dingy plastic container in his hands. He fishes around in the container and pulls out something long and thin. It curls and coils in his fingers. I blink and stare at the child holding the earthworm, wondering what he’s going to do with it.
He hands it to a wisp of a child—a girl, I think—wearing an oversize T-shirt that hangs down to her knobby knees. The girl shoves it into her mouth, chewing and sighing like she’s eating chocolate.
My jaw drops, but I snap it shut. I can taste the sewer when I breathe through my mouth.
The boy gives each child a worm, then hands one to the woman. Once everyone else has had one, he takes one for himself, eating the wriggling creature in little bites, savoring it.
“Why are they eating worms?” I whisper.
“Obviously their father, wanting to live a life of leisure inside the wall, abandoned them,” Arrin whispers, voice bitter.
“No way. A father wouldn’t do that.”
“Wanna bet?” She squeezes my hand, mashing the bones together. I gasp and try to yank my hand away, but she clings to it. “Shut up, Fo!”
In one collective movement, all four children whip around to face us. A knife appears in the boy’s hand. Another appears in the wispy little girl’s hand. They stare into the darkness, poised on the balls of their feet. The woman, eyes panicked, leans forward and blows out the candle, and the safety of darkness swallows them.
Arrin yanks me in the opposite direction of the worm eaters. We run until she jolts to a dead stop, and I slam into her back. She groans and drops my hand, but our palms don’t come loose. I pull and our flesh peels apart.
“Why were our hands—”
“Shhh!” Arrin hisses, smacking me. “You are going to get me killed! Just shut up long enough to pay me back!”
There is a wet thud by my feet. “I crashed into a wall and hit my head.” Arrin’s voice comes from below. “And the guy in the tunnel cut me. I’ve got to rest. Sit, if you want.”
I don’t sit. Not when I know what coats the floor.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, Fo,” Arrin says a few minutes later. “My nine-year-old brother was picked up yesterday morning. You’re going to create a distraction so I can get him out. After that, you’re on your own.”
“Why was your brother picked up?” I ask.
“He’s a Level Three,” says Arrin, as if it’s the most obvious reason in the world.
“A Level Three what?”
“Where are you from, Fo? How can you not know what a Level Three is?”
“I’m from …” Fuzz fills my brain. I can see my house, see my brother, remember how my sister smells, remember my dad teaching me how to shoot and my mom cooking pancakes on Sunday morning. I can even remember how to make music with my fingers. But I can’t remember where I have been.
“That was a rhetorical question, moron. I get it. You don’t remember. Help me up.” I pull Arrin to her feet. “Next rain gutter we see, we’re going topside.”
Chapter 6
The late-afternoon sky burns my vision. I press my palms against my watering eyes and fill my lungs with clean, bright air.
“The bad news is, we’re still about half a mile from the wall,” Arrin says, sliding the grate back over a rain gutter. “Good news is, I don’t think there’s a hive between us and there. All we’ll have to watch out for is patrolling militia and raiders. But raiders usually don’t come around the militia’s camp, and they never come out before sunset.”
I pull my hands from my face and squint. We stand on the side of a deserted street surrounded by crumbling factories, abandoned cars, and broken traffic lights. Garbage and tumbleweeds blow down the street, the only noise in this arid world of silence.
Arrin starts to run. I lope to her side and for the first time, truly see her.
She is tiny, the top of her greasy head barely as high as my chin. One of her eyes is bruised and nearly swollen shut, and her lip is split. Greasy-looking grime covers every inch of her skin and darkens her pores into a constellation of black dots. Yet, beneath the dirt and filth, she is a child. She glares at me with cold blue eyes.
“Why are you staring at me, Fo?”
“How old are you?” I ask.
She thrusts her square chin and pointy nose forward. “Thirteen.”
“So am I,” I say. I can remember