Metaltown

  Hayden shrugged out of his jacket and passed it over. He rubbed his hands together, his breath clouding in front of his face. Colin pulled the coat over his shoulders, keeping his arms close to his body. The sun was coming up, lighting the haze a too-bright shade of pink. He could see his brother more clearly now, and was surprised to recognize the anger on his face. How many times had he looked that same way after spending all night searching through Hayden’s haunts?

  “Where you going?” Hayden stared straight ahead at the open compartment.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Matters to me.”

  Colin felt a flash of guilt. “Thought I might try Rosie’s Bay.” Alone, he could be a stowaway. It wouldn’t matter that he was broke. He’d catch however many trains he needed to until he reached the coast.

  Hayden sat back, rubbing his shins to keep his legs warm. Down the way, another train engine roared to life. Colin felt the pressure kick alive inside of him. He needed to get into that empty car.

  “I never pegged you as a runner,” said Hayden.

  Colin turned on him, teeth bared. “You never pegged me as anything because you were never around.”

  Hayden tucked his chin into his shoulder. Colin stood up, not caring now that he might be seen. He needed to get on that train. His feet needed to move. But instead he rounded back on his brother.

  “What are you talking about, anyway? You left. Why can’t I leave? It’s my turn.”

  Hayden was silent for a full minute. “I never left.”

  Colin blinked. “What?”

  “I never went to Rosie’s Bay. I made it up.”

  “You made it up,” Colin repeated. He tried to picture the white sand, the sunny dock. The sound of the waves. If he could hear them, they had to be real. “You’re lying.”

  Hayden looked away. “I made it up. You liked the story so much, I don’t know, it just went on from there.”

  “You were gone for two years!” Colin bellowed, forgetting momentarily about the train. Rosie’s Bay couldn’t be made up. It had to be real. But the Metaltown smog was now crushing him. Suffocating him. Filling him with doubt.

  Hayden looked pale, but his cheeks were blotched red, like Cherish’s.

  “I was in Bakerstown. I went back to where we grew up, you remember? I thought I’d make a go of it, and then once I did, I’d come get you guys.” He sighed, defeated. “I never meant to get hooked on the stuff. It was just to take the edge off.”

  Colin wanted nothing more than to strangle him, but his limbs wouldn’t move. “You were just across the beltway the whole time?” The insanity of Hayden’s claim was sinking in. He’d been close enough to visit, to send money, to help with Cherish, and he’d done nothing. For two years.

  A dark fury swelled within him. He wondered if it was possible to hate his own brother.

  “Ty said you were a sellout,” Colin said. “What’d you do?”

  Hayden closed his eyes.

  “Same thing I always do,” he said weakly. “Got my fix.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, standing finally, but looking small. “I told Schultz about your charter. I … I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Schultz had known about the charter the night after the Small Parts workers had met at Lacey’s. There had been a leak.

  The leak had been his own brother.

  Colin took a step toward the train. He didn’t know where it was going. It didn’t matter anymore, just as long as it wasn’t here.

  Hayden was pathetic. A junkie. A sellout. Colin remembered all the times he’d lain out here with Ty and told stories about his brother’s adventures. How many nights had he watched these trains waiting for Hayden to come home?

  He never should have come home.

  “I don’t suppose it matters,” said Hayden. “But I’m clean now. Three days. I won’t mess up again.”

  Colin shook his head. Right. He contemplated whether lying down on the tracks was a yellow way to die. It was one thing to lose Lena. It was another to lose Rosie’s Bay. It felt like someone had died.

  The engine down by the station sighed. The car before them crawled forward.

  “I’m leaving,” said Colin, raising his voice over the grind of the machines.

  “Okay.” Hayden shifted. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, little brother. I hope there is a Rosie’s Bay.”

  But there never had been a Rosie’s Bay. There had only been the false hope that there was someplace better than this place. A break from the daily grind. A shiny wish he could chase after, something bright enough to light the dark places. For a little while, Colin had thought that was Lena.

