mules look up from their game, blinking in silence.

Jack’s faster than he looks.

Roy reaches up to the TV, raising the volume manually. It’s a news story about a raid on a gang of water nixies from along the reservoir. There’s a montage of seized refinery equipment and a gaggle of nixies being hauled off in saltwater tubs.

Roy settles into a nearby armchair. “We missed you in the race,” he says. “Too chicken, I guess.”

“It’s not my thing.”

“It oughta be. You’re a
wolf
. Didn’t anybody tell you?” He stabs a paw in Jack’s direction. “Quit hanging with the baldies.
Run
with us. I’d have a lot of fun making you eat my dust.”

“I try to avoid dust whenever I can.”

“Whatever.” Roy turns back to the TV. “Once I get out of here, I’m gonna get me some work with those guys, see? Nixies. There’re the only ones who’ll give a wolf a decent break.” He points idly out the window. “And
that
is also why we race. It’s practice, Hank-man. Like an investment in the future. Face it already: You gotta live up to your species one of these days.” He looks at me sideways. “Don’t you wanna make your father proud?”

“No,” I tell him. “I don’t.”

Roy opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted when Eddie flaps in.
“Cheat!”
he squawks.

Roy chuckles. We can all see Eddie’s feathers are badly ruffled. “You cut the corner by the rectory.”

Roy picks something from his teeth, right from back in the molars. It comes out tied to a string of spit, and Roy flicks it down at Eddie’s feet. “I’m trying to watch,” he says. The screen’s full of police tape and flashing lights.

Eddie takes a step forward. “Admit you cheated. We all saw it. Right, Jim?”

Jim says nothing. He’s staring at the screen, too.

“Admit it, Roy! Tell everybody how you—”

Roy’s paw lashes out. He catches Eddie by the neck and the poor bird comes right off his feet. Only this time it’s not on his own power. I can easily imagine Roy crushing Eddie’s larynx with a pop of his fist.

“Excuse me?” Roy rises from the chair and pulls the bird in close. Eddie’s hard black eyes bug out like a frog’s. “I think
you’re
the one who’s got something to confess.”

Eddie’s focus starts retreating to someplace inside his avian skull. His beak hangs loose and a wormy tongue lolls out. Roy puts his snout to the bird’s cheek, almost like he’s giving him a kiss.
“You
need to admit that you are lying,” he whispers. “I won fair and square. Didn’t I?”

But Eddie can’t admit anything. He can’t even speak. He twitches and his feathery arms hang limp.

“Put him down, Roy.” It’s Gunther, finally deigning to intervene.

“Whatever.” Roy loosens his grip and Eddie—belying his species—drops like a stone. Roy giggles through his snout. “Not much of a flyer, I guess. Maybe
that’s
why you lost.” Roy settles back into the armchair. It creaks like a sinking ship under his weight.

The other ravens move to help Eddie up, but Roy glares at them. “Let him lie.” They know better than to argue with Roy, so Eddie stays there for a while, splattered on the floor like spilled soup.

Gunther says nothing. He fades back into the corridor,
leaving the rest of us to watch Eddie floundering on the tiles. There’s a certain tenseness in the room now, and since nobody knows how to alleviate it, we simply turn our attention to the television. We watch it in silence for a long time before Eddie finally scrapes himself up off the tiles. He stumbles away, wingtips dragging behind him.

5

BUBBLE OF MUD

JACK AND I ARE BACK IN THE YARD, SITTING IN OUR USUAL SPOT. IT RAINED
all night and the field’s nothing but mud. Through the damp haze, I’m keeping an eye on Gunther. He’s propped against the wall of the dormitory, laughing with the other guards.

Jack’s twisting his toe, digging a little trench in the mud. “Got a letter from Siobhan yesterday.”

I nod, gazing through an open section of the exterior wall. It’s been patched with triple panes of chain link. “How’s she doing?”

