The Scavengers (17 page)

I’m still trying to picture Dad in a lab coat.

“It was a good life,” he says. “I loved your mother, I loved my work, and I especially loved seeing my research put quickly to work in the real world.”

Now he looks down at the ground, and his voice gets quieter.

“For a long time, things just kept getting better. CornVivia paid me more and more. Your mother went back to school and was able to finish her studies, and we lived in a beautiful house. I hired a man to build your mother beautiful bookshelves, and she filled them with beautiful books. I even had the man engrave a quote above the shelves: ‘
she ate and drank the precious words
’
 . . .
”

“Emily Dickinson,” I say, recognizing the line. “It’s from a poem about how books give us wings. Ma and I memorized that one! It was our favorite. It actually says ‘he,’ not ‘she,’ but you must have changed that for Ma.”

For just a fleeting second I see the shadow of a smile cross Dad’s face, but then he grows serious again. “The more CornVivia paid me, the more they pushed me. They wanted more and more ideas, more and more ways to grow more and more food faster and faster.”

“Dad! Did you work on URCorn?”

He doesn’t answer the question. “Then came the Secrecy Signings,” he says. “I had to sign papers promising never to reveal what I was working on or discuss any of my inventions with anyone outside the laboratory.”

He stops now, his elbows on his knees and rocking forward with his shoulders hunched, like he’s working his courage up. When he speaks, his voice is so quiet I have to lean in to hear him. “One day several men in suits visited my lab. They sat me down in a little side room. One of the men explained that because the knowledge I carried in my . . . in my brain . . . was patented and owned by CornVivia it was considered ‘intellectual property.’ And because of the Patriotic Partnering Act, it was also classified as a state secret. He said it was CornVivia’s right and duty to make sure the information didn’t fall into the wrong hands, so a small tracking chip would be implanted beneath the skin of my right cheek in case I was kidnapped by someone trying to steal their secrets.”

“You let them
do
that?” I say, angrily.

“They quadrupled my pay,” he says, catching my eyes and then looking away. “Our life was so good. We had everything we needed and all we could want.” Then he looks up. “You were a toddler and Ma was pregnant with Dook . . . Henry. We lived in a nice house with a nice yard, we had the best medical care, and when CornVivia and the government announced their Bubbling program, we were guaranteed a special place in the capital Bubble City, with everything the same as we had it, right down to your mother’s bookshelves.”

I feel like I’m falling through the air. My hands are balled into fists, like I’m trying to grab hold of something to slow me down. Dad just keeps talking, his voice quiet and his face expressionless.

“Right after Henry was born, they put me in charge of a big new project,” he says. “Top secret. Related to the Bubbling. When I figured out how it was being used, I wanted no part of it. But it was too late—I
was
part of it. And Declaration Day was coming. I knew too much and was terrified about what would happen if I tried to leave. So before they could do anything, Ma and I packed up you and Henry and took off.”

“But the chip? How did you avoid being tracked?”

“On my way home from work that Friday, I bought a red balloon.”

I jump to my feet. “I remember that! You gave it to me in the backyard, and it flew away before I could grab it.”

For the first time, I see tears in Dad’s eyes. “It wasn’t an accident.”

“You did that on
purpose
?” I sit back down.

“Yes, Maggie.” He is hanging his head down again. “It was a terrible thing to do. But there was always the chance someone was watching. I had to make it look like an accident. Like I was trying to give my little girl a balloon and it just got away.”

I’m upset, but mostly I’m just confused. Dad can see I don’t understand.

“The chip,” says Dad. “In the bathroom, in the house, before we came outside with the balloon, I numbed my face with ice, then cut it out.”

My mouth falls open. The bandage on his cheek that day! His goofy lopsided smile!

“When I let go of that balloon, the chip was taped to the string. As we watched that balloon disappear, it took our old life with it.”

He pauses. “I have never forgiven myself for not thinking to bring a second balloon.”

“But there was a second balloon, I remember it.”

“Yes, I dug it out of a drawer. It was left over from a birthday party. It didn’t float. You didn’t like it.”

“Yah,” I say. “I remember stomping it.”

