The Secret of Zoom (27 page)

Christina said a few words in a low voice. Dorset nodded.

One by one, they woke the children. One by one, the orphans lay still and pretended to be sleeping.

“Wait for my signal,” said Christina, and the orphans passed the word quietly, mouth to ear.

Dorset was counting on her fingers. “We're missing one,” she whispered, and counted again.

Christina looked over the ragged orphans, lying like heaps of old clothes. She had no idea who most of them were. She could recognize a few—the little boy in the undershirt, the girl with the tangled hair, Danny of course . . .

“Where's Danny?” Christina asked abruptly.

Dorset looked around. “I don't see him.” She paused, frowning. “I haven't seen him for hours, actually.”

Christina sat back on her heels. They couldn't leave without Danny. “I'll look for him,” she said, handing Dorset the pocketknife. “You cut the collars.”

Christina moved stealthily across the camp. If she was stopped, she could always say she was stretching her legs—but she wasn't stopped. And she had an idea where Danny might be.

The guardhouse was quiet, except for someone inside who seemed to be pacing back and forth. In the pickup, the sleeping guard snored blissfully. Christina moved on cat-soft feet to the far side of the garbage truck, where she scanned the bushes and listened intently.

She heard what she had expected to hear. Danny, weeping low.

Christina smiled sadly. Danny had wanted to get as close to his cow as he could. It sounded as if he was right next to the truck.

But he wasn't. She walked around the whole garbage truck, holding her nose against the smell, but Danny didn't appear.

Christina listened more carefully, trying to judge direction. He was close, she could tell. Had he gone inside the cab?

She cracked open the driver's side door and jumped as the overhead light came on. She glanced inside—there were the buttons Barney had such trouble with, green, brown, red—but no Danny. She shut the door with a quiet click and watched the light go out.

Danny sniffled and hiccuped. He sounded terribly near. Christina circled the truck once more, looking in all directions, and finally ducked down under the hopper to look beneath the truck. It was dark.

“Danny?” she whispered.

Something squeaked.

Christina blinked, confused. The cow was squeaking—but how could that be? The toy had been scooped into the body of the truck, where the garbage was packed . . .

She stiffened in horror. Danny had crawled up inside the truck itself.

C
HRISTINA
couldn't seem to breathe. She squatted down, hunching over her knees. The ripe odor of garbage curled around her like a fog.

Danny must have wedged himself up through the narrow gap while it was still half light. He had felt around until he made something squeak and found his rubber cow. And meantime, it had grown dark outside . . . and he couldn't find his way out. That was what must have happened.

She looked up at the fire of the orphan camp glowing fitfully on the flat, elevated space where the children slept. There were a hundred children—well, ninety-nine—who were waiting for her signal. How long would it take to get Danny out? What if she accidentally woke the guard who was sleeping in the pickup truck only ten feet away?

The orphans' collars were all cut by now. If they didn't escape tonight, they would have lost their chance; the guards would see the collars in the morning.

Christina made herself stand up. Trying not to touch
anything, she bent over the hopper and craned her neck, so that her whisper would go straight through the gap. “Danny?”

A scrambling sound came from within the truck. “TAFF!”

“Shhhh!” Christina dropped to the ground behind the truck's massive tire. She waited for shouting, for the sound of boots, for a guard to drag her from her hiding place.

There was only silence. After a long moment, she breathed again and got up shakily. “Don't be loud, Danny—whisper. Can you get out? Can you come this way?”

Danny whimpered.

Christina's cheek twitched. This was maddening. The rest of the orphans needed her
now
, and she was stuck here with this boy who couldn't understand anything at all.

Disgusted, she gripped the slimy metal and got a leg over the side of the hopper. She pulled the other in—she slid down, pressed her knees against the curved back side, and reached up through the gap, gagging.

“Take my hand, Danny.” Her whisper was urgent. She couldn't hold her breath much longer against this horrific smell. “Come on, I'll pull you through!”

The cow squeaked again, a forlorn, hollow sound. “Taff?” begged Danny.

Oh, for crying out loud. “I'm not Taft,” Christina snapped. “Come
on
, already!”

There was a slithering sound of motion, a thump on the steel floor, and a low cry. “I can't
find
you, Taff!
TAFF!
”

Christina leapt out of the hopper in a fury of desperation. The stupid kid was going to get her killed if he didn't shut up . . .

She scrunched down behind a bush and listened bleakly to Danny's piteous sobs.

No.
She
wasn't the one who would get killed. It was Danny who would be killed, unless she went in and got him out.

Christina drew in her arms to her chest, suddenly cold. Was she brave enough to go into that dark, horrible place?

She wasn't sure. And even if she did go into the truck after him, what if Danny's noise and clumsiness ruined the whole plan for everyone? Then ninety-nine children—not to mention her mother, Taft, Leo, and Christina herself—would lose their best chance to escape. And if they didn't escape, some of them would die.

Christina sat without moving. They might not die right away, of course. It would take weeks before the food in the cavern ran out. And not all the children would be sent away in the garbage truck.

