Albert was nearby, watching the whole place, arms folded over his chest. He was, as usual, the neatest, cleanest, calmest, most focused person there. Astrid envied that about Albert: he set a goal and never seemed to suffer any doubt about it. Astrid was almost, but not quite, resentful of the way he had come to her and ordered her to quit feeling sorry for herself and get her act together.
But it had worked. She’d finally done what she needed to do. She hoped. She hadn’t shown the results to anyone yet. People might just decide she was crazy. But she hoped not, because even after all the self-doubt, after all the abuse she’d endured, she still thought she was right. The FAYZ couldn’t just be Albert making money and Sam kicking butts. The FAYZ needed rules and laws and rights.
People were coming, drawn by the smell of meat. Not a lot of it per person, Albert had made that clear, but in the aftermath of the fire, with many kids having lost their limited stocks of food, and with nothing coming in from the fields, the prospect of any food at all made stomachs rumble and mouths water.
Albert had guards ready, four of his own people armed with baseball bats, the default weapon of the FAYZ. And two of Edilio’s guys, and Edilio himself, walked with guns slung over their shoulders.
The strange thing was how it no longer seemed strange to Astrid. A nine year-old dressed in rags, sharing a bottle of Scotch with an eleven-year-old with a shaved head and a cape made out of an olive green bed sheet. Kids with sunken eyes. Kids with open sores, untreated, barely noticed. Boys wearing nothing but boxer shorts and boots. Girls wearing their mother’s glittery formal gowns, shortened with rough scissor hacks. A girl who had tried to remove her own braces with pliers and now couldn’t close her mouth because of the jagged wire sticking through her front teeth.
And the weapons. Everywhere weapons. Knives, ranging from big chef’s knives stuck in belts, to hunting knives in ornate leather sheaths. Crowbars. Pieces of pipe with taped handles and lanyards. Some had been even more creative. Astrid saw a seven-year-old carrying a wooden table leg to which he had glued big slivers of broken glass.
And it had all become normal.
In this plaza coyotes had attacked screaming, defenseless children. That had changed a lot of people’s attitudes toward weapons.
But at the same time, girls carried dolls. Boys crammed action figures into their back pockets. Stained, torn, ratty comic books still stuck out of waistbands or were clutched in hands with nails as long and filthy as a wolf’s. Kids pushed baby strollers loaded with their few possessions.
The kids of Perdido Beach were a mess at the best of times. But it was so much worse now in the aftermath of the fire. Kids were still black with soot or gray with ash.
Coughing was the background noise. The flu that had been going around was sure to spread through this crowd, Astrid thought grimly. Lungs damaged by smoke inhalation would be especially vulnerable.
But they were still alive, Astrid told herself. Against all the odds, more than ninety percent of the kids first trapped in the FAYZ were still alive.
Mary led the preschoolers out of the day care into the plaza. Astrid looked closely. Mary seemed her normal self. She grabbed a little girl who was about to step in front of a boy on a skateboard.
Had she been wrong about Mary? Mary would never forgive her.
“Well, so what?” Astrid muttered wearily. “It’s not like I was ever popular.”
Then, Zil and a half dozen of his crew swaggered into the plaza from the far side. Astrid clenched her jaw. Would the crowd turn on them? She almost hoped so. People thought because she wouldn’t let Sam go after Zil she must not really despise the Human Crew’s Leader. That was wrong. She hated Zil. Hated everything he had done and everything he had tried to do.
Edilio moved quickly between Zil and a few of the boys who had started toward him, sticks and knives at the ready.
Zil’s kids were armed with knives and bats, and so were those who wanted to take them on. Edilio was armed with an assault rifle.
Astrid hated that this was what life so often came down to: my weapon is bigger than your weapon.
If Sam were here it would be about his hands. Everyone had either seen what Sam could do, or heard the stories retold in vivid detail. No one challenged Sam.
“It’s what makes him dangerous,” Astrid muttered to herself.
But it was also what had kept her alive on more than one occasion. Her and Little Pete.
She hated Sam for doing this, for just withdrawing like this. Disappearing. It was passive aggressive. Unworthy of him.
But another part was glad he was gone. If he were here it would be all about him. If Sam were here then every word Astrid spoke would be conditioned on what Sam would say or do. The kids would be watching his face for clues, waiting to see whether he nodded or laughed or smirked or gave them that cool, steely warning look he’d acquired over these last months.
Orc made his way into the crowd. People parted to let him pass. Astrid spotted Dekka, as always left alone by other kids so that she seemed to have a force field around her. The one person Astrid didn’t see was Brianna. Brianna wasn’t someone you missed or overlooked. She must still be too sick to go out.
“It’s time,” Albert said over his shoulder.
“Now?” Astrid was surprised.
“Once we feed them they’ll go off in separate directions. I got them here and behaving themselves because of food. Once the food is gone…”
“Okay.” Astrid’s heart was in her throat. She clenched her papers again and stood up too suddenly.