Mary covered her mouth with one hand, aghast. The hand touched her lips, then went to her hair. Then she smoothed the front of her blouse. “You think I would ever hurt one of my kids?”
“Mary,” Astrid said, finding a pitiless tone, “you’re a troubled, depressed person off her meds who is talking about how maybe it would be best if those kids died and went to their parents.”
“That’s not what I…,” Mary began. She took a couple of quick, shallow breaths. “You know what? I’m going back to work. I have things to do.”
“No, Mary,” Astrid said forcefully. “Go home.” Then, to Edilio she said, “If she tries to enter the day care, stop her.”
Astrid expected Edilio to agree, or at least to do as he’d been told. But when she glanced his way, she knew better.
“I can’t do that, Astrid,” Edilio said. “You keep saying we need laws and all, and you know what? You’re right. We got no law says I have a right to stop Mary. And you know what else we need? We need laws to keep you from trying stuff like this.”
Mary walked from the room followed by loud applause.
“She could hurt those kids,” Astrid said shrilly.
“Yeah, and Zil burned down the town because you said we couldn’t stop him,” Edilio shot back.
“I’m the head of the council,” Astrid pleaded.
“You want us to vote on that?” Howard asked. “Because we can vote right now.”
Astrid froze. She looked out at a sea of faces, not one of which belonged to someone who was on her side.
“Petey. Come on,” Astrid said.
She held her head up high as she walked through the crowd and out of the church.
Another failure. The only comfort was that it would be her last as the head of the council.
THIRTY-THREE
“I DON’T SEE any big mansion,” Diana said. “I see trees.”
“Bug,” Caine called.
“Good luck finding him,” Diana said. Bug had been clearly visible during the climb up from the water. Caine had caught him once as he fell.
But as they topped the cliff they faced a line of trees, not a fabulous Hollywood hideaway. Trees and more trees.
Penny lost it then. She started yelling, “Where is it? Where is it?” and running into the forest.
“Bug!” Caine shouted. No answer.
“Yeah,” Diana said, “We trusted Bug. And here we are.” She turned and saw the boat. It was drifting farther and farther away. On its way to the distant power plant maybe. Maybe they would survive somehow. Maybe they would be better off than Diana was.
“Sheep!” Penny’s voice from some distance away.
Diana exchanged a look with Caine. Was Penny crazy? Maybe so, but was she hallucinating sheep?
The two of them started forward into the woods. Soon they saw that the trees were just a narrow belt and that beyond them lay a sunny meadow of knee-high grass.
Penny was at the edge of the meadow, staring and pointing and wobbling like she might topple over at any moment.
“They’re real, right?” Penny asked.
Diana shaded her eyes and, yes, they were real. Three dirty-white cotton balls with black faces, almost within reach. The sheep turned and stared at them with stupid eyes.
Caine acted quickly. He raised his hand and snatched one of the sheep off the ground. It flew through the air and smacked with sickening force into a large tree. It fell to the ground, white wool marked with red.
They were on it like tigers. Bug, suddenly visible right there next to them, tearing at the wool, desperate to expose the flesh. But with bare hands and brittle fingernails, even with their dull loose teeth, they couldn’t reach the meat.
“We need something sharp,” Caine said.
Penny found a sharp-edged rock. Too big for her to carry, but not too heavy for Caine. The rock rose in the air and came down like a cleaver.
It was messy. But it worked. And the four of them ripped and tore at chunks of raw mutton.
“Kind of hungry, huh?”
Two kids were standing there like they had appeared out of thin air. The taller one had spoken. His eyes were intelligent, mocking, and wary. The other kid’s face was impassive, expressionless.
Both were dressed in bandages. Bandages wrapped around their hands. The shorter kid had a bandana around his lower face.
The silence stretched as Caine, Diana, Penny, and Bug stared and were stared back at.
“What are you supposed to be, mummies?” Diana asked. She wiped sheep’s blood from her mouth and then realized that it had saturated her shirt and that there would be no wiping it away.
“We’re lepers,” the tall kid said.
Diana felt her heart skip several beats.
“My name is Sanjit,” the tall boy said, and extended a hand that seemed to be stumps of fingers bound with gauze. “This is Choo.”
“Stay back!” Caine snapped.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Sanjit said. “It’s not always contagious. I mean, sure, sometimes. But not always.”
He dropped his hand to his side.
“You have leprosy?” Caine demanded.
“Like at Sunday school?” Bug said.
Sanjit nodded. “It’s not that bad. It doesn’t hurt. I mean, if your finger falls off, you kind of don’t even feel it.”
“I felt it when my penis fell off, but it didn’t hurt that bad,” the one called Choo said.
Penny yelped. Caine shifted uncomfortably. Bug faded from view as he backpedaled away.
“But people are scared of leprosy, anyway,” Sanjit said. “Silly. Kind of.”
“What are you doing here?” Caine asked warily. He had put down his food, keeping his hands ready.
“Hey, I should ask you that,” Sanjit said. Not harsh but definitely not willing to be pushed around by Caine, either. “We live here. You just got here.”
“Plus, you killed one of our sheep,” Choo said.
“This is the San Francisco de Sales leper colony,” Sanjit said. “Didn’t you know?”
Diana began to laugh. “A leper colony? That’s where we are? That’s what we half killed ourselves getting to?”
“Shut up, Diana,” Caine snapped.
“You guys want to come back to the hospital with us?” Sanjit offered hopefully. “All the adult patients and the nurses and doctors are gone, they just disappeared one day. We’re all by ourselves.”
“We heard there was some movie star’s mansion out here.”
Sanjit’s dark eyes narrowed. He glanced right, as if trying to make sense of what she was saying. Then he said, “Oh, I know what you’re thinking of. Todd Chance and Jennifer Brattle pay for this place. It’s, like, their charity.”
Diana couldn’t stop giggling. A leper colony. That’s what Bug had read about. A leper colony paid for by two rich movie stars. Their charity thing.
“I think Bug may have gotten just a few of the details wrong,” she managed to say between dry, racking laughs that were indistinguishable from sobs.
“You can have the sheep,” Choo said.
Diana stopped laughing. Caine’s eyes narrowed.
Sanjit quickly said, “But we’d rather just have you come back with us. I mean, we’re kind of lonely.”
Caine stared at Choo. Choo stared back, then looked away. “He doesn’t seem to want us to come to this hospital,” Caine said, indicating Choo.
Diana saw fear in the younger boy’s eyes.
“Have them take off their bandages,” Diana said. All urge to laugh was gone now. Both boys had bright eyes. The visible parts of them seemed healthy. Their hair wasn’t brittle and broken like hers.
“You heard her,” Caine said.
“No,” Sanjit said. “It’s not good for our leprosy to be exposed.”
Caine took a deep breath. “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to throw your little lying friend there straight into a tree. Just like I did with this sheep.”
“He’ll do it,” Diana warned. “Don’t believe he won’t.”