The House of the Scorpion (39 page)

Jorge paced back and forth, whisking the cane. Any second now he'd break into a run. He stopped. He gathered his strength for the initial blow. He lunged forward—

Matt hurled himself at the Keeper. He drove his head into Jorge's stomach and tore the cane from the man's hands. Jorge reeled back, gasping for breath. Matt brought the cane down hard on his shoulder and then used it to force the Keeper to the floor. Chacho came out of nowhere and threw himself into the battle, pummeling Jorge with his fists.

“You—hit—little—kids!” Chacho shouted between blows. “You—deserve—to—be—hit—back!” The other boys were shouting and cheering. They surged forward, forming a ring around the Keeper and his two attackers. Flaco dragged Fidelito away from the fight.

Matt's head spun. Jorge was curled into a ball. Maybe he was seriously hurt. The boys were dancing around excitedly, and Matt guessed they were about to join in. “Stop!” Matt cried, dropping the cane. He grabbed Chacho and pulled him back. “We mustn't kill him!”

“Why not?” demanded the boy. But the interruption was enough to bring him to his senses. He sat down hard on the floor and clenched his fists. The other boys groaned with disappointment, but they moved aside when Jorge rolled onto his hands and knees and scuttled to the door.

No one said a word. Chacho sat on the floor, breathing heavily. Fidelito whimpered in a corner, where he was being held firmly in place by Flaco. Matt shivered as though he had a high fever. He couldn't imagine what was going to happen next.

But he didn't have long to wait. Footsteps thundered down the hall, and the door was slammed open by an army of Keepers. All twenty of them stormed into the room. They were armed with stun guns, and the boys retreated against the walls. First Matt, then Chacho was seized. Their hands were bound behind their backs and their mouths were sealed with tape.

“You're going to be locked down,” Carlos roared at the remaining boys. “We'll decide what to do with you tomorrow. But understand we won't—repeat,
won't
—tolerate this kind of mob behavior.”

“Don't you want to know what Jorge did?” said Flaco.

“What you did was far worse!” shouted Carlos.

“He was going to kill Fidelito.”

That did seem to startle Carlos. He stopped and looked at the little boy hiding behind Flaco.

“He's lying,” said Jorge, who was holding his injured shoulder with one hand.

“There are two hundred of us,” said Flaco. “We all witnessed it.”

And in that statement, Matt realized, was an implied threat. There were two hundred boys in the dormitory. No matter
how well armed the Keepers were, they couldn't hope to control a crowd that size.

The thought seemed to have occurred to Carlos as well. He backed toward the door and signaled the other men to follow. But like a swirl of dust on the dry salt flats outside, a stream of boys moved to cut off the exit. Now the Keepers were surrounded on all sides.

“I think you should listen to us,” said Flaco.

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” Carlos said.

No
, thought Matt.
Don't let them put it off. The minute the men are outside the room, they'll bolt the door. They'll never listen to the facts.
He could say nothing because his mouth was covered with tape.

“I think now is better,” said Flaco.

Carlos swallowed. He fingered the stun gun.

“They've been corrupted by the aristocrat,” said Jorge. “Things have gone wrong ever since that arrogant swine arrived. He's the one who led the attack, and the rest followed. He's the leader. The rest are his filth-eating lackeys.”

“Don't make things worse,” Carlos said.

“Luna in the infirmary has an interesting tale,” Jorge went on. “When the aristocrat was brought in, Luna helped load him into bed. He saw writing on the boy's right foot.”

Oh no, oh no
, thought Matt.

“There was an old scar across it, but he managed to make out the writing: ‘Property of the Alacrán Estate.' ”

“Alacrán?” said Carlos. “That's the name of the old vampire who runs Dreamland.”

“I know,” Jorge said pleasantly. “I wondered how a person could belong to an estate, unless he worked there.
Or unless he was an escaped crot!
”

A gasp ran through the room.

“Don't use that filthy word,” Carlos said.

“I'm sorry.” Jorge smiled. “I was only using language I thought the boys would understand. I was still thinking about what to do with the information when tonight's problem cropped up. It
is
funny, you have to admit, that all these lackeys have sworn their loyalty to a stinking
crot
—excuse me, zombie—instead of a real aristocrat.”

No, no, no
, thought Matt. His weakness had been found out. Even though the Keeper had drawn the wrong conclusion about the tattoo, it was just as devastating.

“I don't believe it,” said Flaco.

“Why don't we look?” invited Jorge. Flaco came forward and knelt on the floor next to where Matt was standing. He looked up, apologizing with his eyes. Matt didn't resist. It wouldn't have done any good. He allowed the boy to turn his foot toward the light and waited for the inevitable reaction.

“Jorge is right. It does say ‘Property of the Alacrán Estate,' ” said Flaco.

The rebellion went out of the boys then. They were so used to obeying, Matt realized, that very little was needed to make them surrender. They moved away from the door and slowly drifted toward the bunks.

“W-Wait,” said a voice Matt never expected to hear. “Any, uh, anyone can get trapped in Dreamland. It, uh, doesn't make him a bad person.”

“Be quiet, Ton-Ton,” said Jorge. “Thinking isn't your strong point.”

“I have, uh, I
have
been thinking,” said the big boy. “Our parents ran away to, uh, Dreamland, and they w-were turned into z-zombies.” It was clearly difficult for him to say this.

“My father wasn't,” protested Flaco. “He's living it up in the United States. He's running a movie studio, and when he gets enough money, he'll send for me.”

“We, uh, tell ourselves stuff like th-that,” stammered Ton-Ton, “but it isn't t-true. All our parents are crots.” A flurry of voices rose telling Ton-Ton to shut up. “Our
mamás
and
papás
aren't b-bad, just unlucky,” the boy went on in his relentless way, “and M-Matt isn't bad either!”