We sit for a moment. I can hear the pigs grunting softly outside the feed room. Dad continues. “We did the best we could to disguise our escape, driving away like we were going on a camping trip. We had two backpacks filled with everything we could carry that would help us survive without returning to civilization for a long, long time. Nothing extra. No frills. Except for the Emily Dickinson book and
Little House on the Prairie
. I understood what that meant to your mother.

“The day before, I bought a brand-new car for cash from some guy I didn’t know. I didn’t tell him who I was, and he didn’t ask. You could get cars anywhere then—everyone who was planning to go UnderBubble was getting rid of them.”

“The new-car smell!” I exclaim, the memory of it coming back.

“Our plan was to drive as far as we could, all weekend long, knowing that when Monday came and I wasn’t at work, the questions would begin, but hoping by then we’d be hundreds of miles away and that balloon would have carried the tracker far, far away in the opposite direction.”

“But we started ‘camping’ that same day,” I say, furrowing my brow.

“Yes. All day your mother and I listened to the car radio—we had left our phones behind so they couldn’t be traced. We’d only been driving for half a day when we heard that the balloon had been found. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it got caught in a downdraft. Maybe it set off an alert because it was traveling too far in a straight line. It didn’t matter. We knew now that the authorities would be hunting us. So we drove the car deep into a logging road, abandoned it, and just started hiking.”

I stare at the man in front of me. Here he is, nearly healthy again and looking like the Dad I knew, but with every sentence out of his mouth it’s like I am hearing from someone I’ve never met before.

“I’ve always known they were coming for me. That’s why we lived on the run for so long. That’s why even after we did settle I never went to town with Toad. It was because I knew the Bubble Authorities might have someone out there looking for me. I know I said it was because I was staying back to protect Dookie and Ma . . . but . . .” He stops, and his eyes fill with tears.

“Was that who attacked the shack?” All this talking, and now I realize I haven’t asked him what happened to Ma.

Now the tears are running down his cheeks.

“I don’t know. Probably.”

I reach out and grab his shoulders. “You don’t know? You can’t even guess? You were there! You were supposed to be protecting them! What did you see?”

Before he speaks, he tips his face into his hands. When his voice comes out, it is choked and muffled.

“I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t there? But . . .”

“I was already with the GreyDevils.”

“The GreyDevils! Why?”

Now he looks at me again. The light in his eyes is gone.

36

I STAND UP SO QUICKLY I KNOCK OVER THE SLOP BUCKET. EVER
since Dad began talking I have gone from sad to terrified to happy to freaked out to confused, and now I feel myself taking a sharp turn toward angry. Having just learned that he abandoned Ma in the worst moment possible, and after the story about the red balloon, I am in no mood for tenderness.

He reaches out his hand, but I turn away. He sighs, and speaks again.

“Do you know what makes URCorn work? Why it cures disease, why it will heal your wounds overnight, why it will keep you alive for a hundred years . . . unless you get hit by a cornvoy truck?”

I shake my head, still not looking at him.

“What happens if
you
eat URCorn?”

“It makes me sick.”

“Why aren’t all the people in the Bubble—who eat URCorn every day—getting sick?”

“I dunno. You’re the science genius.” I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m really not in the mood for Twenty Questions.

“It’s because they’ve all been treated with Activax.”

“Activax?”

“Think of Activax as the key that turns on all the good things in URCorn. If you don’t have Activax, URCorn is just a quick way to puke. If you do have Activax, URCorn is a miracle—but there’s a catch.”

“Yah, the last twenty minutes have been just
full
of catches.” I’m really not in a very good mood. I sit back down on my slop bucket with my arms crossed.

“Once you have the Activax, you have to have URCorn. If you don’t get it, you develop a terrible hunger. A hunger that claws and digs at your insides. A hunger that takes over your brain. A hunger that becomes the only thing you can think about. A hunger that will drive you to do anything you can to get URCorn. A hunger that will drive you to do anything it takes to make the hunger go away, even if it’s only for a little while.”

Now I’m paying attention, because I’m starting to understand something. I straighten up.

