The swag they find in the trunks and glove compartments? Just a little bonus.
He wanted Becky. Oh, God, how he wanted Becky. And oh, God, how he wanted something to eat. He couldn’t decide which he wanted more.
“Becky? Becky?”
Nothing. Overhead, stars were now glimmering.
Cal dropped to his knees, pressed his hands into the mucky ground, and dredged up more water. He drank it, trying to filter the grit with his teeth. If Becky was with me, we could figure this out. I know we could. Because Ike and Mike, they think alike.
He got more water, this time forgetting to filter it and swallowing more grit. Also something that wriggled. A bug, or maybe a small worm. Well, so what? It was protein, right?
“I’ll never find her,” Cal said. He stared at the darkening, waving grass. “Because you won’t let me, will you? You keep the people who love each other apart, don’t you? That’s Job One, right? We’ll just circle around and around, calling to each other, until we go insane.”
Except Becky had stopped calling. Like Mom, Becky had gone dar—
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” a small clear voice said.
Cal’s head jerked around. A little boy in mud-spattered clothes was standing there. His face was pinched and filthy. In his right hand he held a dead crow by one yellow leg.
“Tobin?” Cal whispered.
“That’s me.” The boy raised the crow to his mouth and buried his face in its belly. Feathers crackled. The crow nodded its dead head as if to say, That’s right, get right in there, get to the meat of the thing.
Cal would have said he was too tired to spring after his latest jump, but horror has its own imperatives, and he sprang anyway. He tore the crow out of the boy’s muddy hands, barely registering the guts unraveling from its open belly. Although he did see the feather stuck to the side of the boy’s mouth. He saw that very well, even in the gathering gloom.
“You can’t eat that! Jesus, kid! What are you, crazy?”
“Not crazy, just hungry. And the crows aren’t bad. I couldn’t eat any of Freddy. I loved him, see. Dad ate some, but I didn’t. Course, I hadn’t touched the rock then. When you touch the rock—hug it, like—you can see. You just know a lot more. It makes you hungrier, though. And like my dad says, a man’s meat and a man’s gotta eat. After we went to the rock, we separated, but he said we could find each other again anytime we wanted.”
Cal was still one turn back. “Freddy?”
“He was our golden. Did great Frisbee catches. Just like a dog on TV. It’s easier to find things in here once they’re dead. The field doesn’t move dead things around.” His eyes gleamed in the fading light, and he looked at the mangled crow, which Cal was still holding. “I think most birds steer clear of the grass. I think they know and tell each other. But some don’t listen. Crows don’t listen the most, I guess, because there are quite a few dead ones in here. Wander around for a while and you find them.”
Cal said, “Tobin, did you lure us in here? Tell me. I won’t be mad. Your father made you do it, I bet.”
“We heard someone yelling. A little girl. She said she was lost. That’s how we got in. That’s how it works.” He paused. “My dad killed your sister, I bet.”
“How do you know she’s my sister?”
“The rock,” he said simply. “The rock teaches you to hear the grass, and the tall grass knows everything.”
“Then you must know if she’s dead or not.”
“I could find out for you.” Tobin said, “No. I can do better than that. I can show you. Do you want to go see? Do you want to check on her? Come on. Follow me.”
Without waiting for a reply, the kid turned and walked into the grass. Cal dropped the dead crow and bolted after him, not wanting to lose sight of him even for a second. If he did, he might wander around forever without finding him again. I won’t be mad, he’d told Tobin, but he was mad. Really mad. Not mad enough to kill a kid, of course not (probably of course not), but he wasn’t going to let the little Judas goat out of his sight either.
Only he did, because the moon rose above the grass, bloated and orange. It looks pregnant, he thought, and when