“Says she’ll come visit again. Real soon, probably.” Jack untucks his shirt. Underneath, instead of the smooth pink skin of his belly, there’s a manila folder. “Got something for you,” he says. He slips the folder out of his pants and places it on the dull rock between us. The color blends in, almost to the point of invisibility. “Remember how you told me once you always wonder what Doc’s writing about you?”

I suddenly realize what Jack’s done. “You
stole
it?”

Jack smiles but it’s only halfhearted. “It’s what I’m good at.”

“You probably read it, too. So now what—you know everything about me, right? About my mother and my nightmares and—”

“Naw!” He digs his foot deeper into the muck. “Which is not to say I didn’t read it. Because I did. Well, sort of. I started to, but here’s the thing: It’s the wrong file.”

“Then why’d you say it’s for me?”

“I saw the one that said Whelp, so I took it. Except it’s not yours.”

“Whose is it?”

“Your dad’s.”

Acting on instinct, I grab for the file, flipping it open.

Dear Henry,

You must think—

“Hey!” Jack yanks my arm. I’m so gutted with shock I lose my grip. Jack lays the file back on the stone. “Someone’s gonna see.”

“That’s my dad’s handwriting.”

Jack’s eyeing the rectory. “You can read it later.”

“He sent me a
letter?”
I can see the thickness of the file. There’s more than one. “How come I never got them?”

Jack taps the folder. “I think your dad wants to see you.”

“So you
did
read them?”

“A little. I think maybe Doc thought reading them would screw you up or something.”

My eyes burn into the bland manila. If the guards find out I have this, they’ll not only take it back but they’ll figure I stole it. I need to find out what Dad wrote, but I’m staring so hard, it feels like someone will notice. So I tear my eyes away.

“Why would Doc keep them?” I wonder. Through the patch of chain-link I can see the ridge that runs along the edge of the City, out where the quarries start. There’s a dirt road out there, bypassing the school as it cuts onto the overpass. There’s a vehicle speeding down the ridge. It’s probably a delivery truck, probably from Nimbus. They’re always driving too fast. They never stop for anything. I turn back to Jack. “I need to read it,” I tell him.

Jack nods. “Let me hold onto it for now.” With one swift motion, he slips the file back under his shirt. “You’re coming, right? They’re gonna think you stole this.”

“What? Coming where?”

He dips one hand into the folds of his uniform. It comes out with the battered leather pouch Siobhan gave him on Visitors’ Day. He tips it and a big seed, about the size of a pea, dribbles into his palm. He holds the seed in his fist and pokes his foot into the ground, which leaks back at him, spongy with stale rain.

“What’re you doing?” My head’s swimming. “Let me see the file.”

Jack doesn’t answer. The truck coming down the ridge races through a puddle of sunlight and flashes suddenly, blinding me. Jack’s looking up, contemplating the wall. He
opens his palm, plucks up the seed, and with his thumbnail he peels away nothing more than a sliver. “Trust me,” he says. “Your dad wants to see you.”

The truck is down from the ridge now, coming toward the school along the lone highway—only now I see it’s not a truck. It’s a little convertible. A fast one. Jack drops the larger chunk of the seed back into his pouch, slipping it into the mysterious folds of his shirt.

I rub my forehead. I’m sweating. “Can I see the file?”

Jack ignores the question. “There’s still some of the old magic left in this city, but it’s rare. So you have to know when to use it.” He works his tongue inside his mouth, stirring up spit and drooling a drop into his palm. With a fingertip he pushes the flake around to moisten it. Then he tosses the mixture into the pit he’s been digging with his shoe. “As soon as you see a nice sturdy vine,” he tells me, “grab hold. But don’t wait too long. I only used a sliver, see? So it’s not gonna last long.” He refills the trench and tamps it down.

“Jack?”

He gets up and retreats a few paces back toward the school. “I’d get outta the way if I were you.”

Good advice. In the spot where Jack tossed his sliver and his spit, the moist earth is swelling up in a bubble of mud. A fiddlehead of a sprout pops through the center, green and leafy and unfurling like a fist into an open hand.

