The Walls Have Eyes (7 page)

“The fish out here are no larger than my little finger,” he said. “I don't know why you told me to bring my fishing gear, and I have no idea what we're going to eat.”

“This is a tiny river,” Martin said. “It's got tiny fish in it. Trust me, they get bigger than that.”

They packed up for the hike. Mom was disappointed when Martin made them wrap up in their sheets again.

“Look,” Martin said, tucking his sheet securely around him, “you wouldn't even believe what I looked like on my second day. I hurt so much, I thought I was gonna die. You're pink on the nose already. You don't wanna get worse.”

They trekked toward the mountains. Dad insisted on
helping to carry his pack, so he and Martin slung it between them, and each held a strap. Martin soon grew to hate this. They had to walk so close together that they made each other stumble, and Martin could no longer pick his own way through the rocks and scratchy weeds.

The ground began to rise and fall in short, steep hills. The higher ground was hard for them to tackle because of the weight of their packs and the burning sunshine, but the gullies between the hills were so choked with short bushy scrub that there was little room to walk.

At their first break, Chip scared up a covey of quail. The birds flew off with such a loud beating of wings that Mom and Dad jumped and gasped, and even Chip sprang back. Martin laughed at them, but Dad grew stern.

“There's danger out here, son,” he said. “You may choose not to think about it, but some of us have to.”

“I think about it,” Martin protested. He had just discovered a wonderful new variety of bug. It lived inside a little cone in the orange sand. It had huge jaws like tweezers, and everywhere it went, it scooted backward on its soft little behind. It was scooting across Martin's hand right now. Martin was completely enchanted with it.

“And what about the wild animals we keep seeing? And those plants with spikes all over them? And what about this sheet? Why do we have to muffle up like children at a costume party? Because the light's trying to kill us, that's why.”

“It doesn't
kill
you,” Martin pointed out.

Dad ignored him. “I think it's time we faced facts,” he said sorrowfully. “This may not be blowing sand and poison
gas—although it might have been when the domes were built— but I'm afraid it's just as impossible to live out here the way it is. Our leaders were right about putting us inside domes.”

Martin was so angry, he started to shake. He dropped the wonderful new bug back into the ruin of its home. “Our leaders!” he said. “Our leaders were maniacs.”

“Martin!” Mom cried.

“They were, Mom. No kidding! They were evil cold-blooded killers. The blowing sand was just a big trick so they could kill off anybody they wanted to.”

Dad drew himself up. “That kind of speech is hateful and offensive, particularly coming from a child.”

“Walt, it's my fault,” Mom said. “When Cassie left, I'll admit I thought horrible things, and I let Martin know about them. But, Martin, you can see now how wrong I was. Even Cassie's school turned out to be true. And if we're in trouble, that's our fault, not the fault of our leaders. We're the ones who broke the rules.”

“Martin broke the rules,” Dad said. “Son, you're ungrateful. You don't know how lucky we are. Were. How lucky we were.”

Martin stood up and looked his parents squarely in the eye.

“Oh, yeah, I do know,” he said. “I know exactly how lucky we were. See, way back when, about a hundred years ago, a President got to thinking. ‘What do I need all these people for?' he thought, because we were sick a lot, and we needed medicine, and big crowds of us didn't have jobs. So he said, ‘I know what I'll do. I'll plan this big epidemic, like everybody's going to die, and I'll get the science people to help me make it look real. And people will be so scared, they'll give
up living in this beautiful world and hide under my stupid little domes.'”

Mom put up her hands as if she were pushing his words away. “Oh, Martin, that's wicked!” she said. “How could you make up such a thing?”

“Because I didn't make it up. I got told the whole story. And the guy who told it to me should know, too, because he's a scientist, and he knew all about what the science people did to help. He's the one who stole Cassie and the other Wonder Babies before the government could collect them. He's the reason they've got a school, and he says it'll be really bad if the government ever finds out where they are.”

Dad shook his head in disbelief. “So the domes were a fraud? Are you serious?”

