Sanjit hung his head.
“Sorry,” Choo said. “I screwed it up.”
Sanjit began unwinding the gauze from his perfectly healthy fingers. “Okay, you got us. So, allow me to welcome you to San Francisco de Sales Island.”
“Thanks,” Caine said dryly.
“And yes, we do have some food. Maybe you’d like to join us? Unless you want to stick with your sheep sushi.”
Throughout the morning and early afternoon, the shell-shocked kids of Perdido Beach milled around, lost and confused.
But Albert was neither lost nor confused. Throughout the day kids came to his office in the McDonald’s. He had a booth there, in a corner by the window so he could look out on the plaza and see what passed by.
“Hunter came in with a deer,” a kid reported. “And some birds. About seventy-five pounds of usable meat.”
“Good,” Albert said.
Quinn came in, looking tired and smelling of fish. He sagged into the seat across from Albert. “We went back out. We didn’t do very well since we got started late. But we have maybe fifty pounds usable.”
“That’s good work,” Albert said. He calculated in his head. “We have about six ounces a head of meat. Nothing from the fields.” He tapped the table, thinking. “It’s not worth opening the mall. We’ll do a cookout in the plaza. Roast up the meat, make a stew out of the fish. Charge a ’Berto a head.”
Quinn shook his head. “Man, you really want to get all these kids together in one place? Freaks and normals? As crazed as everyone is?”
Albert thought that over. “We don’t have time to open the mall and we need to get this product out there.”
Quinn made a half smile. “Product.” He shook his head. “Dude, the one guy I’m not worried about when the FAYZ ends-or even if it doesn’t-is you, Albert.”
Albert nodded in agreement, accepting the flattery as a simple statement of fact. “I keep my focus.”
“Yes. You do,” Quinn agreed in a tone that made Albert wonder just what he meant.
“Hey, by the way, one of my guys thinks he saw Sam. Up on the rocks, just down from the power plant,” Quinn said.
“Sam’s not back here yet?”
Quinn shook his head. “The number one question I keep hearing: where is Sam?”
Albert curled his lip. “I think Sam’s having some kind of breakdown.”
“Well, he’s got a right, doesn’t he?” Quinn said.
“Maybe,” Albert allowed. “But mostly I think he’s just pouting. He’s mad because he’s not the only person in charge anymore.”
Quinn shifted uncomfortably. “He’s the one who goes right into the danger when most of us are sitting on our butts or hiding under a table.”
“Yeah. But that’s his job, isn’t it? I mean, the council pays him twenty ’Bertos a week, which is twice what most people make.”
Quinn didn’t look as if he liked that explanation very much. “Doesn’t change the fact that he could get killed. And, you know, it’s still not fair pay or anything. My guys make ten ’Bertos a week to fish, and it’s hard work, but dude, a lot of people could do that job. Only one guy can do Sam’s job.”
“Yes. The only single person. But what we need is more people doing it. With less power.”
“You’re not getting anti-freak, are you?”
Albert pushed the idea away. “Don’t accuse me of being an idiot, okay?” It irritated him, Quinn standing up for Sam. He had nothing against Sam. Sam had kept them safe from Caine and that creep Drake and Pack Leader, Albert understood that. But the time for heroes was on its way out. Or at least he hoped it was. They needed to build an actual society with laws and rules and rights.
This was Perdido Beach, after all, not Sam’s Beach.
“Heard another kid, this is like the fourth, say he saw Drake Merwin during the fire,” Quinn said.
Albert snorted. “There’s a lot of bull going around.”
Quinn looked at him long enough that it almost made Albert uncomfortable. Then, Quinn said, “I guess if it turns out to be true we better hope Sam decides to come back.”
“Orc could take care of Drake. And he’d do it for a pint of vodka,” Albert said dismissively.
Quinn sighed and got up to leave. “Sometimes I worry about you, man.”
“Hey, I’m feeding people in case you didn’t notice,” Albert said. “Astrid talks and Sam pouts, and I get the job done. Me. Why? Because I don’t talk, I just do.”
Quinn sat back down. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Man, don’t you remember taking tests in school? Multiple choice: A, B, C, D, or E, all of the above.”
“Yeah?”
“Dude, sometimes the answer is ‘all of the above.’ This place needs you. And it needs Astrid. And it needs Sam. It’s all of the above, Albert.”
Albert blinked.
“I mean, no offense,” Quinn said quickly. “But it’s like Astrid’s yapping away about how we need some kind of system, and you’re counting your money, and Sam’s acting like we should all just shut up and get out of his way and let him fry whoever messes with him. And the three of you aren’t really stepping up. You aren’t working together, which is what all of us regular people need you to do. Because, and really, I’m not trying to be a jerk or whatever, but duh: we do need a system, and we do need you and your ’Bertos, and sometimes we need Sam to just come along and kick some ass.”
Albert said nothing. His brain was clicking away, but it occurred to him after a minute that he hadn’t said anything and that Quinn was waiting for an answer, and cringing a little like he expected Albert to lash out.
Quinn stood up again, shook his head ruefully, and said, “Okay, I get it. I’ll stick to fishing.”
Albert met his eyes. “Cookout in the plaza tonight. Spread the word, okay?”
THIRTY-FOUR
DIANA STARTED TO cry when Sanjit put the bowl of Cheerios in front of her. He poured from a carton of shelf-stable milk and the milk was so white and the cereal so fragrant, so wonderfully noisy as it sloshed around in the blue bowl.
She reached for it with her fingers. Then she noticed the spoon. It was clean. Bright.
With trembling fingers she dipped the spoon into the cereal and raised it to her lips. The rest of the world disappeared then, for just a few moments. Caine and Penny wolfed from their own bowls, Bug completely visible as he did likewise. But all she noticed, all she felt, was the cool crunch, the rush of sugar, the shock of recognition.
Yes, this was food.
Diana’s tears ran down her face into the spoon, adding a touch of salt to her second bite.
She blinked and saw Sanjit staring at her. He held the industrial-size box of cereal at the ready in one hand, the carton of milk in the other.
Penny laughed and spilled cereal and milk from her lips.
“Food,” Caine said.
“Food,” Bug agreed.
“What else do you have?” Caine asked.
“You have to take it slow,” Sanjit said.
“Don’t tell me how to take it.”
Sanjit did not back down. “You aren’t the first starving people I’ve seen.”
“Someone else from Perdido Beach?” Caine demanded sharply.
Sanjit exchanged a look with the younger boy, Virtue. He’d told Diana that was his real name.
“So it’s pretty bad on the mainland,” Sanjit said.
Caine finished his cereal. “More.”
“A starving person eats too much all at once, he gets sick,” Sanjit said. “You end up puking it all up.”
“More,” Caine said with unmistakable threat in his voice.
Sanjit poured him a refill, then did the same for the rest of them. “Sorry we don’t have any Cap’n Crunch or Froot Loops,” Sanjit said. “Jennifer and Todd are into nutrition. I guess it wouldn’t do for them to be photographed with fat children.”
Diana noted the sardonic tone. And as she gulped the second bowl she noted, too, that her stomach was cramping. She made herself stop.