Chong said, “I hope she’s okay.” He was aware that he’d said “she” rather than “them,” but Tom didn’t seem to mind.
“Sorry things didn’t work out with you two,” Tom said. “For what’s it worth … she couldn’t do any better.”
Chong didn’t reply.
Tom quietly opened the front door and stepped inside. And stopped dead. His eyes went wide, and when Chong followed him in, he also stared. On one side of the room, weapons, ammunition, and explosives were stacked from floor to ceiling; on the other were hundreds of smaller, more well-used guns and rifles, each of them hanging on a nail driven into the wall. Small paper tags hung from each trigger guard.
“What is all this?” asked Chong in a hushed voice.
Tom listened for sounds of other people, heard nothing. Then he touched the barrel of one of the new rifles. “Probably scavenged a military base.”
Chong pointed to the older weapons. “And these?”
“They probably collect firearms from everyone who comes to Gameland. They did that before. Keeps people from shooting each other over bets.” He bent and read several of the small tags. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?”
Tom held out one of the pistols. “Read the tag.”
“Lucille Flax.” Chong looked up, confused. “I don’t understand. Mrs. Flax is my—”
“—math teacher. I know. There’s a shotgun here with Adrian Flax’s name on it. That’s her husband.”
“Wait,” said Chong, “are you trying to say that they’re here? That my math teacher and her husband come to Gameland?”
“How else would you read it?”
“It doesn’t make sense! They’re regular people… . Mrs. Flax doesn’t come to places like this. She can’t!”
“Why not? Chong … no matter how often you see someone, you can’t ever say that you really know them. Everyone has secrets, everyone has parts of themselves that they hide from the world.”
“But … Mrs. Flax? She’s so … ordinary.”
“Well, kiddo, it’s not like people walk around with signs saying, ‘Hey, I’m actually a creep!’”
Chong kept shaking his head. “And I was running home to people like that?”
“Remember what I said. There are more good people than bad. Even so … you always have to pay attention.”
Chong sighed. “I guess this shouldn’t hit me so hard. After all Benny, Morgie, and I used to hang around Charlie and the Hammer all the time. We thought they were—”
“—cool. Yep, I know.”
“Still. My math teacher? Jeez … so much for civilized behavior.”
“Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn’t make us civilized, Chong. That’s organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn’t exist at all.”
Then Chong spotted something that made him yelp. He ran across the room to a big urn in which long-handled weapons stood like a bouquet of militant flowers. He slid two items from the urn: a pair of wooden swords.
Tom took the bokkens from him. “Son of a—”
They both froze as they heard a sound from somewhere else in the hotel. A sharp cry. A child’s yelp of pain.
Tom turned and looked at the broad staircase.
“That’s not Benny or Nix. Too young,” gasped Chong in a horrified voice.
“I know,” Tom said bitterly, and headed up the stairs. “Stay behind me and let me handle things.”