Metaltown

  * * *

  He searched for hours. Hayden wasn’t under the bridge where the kid had said. Even the normal bums had scattered, leaving the tagged concrete pylons and asphalt to the rats. Part of him was grateful for it; his brother could have frozen so near the murky river water.

  After clearing the area, Colin pulled up his collar, hid the blanket inside his coat, and began his normal drill—a systematic check of all the places he’d found Hayden before. He ducked into shady clubs and talked to bouncers, a few who knew his brother by name. He asked a couple working girls if they’d seen someone tall, like him, but a couple years older and with longer hair. Not a sign.

  Dusk had long since faded to black, and with the night came a familiar tingling at the base of Colin’s neck. He palmed the blade from his waistband and cursed himself for telling Ty to get her bunk. He could have used an extra pair of eyes, if for no other reason than to watch his back.

  Resigned to kicking Hayden’s ass all the way to Bakerstown when he found him, Colin returned to the bridge and climbed the concrete steps to the pedestrian path. Half the suspension wires had busted since the famine, but that was back when cars traveled this route. Now it was all foot traffic, and only chem plant employees who came this way. Though he doubted they did so this late at night.

  He kept his eyes sharp across the bridge, ignoring a man near the edge who was yelling at no one, and a trio that eyed him suspiciously as they passed around a glowing dope pipe. The air smelled sweeter over here—sweet enough to make the bile rise up Colin’s throat. Still, the river rushed twenty feet below him, and for a moment the water, lapping against the man-made levies, brought a small sense of calm. He wondered if the ocean spoke this language, or if it made a different sound when it hit the sand.

  In the dark it was impossible to see the hulking stone asylum, or the sign that hung from the edge of the bridge, but he knew it was there. Hampton Industries, Division III. Chemical Plant. Half a dozen biohazard signs had been erected on the path, but most of them were rusted or tagged with graffiti. At thirteen he’d thought this was the creepiest place he’d ever seen. His opinion hadn’t changed much in the last four years. He gripped the knife harder, wishing he had some source of light.

  If Hayden wasn’t dead, Colin was going to kill him.

  The gates were close. He could hear the clink of metal on metal as a breeze came through. And then the slide of a chain against it, like fingernails scratching up his spine.

  “Hayden,” he called. And damn it all if he didn’t sound like a Bakerstown pansy. He swore and stood a little taller.

  Something stirred near the base of the gate. Everything inside of Colin told him to run. Every muscle flexed against his skin. Who knew the type that came out here this late. The type who killed people and pawned their effects, that’s who. The type who’d gone crazy from the food testing plant. Who lured orphans down to the river and maimed the girls that worked the Metaltown corners.

  The thing moved again—a shuffle of cloth and a scrape against the dirty pavement. Colin almost guessed it was a rat until a distinctly human moan whispered over the breeze.

  “Who’s there?” Colin’s voice cracked. Now part of him was glad Ty was across the river; she would have ridden him for weeks about it.

  Another moan.

  “I’m looking for Hayden Walter,” Colin said, taking a risk and stepping closer. He was only a few feet away now. The knife was braced before him, but the stranger wouldn’t have been able to see it unless he had cat’s eyes.

  “Hayden,” the man repeated. In a voice Colin knew as well as his own.

  “Damn you.” Colin tucked his knife away and knelt down beside the pile of rags on the cement. A sliver of skylight, just for a moment, revealed the soiled white canvas of his brother’s uniform. A deep breath, and Colin’s head spun. Hayden smelled worse than he did. Sticky sweet, like the air. Like the plant.

  “Nitro?” Colin asked in disgust. He swore again. Nitroglycerine. The stuff was worse than dope. Workers in Hayden’s team breathed the heavy, colorless oil all day while they packed it into bomb shells. Anyone outside would have gotten a headache from the fumes, even had a heart attack if they’d gotten too much, but those on the inside developed a tolerance. Which turned the hours after work into a slow grind of withdrawal.

  Good thing you could huff the fumes to fight off the tics and aches. Took the edge right off those clenching muscles. Of course, after a while, your body couldn’t survive without it, but who cared about that?