  He thought of Ty then. Who never got a break. Who never quit. Of Matchstick, risking his life to blow up the jail. Of Martin, who’d turned into a believer, and Zeke, who looked out for his sister, and Noneck and Henry, who’d followed him straight into chaos. Of his ma, who never stopped to complain. Of Cherish, who didn’t have much longer. And suddenly it all seemed like a lot to lose.

  The train squealed, the sound of metal scraping metal, and when it pulled out of the shipping yards, Colin was not aboard.

  35

  TY

  Ty hunkered down in the shadows of the warehouse on the opposite side of the street from the Small Parts factory. After busting Colin out from food testing, and her run-in with McNulty, going back to Beggar’s Square was out of the question. Instead she’d come here. To think. To watch.

  Three hours before the day shift and already there were Brotherhood goons milling around. Every lit cigarette cast an orange glow, a beacon in the early gray light.

  She’d slept just a little, with Chip under her arm. She told herself it was only to keep him warm—the alley floor was cold and unyielding—but in truth she didn’t mind. His heavy dreaming breaths soothed some of the questions in her head.

  But they didn’t take them away.

  For years she’d tried to tell Colin he belonged in Metaltown. That to want anything more was wasted effort. Hope was a killer, worse even than the corn flu, because hope in Metaltown went by another name: disappointment. And to live with disappointment was to die of thirst holding a cup of clean water.

  But Colin wasn’t like the rest of them, not really. He’d taken on Schultz when the other Metalheads bent. He’d taken on Hampton because it was the right thing to do. He was meant for bigger things. Every time she’d tried to tell him otherwise, she’d only been trying to convince herself.

  It was just a matter of time before he moved on.

  Maybe if she were flush like Lena Hampton, maybe if she were dignified, and had fancy things and smart duds, Colin would have taken her side. But even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t right. Colin wasn’t shallow. It wasn’t just Lena’s pretty face drawing him across the beltway. He’d been with plenty of pretty girls and none of them had stuck. No, he was looking for a way out, and Lena was his ticket.

  Ty could never offer what she did, and that made all the anger and panic and despair inside of her spark into a full-blown fire. Her thoughts turned to McNulty. He’d called her Astor Tyson. He’d made it sound like she was worth something. The truth was, she could have been worth something—she didn’t know where she was born, who she was before she’d been dropped off at St. Mary’s. There was no saying she wasn’t this Astor Tyson.

  Her dreams emerged from the tired parts of her mind, slipping past the barriers of her consciousness. The toy train, the smell of perfume. A woman, leaving her on the steps and running into the dark. Old questions she’d shoved into the boxes in the back of her mind had been seeping out—things she’d tried to forget about because knowing the answers didn’t change anything. Who were her parents? Was the woman who’d taken her to St. Mary’s her mother? Why had she left her?

  Who was Astor Tyson?

  Before she could wake Chip properly, she was scrambling to her feet. Maybe Shima knew what McNulty had been talking about.

  “What’re you doing?” Chip slu
rred, rubbing his eyes. “You got some food?”

  “Come on.” Ty grinned, feeling like she was standing on the edge of something big. If McNulty was right, and she was entitled to money, she could pay him to send muscle, get the press up and running again, and show Colin that he didn’t have to go all the way to the River District to find a greenback. He’d had one in front of him the whole time.

  But she didn’t get far, because a moment after they’d started toward Shima’s, a voice hailed them from around the corner.

  “Hey!” he said. “Hey, get over here!”

  “Keep walking,” she told Chip, reaching for her knife. Her muscles tensed. Probably a junkie or a perv out trolling.

  “Hey!” the voice called again, and through the gray, predawn haze she saw what looked like a man wearing a hat of snakes.

  She squinted. Not snakes. Dreads.

  She gripped the knife low at her waist. “Watch my bad side,” she told Chip, who obediently jumped to her left.

  They glanced around the corner and spotted two figures. It took her a moment to recognize them.

  “About time somebody showed up,” Dreads said. Beside him, Schoolboy folded his arms over his chest.

