The Walls Have Eyes (15 page)

“A kid gets tired of hanging around with his mom and dad all the time.” That was the truth, one hundred percent.

Ruined buildings gathered by the tracks in greater and greater numbers, big brick boxes several stories high. Rusted wire fences cordoned off the weedy spaces between them. Streets were everywhere now, some mere suggestions buried under generations of leaves, others with most of their concrete intact beneath a sprinkling of spindly weeds. Dark metal hulks on wheels sat in neat rows along them. Each hulk was large enough to hold an entire family at once, with a rusted roof overhead to keep off the rain. A tiny steel dome, Martin thought.

“Well, well,” the Secretary said when Martin came to the end of his story. “That's quite an improbable tale.”

“Thanks,” Martin murmured.

The old city spread out around them, full of useless junk of all sizes, from the derelict buildings sporting caved-in doors to the cascades of ancient trash that spilled out of every store-front and choked the busted sidewalks. Discolored signs still lined the streets. Those that he could make out made no sense.
QUICK WASH. U-FIX. DRY CLEAN. HANDI LUBE
. What a weird world.

I bet the Wonder Babies came this way, he thought. There's lots of cover, lots of room to hide. That's important. You can't stash a thousand kids behind a juniper bush.

The Secretary hummed and grumbled to himself as he pressed buttons on his handheld. “My program,” he remarked, “tells me that you lied or prevaricated eighty-nine times.”

They rattled through an old rail yard. A few packet cars stood abandoned there, wreathed in vines, their sides all but black with rust. Packet cars! Martin scanned them avidly.

The Secretary's massive fist came down with a crash and broke the little stowaway table. “You will look at me when I'm talking to you! Ursula! Persuade Mr. Glass of the error of his ways.”

But at that second, Martin spied a packet car swathed in a gray tarp. He knew that tarp! It was Rudy's. And underneath—

He bolted to his feet. “Chip, we gotta go!” he called.

“Ursula! Break something,” the Secretary said. “Teach Mr. Glass some manners.”

The Ursulas stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the back half of
the packet car, a fearsome barricade between Martin and the door.

“Wha—Break? What are you supposed to break?” he asked.

They gazed at him sorrowfully, as if he were a cake that had fallen in the middle. “We start with the fingers,” they said.

“Don't hurt me,” he begged, clutching his fingers together. “I just need to get past.”

“Go ahead,” the Ursulas told him.

Martin hesitated. Maybe they intended to attack him when he came within reach. But the Secretary's face flushed light purple.

“Ursula, what are you waiting for?” he roared. “Since when do you not do what I say?”

“One of us thinks hurting this boy isn't guarding the President. Guarding the President is what we're supposed to do.”

“What do you mean, one of you? Which one?” Veins stood out on the Secretary's forehead. “Good Lord, he isn't one of you! That's a dog!”

The packet climbed up a long ramp. The clack of the rails grew very loud. They drowned out the Ursulas' reply.

Martin squeezed through the crowd of bots. “Come on, Chip, we're going,” he called. Behind him, he heard the Secretary rage, and the crash of more broken furniture.

“Count yourselves, you idiots! You're the twelve Ursulas. There can't be thirteen of you!”

Martin flung open the door at the back of the packet. They were on a long bridge at least fifteen feet in the air, and a rush of wind whistled by the open railing. The platform was
nothing but a few square feet of metal mesh. He could see straight through it, and through the open slats of the railway bridge beneath. Metal fencing zigzagged underneath the car, jagged posts, broken glass.

Chip dashed past him out onto the platform and crouched down close to the mesh. The wind turned his black fur over in waves, revealing his creamy undercoat. Martin grabbed the rail, pulled himself out, and slammed the door shut behind him. Then he froze, clinging to it as the wind buffeted him, watching the ground rush by under his feet.

“Chip,” he cried, “we can't get down from here!”

When Martin was eight, David had dared him to put his hands in the air while they rode home on Dad's scooter. As soon as he had tried, the street had banged into him with swift and impersonal force. Martin still remembered the close-up view of the asphalt as he rolled to the curb. The street had sanded patches off his shirt and jeans. Off his hands and face as well.

