Frail (42 page)

His eyes were adrift and lost in his own face, that whole ocean of insect life; I had to look that much harder at him to read his expressions, gauge his mood. Keep my attention on him constantly. If it had been me I’d have been creeped out, someone staring at me all the time like that, watching every last thing I do. Joe, he didn’t mind.

“I’m not so old,” he said, softly. Then he grinned. “And I can’t drop even if I wanted to, now I’ve got a goddamned diapershitting baby to feed—”

I hit him, and he laughed again and louder and we wrestled until I shrieked for my arm, not my good arm, goddammit. The sky was pure cloudless blue that whole afternoon and the sun pressed in hard on dark-loving undead eyes but it was still beautiful, the sky, the woods, even that ratty old cornfield, all ours.

What the hell were we looking for? He never did answer that question. Him or anyone else.

They were the first gang, the only gang for me. Lingering out here in the middle of nowhere, years and years, shy kids at the perimeter of the playground, hiding and skulking when there was not a thing to hide from, there had to be a reason for that, it had to be some sort of deliberate strategy, I thought. It couldn’t be that some of them stayed out here because it was easy. Because they really had been big noises in faster, stronger, more aggressive gangs, but they’d washed out or been thrown out or left thinking they’d be king hoo-killers all on their own, crowned and canonized, and it never happened.

Because they were old, some of them, older and dustier than they liked to say. Because they were young, and hiding was easier. Because they just didn’t care for killing, not really, not once the hunger that never really left you got put in its place up on the shelf for another few hours, and that was a shameful thing even fleetingly to think so they just kept very quiet.

And then there was me. And now that I knew I could fight and that it wasn’t hard to hunt I could have left any time, kept to myself for years or decades and avoided all the trouble that came after. I stayed because of Joe—his smile, the loud pounding music in his head, the way he hit right back and looked at me afterward with shrewdness, new respect, and then something more. Every time. What would repulse any sane human, the bugs, the smell, the casual brutality, the gleeful killing, meant less than nothing to me now. Even knowing then and later that I should have collected my strength and wits, turned around and left for good, no looking back. I stayed because of him.

Like I said, I was fifteen.

ACE BOOKS BY JOAN FRANCES TURNER

DUST
FRAIL