Passenger

I didn’t know what to say.

I missed Nickie so bad it hurt. I kept thinking that this time I’d never find a way out of this world and get back home.

Qui

The redhead went around behind the divider wall and turned on his shower nozzle. “And we got lots to talk about, Billy. Lots and lots.”

*   *   *

Qui

I felt bad for Ben and Griffin, thinking about how they were probably hungry, starving, and I decided, sitting there in those baggy PE clothes at Qui

I cleared my throat. “This is the best food I’ve ever had in my life, Qui

He looked at me, and I was certain he could tell I was serious. So I stuck my bandaged hand out across the table of food and said, “Thank you. And I apologize. And please don’t spit in your hand before we shake.”

Qui

“You don’t need to apologize, Odd. No big deal.”

We ate in silence until everything Qui

I sat there watching. I could tell he didn’t want me to help, like he was trying to teach me some kind of routine or something, show me how he was in control of everything—and it was all perfect. I realized that all day long Qui

So I knew he was plotting out his cross-examination of me while he quietly packed away his kitchen.

When it got dark inside the firehouse, Qui

“Well, for someone who said we have lots to talk about, you haven’t said a thing, Qui

“What about that shirt you took off?” he said. “What about that stuff written on the wall at the old man’s house? Do you think I’m stupid, Billy?”

I gulped. Had to think.

The kid really did know things about me.

And he’d found the shirt. He must have known every detail about the stuff inside that house.

Then Qui

I felt the blood rushing out of my head. I looked down at Qui

“I’m telling the truth, Qui

“Your friend’s named Co

I studied Qui

“Do you know anything about Co

Qui

“What about Fent?”

Qui

I cleared my throat. “Why?”

“When someone tells me, I’ll let you know. How’s that sound?”

“Am I safe here?”

“Do you trust me?”

Fuck you, Jack.

Qui

In the back corner of the firehouse, opposite the shower stall, a narrow black metal ladder rose up to a square hatch in the roof. Qui

five

It was awkward climbing up that ladder.

The rungs hurt my bare feet and I could only work with one hand. My bandaged palm stayed hitched on the waistband of those goddamned shorts Qui

Balancing with my knees propped against one rung, I flipped him off, and Qui

“Come take a look at this, Odd. Tell me if you never seen it before.”

The roof of the firehouse was a flat deck of some sort, surrounded by a waist-high cinderblock wall that extended up from the perimeter of the station. At one time, I could imagine firemen enjoying a pleasant day up here. Maybe when the world was different.

I sat at the edge of the open hatch, and then brought my feet up onto the roof before trying to stand. The sky was just going to nighttime dark in Marbury, a milky gray, the color of a rotten tooth. Qui

“See that?” he said.

I looked up.

And, in what dark the Marbury night made for us, standing there beside Qui

Overhead in the east, above the business district where the kid had pushed us in a canoe past Java and Jazz, there was a gash—a knife wound through the gray. The thing bled vacant light that seemed to spill downward like a waterfall and blind out the foggy haze around it; a liquid constellation, some kind of fire that rained down from nowhere and everywhere.

“What do you think that is?” Qui

I just shook my head.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Odd. Like I said, when it happened things got worse. The Rangers been coming through trying to get anything they can take. Some of them’s even headed out now, just leaving here altogether. Seems like, to be honest, there’s more suckers, more Hunters, harvesters, and more of us dying. And I believe Fent’s crew is getting ready to go too, and leave us all—what’s left of us—to the Hunters. But those next few days after it happened, the Rangers rode through, roughing up all the Odds that were too young to conscript, and you know what some of them do to us who are older, don’t you? They were looking for you. Jack Whitmore. See? I knew your name before you even said it, Billy. And they were trying to find your friend, too. They said you did something to him. Why do you suppose that is? You weren’t just a prisoner, were you?”

When Qui

I leaned my arms on the edge of the block wall and watched as the thing pulsed overhead in the sky. The kid knew things about me and Co

Qui