“Does this sound like a joke?” Martin said. “The President decided if he only had a few people, he could give them everything he wanted them to have, and everybody around the world would marvel at how great his people were. But before he could get to those great people, first he had to kill off nine hundred and ninety-six people out of every thousand. He only kept four. Four out of every thousand! Now, that's what I call sick.”

Dad and Mom looked deeply troubled. Mom kept glancing over her shoulder, as if she suspected some walls might have followed them into the wilderness and be lurking behind a juniper bush, listening. Dad turned away and busied himself with a water bottle. “Anyway, you have no proof,” Dad said.

“I kinda wish I didn't,” Martin said. “It's not my favorite thing, but I've seen the real, old suburbs, and they cover more
ground than we can walk in a day. Every house is ruined, but every one is bigger than ours. And their roads were bigger, and their buildings went way tall, and their grass and flowers weren't just plastic stickers on a window, but plants in a whole square of ground in front of the house, as big as our house back home.”

Mom tapped Dad on the shoulder. “That's true,” she said in a low voice. “I learned about that from Granny.”

“I've seen those flowers, Mom,” Martin said. “Big ones. Beautiful. They're still there. Thousands of houses, Dad. Nobody was dying. They were all just fine.”

Dad stared at Martin. Then he said the last thing Martin expected to hear.

“Houses.”

“What?” Martin said. “What are you talking about?”

“Houses. You said there are houses out here. I want to see them. We need a house of our own.”

Martin shook his head. “You don't get it. Those things are worse than a collector bot. I know. I've had to run away from both.”

Dad dropped the subject, and they started off again. For half an hour, they toiled up a gradual slope. Once they reached its broad summit, they finally stood above the scrubby growth that had blocked their view of their surroundings for so long. The gray mountains loomed over them now, a daunting spectacle. Dark green pine trees mantled the rounded lower slopes and marched diagonally up the mountains' rocky faces, clinging to long cracks. Behind the nearest peaks, Martin could see more distant, higher peaks, whose cliffs and crags were bare of life.

“We haven't gotten very far,” Dad said, disappointed. “HM1 is right over there.”

Two or three miles away, a dome caught the full force of the afternoon sun and reflected it toward them in a blinding starburst of light. Martin squinted at the shimmering halo, and then he stood on his tiptoes and squinted to the south. Sure enough, another starburst dazzled him from that direction, high on a hill and far away.

“There's our dome, Dad, way back over there. The dome you're looking at is Fred's suburb, BNBRX.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I came past BNBRX twice, on the other side of it. See that short hill on the other side of the dome? You can just see there's something white there; it looks like a big salad bowl when you're next to it. I think it must be Points Visual, where the camera is. That's where the packet lines split too. One line comes to us, one goes to BNBRX, and one goes up north, toward the abandoned suburbs.”

Mom shaded her eyes and leaned forward, as if six inches of space would make all the difference in getting a clearer view. “I see the white thing,” she said. “I almost think I see the packet line, but that's probably just wishful thinking.”

Dad squinted hopelessly. “I don't see a white bowl. So you say the abandoned suburb is ahead? Can you see it? We need to look at those houses.”

“It's a
long
way away,” Martin said. “Across open country where those agent guys could spot us. There's even a weird bot out there. Chip didn't like him.”

That wasn't strictly true.
Hertz
hadn't liked
Chip
; he was
the only bot in Martin's experience who hadn't. But that wasn't something Martin felt like thinking about right now.

“Can you see them from here?” Mom asked. “Because I see things that look like houses. Right over there.”

She pointed to a patch of thick forest to the north of them, nestled at the feet of the gray mountains. Sure enough, Martin could see the ragged outlines of tumbledown structures poking through the dusty green leaves.

“I can't really tell,” he lied. But even Dad could see them.

“Fantastic!” he said. “With any luck, we'll have a front door to close tonight.”

Martin tagged after his parents as they headed down the hill. He had goose bumps on his arms.

“Dad, no! Why do we need a front door? We're fine without one.”

“I think he's right, Walt,” Mom said. “I like sleeping under the stars. It's nice to feel the air moving past our faces.”