  A dark understanding settled on her bones. McNulty hadn’t sent anyone else, which meant that he didn’t intend to take back Metaltown. He wanted her dead so he could collect his bounty from Hampton.

  She crouched low, revealing her knife. If she ran into the street the Brotherhood would see her, and they certainly wouldn’t help. But if she stayed here, she’d have to take them both. After their last interaction, she doubted they’d let her off easy.

  “Why’d you cross the line, schoolboys?” she said, putting a hard edge in her tone.

  Dreads gave a snort. “McNulty sent us.”

  She loosened her shoulders. Beside her, Chip flashed a new shank—a metal butter knife he’d lifted from St. Mary’s. “What’s McNulty want with us?”

  “What’s McNulty want with anyone?” said the boy with curly hair, clearly annoyed. “He wants to collect.”

  “Collect what?” asked Chip. “Ty doesn’t got any green.”

  The two Bakerstown boys tossed their heads back and laughed, revealing a flash of their lime-colored belts.

  “Your friend’s worth more than your life, kid,” said Dreads. “Her daddy used to own half of this hellhole.”

  Curiosity got the better of her. “He owned a factory?” Nothing else made sense—there wasn’t anything else in Metaltown that carried any weight.

  Schoolboy turned to Dreads. “Just one or two,” he said, with a bite of sarcasm.

  “Small Parts?” asked Chip hopefully. Ty was glad he asked.

  “Try the entire scientific world,” said Dreads. “Every clinic, hospital, and food testing plant. The Medical Division, ever heard of it?”

  When he reached into his pocket, Ty hissed and nearly stuck him, but he only revealed what looked to be a crumpled wrapper. Slowly, he smoothed it out against his chest, then turned it to show them. The black and white image had been divided by fold creases where the paper had thinned, but a man’s face was still visible in a small, boxed segment.

  He had short, slicked hair, and a mustache. Round glasses. Serious eyes.

  Ty felt her stomach drop. Her knife nearly slid out of her hands. The man was familiar. She’d seen him before. Known him before. Not just from a picture like this—news images were only on screens and tablets, and no one in Metaltown had one of those. The closest she’d gotten to one had been when Otto Hampton had once carried his through the factory.

  No, she’d seen him before in person, she was sure of it.

  She snatched it from the boy’s hands, trying to sound out the words above the picture, frustrated that she couldn’t read faster.

  “Doctor and his wife succumb to flu, it says,” Dreads told her. “Survived by their only child.” She barely heard him snickering.

  “Where’d you get this?” she said, unable to tear her eyes away.

  “McNulty had it. Said you might want it. Says to tell you he plans on seeing you real soon.”

  She should have been looking for her nearest exit, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the picture. She knew what this man looked like without his glasses. When he lay on the floor, and played trains with her. He helped people—he was a doctor. A doctor.

  See you later, Astorgator, he used to say. Every morning before work. One hand went absently to her stomach, to the round scars there. He’d had to give her a shot. Something so she wouldn’t get sick.

  Astor, that was her name.

  Her head throbbed painfully. Was she making it up? Forcing the pieces to fit in the outline of a puzzle they’d provided? It seemed too good to be true.

  But it was true. She could feel it in her bones, the same way she knew that Jed Schultz was bad and Colin was, well, Colin.

  Her family had owned the Medical Division.

  She had heard the stories. That the heir had gone missing—a suspected victim of the corn flu. By the time she was old enough to work at Small Parts, that speculation was all gossip. A joke they would tell—Matchstick especially. When I collect my inheritance …

  Hampton Industries had absorbed the division, and no one fought Hampton.

  Until Colin.

  “I told McNulty the deal,” she choked out. “He helps me, and I help him.”

  “What did you think we were doing here, She-male?” asked Dreads. He held out his hand, and Ty jumped back, thinking he held a weapon. But it was empty.

  “Skaggs,” he said, then pointed to his schoolboy friend. “This is Liam.”