But now, the Secretary of State would soon be at the door, with a new plan for dealing with his prisoners. Martin gulped. “We gotta do it. We gotta jump.”

Balancing precariously, he knelt down next to his dog. Chip put his big ears back and licked Martin's face.

“Listen,” Martin said, “remember William and Sim? Remember the typewriter? I need you to think like a bot and get us off of here. Not like a dog. Like a bot!”

The German shepherd snuggled close to Martin. Then he turned his shaggy head away. Handles jutted out of his neck.

“Okay, I get it.” Martin scrambled astride the furry form and gripped the handles. “Just like riding a bike,” he whispered, and he closed his eyes as tightly as he could.

They launched out into space.

Martin felt the exact second when they stopped moving entirely, hanging in the air like birds. Then they dropped so fast that Martin's stomach stayed behind. Now the pavement in my face, he thought, now the scrapes and scratches all over my body. He buried his face in Chip's tickly fur.

He felt them hit the ground, but they hit it in slow motion, the moment of impact elongating like a rubber band. Martin's knees touched dirt with a gentle tap. What's going on? he wondered.

Then they shot back into the air.

Martin opened his eyes. They were rising above a wide, flat space covered with faded steel hulks half-buried in cheerful yellow sunflowers. Then came the instant when they hung in the air and the stomach flop of the drop. Then they came down into the waist-high sunflowers. Then they sprang up again.

Chip hopped across row after row of the hulks like a giant pogo stick. Then he bounced in place a few times, and Martin slid off into the sunflowers' stiff green stems and fuzzy, itchy leaves.

The packet bridge that bounded one edge of the sunflower field was empty. The Secretary's car was out of sight. Martin thought he could still make out the clack of its progress in the distance, but soon the breeze sighing through the sunflowers was all he heard.

He sat right where he was, shaking all over, and put his arms around his knees and rocked. When he had been very small, rocking like this had calmed him down. Things had happened too quickly in the packet car for him to feel the danger he was in. Now that he could look back on it, he thought he might pass out.

“He was gonna have them break me up,” he groaned to Chip. His fingers hurt at the thought, and then the skin on his arms and legs began to crawl. He rubbed them to cancel out the prickling sensation. The sunflowers hid him from view,
and he wanted to stay hidden. He would have liked to dig a hole and crawl inside.

“The Ursulas were nice,” he muttered. “You could tell they didn't wanna be mean. But
that
guy! That—that
guy
—” Martin couldn't think of a word evil enough to describe him. “He didn't just wanna kill, he acted like it didn't matter. He made out like it was a business or something!”

Chip didn't seem to share Martin's fear, or perhaps he was celebrating his emancipation from the ranks of the twelve Ursulas. He cavorted through the yellow flowers, then pounced. Seconds later, he came prancing up to Martin with a stick.

“You sure saved the day,” Martin told him, “being an Ursula and all. And that jump! Wow! My legs are like jelly. That might be fun to try again sometime.”

Chip sidled into Martin, knocking him off balance, and whipped his bushy tail back and forth. Yellow petals went flying like confetti.

Martin climbed to his feet and tossed the stick. Chip sped after it, muscles rippling beneath his magnificent coat. “You're a good boy,” Martin told him when he returned. “You're a great dog.” He tossed the stick again, and Chip sped away. “We better get going. We need to find Cassie and get help for Mom. And what if that guy comes back? Maybe he's figured out a way to make the Ursulas not listen to you.”

About a mile from them, a cluster of thin buildings reached improbable heights, as if some giant hand had come down from the sky and pulled them toward the heavens. Some were faced with polished stone, still stylish and dignified. Others were faced with panels of mirrored glass. These had shattered
and left dark squares here and there, so that their sides looked like surreal chessboards. Flocks of birds swooped in and out of them and gave their solid lines the illusion of movement.

“We were closer to those tall places when we saw the red packet car,” Martin said. “Let's go that way.”

They started toward the high buildings. Martin walked through the rows of short metal hulks, stepped over a low spot in the sagging chain-link fence that bordered them, and headed down a crumbling street. Chip snagged his stick in the rusted fence and had to leave it behind.

