Plague (Gone 4)

Yes, Turk thought. This could be good. This could be very good. Taking out Albert would cause more problems than burning a bunch of houses. Albert was the one who was really in charge. He had the money and the food. That made him even more important than Sam.

Lisa came in then with cabbages she’d picked from the fields, and a fat rat she’d bought. Turk’s mouth watered: dinner was late.

“Let’s eat,” he said. “Then we think about what comes next.”

Chapter Fourteen

37 HOURS, 48 MINUTES

EDILIO WAITED UNTIL the sun was up to go for Roscoe.

It was all very peaceful. Roscoe wasn’t the kind of guy to make much trouble.

“We just have to put you somewhere safe,” Edilio explained.

“So I don’t give it to anyone else,” Roscoe said.

“Yeah. While we figure out how to cure you.”

“I want to say good-bye to Sinder,” Roscoe said softly. He jerked his head indicating that she was in the house.

“Of course, man. But listen. Don’t let her touch you, okay? Just in case.”

Roscoe struggled a little then, not against Edilio but against himself. He fought to stop a quiver in his lip. Fought to keep the tears from filling his eyes.

Edilio took him to town hall. There was an unused office with a cot. Edilio had made sure there were books for Roscoe to read. And a covered pot for Roscoe to do his business. A jug of water was on the shelf next to the window. A cabbage and a cooked rabbit were there, too.

The rabbit was a delicacy.

Roscoe thanked Edilio for being decent.

Edilio closed the door. Then he turned the key in the deadbolt.

Quinn’s fishermen had had a good day. The boats were reasonably full of fish, squid, octopi, and the weird things they called blue bats. Those they fed to the zekes—the worms in the fields—to buy safe passage for the vegetable pickers.

The prize of the morning’s work was a five-foot-long shark. Quinn’s boat was actually cramped because of the thing. He was sitting on the tail as he rowed, which was awkward and would give him a backache later. But no one in the boat was complaining. A shark was a twofer: not only was it great eating, it was a competitor for the limited supply of fish.

“Here’s what we ought to do,” Cigar was saying as he pulled at his oar. “We ought to sell the teeth at the mall. I mean, did you see all those teeth? Kids would pay a ’Berto for, like, a necklace of teeth.”

“Or they might, like, glue them onto a stick and make a gnarly weapon,” Elise suggested.

“What do you think it weighs?” Ben wondered.

“Ah, not much,” Quinn said.

That got a laugh. It had taken eight kids just to haul the fish over the side into Quinn’s boat, and then they’d practically swamped the boat.

“Weighs more than Cigar,” Ben said.

Cigar plucked at his ragged T-shirt and revealed a hard, almost concave, stomach. “Everything weighs more than me nowadays. When this all ends and we get out, I’m writing a diet book. The FAYZ diet. First, you eat all the junk food you can. Then you starve. Then you eat artichokes. Then you starve a little more. Then you eat someone’s hamster. Then you go on the all-fish diet.”

“You left out the part where you fry up some ants,” Elise said.

“Ants? I ate beetles,” Ben bragged.

They went on like this for a while, rowing their heavy-laden boat and bragging about the awful things they had eaten.

Quinn noticed something he hadn’t seen in a long time.