J. Mitchell - Midnight City

The Delirium had plenty of items he could use, Holt noticed as he studied the trading stalls. Nonperishables and water being the most obvious, but they also had a water purification kit and sunblock.

One of the Delirium ’s traders stood up as he approached, a boy of fifteen, Holt guessed from the amount of black in his eyes. “Looking to trade?” he asked.

“I am,” Holt replied.

“Well, we’re kind of done here,” the kid said dismissively. He had on a denim shirt covered in patches of all kinds of colorful fabric. “Trading post’s been running three days, we’re pretty much set. Unless you got something special, not sure we’re gonna be interested.”

“Define special,” Holt said.

“Working guns, nails and screws, fuel, pharmaceuticals, radios—that’s pretty much it,” the kid said.

With each item, Holt kicked himself mentally. If he hadn’t lost the blue bag back in the Drowning Plains, he would have all he needed to trade these kids out of their underwear. But he’d lost it. He had nothing the Delirium wanted.

From behind him, Zoey whispered, “Tell them you have dominoes.”

Holt glanced behind him at Zoey, gave her a confused look. “How did you know I had—?” Holt began, then stopped himself. He was starting to think it was better not to know.

“Just tell them,” Zoey said. The girl’s eyes were locked on the boy running the trading stall, in that strangely intense way she focused on things.

Holt frowned, turned back to the boy. “We… have dominoes,” he said without much hope.

The boy’s only reaction was a slight raise of his eyebrow, but Holt noticed it nonetheless. Even if he hadn’t, the four closest kids of the Delirium ’s crew perked up like dogs being shown their favorite toy. One of them, a blond kid who wore glasses without any lenses, turned and looked at the head trader almost pleadingly.

He ignored the kid, looking from Holt, to Zoey behind his legs, then back to Holt. “We’ve been trying to assemble a full set for a whole year. We only need six more.”

“I have a full set myself,” Holt said. And he did. He’d found it buried in the ruins of what had been the St. Louis suburbs. “You’re welcome to whatever pieces you need.” Zoey had been right: he had them now, and they all knew it.

“I’m Russ,” the boy said. “How’d you know we needed dominoes?” It wasn’t a question for Holt; it was for Zoey. “I saw you tell him. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know how I know… I just know,” she said.

“Sounds like a Strange Lands artifact to me,” Russ guessed. “But whatever. Let’s have a look at what you got.”

Holt dropped his pack, started undoing the clasps. As he did, he took a closer look at the boat. There were huts and tents set up all along its rear decks. Three of them were open… and one was zipped shut.

In the fading light, Holt saw the glow of a flashlight inside it, moving back and forth. Someone was there. He wondered why they weren’t out with the others.

“What are you looking to trade for?” Russ asked, watching him impatiently.

“Three or four nonperishables would be nice, and so would one of those water purifiers,” Holt said. He saw Russ’s eyebrows rise again but pushed on before the trader could object. “And the sunblock. A full canister, not a used one.”

“Four nonperishables is way more than those dominoes are worth,” he said. “I can’t trade for the water purifier and sunblock, too.”

“The way your boys got their hackles raised when I mentioned them says you can,” Holt said evenly.

Russ glared at the blond kid with the empty frames. He looked away quickly.

“A couple bags of jerky,” the head trader said, not pleased. “And that’s it for nonperishables.”

“What about bullets? Any bullets you’ve found here and there?”

“Get the bucket,” the trader said. One of the kids disappeared around the side of the tug’s rusted bridge. When he came back, he was holding a big, aging plastic bucket full of ammo. Bullets and shells of all kinds. “You can have any of that you want, getting harder to trade for, it’s just dead weight.”

“I bet.” Holt eyed the bucket greedily. It was more ammo than he’d seen in a long time. “Getting tougher to find working guns, most people don’t take care of them right.”

“Or they switched to refurbished Assembly guns,” Russ said.

It was true. He had shot one or two of the plasma cannon some of the more industrious kids had managed to strip off fallen Assembly walkers. They were powerful, but you lost a lot of accuracy. He’d stick with his guns until they fell apart, thank you very much.

Holt handed over the domino case… and the kids descended on it like happy little vultures. Holt dug through the ammo bucket, looking for calibers he could use.

Behind him, Mira was still trading for artifacts. With the ammo bucket holding his attention, Holt didn’t notice Zoey move away from the group and start walking toward the one lone, sealed tent….

SHE HAD CHOSEN HER MOMENT TO WALK OFF, waited until they were all absorbed in the trading.

Zoey didn’t know what attracted her to the tent. Like everything that had to do with the “feelings,” Zoey was simply pulled toward it. There was a certainty in her mind that there was something there for her, and ignoring it wasn’t an option.

Sometimes Zoey felt like a boat in a current, being carried this way and that. She let herself be pulled and pushed, and sometimes it was scary. But she had a sense it was important to let it take her where it wanted. So she did.

Zoey reached the tent. It was zippered shut. The flashlight was still on inside, wavering back and forth. Zoey heard breathing and what she was sure was someone gently crying. She reached for the zipper near the ground and pulled it straight up, opening the tent.

Inside were two kids, both older than the others outside, approaching their twenties.

One was a girl. She was kneeling over the other figure, a boy. Her eyes were red with tears. When Zoey opened the tent, the girl’s hand was resting on the boy’s chest like she was feeling his breath.

The boy was on his back on the floor, unmoving, as if he were sick. But he wasn’t sick, Zoey knew. She noted that his hands and feet were bound, tied with rope. And most tellingly… his eyes were solid black. They stared sightlessly upward, never blinking.

The Tone had taken him.

“Who are you?” the girl asked Zoey, her voice shaking with surprise. “You shouldn’t be here.”

The boy was blank to Zoey: she couldn’t read or sense anything from him. It was the Tone, she somehow knew. Once it took someone, they were inaccessible to her.

But, the girl…

Zoey felt the girl’s emotions wash over her, a rich mix of pain and sadness and anger and… fear. Of being found, Zoey sensed. She’d been hiding. Keeping the boy out of sight from Holt and Mira and herself. Obviously feeling they wouldn’t understand. Her name was Elizabeth, Zoey sensed.

Elizabeth read the thoughts in Zoey’s eyes. “It’s… You don’t understand,” she stammered, eyes welling with tears again. “I just want to go with him. He’s my best friend. I just want to wait until it takes me, too—then we can go together. So… we tied him. That’s all…”

Zoey saw her eyes now, the Tone spreading through them like masses of black veins. She wouldn’t have long to wait.

“Please,” Elizabeth said. “Please don’t tell your friends. Please don’t—”

“Elizabeth,” Zoey said quietly. The older girl stopped talking, staring at Zoey. “I understand. You haven’t done anything wrong.”