The helmet on the towel was printed in white on faded green, and the cloth was marked with stains and a few rips here and there, but Jed could still see the stylized wings wrapping from the front of the helmet toward the rear. Under the helmet were the words GO EAGLES! Apparently the towel was a relic of some football competition.
“So you took the name ‘Go Eagles’ because it was written on that towel?”
The salvager nodded his head. “Name being Goa Eeguls. Being my name.”
“Can I just call you Eagle?”
The salvager gave Jed a look of irritation, and spat a huge amount of greenish goo in a disgusting pile between himself and Jed. “Yes. Being Eeguls.” The salvager emphasized the “s” at the end of the name. “Eegulsss. Now shutting yourself.”
Jed pointed at Eagles’s face. “You shouldn’t chew that tobacco while it’s green, Eagles. It’s loaded with bad poisons that are only eliminated by aging and curing.”
Eagles stood up and glared at Jed for a moment, then stomped off a couple of paces. “Boy need shutting himself!” Eagles spat and then, after a few seconds of preparation, began urinating on a bush.
Jed looked away and shook his head. His nerves were still on edge and his hands still shook when he rubbed his face. He’d been clean-shaven when he left the Amish Zone back home. They told him his hair wouldn’t grow while he was in suspended animation, but apparently it had started again. Now, for the first time since he’d left on the trip, he noticed that he had the beginnings of a beard. He stretched his fingers out in front of his face and tried to will his hand to stop shaking. Only twenty minutes had passed since his airbus had been shot out of the sky—with him in it. He’d barely escaped death, and now here he was with this wild man named Eagles who chewed toxic green tobacco and hated to talk.
Where are Pook and his team? Is Dawn out looking for me?
In his post-crash confusion he’d momentarily forgotten that the team would be searching for him and that his job was to delay so that the TRACE unit could locate and rescue him. He reached down and unlaced his boot, and started to pull it off. Any minute now Eagles would want to move on. Removing his shoes was the only thing Jed could think to do as a means of delaying.
Eagles turned around and held up his hand before pointing at Jed. “No! Doing not that!” The salvager grimaced. “Shoes on, boy!”
“I have a stone in there I need to remove.”
“Shoes on, boy! Going.”
Jed ignored Eagles and finished unlacing his boot. He pulled it off and slowly shook it, looked down into it, and then reached deep into the toe area as if searching for the non-existent pebble. After a few seconds, he began feeling on the ground, as if the pebble had come out and now he was trying to find it.
Eagles spat and chewed and then spat again, his jaw working furiously. “Hurry, boy.”
Jed straightened his sock and then, as slowly as he could manage without enraging the salvager even more, he began putting his boot back on. He tried not to look up at the wild man for a full minute, but when he did, he saw that Eagles was lifting his rifle very slowly, and crouching down at the same time. The rifle came up and Jed could see all the way down the barrel. Thinking that Eagles was about to shoot him, he dove to the ground and put his hands over his head.
Eagles whispered. “Stopping that, boy. Friends being near. Making the noise too muches.”
“Your friends?” Jed asked.
“Shhh… No. Being not mine. Being yours. Stupid cronads.” Eagles looked down at Jed and spat. The green saliva landed a foot from Jed’s head. “Getting up, boy!”
Crawling to his knees, Jed felt the rifle barrel pressed against his temple.
Eagles shouted, and the sudden, scary holler drove Jed back to the ground.
“Getting out the open, Pook! Eeguls knowing you being out there!”
Jed turned his head, but couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything moving at all.
“Getting out the open, Pook! Or Eeguls shooting boy!”
Jed heard a snapping of twigs and a shuffling of feet before Pook—and about ten others, including Ducky, Jerry, Jeff, and Dawn—appeared from out of the heavy brush.
“Don’t shoot him, you old nasty bastard,” Pook said.
Ducky made a hand signal and the rest of Pook’s team lowered their weapons.
“Give him to us, Eagles. You know who he is, and you know where he needs to go.”
Eagles shook his head and spat. “Nope. Boy will bringing Eeguls many much moneys.”
Pook reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Eagles, who declined and pointed to the wad of green nastiness in his mouth. Pook screwed up his face and then popped one out of the pack for himself, lit it with the okcillium lighter, and smiled at Eagles. “We don’t have time for this, old man.”
“Boy being with me. Making Eeguls much rich.”
Pook looked down at Jed, who began climbing back to his feet. “Didn’t you offer him the gold like we said?”
“I did. He turned it down. Said my brother would pay more for me.” Jed knelt down and finished lacing up his boot. “What did he mean by that, Pook?”
“He meant exactly what he said. Your brother would pay way more than one gold coin to get you back.”
“My brother is either on his way here, in suspension, or he never left Old Pennsylvania. And he’s four years younger than me.”
“You’re wrong, Jed. Way wrong. And on every count. But that’s to be expected, since you don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“So why not tell me? It’s not like I haven’t asked.”
Pook shrugged and pointed at Jed with the cigarette. “We have cross purposes, Jed. The first thing you should know is that I don’t care about you. Don’t care what you know, or who you are by accident of birth. You want to know things, and we’ve all been ordered to keep things secret.” Pook took a long draw from the smoke and then closed his eyes as he exhaled. “But… but it looks like now the cat is out of the bag.” Pook cocked his head and gave Jed a look that was half apology, and half “deal with it.”
Dawn stepped up and grabbed Jed by the arm, pulling him closer to her. Eagles smiled, but he didn’t lower his rifle. He kept it trained on Jed’s head, and around his grin, spittle glistened in his facial hair.
Dawn reached over, and with a snarl she pushed Eagles’s rifle barrel down, and Eagles let her. He looked amused. “Jed,” Dawn said. “We’ve all known that you have a lot of questions, and I’m sorry we haven’t answered them. It’s frustrating, I know. But your brother had his reasons for keeping you in the dark. He wanted you to see things and understand them in their proper order and context.”
“So my brother, Amos—he’s here, in New Pennsylvania? Now?”
“Yes, Jed, he is.” Dawn reached over with her other hand and pulled Jed even closer to her so that she could look him in the eye. “Everyone gets frustrated when there are more questions than answers. You’re not the only one. We all do. And your brother understood that. He’s the one who contacted me via my BICE when I met you at the Transport desk. He messaged me in my head—as you would say it—and ordered me to escort you here. He said that he wanted you to get to the City, and then to the Amish Zone, so you could see everything for yourself. You have to understand—”
“I have to understand? What do I have to understand, Dawn?”
Dawn’s eyes narrowed, and he could tell that she was irritated. “Do you think we’ve all not wanted to answer your questions? Do you think Ducky’s men wanted to die last night to protect you and to try to get you where you want to go? Do you think Donavan wanted to bleed out onto the floor of an antique shop just so we could all keep secrets from you? Get some freaking perspective, will you Jed?”