'We need to find you a house,' Dekalb said around a mouth of what looked to Sarah like dirty pink styrofoam. 'If you're going to stay here with me you'll need a proper house. You can't live in the ventilation shaft with us, it's not healthy.'
Sarah's brow furrowed. 'Daddy, I didn't plan on staying,' she said. 'I've got work to do. Important stuff.' She felt like an infant as the words came out of her mouth.
Dekalb shook his head. 'It'll wait,' he told her. 'We have way too much catching up to do. And there's the question of your education. Marisol, what about the officer's quarters over by the schoolhouse, what's available over there?'
'Dad!' Sarah interjected, 'I''
He pushed his hand into the bag and rustled it in his annoyance. 'I will not let you be put in danger again,' he told her. He drew out a handful of rinds and shoved them into his permanently stretched-out rictus. 'Who's the grown-up here, after all?'
Monster Planet
Chapter Four
The giant truck rocked up on one set of giant tires as it crushed an abandoned car on the interstate, a thousand tiny glass cubes exploding from the crushed windshield, rotten struts and shocks popping and collapsing and squealing and then it was over. In the bed of the truck Ayaan held onto a roll bar until the truck stopped bouncing and then clicked on her walkie-talkie. 'Bring up a wrecking crew,' she said. 'The flatbed won't make it past this one.'
A few dozen living men in blue paper scrubs came rushing up with prybars and sledgehammers. They made short work of the rusted-out car, taking it to pieces and hurling the wreckage into the undergrowth on either side of the road. They had to move quickly. Behind them the Tsarevich's flatbed trailer was surging forward, its ranks of wheels turning in fits and starts as the giant vehicle moved forward one staggering step at a time. A hundred corpses heaved at it with their shoulders, their bent backs, their straining fingers. On top six more ghouls turned the cranks of giant flywheels, feeding storage batteries so they would have electricity for the night to come. Living gunners crewed heavy machine guns mounted in pintles at two positions on the flatbed. The green phantom sat strapped into a chair on a high superstructure from which he commanded a good view of their surroundings and everything that happened in the column of vehicles. At the back of the flatbed the Tsarevich himself reclined in his yurt, quite hidden from view. There were plenty of rumors that claimed he was actually not in there at all, that the flatbed was a complete ruse and that he was hidden elsewhere. Ayaan wouldn't have blamed him for being a little cagy.
The attack on his person had shaken him badly and the death of Cicatrix had left him without a familiar supply of food. Once the Tsarevich had learned that Amanita was also dead, well, something had changed. He had gone from being hurt and confused to being galvanized. He had moved quickly to get his people on the road. He'd had plenty of enthusiastic help, too. The living and the dead had worked side by side to get vehicles ready, to pack up their supplies and belongings, and do whatever it took to stay near the prince of the dead. Where they were going and what they would do when they arrived was still a complete mystery to them. Ayaan, who only knew a little more, found she had too much work to get done to be asking a lot of questions anyway.