Sam nodded. It made sense. If he wanted Dekka along he’d have to leave Brianna behind. But Taylor?

Suddenly the trip, which he had started to anticipate just a little, seemed much less like fun.

Lana disliked going into town. In town people asked her for things. But she needed a gallon of water to take back up to Clifftop anyway, so she figured she might as well stop by the so-called hospital and clear up the usual backlog of kids with broken arms, burned hands, and a rumored cut wrist.

She wasn’t that sure she should be fixing anyone dumb enough to try and slit his wrist. After all, the FAYZ would kill you soon enough, why be in a hurry? And if you wanted a quick trip out of the FAYZ there was always Mary’s way: the cliff.

Dahra Baidoo was reading her medical book and telling some kid with a sore tooth to be quiet. “It’s just loose, it will come out when it wants to come out,” she said irritably.

She looked up with a weary smile when she noticed Lana.

“Hey, Lana.”

“Hey, DB,” Lana said. “How’s medical school?”

It was an old joke between them. They had worked together closely in times of crisis. The flu that had gone around a couple of weeks ago, the various battles and fires and fights and poisonings and accidents.

Dahra would hold the injured kids’ hands and feed them Tylenol while waiting for Lana to come around. The fire had been the worst. The two of them had been down here together for days, barely seeing the sun.

Bad, bad days.

Dahra laughed and tapped the book. “I’m ready to perform heart transplants.”

“What do we have?” Lana asked. “I heard you had an uncommitted suicide.”

“No suicides. Broken ribs. And a burn. Not too bad, and I should probably let her suffer since she got it from trying to light a bag of poop and throw it.”

Lana heard a hacking cough from a very sick-looking girl. “What’s that?”

Dahra gave her a significant look. “I think our flu is back. Or never went away.” She pulled Lana off to the side, to where the patients couldn’t hear. “I think this may be worse, though. This girl is hallucinating. Her name is Jennifer. She came crawling in here this morning. She keeps talking about some other girl named Jennifer who coughed so hard there were pieces of her lungs coming up. And then she supposedly coughed so hard she broke her own neck.”

“Fever brings on the crazy sometimes,” Lana said.

“Yeah. Still, I wish I had someone to go check on her house. See if there’s anything going on.”

“Where’s Elwood?”

Dahra sighed. “That’s over.”

Lana had never liked Elwood much and she kind of wanted to know what had happened—Dahra and Elwood had been going out for a long time. But Dahra didn’t look like she was interested in spilling her guts.

Lana healed the broken ribs, then checked out the girl with burned fingers. “Don’t do stupid things like this,” Lana snapped at the girl. “I don’t want to be wasting my time on stupidity. Next time I’ll let you suffer.”

But she healed the burn as well and did a quick touch-and-go with the coughing girl.

“Can I fill a jug before I head out?” Lana asked.

Dahra winced. She had an old water cooler in one corner with a clear glass five-gallon jug on top. But there was nowhere near five gallons in there.

“How about half a gallon?” Dahra said.

“Deal,” Lana said. “Albert needs to keep you better supplied. Me, too, while we’re at it. He’s supposed to send one of his people up with a gallon a day. It’s been two days. It’s not smart for a hypochondriac like Albert to grind my nerves.”

Then, with a nod to Dahra, Lana headed off again, back toward her lonely eyrie.

She took a shortcut that took her up the hill to Clifftop. It was a bare trail through the brush, a place where a hungry coyote might be. But Patrick would warn her long before she walked into a coyote. And in any case Lana carried an automatic pistol she had no compunction about using.

Suddenly Patrick growled and Lana had the automatic out and aimed with both hands in a split second.

“Step out where I can see you,” she said.

There was no coyote. Instead there was Hunter. Lurking. Looking ashamed to be here. He had been banished from town, although he was allowed to come see her anytime. Still he preferred to stay out of sight.

Lana liked Hunter. First because he often saved her some tasty morsel, a rabbit or a couple of plump frogs. And he brought stomachs and intestines for Patrick to eat.

Second because even though he was brain damaged he at least had the sense not to waste her time. If he was looking for her there was a reason.

“T’sup, Hunter?” she asked. She stuck the gun back in her waistband. “Whoa. I see: bad scratches there.”

“No,” he said. “It’s something else.”

He pulled on his T-shirt neck.

Lana didn’t breathe for a few seconds. “Yeah,” she said. “That is something else.”

Chapter Six

61 HOURS, 26 MINUTES

NO ONE KNEW quite how to deal with Hunter. He wasn’t supposed to come into town. So the council had to go to him.

They met on the highway.

No one had ever cleaned up the crashed and abandoned cars on the highway. They were all just where they’d been since the coming of the FAYZ.

The big FedEx truck was still on its side. Kids had long since broken into the back and rifled through the packages. The wrapping, torn paper, plastic packing peanuts, curls of tape, and packing slips had mostly drifted into a section of construction barrier on the side of the road.