Passenger

I had fallen into another pit inside my nightmare, a deeper layer, and nothing was finished yet. We all fell—me, Co

“You have to believe me, Qui

“All right, Odd.”

I heard music playing.

Crazy Jack dreams up all kinds of shit.

And sometimes it’s accompanied by music.

I held my breath.

I had to be out of my mind.

It sounded so far away, floating: a jangling, grinding, metallic sound, the wheezing strains of a high-pitched organ.

“Do you hear that?” Qui

“I don’t know what it is,” I whispered. “It sounds like a circus.”

Musical monsters.

“It’s Fent.”

Qui

*   *   *

We sat on our beds, across from each other, and listened to the music as it got louder at times, and then drifted away like a wind.

I’d been scared plenty of times—in Marbury, and in other places—but there was something about that music and the thought of it being co

“Why do they do it?” I said.

“The music? Fent just wants us Odds to know they’re coming. Hunters, too. I guess it saves the Rangers on ammunition. Everyone runs from them.”

“Do they know about this place?”

“Of course they do, Odd.”

The music was clearer now. It sounded, ridiculously enough, like a single small accordion; the kind they call a concertina.

“It doesn’t scare you they know about you?”

“You really don’t know nothing, do you?” Qui

Qui

That explained some of it, I guess.

“How old do I look?”

“You? You look like you’ve been around for a really long time, Odd.”

He was fucking with me again.

I wanted to get out of there. If I didn’t get away from Qui

I lay down and stretched my legs across the cot. I was completely exhausted.

“What do you want me to do if they show up?”

Qui

It was as black as if I’d shut my eyes, but they were wide open. I could hear his bare feet padding across the floor, the squeak of his bedsprings as he sat down again on his cot.

“Don’t be scared, Odd. I’ll take care of you. I can handle Fent and the Rangers. If they show up tonight, you just get up on the roof. You’ll be safe there till I come get you. Okay?”

I gritted my teeth, forced the words from my constricted throat. “Thanks, Qui

“Don’t worry about them.”

“Okay.”

I remembered something.

And I told him.

“There’s a settlement across a desert. They call it Bass-Hove. You ever hear of such a place? There are people in it. Real people who don’t call themselves Odds. There’s girls, too. They still have some power there. Trains. Locomotives that take people out, to another city. A fortress behind big walls, named Grove. Did you ever know anything about those places? That’s where the Rangers are going.”

I had seen it all before. I had been to those places, could still feel the gritty, windless heat of the air at the Bass-Hove Settlement, could picture the sheer walls of the fortified city at Grove, where Co

“You’re making that shit up, Billy.”

I heard him roll over onto his side and exhale a tired breath of air.

And I was certain he knew exactly what I was talking about.

*   *   *

The Rangers came that night.

I was hard asleep, and at first I felt Qui

He shook my chest gently, and I thought it had to be a weird dream.

I dreamed of being on the water again.

“Psst! Billy!”

Then I heard the music, louder now, the squeal of the concertina wheezing in and out, in and out.

It sounded as if it were right outside the firehouse door.

“Huh?” I shot up in my bed, disoriented, everything swirling and smearing like a watercolor painting that had been left out in a summer storm—Glenbrook, here, there, Marbury, my friends, the Odds, Qui

“Shhhhh … Quiet now, Odd.”

Qui

I stood, shaky and weak.

Qui

This was it, I thought.

I started toward the ladder, holding my shorts up as I walked. Then, I’m not sure why I did it, but I looked back at the room. And I thought, If they come up here and see two beds have been slept in, they’ll know somebody else is here. Qui