weird, being the center of attention, but not so weird that he stopped eating. Too good. I-have-questions-but-I-also-have-bacon-and-guess-which-I-love-more good.
A few times, Muscle Guy (“Henry,” he said, “but I prefer Hank. So call me Hank. Question—”) tried to cut in, but the woman, who introduced herself as Bobbie Louise, gently hushed him.
When Michael had sat down next to Patrick, he’d whisper-asked where Mom was, now that they’d “got to The End.”
“We’ll find out, Bub,” Michael told him.
Patrick nodded. “Is this the big party?” he asked. And when Michael shook his head, Patrick replied, “Oh, okay.” It came out sounding like, Oh, thank crap. ’Cause that would have been lame.
If there were other sections in the Safe Zone, Michael supposed it could be a couple hours before he found Mom. He allowed himself to draw up the image he’d had in his mind these past few weeks, the image of The End: him holding Patrick’s hand as they walked across a bright Safe Zone room, spotting Mom in a crowd, her looking up at him, proud and so, so happy.
As Michael finally finished his hash browns (wonderfully greasy), Hank said, “Question,” for the fifth time. “How’s the situation out there?”
Michael set down his orange juice slowly. He traced his finger over the sweat on the side of his glass, struggling for an honest answer.
“Super cold,” Patrick suggested to Michael quietly.
The old woman laughed. Patrick looked up at her with a surprised delight, but then almost seemed to catch himself. He looked back to Michael, doing his songless humming thing.
“And there’s not many humans,” Michael said. “Have you guys noticed that there have been more of those, uh, Things, sort of gathering, moving in bigger groups?”
“Have we friggin’ ever,” Hank nodded. His voice was clipped, though. Was the deepness of his voice changing a little every time he spoke, like he was trying to sound more manly, or something? “They were easy to deal with the first couple weeks. Scattered. Then it was almost like they started . . . coordinating, I dunno. Maybe it’s just that they were looking for people, and they were getting better at finding us, so they all started attacking around the same time. But it’s weird.
“Anyway, been out there long, man? What’s your time line?” Hank pulled a tattered spiral-bound notebook from his pocket, uncapped a pen.
Michael’s eyes flicked to the notebook, his stomach tightening a little. He suddenly felt wary of speaking about their time in the outside world and confusing Bub. “Since Halloween,” he replied.
Hank, who had been leaning across the table, fell back in his chair. “You’ve been out there the whole goddamn time?”
Patrick, halfway through a piece of bacon, froze, eyes popping, like he had just heard someone fart. Protectiveness and a little anger blossomed hotly in Michael’s stomach.
“Hey, let’s keep it PG in here,” Michael said amiably.
Hank snorted a laugh like Michael was making a joke. But when Michael didn’t return the laugh, Hank stared, as if trying to gauge if Michael was serious about protecting Bub from cuss words in a world where there were, y’know, monsters trying to eat him.
Finally, Hank said, “Uh, whatever, dude, sure.” Michael nodded, friendly . . . although he realized that Hank—good-looking in a hard kind of way; striped track pants, cigarette breath—would probably not have been his friend in the world Before. And not just because, ha-ha, I don’t technically “have friends.”
“I think what Hank is trying to say is, what were y’all up to the whole daggum time, Michael?”
The girl leaned forward on her elbows across the table, her eyebrows raised in an open, friendly expression. Her hair, short and choppy, was so darkly red that it was almost black. She wore wire-rim glasses and a bright blue hoodie over an EPCOT T-shirt.
“Looking for the Safe Zone, is all,” Michael replied. He impressed himself by being able to look the girl in the eye for almost an entire second.
“It took you three weeks?” Hank scoffed, as if taking so long to battle lots of dead-slash-insane people was just ridiculous.
Michael’s shoulders pinched back. He felt a surprising twinge that he didn’t like, an ugly defensiveness.
“Yeah, well,” he said, making his voice steady, “we were in my stepdad’s cabin in the middle of nowhere for the first week. There were a few Things out there in the woods. Nothing me and my gun couldn’t handle.”
Michael paused, waiting for Hank to nod, maybe look impressed—something. But Hank kept quiet, just waiting for him to go on.
Well, who