  Obviously not Hayden.

  “Get up,” said Colin. “We’re leaving. Get your sorry ass up.”

  Hayden groaned when Colin squatted beside him and felt around for his arm. He stood up fast enough to tweak his brother’s shoulder, and relished in the little grunt of pain. He wished Hayden was sober enough to fight, because Colin would have worked him up and down the walls.

  “Whatcha doin’,” Hayden slurred.

  “God, you reek.”

  “Colin?”

  “Walk, asshole.”

  They took a few steps toward the bridge, and Hayden stumbled, taking both of them to the ground. Colin pushed him off, feeling a sudden, uncontrollable swelling inside his chest. He couldn’t look at his brother. He shouldn’t have come out here. This was unbelievably stupid. If Hayden wanted to die he should just get on with it and leave the rest of the family alone.

  The air stunk, and he stunk, and Hayden was high on nitro. Nitro. Why was it that Colin felt like an idiot, when Hayden was the one stoned out of his mind?

  “Little brother?” Hayden said slowly. In the darkness, Colin could see his brother’s glassy eyes blink once. His chest clenched again, harder than before. So hard he could barely breathe.

  After a while he stood and helped Hayden back up. “Come on,” he said. He moved slowly this time, so that Hayden could take each step.

  “Don’t tell them,” Hayden said.

  Colin sighed. “I won’t.”

  8

  TY

  Watching Colin walk away, Ty felt the cold shudder through her. A reminder that she was about to face another night alone.

  She wasn’t scared—she refused to be scared. And she didn’t need anybody looking out for her. But having Colin around did make it a little easier to breathe. Sometimes, being around him was the only time she ever really relaxed.

  And sometimes, she couldn’t relax around him at all.

  “Looks like that makes two of us got stiffed.” The boy with dark, sweat-crusted hair shoved off the wall to a stand. She’d forgotten about him.

  “What?” Ty frowned.

  “He stole my shoes, and you got ditched.”

  “He didn’t ditch me. I told him to go.” She didn’t know why she was defending herself to a boy half her age. “Anyway, you’re the one who stole the shoes first.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  The alley outside the employee entrance had cleared; most of the workers scattered as soon as they realized there wouldn’t be a fight. Just a few remained now, people she knew but wasn’t friendly with, and this boy.

  The gray haze was lowering, turning purple with the sunset. The boy glanced upward warily. He wasn’t looking forward to the night any more than she was.

  “You hungry?” she asked. As he turned to face her, it hit her how small he was—a bony body draped in tattered, oversized clothes. The chill blisters on his cheeks were easier to see when he wasn’t mouthing off, and the curls at the ends of his hair made him seem almost babyish. He stepped gingerly down the alley, holey socks providing limited protection from the cold, dirty ground.

  “Why? You sharing?” He tracked the movements of her hands down by her pockets like a stray dog, and she wondered when he’d last eaten. Her stomach was already grumbling; it had been since they’d gotten back to Small Parts.

  “Come on.” She led him down the alley, watching the way his eyes darted to every shadow, how he hesitated before every corner. “What’s your name, ki
d?”

  “Augustine,” he said. “But the guys call me Chip.”

  “Augustine,” repeated Ty. “You’re from St. Mary’s then.” She knew the orphanage well enough. She’d been brought there when she was little after a woman had found her wandering the streets. For five years she’d schooled under the iron fists of the nuns, only to be turned out when she was eight with a half-assed prayer and an order to find work before she starved. If she had to guess, it hadn’t been long since Chip had been given the same farewell.

  “There were three Augustines when I was there,” she continued when the boy didn’t answer. “The nuns like that name, I guess.”

  “I said to call me Chip.” He glared up at her. The corner of her mouth turned up. “Where we going, anyway?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She led him the back way, down a dingy cart path, past a pawn shop to a dimly lit bar. Jack Sly’s. The windows were covered with plywood and tagged with graffiti, but hard, growling music seeped out from beneath the door.

  “In there?” Chip asked.

