The Walls Have Eyes (11 page)

Dad escorted Martin and Chip through the front door. Then he shut it and sank down on the front steps. Martin was astonished at the change that had come over his father. Dad seemed to have aged several years.

“Ten minutes after,” Dad said. Then he couldn't go on. Tears rolled down his cheeks and got caught in the stubble that had formed there.

Martin was appalled. Mom cried, sure. But Dad?

“After—after—” Martin stammered. “After what?”

Dad wiped his eyes and pointed at his watch. “It's five after eleven, ten minutes after the time when we left the suburb and cleared that last fence. Four days and ten minutes, and she's been sick for about ten minutes. She's not sick. They've disabled her somehow.”

This sank in, and Martin collapsed onto the step beside Dad. Chip didn't try to lick his face or beg for pets. The dog looked just as shocked as he was.

“So it's a suburb thing?” Martin ventured.

“Suburb or agents or something like that. I don't know how. I've never heard of such a thing. Why didn't it happen to me instead? Why didn't it happen to all of us?” Dad blew out a breath and rubbed his eyes. “I don't know what to do.”

“Are they coming, then?” Martin asked.

“If we're lucky,” Dad said in a gruff voice. “If we're lucky, they're on their way. Otherwise, your mother probably just stays . . . just like that. We won't be able to turn it off.”

Martin was silent. Nothing this horrible had ever even entered his mind before. He rubbed his hands on the knees of his jeans faster and faster. Chip stuck his nose in the way to force him to stop.

“We never should have come here,” Dad groaned. “I never should have allowed it. The game shows aren't that bad. They're humane. We'd be well fed and kept in nice accommodations, and given facials and haircuts and new clothes. Before you die, you're a television star. You're treated with respect.”

Martin wished he could argue, but he couldn't. It was his fault Mom was here. He had wanted to get her past the reach of the dreary suburb, but its reach was longer than he could have imagined.

“Why did we risk it?” Dad went on. “We can never make a life of it here, not without a fridge and a cooker and running water, not eating smoky fish three times a day. We should have stayed where there were people. People stick together, my dad always told me. But what did we do? We went off on our own.”

Martin thought about how nice it would be if there were
people in this suburb. He would run next door for help, and the neighbors would come with little snacks and sit by Mom's bedside to cheer her up. And maybe he could play game cartridges with the kids who lived on his street.

But life here wasn't like that. Next door was nothing but a tangled mass of vines dragging down the ruined rafters, and instead of a cookie jar on the kitchen counter, there was a nest of little cranberry-colored birds. There weren't any people in this whole great outdoors who could be their friends. Except— Well, of course, Martin thought. Yes, of course!

He jumped up from the step and ran back into the house. “Where's my pack? I'm gonna go get help.”

Mom sat on the bedroll, and Dad stood beside her while Martin split up the supplies.

“I don't think you should go,” Mom said. “I'll be fine after a little rest, and I don't want you doing something dangerous.”

Dad and Martin exchanged a look.

“It's just, you know, in case,” Martin said. “Anyway, it's a short walk, probably just a day, and I'll have Chip with me to handle the danger.”

Mom chewed her lower lip. “I don't like it. This is a lot of trouble over nothing.”

“It'll give me a chance to check on Cassie and tell her about our new house,” Martin said. “Remember, I've walked all over out here. It'll be fun. And maybe the prototypes can give us advice about how to fix this place up.”

Dad asked, “So you think these prototype people will know about this?”

“They're really smart. They'll know what to do.” Martin
hoped Theo would be home. It was over a week since he'd left. She was supposed to have reported back after five days.

“But why would they want to help?”

“They're nice.” Most of them, at least, Martin thought. I'll just make sure William never goes near my dog.

Dad followed Martin into the kitchen to sort through the water bottles.

“But how do you know they have the resources?” he asked in a low voice. “You said Central is looking for them. What if they're in trouble of their own?”

“Nothing bad happens to them, Dad,” Martin said. “They know just about everything.”

Dad ran his hands through his thinning hair and rubbed them over his bald spot. He said, “I should be the one who goes.”