“The GreyDevils!”

“Yes,” says Dad. “The GreyDevils. Based on everything I’ve seen, I’m certain every one of them has been injected with Activax. And every one of them will do whatever it takes to make the hunger go away.”

“That’s why they throw themselves at the BarbaZap!” I say. “That’s why they swarmed the cornvoy truck.”

Dad nods. “And that’s why they guzzle PartsWash. It’s awful, but it makes the craving stop.”

Then it hits me. Dad snuffling at the URCorn. Dad howling in the pig shed. Dad all haggard and slimy. Dad the
GreyDevil
.

“Dad . . . you had the Activax!”

“Yes, Maggie. Before I left CornVivia. I was one of the first.”

“But . . . how did the GreyDevils—those
people
—get the Activax?” It was odd to suddenly think of the GreyDevils as people. Like my dad. “And where do the new ones come from?”

“I don’t know,” says Dad. “I have my suspicions, but I don’t know. . . . I’m not sure we
want
to know.”

“What about Ma? Did Ma have the Activax?”

“No . . . at first—when I took it—I really believed in all the good it could do. By the time it was ready for mass production, once I suspected how they intended to use it, I had too many doubts. Too many suspicions. I wouldn’t let her—or you children—get it.”

“But all this time . . . where have you been getting your URCorn?”

“When I knew we were leaving, I began sneaking it home. We had bins of it at the lab. The day I tied that chip to the balloon and we took off, both your Ma’s pack and mine were half full of URCorn.”

“But that couldn’t have lasted you this long . . .”

“You’re right. I ground up and ate as little of it as possible and planted the rest. To prevent anyone from planting their own URCorn, it will not sprout unless it is treated with a CornVivia sprouting agent. The URCorn I brought in my backpack had been treated, but once it ran out, I wouldn’t be able to grow any more. I could only plant a few stalks here and there. I planted them far apart so if something happened they wouldn’t all be lost. And I had to plant them where the GreyDevils weren’t likely to go. That’s why I chose Skullduggery Ridge. Goldmine Gully was part of it, but mainly I did it to avoid the GreyDevils.

“But I hardly ever had enough. Each year the plants had a tougher and tougher time surviving. In the Sustainability Reserves they have the advantage of all the sprays and chemical boosters. And now and then some stray GreyDevil would stumble on my little patch and devour it in a minute.

“This past year, I finally realized I couldn’t keep up. When you caught me in the root cellar, I had just counted my last few kernels, figuring out just how many more days I could go.”

“But I looked! There was nothing down there but carrots.”

“Maybe you stopped looking too soon,” says Dad. I start to ask what he means, but he continues his story. “I kept cutting down, trying to wean myself off it, but already I could feel the gnawing in my gut and the aching in my head. I started sneaking out at night with a jacklight, checking for spillage outside the Sustainability Reserve gate. I walked the cornvoy routes to try and find stray kernels before the GreyDevils got to them in the light of day. But they were so few and far between, and the gnawing and the aching just got worse and worse.

“Then one night when I had been walking all night and hadn’t found any URCorn, and the gnawing was the worst it had ever been, in the gray light of dawn I came to a GreyDevil bonfire. They were all lying about unconscious and I dipped a little Partswash off the bottom of the cauldron. It was awful. But the gnawing feeling faded. I snuck out again a few nights later. And a few nights after that . . . and soon, as my URCorn dwindled down to nothing, all I could think of was how I was going to get my next dose.”

It is all beginning to make sense. Why Dad went from being the healthiest person in the family to being sickly or overtired so often in the morning. And why he was scraped up—not from a tumble off the trail but from making his way through the brush at night. Now I’m remembering the night I caught Dad up by the flagpole, staring off into the distance to the GreyDevil fires. He wasn’t just staring, he was preparing to go.

“But now you’re fine!” I say. “How . . .”

“Do you remember the day you ate the URCorn and got sick?”

“Kinda hard to forget,” I say. “I thought I was gonna yak up my liver.”

“Do you remember that I went back out to see if I could find more?”

“I remember,” I said. “You wanted to make sure Dookie didn’t eat any.”