  “Not unless you’re paying.” She led him around the back side of the building and dragged him down behind a stack of cardboard boxes.

  “What are we doing here?” he whined. She shushed him.

  They waited with bated breath as the minutes passed. Ty’s legs began to cramp, and her stomach became more demanding. Unable to hold still, Chip started tearing the boxes into chunks, and shoving the pieces up his shirt. Kid was smart, Ty thought. Cardboard was a good barrier against the cold.

  The back door opened, and a hefty man in a white undershirt, stained around the pits, hoisted a bag of trash toward the green metal trash bin. The garbage was already overflowing as it was, and after attempting a few times to push it down to make more room, he simply tossed the bag on top. Then he wiped his hands, hocked up a mouthful of phlegm on the wall, and disappeared back into the bar.

  “Dinnertime,” whispered Ty, eyeing the trash bin. It said a lot that Chip’s eyes were round and eager, and he didn’t get snobby.

  They tiptoed across the way, grabbed the bag, and pulled it behind the Dumpster. One rip of the plastic and a blast of fumes hit them—rotten vegetables, probably, but deeper inside was a mix-meat sub, half-eaten, and a few pieces of fry bread.

  “You gotta get here before midnight, okay?” Ty told him. “That’s when they throw rat poison on it.” When the kid didn’t look up, she snapped a finger in front of his face. “I showed you my stash, now when you find one, you show me, got it? Those are the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “Street rules,” she said. He nodded.

  Fat on their feast, they cut through an abandoned building filled with squatters, and made their way to the Board and Care. Ty found she didn’t mind Chip’s company. He hadn’t said much, and she liked that. Still, she couldn’t help wishing Colin was there. She wondered if he’d found Hayden, and if he had, what kind of shape he’d been in.

  Stupid junkies. Colin should just cut ties and be done with it. He couldn’t see that Hayden wouldn’t have gone looking for him. Sometimes you chose your family—like she’d chosen him all those years ago.

  The light of day was just barely hanging on by the time they reached the Tribelt Interchange, or Beggar’s Square as the people in Metaltown called it. There, three roads converged into a narrow roundabout encircling a small, dry fountain. Any day of the week that fountain was lined with pigeons and bums, and tonight was no exception.

  On one corner was St. Mary’s orphanage. On another, the Board and Care. And on the third, Charity House.

  “Go get some shoes,” Ty told Chip, lifting her chin toward the flimsy wooden building. So many additions had been tacked on to Charity House over the years that it hardly looked like a house at all, but more like a big, cancerous mass.

  The boy shifted back and forth.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Ty.

  “Nothing. I don’t need shoes,” he said. She barked out a laugh, but swallowed it down when his obstinate little face scowled up at her.

  “Come on,” she prompted, leading the way. Across the street, outside St. Mary’s, the orphans were cleaning up the broth bowls they’d given out to the first hundred lucky people in line.

  “No.” Chip dug his heels in. “I know what’s in there. I’m not catching it.”

  Ty tilted her head, then huffed. “You can’t catch corn flu from another person.”

  You can’t catch corn flu from another person. Someone had told her that when she was little. She couldn’t remember who. Probably someone from St. Mary’s.

  “Oh, yes you can,” he argued.

  “Oh, no you can’t,” she retorted. “I promise. My friend’s mom got it from food, and he sees her all the time, and he’s not sick.”

  “Your friend who stole my shoes? That friend?”

  “That friend.”

  “Like I’m gonna believe anything he says.”

  Ty sighed. “Fine. Suit yourself. I’m going to get a bunk, and unless you’re planning on sleeping outside, you better get in there, too.”

  Chip lifted his chin defiantly, glancing back at the Charity House.

  “Swear on your mother’s life I won’t catch it.”

  She barely remembered her mother, but supposed it wouldn’t hurt swearing on someone who was already dead. “Sure, Chip. I swear.”

  Ty pulled Chip through the swinging doors, not giving him a chance to waste time thinking. The sight that greeted them always made her insides turn to jelly, but she wasn’t about to show it. Not while the kid was watching.

