The Garden of Darkness

Becca looked pleased. Sam went back to the porch, but Becca lingered.

“If you find the cure for Pest,” she said to Jem, “come back.”

“Why don’t you let me show you our route?” Jem said to her. He pulled out the map, and they bent their heads together over it. Sam didn’t seem interested.

Then it was time to move on. “Come and find us if you need to,” said Jem.

“I will,” said Becca. Then she paused. “We will.”





“THEY DON’T BELIEVE they’re infected,” said Clare when the old farmhouse was behind them.

“She does,” said Jem. “I can tell.”

“Maybe they’ll follow us.”

“Strange to think about. A baby, I mean. I guess it’s all starting over again. Still. Fourteen years old. My age.”

“When you put it that way, it’s kind of scary.”

Jem seemed thoughtful, even sad, as they walked, and Clare saw him looking at her from time to time. She looked away. There were no words, but she understood.

The terrain had leveled out, and Sheba didn’t have to work as hard. Her ears flicked back and forth as though she were listening to something none of them could hear.





MASTER





“I WANT TO hunt them Cured, too,” said Charlie.

“You haven’t even been debriefed yet,” said the Master. “You haven’t met the other children properly. We need to know you before you go on this hunt.”

“I bet I’d be good at killing them Cured. Undo me now.”

“Debrief you.”

“That. Then we’ll hunt them Cured.”

They had begun to sight the Cured more and more frequently. The Cured had pilfered from their stores, and one of them had approached a toddler, Ryan. Ryan was unhurt, but the Master thought it was just a matter of time before one of the children was taken or killed. All the children wanted to help with the hunt, although they had no real idea of what he had in mind. But this Charlie seemed like a canny child. A child who might prove useful. What in the Master’s youth had been called a Forward Child. He was a new arrival, but he was eager, very eager.

“Give me the details of your past,” said the Master. He sat back, prepared to hear yet another version of what was essentially the same story. Mother dead. Father dead. Sisters dead. Brothers dead. He had felt for a while now that debriefings were unnecessary, but he wanted to appear concerned, fatherly—and very much in charge. Besides, there was always the chance that he would hear something important. Because something was nagging at him; it was as if he had forgotten something; it was as if there were something he should know, but didn’t, or something that was coming that he should be aware of. That unsettling feeling sometimes made him roam the woods at night. Then he would return, powerful in the thought that he was the most frightening thing out there.

“I come from the city,” Charlie said.

“Go on. You’re the first to come from the city.”

“I heared you on radio, and I dint want to die of Pest.”

“Quite right,” said the Master. “Are there others coming?”

“Don’t think so. There’s kids there right enough. There’s Tork and Myra who runs everybody. They ain’t coming. But I dint want to get run by no kids anymore. Or get Pest, like the Connor kid did.”

“One of them died?”

“Yeah.”

“They should all have come with you.”

“They likes it free,” said Charlie. “They wouldn’t have no room for grownups.”

“You need to work on your grammar.”

“Don’t care, and I’m guessing you don’t care neither. Not really.”

“Either. Don’t care either. And you’re right. I don’t.”

“You’re after something.”

“But not anything you can think of. That’s the beauty of it.”

Charlie smiled. Maybe he understood more than the Master had thought. There it was again—a Forward Child.

The Master and Charlie were in the library with the overstuffed furniture and the ebony paneling. The room smelled like old furniture polish and the dust of a thousand books. Books lined an entire wall. The Master had investigated most of them. There were field guides to birds, plants, animals. Classics were displayed in old leather Victorian bindings. This was where Britta and Doug had found David Copperfield and Middlemarch. Britta was in a corner now, reading Emma. The Master didn’t care what Britta overheard: Britta was to be trusted absolutely.