The Fall of Crazy House (Crazy House 2)

He did. And a few minutes after that. Then every five minutes for an hour. We even tried calling Havers. No one answered, no one brought breakfast. No one brought lunch, either. When we looked through our windows, the grounds outside were empty. No marching recruits, no shouts, no vehicles rumbling by.

By evening, we weren’t even pretending to work, just kept looking at each other with wide eyes.

Finally I said what we were both thinking.

“Something’s wrong. Something’s really, really wrong.”

60

BECCA

NOW THAT IT WAS DAYLIGHT, I peeked through the window blinds to see that this garage was surrounded by trees, large shrubs, and ivy climbing up a fence. Good camouflage. As each member of the team woke up, I directed them to take showers and inspect any wounds they’d gotten. Was it only two days ago? Less than. Levi had died two nights ago. We’d rescued Ansel just yesterday.

There was a well-stocked first-aid kit in a cupboard, and as I slathered on ointment and bandages, I felt about a hundred years old.

All of us had suffered in the wolf attack. I didn’t want to admit it, but my shoulder was killing me. When it was my turn to shower, I looked at the angry punctures with dismay. I was just as likely as Nate to get rabies—any of us were. I’d known people and animals both who’d died of the disease, and it was not a good way to go. I had a quick image of my squad out in the middle of nowhere, killing ourselves one by one.

I didn’t want to die without seeing Tim one more time. I didn’t want to die, period.

After breakfast Nate was listless, dull-eyed, but trying his damnedest not to show it. Silently I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in that the food and rest would pull Nate through. Ansel and the others were patched up and almost back to normal, but I knew my squad was remembering the wolves, remembering little Levi.

Our host told us her name was Kelly, but we knew it was fake, just as she knew the names we gave her were fake.

“How come there’re so many fancy cars here?” Mills asked her.

Kelly laughed, her Afro sparkling with tiny raindrops from the drizzle outside. “This is a manufacturing cell,” she said. “We make cars. There are five different factories here—each one has thousands of employees.”

“In our cell, the fanciest car was the Movolo,” Nate said quietly. “That was for the Provost.”

The Provost, his father.

Kelly made a face. “The Movolo is the lowest level we build.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment. Back home, most people drove little electric Hoppers or maybe a Daisy, if they had more than two kids. Seeing the Provost’s fancy Movolo showed everyone how important he was, how he got the best of everything.

“If a Movolo is the lowest kind of car you make,” I asked, “who drives the others?”

“What could be nicer than a Movolo?” Mills asked.

Kelly laughed again. “I’ll show you nice!” she said. “We ship ninety-nine percent of our cars out, of course, and I have no idea who drives them.” She glanced around the small attic-like room and lowered her voice. “No one’s ever said, but I’ve always thought that they go to the big capital, in the east.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know if it exists—it’s just rumors, really, because we don’t know.”

“Oh, we sa—” Bunny began, but I kicked her under the table. We’d seen that huge city from the scope of the anti-aircraft gun, and Ansel had confirmed what we thought. But that didn’t mean that Kelly had ever seen it or knew for sure that it existed. Bunny coughed and mumbled something, then drank more tea.

Kelly was a foreman at one of the factories, so after breakfast we walked over with her to get a tour. I forced Nate to stay in and rest, and when I say forced, I mean I pinned him down by his shoulders while he struggled uselessly against me. It was pretty fun, actually.

“You will stay here and sleep,” I snarled quietly. “Or I will kick your ass.”

At the factory, Kelly gave us workers’ coveralls and hard hats, then took us to the production lines.

It was… it was… like a dream? Except no dream could have imagined this stuff. My family had had a beat-up, ancient pickup truck and a dinky moped that couldn’t go faster than twelve miles an hour. We were totally normal.

These cars belonged in fairy tales, like the big one painted with shiny blue paint flecked with sparkles. Sparkles.

“This model has heated and cooled seats,” Kelly said. When we looked at her blankly, she explained, “You know, so that on cool days your seat will be warm and on warm days your seat will be cool.” More blank looks.

There was a car that could hold seven or eight people, but it wasn’t a bus. The floors of all these cars were covered with carpet. The steering wheels were wrapped in padded leather.

“If someone wants to pay extra, they can have colored lights underneath the car,” Kelly said, and flipped a switch. We stared at the blue light making the factory floor glow. All I could think was, when Nate finds out he missed all this, he will kill me.