“Oh, go to bed,” said Jorge. “Do you think anyone wants to listen to your ravings? You've always been stupid and you'll always be stupid. You're lucky I pulled you out of Dreamland before I found out what an idiot you are.”

“I'm n-not stupid!” cried Ton-Ton, but no one listened to him. The boys drew away from Matt as though he were something unclean. The Keepers hurried him and Chacho out, and Carlos bolted the door behind them.

They were taken to a small closet without enough space to lie down. It was dark and airless. The floor was cold. All night the boys huddled against the wall, and Matt was glad it was dark and that they had their mouths covered with tape. He couldn't have borne hearing Chacho call him a crot or seeing him shrink away from the presence of such a monster.

A
faint light shone under the door when two of the younger Keepers arrived to fetch Matt and Chacho. Matt was so stiff, he fell over when they pulled him to his feet. “Mph!” came from behind the tape covering Chacho's mouth.

They were urged outside to one of the carts the Keepers used to move equipment around the factory. Jorge was in the driver's seat, smoking a cigarette. More tape was wound around the boys' ankles.

The cart rolled slowly at first because it was solar powered, but as the sun rose higher and flooded the salt flats, it picked up speed. Matt saw the shrimp tanks move past. He realized they were heading toward the western fence. The cart's wheels crunched along the gritty path, and sand hissed across the ground in an early-morning breeze.

Matt was thirsty. He was hungry too. He saw, with a kind of
bitter pleasure, that Jorge's shoulder was encased in a plaster cast. Matt hoped he was in a lot of pain.

After a while the cart turned and bumped along rougher ground. Matt saw they were driving parallel to the fence. He saw a white swirl of seagulls as they rose and sank along the Gulf of California. Their cries floated to him on the dusty wind.

On and on the cart struggled. When it floundered in sand, the men had to jump out and put creosote branches under the wheels to urge it on. At last it jerked to a stop, and Matt was carried off by the two young Keepers.

They came over a rise. Before them stretched the wide basin that had once been full of living water and was now filled with dead whales. The bones stuck up like a gigantic bowl of thorns.

“This is what we call the boneyard,” Jorge said pleasantly.

Matt remembered someone saying, when he first arrived,
You won't get away with your swanky ways here. We've got something called the boneyard, and any troublemaker who goes through it comes out as harmless as a little lamb.

“Shall I take the tape off now?” one of the Keepers inquired.

“Only from his mouth,” said Jorge.

“But that means he won't be able to climb out.”

“He tried to kill me!” Jorge shouted. “Do you want a murderer crawling back to stir up revolution?”

“Carlos won't like it.”

“You leave Carlos to me,” said Jorge. Matt felt the tape rip off. He flexed his mouth, ran his tongue over his bruised lips. “You think you're thirsty now,” Jorge said, smiling. “Wait till tomorrow.”

“
He's
the murderer,” cried Matt, but he had no time to say anything else. The men swung him up and out. He came down
with a crash, and the bones shifted and let him fall through. Down he tumbled, rolling this way and that until he arrived at a plateau of skulls. He hung in the midst of a sea of bones, with the blue sky visible through a fretwork of ribs and vertebrae. He turned his head cautiously. Below was a pit whose dark depths he could only guess at.

A few minutes later he heard Chacho land not far away. The mass shifted again, and Matt slipped down a few more feet. He felt a rib poke into his back. A fine dust of salt and sand pattered over his face. He heard Chacho cough. He heard the men's feet crunch away and then the purr of the cart growing fainter and fainter until it was gone.

“Are you okay?” called Chacho.

“Depends on what you mean by okay.” Matt was amazed he could still laugh, although he did it weakly. “Are you hurt?”

“Not much. Got any good escape plans?”

“I'm working on it,” said Matt. The salt powdered his face and got into his mouth. “I wouldn't mind a drink.”

“Don't talk about it!” said Chacho. “I think I could cut this tape if I could find a sharp bone.”

“There's one sticking into my back,” said Matt. He spoke cheerfully, as though they were working on a way to snatch an extra ten minutes of sleep, not trying to escape a long, painful death.

“Some people have all the luck.” Chacho spoke lightly too, but Matt suspected he was just as frightened.

Matt wriggled until his wrists touched the jagged bone. He sawed back and forth, but before he could make any progress, the bones shifted and he slid down into deeper darkness.

“Matt!” cried Chacho with an edge of panic.

“I'm here. Well, that didn't work. Why don't you give it a
try?” In fact, Matt's heart was pounding and he was afraid to move. The whole basin quivered, and he didn't know what would happen if he fell all the way to the bottom.

“Heck! Oh, heck!” shouted Chacho. Matt heard him slither through the fretwork of bones.

“We've got all day. You don't have to hurry,” said Matt.

“Shut up! I think there's something else in this pit.”

Matt thought he heard a high-pitched noise. Was it possible something lived in the darkness below? And what kind of creature would choose such a home?

“They're
bats!
Horrible, slimy bats!” yelled Chacho.

“Bats aren't slimy,” Matt said, relieved. A real creature was much better than the monsters he'd imagined.

“Stop making jokes! They'll suck our blood!”

“No, they won't,” said Matt. “Tam Lin and I watched them dozens of times.”

“They'll wait for dark. I saw it in a movie. They'll wait for dark and then they'll come up and suck our blood.” Chacho's panic was shrill and infectious. Matt began to get scared too.

“Tam Lin says they're just mice with wings. They're as afraid of us as we are of—”

“One's coming at me!” screamed Chacho.