The Garden of Darkness

“Well, then,” she said. “Welcome to the dark place. But you didn’t start real good by playing for real.”


“What’s the dark place?” asked Jem.

“Here. All around you.”

As they spoke, some of the others were giving Tork small slaps to raise him. One of the smaller children was stroking his arm. Tork seemed to be coming around.

“They won,” the girl said to Tork casually, as soon as it was apparent that he was alive.

Tork sat up. His nose was skewed to one side, but he seemed otherwise undamaged. The girl with matted hair sat next to him and, without any preliminaries, snapped the nose more-or-less back into place.

“Thanks much,” said Tork to the girl. He touched his nose gingerly and flinched. Then he looked at Jem. When he got to his feet, he staggered for a moment. Clare had, after all, swung the spade hard. She was surprised he could get up at all.

“Now what do we do?” asked Clare. “I don’t want to fight again.”

“Now we eat,” said Tork, as if the answer were obvious.

And so they ended up down an alley in the children’s homemade shelter.

“I kind of wish Bear had found us by now,” said Clare. “It’s getting late.”

“He’ll find us tomorrow, if not tonight,” said Jem.

They left the cart at the end of the alley, brought Sheba to the shelter and tethered her outside.

“The Cured probably won’t steal your wagon,” said Tork. “They’d just tip it over.”

Cardboard lined most of the shelter, and holes were plugged with plastic and pieces of metal and even the skins of cats, heads still on.

Tork saw Clare looking at the dead cats.

“They were stealing food from us,” Tork said. “So we kilt them.”

“I’m not sure we should have,” said the girl. “The rats is worse.”

“Get the jinormous pots, Myra,” said Tork. “It’s feast time.” And Clare realized that, despite the oddity of the situation, she was hungry.

The wild children used some of the supplies that Clare and Jem had found, but they took only what they needed. Soon they were cooking beans in a big pot over a fire and, in another pot, they had the makings of a cornmeal porridge.

Clare and Jem looked around the shelter, and they found that the wild pack of children didn’t consist only of eleven and twelve year olds after all. The really young ones had stayed back in the sheltered alley. Most of them had runny noses; some had sores on their heads and faces.

“Your little ones look like they’re ailing,” said Clare.

“We do stuff for ’em,” said Myra. “But the city is like a big dead thing, and the stench of it makes you sick. That’s why we call it the dark place. Least the littles don’t have Pest, and they don’t have the fever.”

“We seen Pest again, though,” said Tork. “It ain’t dead. Connor died of it. He was our leader then, but Pest got him. Not the fever—it was Pest.”

“What’s the fever?” asked Jem.

“You might see,” said Tork. “It’s not starvation we’re dying of. It’s fever what kills us.”

“Maybe you should boil your water,” Clare said thoughtfully. Myra and Tork just stared at her.

“Messing with the water won’t stop fever,” Tork said. “We think it comes from the bodies. The rotting gets up your nose and gives you fever.”

“Why don’t you leave the city?” asked Jem. “You could go anywhere.”

“Maybe we could help you,” said Clare.

Myra and Tork looked at them with something like pity.

“You’re the ones needed to come here,” Tork said.





WHEN THEY FINISHED dinner, they stacked the dirty dishes in a corner.

“Look at us gettin’ along,” said Tork. “Like fambly.”

“Will you help us load the wagon with supplies?” asked Jem. “It’d sure make it go faster.”

“Course,” said Tork. “I ain’t got no plans for tomorrow. You, Myra?”

“Nope.”

“Not next day, neither,” said Tork.

“Nope,” said Myra.

Tork and Myra tended the fire and started banking it down for the night.

While Jem was feeding Sheba, Clare sat with a small boy called Stuffo on her lap, combing his hair with her fingers. He smelled as only an unwashed child can smell. While there was no stench, he exuded an unpleasant, greasy, over-ripe smell.

“Ouch,” he said as her fingers snagged in his hair. “Too hard.” But when Clare finally, in the dim light, noticed the nits in the hair, and when she thought she saw the quick movement of a full-grown louse, she declared the session over.

“You’re done. Maybe I’ll brush it out more later.”

The children were readying for the night when Bear came loping down the alley. There was a general panic.

“It’s okay,” said Clare. “He’s mine. His name’s Bear.”

When Bear nuzzled up to Clare, the children seemed to relax.

“He don’t bite?” asked Tork.

Clare put her arm around the dog. “Apparently not today.”

Tork did not look fully reassured.