The Garden of Darkness (27 page)

“Almost everything’s gone,” he said when he came out. “But I found this.” He handed her a gold ring. He must have noted her surprise, because he said, rather gruffly, “We’re not engaged or anything.”

Clare found a piece of string in her pocket and looped it through the ring. She then put it around her neck.

“Thanks,” she said.

Later, after they managed to get out of the city, she began to think of the ring as a good-luck talisman and so began to wear it on her finger. The fit was right.

Jem and Clare spoke mostly in whispers. The city was huge around them. Bear seemed restless; he looked at Clare and gave a low whine.

“Go,” she said, and Bear was a nimble black streak down the road.

“Would Bear stay if you asked him to?” asked Jem.

“Of course. Do you think I should? He’s hungry; I thought he should look for food before nightfall.”

“We might want him close. You know.”

“Just in case.”

“Yeah, just in case.”

“We’ll keep him with us when he comes back,” said Clare.

But Bear wasn’t with them when, soon after, they found a prime foraging place. Working in perfect synchrony, they loaded up sacks of flour, cornmeal and beans that they had found in the back of a Mexican restaurant. Jem heaved up a sack to Clare. Clare turned to secure it in the wagon when Sheba shied sideways. Clare, trying to keep her balance, turned towards Jem.

The attack took them by surprise.

Running towards them from the shadows of an alley came a group of children, all about eleven or twelve, all armed with sticks.

“Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!” the largest of them yelled. Before Clare could think about moving, she found herself alone in the wagon as Jem was pulled under the pack of wild children. Their hair was filthy and their clothes were little more than rags.

“Meat tonight,” the largest boy screamed.

“Tork says ‘meat tonight!’” said the others. They were jabbing at Jem with their sticks, ignoring Clare altogether. She didn’t know if Tork meant they were going to eat Sheba or Jem. Perhaps he had plans to eat all of them. Jem was trying to shake them off. Clare took the spade they had found in a hardware store and jumped into the melee. Sheba, no longer held in place, started into a tentative lope before coming to a stop a few yards away. The one named Tork jabbed at Jem and opened an ugly wound on his face.

“I’ll get you!” Clare yelled and swung the spade. With a dull thud, she connected with Tork’s stomach. She then drove the flat of the blade into his face. Tork fell and didn’t get up.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” yelled one of the older girls. “Tork’s down.”

The children ceased fighting as suddenly as they had begun.

“That ain’t fair,” said one of them, addressing Clare.

“You were going to kill us,” she said.

“Not for
real
. And now you kilt Tork.”

“I don’t think Tork’s dead.”

“Looks dead.” But then Tork groaned.

Jem staggered to his feet. “We’re just here to get supplies. We don’t mean you any harm. And you can’t eat our horse. Or us.” He limped over to the wagon.

A girl with a dirty face and long tangled hair looked hard at them.

“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.

W
HEN 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.

“Well,” said Myra. “Bring him in, then. It’ll be all the warmer.”

When Jem returned from feeding Sheba, he found Bear lying at Clare’s feet. The children let Jem in before closing up the shelter. From the outside, Clare thought, it must now look like only so much refuse at the end of the alley.

The inside of the shelter was stuffy with a distinct odor of decay and unwashed humanity, but there was an air of safety and comfort there too. The little ones were already curled up in what looked like piles of rags.

“You can have Connor’s bed,” Myra said to Clare. “And you can sleep on the rag heap,” she said to Jem. “It’s comfortable.”

“We’ll just huddle up against the fire,” said Jem. Clare was grateful. She couldn’t have slept in the dead boy’s bed.

“Well, that’s all right,” said Tork. “Myra and me share bedding too. S’warmer. And sometimes the little ones crawl in with us.”

It seemed to Clare that in a world of grownups, Tork and Myra might have drowned in a sea of neglected children. Here, they seemed like the matriarch and the patriarch of a lost, but in its way noble, clan.

So Jem and Clare curled up close to the fire. Jem slept first. In his sleep, he cast a protective arm around her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE RUNNING OF THE DEER

M
YRA WOKE UP
Jem and Clare as she bent over them to get the fire going. Bear gave a sigh and got to his feet. Then he leaned down so that Clare could scratch his head.

“Sleep all right?” Jem asked Clare.

“I dreamed I was washing my hair,” she said.

“It’s still pretty clean from last time.”

“This time I was washing it in hot water.”

“Hedonist.”

When Tork opened the shelter, the fresh air was like a gift, but the others seemed not to notice the difference. The smallest children split into two groups: one went with Tork and one with Myra. When they returned some minutes later, they looked quizzically at Jem and Clare.

“Well, aren’t you going to go and do your business?” Myra asked.

“Go where?” asked Clare. “What business?”

Jem nudged her in the ribs.

“Bowel business,” said Myra. “It’s the rule: If you need to go, you need to check. If it’s runny, you might be headed towards fever, and then you take the Pepto-Bismol.”

“
You
ask them exactly where we’re supposed to go,” whispered Jem. “I am not going to discuss ‘bowel business’ with Myra and Tork.”

“Well, Myra’s right about checking if it’s runny,” said Clare. “That’s a good idea.”

“I am not discussing this with you, either.”

Myra and Tork stood there looking at them patiently.

“Well, where do we go to do ‘bowel business’?” Clare asked them.

“Anywhere not too close to the shelter, of course,” said Tork. “We don’t want poop near the shelter. That’s messy. But go together—you never know what’s out there. The Cured are always around. We seen wild dogs, too.” Tork looked closely at Jem, as if assessing his ability to deal with wild dogs.

“You should of come with us,” said Myra.

“If you see wild dogs,” said Tork, “be careful. You don’t want your dog tangling with them. Rabies. And don’t leave fresh dead animals in the street. The rabies’ll cook right out, and meat’s always welcome.”

Jem and Clare hurried out of the shelter.

“I miss Sarai and Mirri,” said Clare. “And Ramah. All of them.”

“I miss the latrine,” said Jem. “Nobody ever has to do this in the movies.”

No place seemed quite right, and they were getting farther from the alley.

“Jem,” Clare said finally. “I just can’t do this with you standing there.”

“I’m glad you said that,” said Jem. “We’ll check out a perimeter and stay inside it. But not too close to each other. Bear should keep us safe.”

O
N THE WAY
back, they caught sight of three dogs gnawing at the bones of what looked like a man. The largest dog looked up; the other two used the moment to drag their prize further away.

As Clare and Jem were about to turn into the alley leading to the shelter, the big dog snarled and began to run towards them. It didn’t have Bear’s bulk, but it was fast.

Bear collided with the dog in mid-air. The wild dog whined and tried to get away from Bear, but Bear had his teeth in the animal’s throat. He shook the dog back and forth until Clare heard a crack that she was sure was the sound of the dog’s spine breaking.

Bear finally dropped his kill.

“Bear seems to have one setting when he’s annoyed,” said Jem. His words were light, but he looked pale.

“That other dog would have been at our throats.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“How do you know if an animal has rabies?” Clare asked.

“You don’t. Not without a lab. Check to see if Bear was bitten, or if he did all the biting.”

“He seems clean. The blood on his coat isn’t his.”

“Try not to touch that blood.”

The dead dog’s teeth, bared in death, were still studded with flesh from the nearby corpse. Despite Tork’s confidence that rabies cooked out, they left its carcass behind. The other two dogs had kept feeding throughout and displayed no interest in Clare or Jem.