But if she tried to save Danny and things went badly—if she was caught, and the cut collars were discovered, and the guard on the orphans was doubled and tripled so that there was no chance of escape at all—then, eventually, people
would
die. How would she feel then, watching children loaded into the hopper, knowing that all too soon they would be mashed? How would she stand it, knowing that beneath her feet, near and yet impossibly far, her mother and Leo and Taft would slowly starve to death?

Christina stared up at the orphan fire, and her mouth went dry as she faced the alternative.

She could leave Danny where he was.

She could go now and lead the other ninety-nine orphans
off the ridge. People would call her a hero, and sometime tomorrow when they got off the mountain, the townspeople would come and lift out her mother and Leo and Taft, too. It would be too late, then, for Danny, but she would have saved everyone else.

A soft night breeze lifted the cut ends of her hair and blew them back against her mouth, and stirred the leaves of the bush that sheltered her. It swirled up dried weeds, a sprinkling of dust, and bits of torn paper from the garbage truck's hopper, and then it wafted back down and cooled the hot tears on Christina's cheeks.

It was too hard to make the right decisions, out in the real world. No wonder her father had kept her behind walls, safe and protected. She couldn't do it.

What if she did save ninety-nine orphans while leaving Danny in the garbage? Could she really pretend to be a hero? Could she even look Taft in the eye, knowing she had done that?

Christina bowed her head. Ninety-nine wasn't going to be good enough. It had to be one hundred. And it had to be now.

 

She stood in the hopper, twisted away from the yawning open slot, and took a last deep breath of sweet air. Then, before she could change her mind, she stuck her shoulders through the gap, heaved up a leg, and scrambled in.

She was on her hands and knees in something that oozed. Retching, Christina tried to stand upright but stopped while she was still bent over, her stomach heaving in dry convulsions. Something squelched underfoot.

“Taff?” said a frightened voice from a back corner.

Christina shook her head, then realized Danny couldn't see her. “Not Taft,” she managed before she choked, strangling on the fetid air.

The smell was beyond belief. It was ripe, it was rotten; it was old bananas and sour milk and rancid cheese and spoiled meat. It had the sharp, acrid scent of mold, and the rich, fruity odor of decaying plums and fresh vomit, and everything was slimy and wet and unspeakably foul.

“Steena?” said Danny, and then she had found him; her hands were patting his face, and he was gripping her arm, weeping in terror and relief.

“Hush, Danny. It's all right. I'm here now.”

“But it's dark, Steena,” Danny said, trembling. “I can't get
out
.”

“I'll help you. Come on, hold my hand. But, Danny, listen. Be very, very,
very
quiet, all right?”

Danny's body joggled, and Christina realized that he was nodding vigorously.

“All right. I've got you. Now get down on your knees and crawl . . . wait. What's that?”

The children froze at the sound of heavy boots crunching across gravel. There was the creak of a steel door and then the garbage truck bounced. A dim light flicked on in a thin line, where the back and side walls met.

“Okay, Barney,” came Barney's voice, faint but clear through the crack. “You are not as stupid as they think. You are going to figure these buttons out if it takes all night.”

T
HE
engine roared into life, rumbling and loud, the whole truck throbbing like a hollow steel drum.

Christina thought: This isn't happening.

There was a sudden hiss of hydraulic hoses. Something shifted and clanked. The rear ram panel shut with a boom.

Christina clutched Danny, her mouth open in a silent scream.

A gleam of pale light appeared at the middle hinge of the rear panel, accompanied by a grating, sliding noise Christina had heard before. The ram panel was scooping, up and back, into the body of the truck.

Christina staggered away from the moving steel, dragging Danny to the far wall. She flattened against it, her heart hammering like a piston. She fixed her eyes on the yellow crack of light from the cab as if it were her last hope.

The crack thinned—dimmed—and winked out. The wall was moving, it was
moving
, she could feel it at her back,
pushing them toward the rear panel, the panel that was scooping, ramming, coming at them—

Barney had pushed the red button. They were going to be mashed.

Christina became aware of a thin, high screaming and a rapid-fire metallic banging. At the same time the engine noise shut off abruptly, and over it all an angry male voice shouted, “. . . IT OFF, YOU DONKEY BRAIN! PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!”

Christina's throat was sore and rasping. The scream, she realized, had been her own. She lowered the hand that had been frantically banging Leo's wrench on the steel wall. Next to her, Danny was moaning quietly. She put a hand over his mouth and listened, weak at the knees.

“Sorry—sorry, Torkel. I just wanted to practice pushing the buttons so I didn't mess up tomorrow—”

“You don't have to start the engine to do that, you moron! Just turn the ignition halfway, enough for lights and such. The buttons will still work. Anyway, what's the big deal? Look, it's simple. Green to close, brown to scoop, red to mash. What's the matter—can't you tell them apart?”

“Of
course
I can, Torkel. I'm not stupid!”

Torkel snorted. “Right. Listen, I'm going in to get some sleep. Push all the buttons you want, but keep an eye on the food truck, will you? I'm leaving—it's your shift anyway.”

Christina heard a crunch of gravel, a creak of wooden steps, and the sound of a door closing. She had to stop this, they had to get
out
.