No you shouldn't, Martin thought. You're old and out of shape, and you can't carry your own pack. Besides which, you don't even know the way. But he didn't say that. The secret of Dad's failings had become a burden he had to be man enough to carry.

“Look, you have to take care of Mom,” he said as they took the bottles back to his other supplies. “You know how to fish and cook, and I don't.”

At the mention of fishing, the troubled look on Dad's face eased. “I thought last night's catch turned out pretty well.”

“It was lovely,” Mom said, and he bent and kissed her. Martin felt better at the sight. After all, it was good that Mom and Dad didn't hate each other. It would be a lot worse if they did.

“Hey, Mom, I've got a present for you,” he said. “Something you can paint pictures of.”

He went to the kitchen and returned with the glass candy in its bowl. The sun coming through the windows lit fire in the hearts of the fanciful disks and sent a jewel-toned scattering of colored lights wavering over the walls and ceiling. Martin handed over his treasure with only a tiny twinge of regret. Probably, even though it was Mom's now, she'd still let him fool around with it sometimes.

“Martin!” Mom gasped. “Where did you find this?”

“It was the Owner's,” he said. “But that's okay. It's yours now. Since you gotta sit here, at least you've got pretty things to look at.” He picked up his knapsack and slung his water bottles over Chip. “I'll be back in a couple of days.”

Dad followed them out of the house and stood on the steps to watch them leave. “Be careful!” he called.

Martin and Chip hurried up the road. Houses grew sparse, and the divided roadway dwindled to chunks of cracked and pitted asphalt. Where it crossed a dry streambed, segments of it had fallen in like folding leaves on a table, and green clumps of field grasses grew out of what remained. Then it made a long bend and began to rise. Martin put his head down and started to pant as the grade steepened. Chip quit bounding ahead.

After fifteen minutes, Martin paused to rest. He hadn't realized they'd climbed so high. Mom and Dad's new suburb was just a patch of forest behind him now, with a few dark squares of old houses poking through the leaves. Several miles farther off, back the way they had come, the steel dome of BNBRX created a white shimmer in the distance.

“We'll have to leave the road,” he said. “We need to go straight
this way, to the edge of those hills. That's where we'll find the dumps. I think I can just barely see them. And I think that might be the sawed-off cliff that's in front of the packet yard. If it is, we don't have too far to go.”

After an afternoon of steady hiking, they reached the vast yard in the early evening. Packet cars of all descriptions sat silent on the wide fan of steel tracks. At the back, below the face of the steep cliff, the row of cinder-block sheds squatted in the sunshine. Chip wandered back and forth across the dusty ground and engaged in an orgy of sniffing.

“Hey, Theo left the shed with the tunnel unlocked,” Martin said. “I know we locked it when we left.”

They came through the long, boring tunnel and crossed the narrow valley dotted with fir trees. No children were playing outside. Martin located the shallow cave that led into the maze of classrooms. Its steel door was propped open with a metal wastebasket, and trash blew out under the trees.

“That's weird,” Martin said.

School papers littered the corridor and rustled in small drifts against the wall. A plastic chair lay upended in a doorway. Water dripped in a hollow cadence somewhere nearby. It only served to accentuate the silence.

Chip sniffed the air and whined.

Martin walked down the hall, pushing open doors: empty classrooms, their desks tossed every which way; empty offices, their handhelds smashed, their stacks of papers flung down and stepped on. “No,” Martin whispered. Then he ran. Up the stairs, to where Cassie lived. Where all the little children lived.

The dorm rooms were a chaotic jumble of broken bed frames and splintered nightstands. Mattresses straddled the wreckage, their pale stuffing spilling through long gashes. Drawers lay where they had been dumped out, and closet doors tilted from their runners. Chip pawed through the heaps of clothing and found a small brown object. He sniffed it all over, whimpering, and then dropped it at Martin's feet.

It was Cassie's stuffed bunny.

Martin stood rooted to the spot. Why hadn't he noticed the mud tracks in the tunnel, the crushed weeds outside? How could he be so blind? Strolling in here, expecting people to be ready to save the day—what a moron he'd turned out to be.

“This isn't happening!” he shouted. “Do you hear me? It's not
happening
!”

