Food rotting. No planting. No irrigating.
Even if they harvested the available crops, it was just a matter of time before everyone was starving. Then, good luck keeping it all together.
It turned out he’d been optimistic. It was almost one in the afternoon before they made it to the field after a hellishly unpleasant bus trip during which a full-on fistfight broke out between two sixth graders.
Sure enough, the first words out of the kids’ mouths were, “I’m hungry.”
“Well, there’s your lunch,” Edilio said, sweeping his hand toward the field and feeling great personal satisfaction at being able to rub their noses in it.
“Those round things?”
“They’re called cantaloupes,” Edilio said. “And they’re very tasty, actually.”
“What about zekes?” one of the girls asked.
Edilio sighed. “That’s the cabbage field, not here. That’s, like, a mile from here.”
But no one moved. They all lined up obediently but kept close to the bus and far from the edge of the field.
Edilio sighed. “Okay. Let the wetback show you how.”
He sauntered out into the field, bent over, gave a twist to one of the melons, and held it up high so they could see.
It was luck that saved him. The fact that he dropped the melon.
He looked down at the cantaloupe and saw the dirt move.
Edilio leaped, a wild reaction that almost tripped him, but he caught his footing and ran.
He ran faster than he had ever run before, boots slamming down on the seething worms and faster, faster, faster until he sprawled, facedown, in the dust.
The dust beyond the field.
He yanked his feet toward him and frantically examined his boots. There were chew marks on the sides, on the heels. But no holes.
The worms had not penetrated.
Edilio looked at the shocked faces of the kids around him. He had been seconds away from impatiently ordering them into the field. Most wearing sneakers. None with experience seeing what the zekes looked like.
He’d been one hesitation away from ordering forty-nine kids to their deaths.
“Get back on the bus,” Edilio said shakily. “Get back on the bus.”
“What about lunch?” someone asked.
FIFTEEN
30 HOURS, 41 MINUTES
SAM TOOK THE list from Astrid. He scanned the first couple of matters and nearly crumpled it up.
“The usual?” he asked her.
Astrid nodded. “The usual. I think you’ll especially enjoy the—”
Computer Jack burst in like he was in a hurry.
People weren’t supposed to just come busting in, but Jack wasn’t just people.
“What is it, Jack?” Sam asked him as he slid into the oversized leather chair behind what had once been the real mayor’s desk and briefly was Caine’s.
Jack was agitated. “You should let me turn on the phones.”
Sam blinked. “What? I thought you had an emergency the way you came in here.”
“Everybody keeps asking me when I’m going to fix the phones,” Jack said in apparent agony. “Everybody asks me, and I keep having to come up with stupid lies. They think I failed.”
“Jack, we’ve been over this. I’m really grateful for the work you have done, man, no one else could ever have pulled it off. But, dude, we have other issues, okay?”
Jack flushed. “You asked me to do it. I told everyone I was going to do it. Then you won’t let me do it. It’s not fair.” His glasses almost seemed to steam up from the heat of his indignation.
“Listen, Jack. You really want Caine and Drake to be able to dial up anyone they want down here? You want Caine to be able to reach out to kids? Threaten them? Sweet-talk them? Maybe offer to give them food in exchange for guns or whatever? Look how well he fooled everyone the first time around.”
“You just want to be in control of everything,” Jack accused.
The accusation stung. Sam started to yell but choked it off. For a few seconds he just struggled with his temper, unable to speak.
Of course I want to control things, he wanted to say. Of course he didn’t want Caine filling kid’s heads with lies. Kids were desperate enough to listen to anyone who offered an easier life, even Caine. Did Jack not understand how close they all were to disaster? Did Jack not get how tenuous Sam’s control of the situation had become?
Maybe not.
“Jack, kids are scared. They’re desperate,” Sam said. “Maybe you don’t see that because you’re busy with other things. But we are about this far”—he held up thumb and forefinger about an inch apart—“from total disaster. You want Caine to know that? You want kids talking to him or Drake at three in the morning, spilling their guts, telling him all of our business? You really want Caine knowing how bad things are?”
Astrid stepped in to cut off Sam’s increasingly angry rant. “Jack, what happened to get you all worked up?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. Then, “Zil. He’s busting on me in front of everyone, talking about how now that I’m a mutant and all, my brain must not work as well.”
“Say what?” Sam asked.
“He says people who get powers, their IQ drops, they get stupid. He said, ‘Exhibit A: poor old Jack, formerly Computer Jack, who can pick up a house but can’t get the phones to work.’”
“You know, Jack, I’m sorry if he hurt your feelings, but I kind of have stuff to deal with here,” Sam said, beginning to get really exasperated. “You’re the tech genius. You know it, I know it, Astrid knows it, so who cares what Zil thinks?”