Hunger

“Sun’s coming up,” Taylor said. “The sky’s turning gray.”

“We have to do something about Brittney and Mickey,” Dekka said.

“I don’t deal with dead bodies.” Howard.

“I guess we could, you know, send them back to town for Edilio to bury,” Dekka said.

Taylor sighed. “Things are bad back there. I’ve never seen Sam like that. I mean, he’s just . . .”

Dekka said, “He’ll get over it.” She didn’t sound too sure of that. “But yeah, maybe this isn’t the time to ask him to speak at a burial.”

“Maybe we could just cover them up. You know, haul Mickey over here, maybe just put a blanket over them or something for now.”

“Yeah. One of these cars around here must have a blanket in the trunk. A tarp. Something. Get Orc to pop some trunks open, huh?”

Which was how Brittney ended up nestled next to Mickey, under the shelter of a painter’s drop cloth.

She felt no pain.

She saw no light.

She heard, but barely.

Her heart was still and silent.

Yet she did not die.

Albert had no time to waste. He and Quinn had finally told Sam about their gold mission. About Lana going off with Cookie.

They’d found Sam listless, not as mad as either of them had expected. He’d listened with his eyes closed and a couple of times Albert thought he might have nodded off.

It had been a relief not to have Sam rage at them. But also disturbing. After all, they were delivering very bad news. Sam’s nonreaction was unreal. Sam wasn’t acting like Sam.

All the more reason for Albert to get his act together. He’d sent a disbelieving Quinn off to fish.

“I don’t care how tired you are, Quinn: we have a business to run.”

And then he’d gotten down to work.

The problem for Albert was melting the gold. The melting point for gold was three times higher than the melting point for lead, and nothing Albert could find achieved that temperature. Certainly none of the equipment at his McDonald’s, none of which was working now anyway, with the power out.

Albert despaired until, rummaging through the hardware store looking for a solution, he noticed the acetylene torch.

He hauled two torches and all the spare acetylene tanks he could find to the McDonald’s. He locked the door.

He placed a large cast-iron pot on the stove and heated it to maximum. It wouldn’t melt the gold, but it would slow down the cooling process.

He placed one of the gold bars into the pot, fired the torch, and aimed the blue pencil point flame at the gold. Instantly the metal began to sweat. Then to run off in a tiny river of molten gold.

An hour later he popped his first six gold bullets from the bullet mold.

It was exhausting work. Hot work. But he got so he could produce twenty-four bullets an hour. He worked without pause for ten hours straight and then, exhausted, starving and dehydrated, he counted out 224 of the .32-caliber bullets.

Kids knocked on the door, demanding to be let in for the McClub. But Albert just posted a sign saying, “Sorry: We Are Closed This Evening, Please Come Back Tomorrow.”

He drank some water, ate a meager meal, and did some calculations. He had enough gold to produce perhaps four thousand bullets, which, equally distributed, would mean just over ten bullets for each person in Perdido Beach. The job would take weeks.

But he didn’t have nearly enough acetylene to manage it. Which would mean that in order to melt all the gold he would need the help of the one person least likely to want to help: Sam.

Albert had seen Sam burn through brick. Surely he could melt gold.

In the meantime Albert intended to distribute a single bullet to each person. Sort of as a calling card. A sign of what was coming.

And then, a paper currency backed up by the gold, and finally, credit.

Despite his weariness, Albert hummed contentedly as he sat with a yellow legal pad and a pen, writing out possible names for the new currency.

“Bullets” was obviously not the appropriate term. He wanted people thinking “money,” not “death.”

Dollars? No. The word was familiar, but he wanted something new.

Euros? Francs? Doubloons? Marks? Chits? Crowns?

Alberts?

No. Over the top.

Units?

It was functional. It meant what it said.

“The problem is, whatever we call them, we don’t have enough,” Albert muttered. If there were going to be just four thousand of the new . . . whatevers . . . they’d obviously have to be worth a lot, each one. Like, to start with, ten slugs should . . .

Slugs?

They were slugs, after all.

To start with, if a kid had the original ten slugs he was given, then each slug would have to be worth more than, say, a single one-can meal. So he needed, in addition to the slugs, smaller units. A currency that would be worth, say, one tenth of a slug.

But any attempt to make up paper currency would just send everyone running to find a copier. He needed something that could not be duplicated.

An idea hit him. A memory. He ran for the storeroom that had long since been cleaned out of food. There were two boxes on the wire shelves. Each was filled with McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces—tickets—from some long-forgotten promotion.

Twelve thousand pieces per box. Hard to counterfeit.

He would have enough to make change for four thousand slugs at a rate of six Monopoly pieces per slug.

“A slug equals six tickets,” Albert said. “Six tickets equals a slug.”