A distant voice sobbed out an answer. “Martin? Is that you?”

“Sim! Where are you? Where are you?”

Martin snatched up a baseball bat, staggered through the mounds of clothes, and threw himself down the stairs three steps at a time. Chip galloped beside him.

They found Sim lying hunched over against the wall of the cafeteria, his gray robes blending into the gray of the vinyl floor. A strange sound rose from his shaking lips, like the mewing of a cat.

“Martin!” cried the old bot, and he jerked up his face to look at them. Tears flowed down his wrinkled cheeks, but his eyes didn't look quite human. Their black pupils spun and flickered from diamond to point to round. Martin drew back and gripped the baseball bat tighter.

“Sim, are you okay?” he asked. “What happened? Where is everybody?”

“I don't remember,” Sim sobbed. “Martin, I don't feel good.” He'd begun to perspire, and his skin was pasty. “Something's happening to me. I can't stand up. I don't feel good.”

“It's all right,” Martin said. “You'll be okay.” But all the same, he took a step back.

“Talking to you . . . it's done something,” Sim gasped. He was sweating bullets now. “Martin!” he wailed. “I don't feel good!”

Big silver jelly drops rolled down Sim's face and slithered across his gray robes. Big silver jelly slugs wriggled from folds in his clothing and crawled onto the floor. One almost touched Martin's foot.

“Yeagh!” Martin screamed, and he brought down the baseball bat to smash it.

The slug exploded into a tassel of waving wires with a noise like an enraged Slinky. Quicker than Martin could think, the wires jerked their way up the baseball bat, pulling the tassel toward him like a spider. Other slugs nearby erupted into flailing bundles of wires, hissing and coiling.

Martin gave a yell, dropped the bat, and jumped onto the nearest table. The floor seethed with squirming silver things now, and the bat disappeared beneath wires.

“Martin!”

Pale eyes still stared out from the ruin of Sim's melting face. An odd gap of a mouth worked itself open, and sound blared out again.

“Martin! Get away!
Run
!”

But Martin couldn't run. The slugs covered the floor nearby and trapped him on the cafeteria table. He turned around to locate an exit, and the slippery table rolled sideways, nearly flinging him off. A dozen slugs exploded with angry hisses, propelling their tasseled forms up the table's wheels and legs.

Fifteen feet away, Chip danced and barked at the edge of the widening tide. He ran up and down in front of the slugs' advance, trying to find a way back to his master.

“Hold on, Chip! Stay there. I'll come to you.”

Martin tossed his knapsack onto a nearby table. It hit the center, slid along its sterile white length, and dropped off the opposite end. From its unseen location came a dozen pops and the furious sound of entangling wires. “Oh, crap!” he muttered. “That was a stupid move.”

The wire monsters had surmounted the legs and benches of the table Martin was on. Silver wires were grappling the edges of the tabletop. He jumped and landed heavily on a nearby table. It rolled forward through a buzz of springing wires. How many slug traps could Sim melt into? Several hundred? A thousand?

The slug army continued to advance, wriggling outward in a wide circle. If the squirmy things got to the door before he did, his escape would be cut off. Martin flung himself onto another table and skinned his elbow. He almost slipped over
the edge. Then he lay there for a few seconds, listening to his heartbeat and peeking at the writhing uproar below him.

Chip's barks changed into howls.

The German shepherd danced at the edge of the fray, still beyond the reach of the slugs, but in his anxiety over Martin, he had forgotten his own safety. He had let the spreading tide trap him on the side of the cafeteria that didn't have a door.

“Get onto a table!” Martin yelled.

But Chip wasn't near a table. The nearest row of tables was at least twelve feet away. If Chip had been thinking like a bot, he could have walked straight up the wall. But, panicked and threatened, separated from his master, Chip's thinking was all dog. He crouched down, collected himself, and sprang.

He almost made it.

Chip's forepaws landed on the tabletop. His back paws landed on the bench. One paw slipped off and touched the ground. Martin saw a flash of something silver. With a shriek, Chip bounded into the air and rolled off the table. He almost disappeared beneath a volley of silver wires.