Orc stopped. He gaped down at the creatures.
He turned with creaky slowness back toward Albert and Howard and said, “Kinda tickles.”
“Pick a cabbage,” Howard called out encouragingly.
Orc bent down and dug his stone fingers into the dirt and scooped up a cabbage. He looked at it for a minute, then tossed it toward the truck.
Albert opened the door of the truck and bent cautiously down toward the cabbage. He refused to step down. Not yet. Not until they were sure.
“Howard, I need a stick or something,” Albert said.
“What for?”
“I want to poke that cabbage, make sure there’s no worm in it.”
In the field the worms continued their assault on the creature whose rock flesh broke their teeth. Orc scooped up three more cabbages. Then he came stomping back.
The worms did not follow. At the edge of the field they slithered off Orc and retreated into the ground.
“Beer me,” Orc demanded.
Albert did.
He wondered how Sam was doing with lining up kids to work in the field. “Not very well, I’d guess,” he muttered to himself.
The answer to the problem of food was so simple, really: farms needed farmers. Then the farmers needed motivation. They needed to get paid. Like anyone. People didn’t do things just because it was right: people did things for money, for profit. But Sam and Astrid were too foolish to see it.
No, not foolish, Albert told himself. Sam was the main reason they weren’t all under Caine’s control. Sam was great. And Astrid was probably the smartest person in the FAYZ.
But Albert was smart, too, about some things. And he had gone to the trouble of educating himself, sitting in the dusty, dark town library reading books that made his eyelids droop.
“My boy’s going to need another beer pretty soon,” Howard said, yawning behind his hand.
“Your boy gets a beer for every one hundred cabbages he picks,” Albert said.
Howard gave him a dirty look. “Man, you act like you paid for those cans with your own money.”
“Nope,” Albert said. “They are community property. For now. But the rate is still one per hundred.”
For the next two hours Orc picked cabbages. And drank beer. Howard played some game on a handheld. Albert thought.
Howard was right about that: Albert had thought a lot since the day he walked into the abandoned McDonald’s and began grilling hamburgers. He had a lot of standing in the community because of that. And the Thanksgiving feast he’d organized, and pulled off without a hitch, had made him a minor hero. He wasn’t Sam, of course; there was only one Sam. He wasn’t even Edilio or Brianna or anything like the big heroes of that terrible battle between Caine’s people and the Perdido Beach kids.
But at that moment Albert wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was thinking about toilet paper and batteries.
Then Orc screamed.
Howard sat up. He jumped from the car.
Albert froze.
Orc was shrieking, slapping at his face, at the still-human part of his face.
Howard ran toward him.
“Howard, no!” Albert yelled.
“They got him, they got him,” Howard cried, anguished.
Orc was struggling, staggering, then running toward the truck, his great stone feet pounding six-inch-deep impressions into the dirt.
One of the worms was on his face.
In his face.
He tripped at the edge of the field and fell hard onto neutral territory.
“Help me. Howard, man, help me!” Orc cried.
Albert broke his trance and ran. Up close he could see the worm, just one, but its black snake’s head was buried in pink flesh, boring through Orc’s cheek.
Up close Albert could see the blur of the tiny paddle feet driving the worm into strained flesh.
Orc had the tail of the thing in his fist and was pulling hard. But the worm wasn’t letting go. Orc was pulling so hard, it seemed he might pull the last of his living flesh away from the rock skin surrounding it.
Howard grabbed on, too, and he was pulling. Weeping and cursing and pulling, despite the danger to himself if the worm should release its grip on Orc and turn against Howard.
“Bite it!” Albert shouted.
“My tongue!” Orc wailed, his speech garbled as the worm slid another inch through his cheek.
“Bite it, Orc,” Albert yelled. Then he knelt, and with all his might delivered an uppercut under Orc’s chin.
It was like punching a brick wall.
Albert yelled and fell back on his behind in the dirt. He was sure his hand was broken.
Orc had stopped screaming. He opened his mouth and spit out the worm’s head, along with a gob of blood and saliva.
The rest of the worm came free. Orc smashed it onto the ground.
There was a one-inch hole in Orc’s face.
Blood spread down his neck and disappeared like rain on parched soil as it hit the rock flesh.
“You hit me,” Orc said dully, staring at Albert.
“Brother saved your life, Orc,” Howard said. “The brother just saved your life.”
“I think I broke my hand,” Albert said.
“Beer me,” Orc said.
Howard raced to comply.
Orc tilted his head back and squeezed the can until the tab burst. Yellow liquid shot from the can and gushed into his mouth.
At least half of it ran, foaming pink, from the bloody hole in his cheek.
TEN
81 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
“SHE WAS IN my dreams, in my head. I saw her,” Drake said.