  “Ty,” she said slowly. Then, “Astor.” But the name sounded wrong on her tongue. “Ty’s fine.”

  They shook hands. Then Liam led them back to a thin, dark street, and her mouth dropped open.

  “Ty, what’s going on?” Chip asked.

  She couldn’t answer. Fifty men filled the alley. Rough, ugly brutes. Muscle. All wearing some flash of green. They crowded together, keeping quiet, like a bomb ready to explode.

  “What’s the call?” asked Skaggs, grinning. “We gonna bust some heads or what?”

  * * *

  Dawn was breaking by the time they’d gathered the others. Word spread like wildfire in Metaltown. Ty found Matchstick and Noneck burning trash under the bridge, both of them wide-eyed with shock when they caught sight of the train of men lurking in the shadows behind her. They agreed to split up—one would take Keeneland Apartments, the other Beggar’s Square. Chip had already torn off toward Lacey’s to catch any stragglers.

  Nerves rattling her clean through, Ty led the Bakerstown lot through the backstreets, toward the Small Parts shipping dock. Two Brotherhood thugs were waiting, but when they caught sight of the army behind her, they ran, just like the yellow cowards they were.

  Ty knew they’d tell their friends. It would only be a matter of time before Jed gathered his troops and attacked—if the cops didn’t come after them first for the damage at the food testing facility.

  She glanced back at the Bakerstown boys and chuckled to herself. It would take a whole lot of cops to take them down now.

  “So how is it a bunch of inbred Metalheads start thinking they can take on the big boys?” Liam fit a pair of fingerless leather gloves over his knuckles. When he made a fist, the hard material creaked.

  Though the claim made her balk, she supposed he was right. They may not have started with the intention of going to war, but they were ready for one now. The poor workers of Metaltown were about to take on the richest man in the Northern Fed, and if they won, they would prove that a swarm of rats was a lot scarier than one big snake.

  While they waited, Ty explained why they were pressing.

  “If this works,” said Liam, looking less burdened than he had when she’d seen him on his own turf, “if the workers get their rights, a lot’s going to change. For everyone. Maybe us, even.”

  “You got something in mind?” she asked. br />
  He scratched his ear. “Maybe after we give Schultz a workout, we can head over the beltway.”

  He wanted to take on McNulty. It occurred to her McNulty might be the Schultz of Bakerstown. She looked around, but if anyone had heard, they didn’t seem too bothered. Could be they all felt that way.

  Could be she’d need more friends in her corner when this ended and she had to come up with the green she owed McNulty. If they weren’t firmly on his side, maybe they’d help watch her back while she figured out how to collect her inheritance.

  Her inheritance.

  It didn’t seem possible. It certainly wasn’t fair. She could have had everything, and instead, she’d lived thin, stomach aching with hunger, never certain when a knife might end up in her back. It was the only way she knew how to be, and imagining another life just felt wrong.

  One battle at a time.

  “I don’t know,” Liam added. “Things change over there, I might try to finish school.”

  Bakerstown pansies, thought Ty, but she smirked anyway. “Thought you had to be bright to go to school.”

  He grinned. “Least I can read, Metalhead.”

  She socked him in the shoulder.

  The start of the shift drew closer. Chip reported that more of the Brotherhood had gathered at the front of the building, and soon Minnick and his shells would start showing up. They needed to make themselves visible, make their intentions known. To bring the bite to Hampton’s door.

  She was just about to give the order to creep around the building and block the entrances when Zeke showed up, two tall men in tow.

  “Thought we might need some help,” he said, white teeth flashing.

  From behind him stepped the Walter brothers.

  Colin was tired—she could see it in his eyes. Tired in the body, tired in the soul. Whatever had happened with Lena Hampton hadn’t turned out the way he’d hoped, which didn’t make Ty as happy as she’d hoped. Still, he’d come back to her, because they both knew she could fix him. She would do what she’d always done: give him something to fight.

  As he looked over McNulty’s crew, his jaw fell slack. “Ty, how…”