Dad's expression didn't change.

“We face more kinds of danger out here than I care to count,” he said. “The least we can do is go indoors at nightfall.”

Martin shivered. “There's things indoors. Way worse things inside than outside.”

“Well, we'll just have to see about that.”

The yellow blaze of sunset was upon them by the time they reached the edge of the forest that held Dad's houses. Tall shade trees towered above the native scrub. Long shadows stretched across a flat, narrow patch of rock seeded here and there with the hardiest of weeds. Mom mistook it for a dry streambed. Martin was the one who identified it as a road.

Twilight fell as they walked along it. The shade trees bent over them as if they were closing the travelers in. Dad stopped every few feet to peer through the tangle of tall weeds at the road's edge. “Where did those houses go?” he said. “We need to find a place for the night.”

“Dad, the last thing we wanna do is spend the night in one of them,” Martin said. “Those places, it's like living your own game of Make-a-Mutant Battle Machines House-to-House Hunt-Down.”

“You can't equate real life with some silly game,” Dad said. “Your mother and I need you to be mature about this.”

The first house they found was about fifty feet from the road. The walk to its doorstep was an obstacle course around ancient machinery and old junk, as if a garage sale had spread itself out across the ground and then, lacking visitors, had mummified. Mom got her foot caught in a mesh of twisted wire. Chip lit his eyebeams, and Martin dug out his flashlight so they could figure out how to free her.

“See what I mean?” Martin said, scanning the shadows anxiously. “And we aren't even inside.”

They climbed broken steps onto a wide concrete porch. The front door had warped into a saucer and half lay, half leaned in place, holding on to the doorframe by the lower hinge alone. When Dad and Martin tried to maneuver it out of the way, it snapped off the frame with a sound like a gunshot. From the trees came a fluttering and scurrying. From inside the house too.

“Dad, this place is occupied,” Martin said desperately.

“Son, I think you need to keep quiet.”

Dad set his pack and gear down on the porch. He took Martin's flashlight, walked around the fallen door, and went into the dark house. Dad took two loud, creaky steps. Then his shadowy form vanished in a dull, splintering crunch, and the flashlight went flying through the air.

“Chip! Light!” Martin yelled.

The twin beams of Chip's eyes lit up Dad's face, contorted in terror. His head was where his feet should have been. For one sickening second, Martin thought his father had been decapitated. Then he picked out grimy arms, scrabbling for purchase on the rotten floorboards. The rest of Dad appeared to be gone.

“Floor! Floor!” Dad gasped. Small white insects, like tiny ghosts, flitted across his upper body and disappeared into the rips and gaps of his buttoned shirt.

“Walt!” cried Mom, rushing forward. Chip danced sideways to bodycheck her, and the room fell into darkness again. Martin caught hold of Mom's arm. He heard hoarse rattles as Dad fought for breath.

“Gotta stay here,” Martin said. “The floor's gone.”

“Oh, Walt!” she cried.

Chip's eyebeams picked Dad out from the shattered floor again. Martin could see the veins standing out on Dad's temples. Dad gurgled and coughed, and one of the white bugs came sailing out of his mouth and landed near Martin's sneaker.

“Chip, can you stretch out long?” Martin asked. “See if you can reach him.”

The bot dog crouched down in the doorway and stretched himself out. Two long vines appeared to sprout where his front legs should be. Quickly, they wrapped around Dad at
floorboard level, right below the armpits. The boards squeaked loudly in protest as Chip's paws levered Dad loose, and Dad came crawling out over the warped door.

“Good job, Chip!” Martin said, and Chip scrambled up from the doorway to lick his ear.

“Are you all right?” Mom asked. She made Dad sit on the concrete steps. “Let's get those nasty things off you, Walt; they're even in your hair. You've torn your shirt. Oh, there's blood. Martin, we need the first aid cream.”

Dad's face was haggard in the light from Chip's eyebeams, and he bled from a dozen scrapes. The knees of his pants had shredded, and the left sleeve of his shirt flopped around his elbow.