Had to eat, man. Caine had to understand that.
He’d get to Coates and find the freaky dream girl in plenty of time.
Bug reached into his pocket and pulled out the map Caine had drawn onto a piece of printer paper. It was pretty good, pretty clear. It led from Coates, down around the hills, out into the desert. An “X” marked something Caine had labeled “Ghost Town.” A second “X,” almost on top of the town, was labeled “Mine.”
On the map was a written message to anyone who challenged Bug. It read:
Bug is following my orders. Do what he says. Anyone who tries to stop him deals with me. Caine.
Bug was to gather up the dreamer, Orsay, and, using whatever guys he could round up at Coates, get her to the “X” labeled “Mine.”
“I don’t know if it dreams or not,” Caine had said. “But I think maybe all its thoughts are dreams, kind of. I think maybe Orsay can get inside its head.”
Bug had nodded like he understood, though he didn’t.
“I want to know what it plans for me,” Caine instructed Bug. “You tell her that. If I bring it food, what will it do to me? You tell Orsay that if she can tell me the dreams of the Darkness, the gaiaphage, I will cut her loose. She’ll be free.”
Then Caine had added, “Free from me, anyway.”
It was an important mission. Caine had promised Bug first choice of any food they got in the future. And Bug knew he’d better succeed. People who failed Caine came to bad, bad ends.
It was a very long walk to Ralph’s. The place was still guarded. Bug could see two armed kids on the roof, two by the front door, two by the loading dock in back. And the place was hopping, kids crowding at the door, pushing and yelling.
Many were there to get their daily ration of a couple of cans of horrible food, doled out by bored fourth graders who had already grown cynical.
“Dude, don’t try and play me,” one was saying as he turned a girl away. “You were here two hours ago getting food. You can’t just change clothes and trick me.”
Others were not there to get food but electricity. Ralph’s was on the highway, outside of the town proper. Obviously it still had electricity, because extension cords had been strung through the front door and power strips attached. Kids were lined up charging iPods, rechargeable flashlights, and lap-tops.
Bug would tell Caine about the electricity at the store. That would earn him some brownie points. Caine would get Jack to find a way to cut it off.
The fact that the power was still on meant that the automatic door also still worked. Bug had to be careful to follow someone else in.
The store was an eerie place. The produce section, which was the first thing he saw, was empty. Most of the rotting produce had been shoveled out, but they had not done a thorough job. A big squash was so rotted, it had been reduced to a liquid smear. There were corn-on-the-cob leaves scattered, onion skins, and on the floors a sticky gray goo that was the residue of the cleanup effort.
The meat section stank, but it was empty nonetheless.
Shelves were acres of emptiness. All the remaining food was gathered into a single aisle in the middle of the store.
Careful to avoid brushing against any of the half dozen or so workers, Bug walked along the aisle.
Jars of gravy. Packets of powdered chili mix. Jars of pimentos and pickled onions. Artificial sweetener. Clam juice. Canned sauerkraut. Wax beans.
In a separate section with its own guard was a slightly more inviting shelf. A sign read, “Day Care Only.” Here, there were cylinders of oatmeal, cans of condensed milk, boiled potatoes, and cans of V8 juice, though not many.
Things were bad in Perdido Beach, Bug reflected. The days of candy and chips were definitely gone. Not even a cracker to be seen, let alone a cookie. He’d been really lucky to score that handful of Junior Mints on his spy mission to the power plant.
That was luck. And now, Bug had some more luck. It was purely by chance that he discovered the secret of Ralph’s. He had dodged aside to avoid a couple of kids and ended up cowering in front of the swinging doors that led to the storeroom area. A swing of the door had revealed two kids manhandling a plastic tub filled with ice.
Bug couldn’t enter the storeroom without pushing the door and risking discovery. But he figured it might be worth it: anything someone else wanted to hide was something Bug wanted to find out about.
He took a deep breath, ready to run for it if necessary. He pushed the swinging door open and slid through. The kids with the bin were gone. But he heard movement around the corner, behind a wall of cartons marked “plastic cups.”
There was the work area that had once belonged to the butchers. Now four kids, in rubber aprons that dragged to the floor, were wielding knives.
They were cutting up fish.
Bug stood and stared, not believing what he was seeing. Some of the fish were big—maybe three feet long—silver and gray, with white and pink insides. Other fish were smaller, brown, flat. One of the fish looked so ugly, Bug figured it must be deformed. And two of the fish didn’t look like fish at all, but rather like soggy, featherless blue birds, or maybe like bats.