At some point. Before. Must have.

“Yeah,” she said aloud, voice slurred.

“What?” John asked, frowning like it was all he could do to pay attention.

“Nothing. Talking to myself. I have to go find Sam or Astrid or someone, whoever is in charge. We’re out of water. We need twice the usual amount of food. And I need someone to…you know…” She lost her train of thought, but John didn’t seem to notice.

“Use some of the emergency food to feed them until I get back,” Mary said. She walked away before John could ask how he was supposed to stretch four cans of mixed vegetables and a vacuum-pack of spicy dried peas to cover thirty or forty hungry kids.

Near the plaza things didn’t look much different than usual. They smelled different—smoke and the acrid stench of melted plastic. But the only evidence of the disaster at first was the pall of brown haze that hovered above the town. That and a pile of debris peeking out from behind the McDonald’s.

Mary stopped at town hall, thinking maybe she would find the council hard at work making decisions, organizing, planning. John had gone on a tour with them earlier, but if he was back they should be, too.

She needed to talk to Dahra. See what meds she had available. Get something before the depression swallowed her up again. Before she…something.

No one was home in the offices, but Mary could hear moans of pain coming from the basement infirmary. She didn’t want to think about what was going on down there. No, not now, Dahra would kick her out.

Even though it would really only take Dahra a few seconds to grab a Prozac or whatever she had.

Mary almost ran smack into Lana who was sitting outside on the town hall steps smoking a cigarette.

Her hands were stained red. No one had water to waste on washing off blood.

Lana glanced up at her. “So. How was your night?”

“Me? Oh, not great.”

Lana nodded. “Burns. They take a long time to heal. Bad night. Bad, bad night.”

“Where’s Patrick?” Mary asked.

“Inside. He helps kids stay calm,” Lana said. “You should get a dog for the day care. Helps kids…Helps them, you know, not notice that their fingers are burned off.”

Something she was supposed to check on. No, not meds. Something else. Oh, of course. “I hate to ask, I know you’ve had a hard night,” Mary said. “But one of my kids, Justin, came in crying about his friend Roger.”

Lana almost smiled. “The Artful Roger? He’ll live, probably. But all I had time to do was keep him from dying right away. I’ll have to spend a lot more time with him before he’s going to be drawing any more pictures.”

“Z’anyone know what happened?” Mary’s lips and tongue felt thick.

Lana shrugged. She lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first. It was a sign of wealth, in a way. Cigarettes were in short supply in the FAYZ. Of course the Healer could have whatever she wanted. Who was going to say no?

“Well, it depends on who you believe,” Lana said. “Some kids are saying it was Zil and his idiots. Others are saying it was Caine.”

“Caine? That’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“Not so crazy. I heard crazier from kids.” Lana laughed humorlessly.

Mary waited for Lana to add something. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Crazier?”

“Remember Brittney? Girl who died in the big fight at the power plant? Buried right over there?” Lana pointed with her cigarette. “I have kids saying they saw her walking around.”

Mary started to speak, but her clumsy mouth was dry.

“And even crazier stuff than that,” Lana said.

Mary felt a chill deep inside her.

“Brittney?” Mary said.

“Dead things don’t always stay dead, I guess,” Lana said.

“Lana…what do you know?” Mary asked.

“Me? What do I know? I’m not the one with a brother on the council.”

“John?” Mary was surprised. “What are you talking about?”

There was a loud groan of pain from the basement. Lana didn’t flinch. But she noticed Mary’s concerned expression. “He’ll live.”

“What are you getting at, Lana? Are you, um, saying something?”

“This kid tells me Astrid told him to spread the word that Orsay is full of crap. Then, same kid says, a couple hours later, Howard tells him to spread the word that anyone who sees anything crazy is full of crap. So the kid says to Howard, what are you talking about ‘crazy?’ Because everything is crazy in the FAYZ.”

Mary wondered if she was supposed to laugh. She couldn’t. Her heart was pounding and her head was banging, banging.

“Meanwhile, guess what Sam’s doing a couple of days ago? He’s over at Clifftop asking me if I happen to have gotten a telephone call from the gaiaphage.”

Mary stood very still. She wanted desperately for Lana to explain what she meant about Orsay. Focus, Mary, she told herself.

Lana went on after a moment. “See, what Sam really wanted, was to know whether it’s dead. The gaiaphage. Whether it’s really gone. And guess what?”

“I don’t know, Lana.”

“Well, it’s not. You know? It’s not gone. It’s not dead.” Lana took a deep breath and stared at the blood dried on her hands like it was the first time she’d noticed. She peeled some off with a thumbnail.

“I don’t understand…”