The sun rose higher and changed color from bright orange to white. The air heated up. Slowly, carefully, Martin and his dog threaded their way among the gigantic buildings, which towered over him, ominous and silent. Surely humans hadn't lived in such unnatural places. He couldn't imagine having the courage to go inside them, much less climb to their top floors.

The narrow streets between them were clogged with debris, some of it several feet deep. Jagged sheets of window glass sparkled in the sun like diamonds. In the shade, they turned all but invisible. A piece of glass sliced through the bottom of Martin's sneaker and barely missed drawing blood.

“Maybe this wasn't the way to come,” Martin worried. “Little kids couldn't make it through all this trash. Maybe that wasn't Rudy's packet car after all. We need to find it and make sure.”

But Martin was accustomed to seeing a horizon. He wasn't prepared for city streets. The collection of buildings around him seemed to shift and change as he passed them. He couldn't recognize which buildings he had walked by or which
streets he had just crossed. He couldn't find his way back to the packet line.

And all the time, as he wiped the sweat that trickled into his eyes, he thought about water. He tried not to think about how thirsty he was, but he couldn't help himself. Before long, it was the only thing he could think of.

“My head hurts,” he said as they plowed their way through a dim alley between two towering ruins. In spite of the hot day, the air in the alley felt clammy. Rotting, moldy trash squelched underfoot. “I don't know where the Wonder Babies have gotten to. This place is way bigger than I thought.”

They turned a corner and came back out into the sunshine. Martin kicked hardened debris off a step and sat down. “My head hurts, Chip,” he said again. “I'm dizzy. It's so bright out here. I don't know where we're going anymore.”

They walked for hours, turning down one street after another, but they never seemed to get anywhere. The same buildings turned up in front of them again and again. We're going in circles, Martin thought, but he was too dazed to decide what to do about it. He didn't know where the Wonder Babies were, so it didn't seem to matter which way he went.

As the morning turned into afternoon, the downtown streets turned into a furnace. Shifting waves of heat radiated off the concrete and glass, and the hot, muggy breeze seemed to smother him. Martin stumbled blindly. It occurred to him that he might die.

“I don't think we're gonna find anybody,” he muttered.

Chip pointed his muzzle skyward and emitted an eloquent, pitiful howl. It went on and on, the cry of a lost dog in
desperate need of help. Martin joined it, yelling as loud as his roughened throat could manage. “Theo! Rudy! Help! Where are you guys?”

As the white sun crept across the concrete-colored sky, Martin staggered along the city streets, yelling for his friends. The heat deepened and took possession of everything until it seemed to Martin that he was drowning under boiling water. His hoarse voice echoed inside his aching head. He wasn't sure the yell had words, but it didn't seem to matter anymore.

A figure detached itself from the shadow of a nearby building. Chip burst into a joyful chorus and bounced ahead. Martin stumbled after him, trying to make out what it was, but his eyes had given up focusing.

It was Theo. She caught him by his sunburned arms. “We thought we heard someone calling my name,” she said. “Martin, you found us again.”

Theo led him across packed dirt, over broken bricks, and into the dark interior of a building. She turned on a flashlight and took him to a set of concrete stairs. Martin's eyes couldn't follow the flashlight's beam. He stumbled and went sprawling. He felt her pull him to his feet, drape his arm around her neck, and more or less drag him along. She was talking, but the words went by too fast for him to catch much of their meaning. “You're hot,” she said at one point. “Like fire.”

The next thing Martin knew, he was lying on something soft. Flashlights came and shone down on him, and a sopping sheet dropped onto him with a slapping sound. Ice tumbled down on him in a roar like thunder, and he moaned against the cold. A whimper answered him, and Chip licked his face.

For the longest time, Martin was convinced that he had fallen into the fridge and been taken prisoner by its inhabitants. Lurid dreams gripped him, in which a ketchup bottle had morphed into the evil Red Queen. She held him down and poured water into his mouth to try to drown him. He sputtered and hacked and shoved her away.