Then, with the miraculous speed of magic, it whips against the wall and begins to climb. More green tendrils
split from the stalk and twine around one another, until the main trunk is as thick as I am. It’s some kind of plant—half grapevine, half oak tree.

I can hear them shouting from the admin buildings.

“Here!” Jack pulls a piece of paper out of a pocket and slaps it into my paw. “In case we get separated, this is where I’ll be!” He steps up and latches a fist into one of the rising vines. The stalk grows higher and pulls him into the air, spiriting him all the way up the wall.

Meanwhile, here comes the little convertible. It’s turned off the road now, skidding over the arid emptiness toward us. There’s a girl behind the wheel. She’s got a handkerchief tied across her nose and mouth, and a baseball cap yanked over her eyes. Her features are obscured, but anyone who’s ever seen the pictures taped over Jack’s bed would recognize those unmistakable eyes.

Jack’s at the top of the stalk now, rising over the wall. He swings his weight and tips the whole thing sideways, bowing it over the cement. The plant seems to understand him, knowing just what he wants it to do. It grows higher and then, with all the gentleness of a new mother, slips Jack perfectly into the convertible.

“Hurry up,”
he shouts at me through the fence. “Grab on!”

What else can I do? I step up, grasping a vine of my own. But the moment I’ve got it in my paw, it snaps off with a quick tear. As soon as it parts from the main trunk, the vine withers and crumbles to nothing. I hear Gunther pounding
across the yard, the muddy ground splashing and quaking beneath him. I reach for another vine, but before I can, his truncheon comes down on my shoulders. I sink to my knees as more blows pin me into the mud.

“I’m sorry!” Jack yells through the fence. He slaps his belly, where the letters—
my
letters—are concealed. “I should’ve left them for you!” He points at me and I realize he’s indicating the pocket where I put his address.

The tower guards start shooting and Siobhan slams the accelerator. Jack lurches over the seat as the car careens toward the road. Wet clumps of earth fountain up from the wheels and the car leaps back to the asphalt, rushing into the city.

Gunther’s knee comes off my back and, dim-witted as ever, he tries climbing after Jack. With his feet wedged in the thickest tendrils, he strains to tug himself off the ground. But suddenly the plant’s deep green drains away—summer turning instantly to autumn. Gunther yelps as the stalk withers and the huge glob sploshes down in a filthy puddle. Suddenly, I understand what Jack meant: with only a sliver, the magic doesn’t last long.

I can’t help but laugh out loud, first mockingly at Gunther’s failure, then jealously at Jack’s freedom, and finally bitterly at what I’ve just learned about Dad’s letters. My laughter is rewarded with another deluge of blows from Gunther, culminating in one clean shot to the back of my skull. The whole sky sparkles with stars and all I can hear is the sound of a distant engine, roaring and free.

6

STICK OF GOLD

THE OFFICIAL TERM FOR LOCKUP IS “REHABILITATIVE SECLUSION.” IT’S
located in a building at the far corner of the grounds. It’s a new one, thoroughly modern, no cobbled walls or ivy. It’s merely a honeycombed strongbox of soundproof cells. Roy spends every other week in this place, but for me, thanks to Jack’s escape, this is my maiden voyage.

I’ve been here all week, in an empty six-foot tomb with walls like sponges, padded and soft and perfumed with the staleness of age. It certainly gives you time to think. In my case, I’ve been thinking about my parents.

My mother’s name was Emily. She died before I was old enough to remember her. All I have are the fabricated memories you make up from old photographs, which goes a long way to explaining why, inside my head, she’s always smiling.

Growing up, it was just Dad and me. All that time, he had me convinced he was a carpenter, doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. The phone would ring, and after speaking to somebody in hushed tones, he’d announce that he was
going out on a job. Then he’d vanish, sometimes until late in the night. I always stayed up to wait for him, even though he forbade it. He always came back looking exhausted.

I didn’t find out what my father really did for a living until the day of the murders, the day the sirens came shrieking to the house to haul Dad away for good. I’ve also been thinking about Doc, about his files and the letters—
my
letters—that he’d been keeping from me (letters that Jack has now run off with, the little thief).