  The low-ceilinged room was packed with cots, drawn so close together the workers had to inch sideways to get between them. The bodies on the beds were in different states of decay—the worst were gray and ashy, so thin they might blow away, with lips tinged red by the blood that spewed from their lungs. Others still had a normal color to them, but were marked by the unmistakable red blotches on their cheeks and skin. And the best off, the newly diagnosed, they worked the place, having come here before they couldn’t walk in hopes of gaining a bed when the sickest kicked the bucket.

  Thick, hacking coughs ricocheted off the walls. Chip, eyes wide with fear, covered his mouth and nose with his dirty hands. Ty made a note to ask for mittens, too, if they had some to spare.

  “They’re just people,” she told him quietly. “Like you and me.”

  “Not like me,” he said, voice muffled through his sleeve.

  A frail man hobbled by, his cheeks cherry red, his eyes bloodshot. A handkerchief, stained with blood, was held tight in his fist. Ty stopped him, careful not to knock him over.

  “Can we get in the donation room?” she asked.

  He nodded and pointed toward the back. They’d have to walk through the clinic to get there, and he was too busy, and too weak, to lead them.

  “How’d they all get so sick if they didn’t catch it?” Chip asked. She flinched when he grabbed the tail of her coat, but didn’t make him back off.

  “It started with the famine,” she said, picking her way through the cots. Her stomach began to pitch—the smell made her want to vomit. She focused on the back door. “Too many people, not enough for everyone to eat. People were starving, so they started fighting for food.” And for the land to grow it on, and the sea to fish it from, and the rights to transport and pack it. The nuns had given this lesson more than once in her youth. “Then the fighting turned into a war, and even more people went hungry. Then these scientists started making synthetic corn, you’ve heard of that?”

  “I’m not stupid, you know,” he said from behind her.

  She rolled her eyes. “They thought it would end the fighting because people would have enough to eat. They made a ton of it in factories all over the world, but it wasn’t tested, and it made people sick.”

  They reached the donation room, and Ty commanded herself to stay calm as they passed through the threshold. There were stacks of clothes here, piled from
floor to ceiling. Shoes, too. Nothing was organized. It was as if the workers had just thrown it all inside and slammed the door.

  Which was exactly what they’d done. Soon as someone at Charity House died, they stripped them, recycled their clothes, and burned their bodies in the incinerators out back. She could smell it working even here. The charred, sour smoke dried out her nostrils.

  “I never knew all this was here.” Chip dove into a pile as if he were being timed. Ty didn’t tell him where the clothes had come from.

  Chip sat on the floor, trying on mismatched shoes. She sorted them for him, hoping he would hurry up. He may have been more comfortable, but she was about ready to pop. They needed to get back outside fast.

  “So why do they keep making the poison corn?” he asked.

  She cleared her throat. “They don’t. But too many people had already eaten it, and it was already put in all sorts of food. That’s why you’ve still got to be careful.” She threw a pair of gloves down for him to try. “And that’s why the Federations are all still fighting. Because testing food is so expensive, half the world’s starving to death.”

  “Why doesn’t somebody just make some medicine?” He laced up a pair of scuffed boots, prodding the toe with his thumb. The look on his face said they were a good enough fit.

  “You don’t think they’re trying?” The Medical Division tested their cures on the inmates at the local jail. Sometimes the inmates were released when they were no longer considered a danger to society. Most of them were so sick they didn’t last long.

  A worker opened the door and tossed another armful in. Before the door closed, they caught sight of an emaciated, naked male corpse being pushed outside on a gurney.

  Chip jolted up, face pale. “Can we go?”

  “Yeah,” Ty said.

  * * *

  Later, Ty lay in the bunk she’d chosen, the one closest to the door and flush against the wall. She kept her knives out at night, one in her hand, the other close to her chest, attuned to the snores and heavy breathing of the fifty others that occupied this wing. Chip was upstairs with the juniors, probably curled up around his shoes snoring like a baby. He was a brat, but he was tough, and she liked that about him. She hadn’t been all that different at his age.