“Hey. Hey! We never told them about what you and me saw last night.”
Sam stopped, looked toward the plaza, toward the hole they had refilled.
“Yeah? What did we see last night, Edilio? Me, I just saw a hole in the ground.”
Sam didn’t give Edilio the chance to argue. He didn’t want to hear what Edilio would say. He walked quickly away.
EIGHT
CAINE HATED DEALING with Bug. The kid creeped him out. For one thing, Bug had become less and less visible. It used to be that Bug would do his disappearing act only when necessary. Then he started doing it whenever he wanted to spy on someone, which was pretty frequently.
Now he would become visible only when Caine ordered him to.
Caine was betting everything on Bug’s story. A story of a magical island. It was insane, of course. But when reality was hopeless, fantasy became more and more necessary.
“How much farther to this farmhouse of yours, Bug?” Caine asked.
“Not far. Stop worrying.”
“You stop worrying,” Caine muttered. Bug was walking invisible through open fields. Nothing but depressions in the dirt where he stepped. Caine was all-too-visible. Broad daylight. Across a dusty, plowed field under a bright, hot sun. Bug said no one was in these fields. Bug said these fields had nothing growing and that none of Sam’s people knew about the farmhouse, which was practically unnoticeable, off a dirt road and looked abandoned.
Caine’s first question had been, “Then how do you know about them?”
“I know lots of stuff,” Bug answered. “Besides, a long time ago you said to keep an eye on Zil.”
“So how does Zil know about this farmhouse?”
The voice above the impressions of invisible feet said, “I think one of Zil’s guys used to know these kids. Back in the day.”
Caine’s next question: “Do they have food there?”
“Yeah. Some. But they also have shotguns. And the girl, the sister Emily? She’s some kind of freak, I think. I don’t know what she does, I ain’t seen her do anything freaky, but her brother is scared of her. So is Zil, kind of, only he doesn’t show it.”
“Great,” Caine muttered. He noted that Zil was a kid who wouldn’t let himself show fear. Maybe useful.
Caine shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned around, looking for telltale dust plumes from a truck or car. Bug said the Perdido Beach people were low on gas, too, but still drove when they needed to.
He was confident that he could take on and defeat any one freak from Sam’s group. With the sole exception of Sam himself. But if it was Brianna and Dekka together? Or even that little preppy nitwit Taylor and a few of Edilio’s soldiers?
But right now the real problem was simply that Caine was weak. Walking this distance-miles-was hard. Very hard when his stomach was stabbing him again, and his navel was scraping his spine. His legs were wobbly. His eyes sometimes became unfocused.
One good meal…well, not really a good meal…was not enough. But it was keeping him alive. Digesting Panda. Panda energy flowing from his stomach through his blood.
The farmhouse was hidden by a stand of trees, but otherwise right out in the open. A long way from the road, yes, but Caine couldn’t believe Sam’s people had never found it and searched it for food.
Very strange.
“No closer,” a young male voice called from the front porch of the house.
Bug and Caine froze.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Caine couldn’t see anyone through the dirty screen.
Bug answered, “We’re just-”
“Not you,” the voice interrupted. “We know all about you, little invisible boy. We’re talking about him.”
“My name is Caine. I want to meet the kids who hang out here.”
“Oh? You do, huh?” the unseen boy said. “Why should I let you do that?”
“I’m not looking for trouble,” Caine said. “But I guess it’s only fair to tell you that I can knock your little house down in about ten seconds.”
Click click.
Something cold touched the back of Caine’s neck.
“Can you? That must be something to see.” A girl’s voice. Not two steps behind him.
Caine had no doubt that the cold object laid against the nape of his neck was a gun barrel. How had the girl gotten so close? How had she snuck up on them?
“Like I said, I’m not looking for trouble,” Caine said.
“That’s good,” the girl said. “You wouldn’t like the kind of trouble I can bring.”
“We just want to…” Caine couldn’t actually think of precisely what it was he just wanted to do.
“Well, come on inside,” the girl said.
There was no movement. No walking, no climbing the steps. The farmhouse seemed to warp for a second, and then it was suddenly around them. Caine was standing in a gloomy living room. There were plastic slipcovers on the sagging couch and on a corduroy La-Z-Boy.
Emily was maybe twelve. Dressed in jean shorts and a pink Las Vegas sweatshirt. As Caine had expected, she was holding a huge, double-barreled shotgun.
The boy came in from outside. He seemed completely unsurprised to see that Caine and Bug were standing in his living room. As though this kind of thing happened all the time.
Caine wondered if he was hallucinating.
“Have a seat,” Emily said, indicating the couch. Caine sat gratefully. He was exhausted.
“That’s a pretty good trick,” Caine said.
“It’s useful,” Emily said. “Makes it hard for people to find us if we don’t want to be found.”
“You have any electricity?” the brother asked Caine.
“What?” Caine peered at him. “In my pocket? How would I have electricity?”
The boy pointed mournfully at the TV. A Wii and an Xbox were attached. All indicator lights off, of course. Game cartridges were stacked high.
“That’s a lot of games.”
“The other ones bring them to us,” Emily said. “Brother likes the games.”
“But we can’t play them,” the boy said.
Caine looked at him closely. He did not strike Caine as any sort of genius. Emily, on the other hand, seemed shrewd and focused. She was the one in charge.
“What’s your name?” Caine asked the boy.
“Brother. His name is Brother,” Emily supplied.
“Brother,” Caine said. “Okay. Well, Brother, those games aren’t much fun if you don’t have electricity. Are they?”
“Those others told me they’d get some of that.”
“Yeah? Well, only one person can bring electricity back,” Caine said.
“You?”
“Nope. A kid named Computer Jack.”
“We met him,” Brother interjected. “He fixed my Wii, long time back. Games still worked back then.”
“Jack works for me,” Caine said. He sat back and let that sink in. It was a lie, of course. But he doubted Emily would know that. She wouldn’t know that Jack was in Perdido Beach. And that according to Bug he was sitting in a squalid room reading comic books and refusing to do anything.
“You can get the lights on?” Emily asked with a glance at her anxious brother.
“I can,” Caine lied smoothly. “It would take about a week.”
Emily laughed. “Kid, you look like you can’t even feed yourself. Look at you. You look like a scarecrow. Dirty, hair falling out. And lying like a rug. What can you do?”
“This,” Caine said. He raised one hand and the shotgun flew out of Emily’s hand. It hit the wall so hard, the barrel stuck in the plaster like a crossbow bolt. The wood stock quivered.
Brother leaped up, but it was like he hit a brick wall. Caine threw him casually through the window. Glass shattered. There was a loud crash as the boy landed on the screened porch.
Emily was up in a heartbeat and suddenly the house disappeared around Caine. He found himself with Bug, standing in the yard.
“That’s definitely a neat trick,” Caine yelled. “Here’s an even better one.”