The Dead Boys (12 page)

“Okay,” Teddy wheezed, after his heart stopped pounding.

“Stay out of the water. I get it.”

“What the heck are you doing here?” Albert whispered.

“I was looking for you!” Teddy blurted out, squirming beneath Albert's weight.

“Shhh,” Albert warned. “Keep it down.”

“What were
you
doing in the water?” Teddy asked loudly.

“Shhh . . . as in, shut up,” Albert said. “They'll hear you.”

Teddy rolled Albert off of him, and not too gently. “Who will?”

Albert cast his guilty eyes downward. “The ones who want you to stay.”

“You and your buddies, right?”

“Richland isn't all sun,” Albert continued. “There's another side. A dark side.”

“And you're part of it,” Teddy said, jabbing the chubby boy in the chest. Suddenly, he was furious with Albert. “You're a fat, dead, stinking liar!”

Albert sighed. “I'm not totally dead.”

“Almost dead, then. Whatever. You tried to lure me into the water. You picked me out.”

“I didn't have a choice. But I tried to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“I told you to bike away and forget me.”

“That's not a warning,” Teddy snapped. “‘Hey, look out, I'm not just a chunky
Star Wars
fan, I'm dead. And I'm trying to make you dead too.'
That's
a warning.”

“I'm not dead,” Albert insisted.

“You disappeared in the river. They never found you. That sounds like dead to me.”

Albert looked away, staring out across the water. After a while, he spoke, as much to himself as to Teddy. “I live it over and over, but I never quite get dead. The bullies come, I go into the river, my feet get tangled in sunken branches, and I show up here.”

It was hard to be mad at someone who had to die over and over. It sounded lonely and sad. “So the branches grab you?” Teddy asked softly.

“They still have me. I can't get loose.” Albert grew quiet, and Teddy put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

They stood on the shore in silence for a moment until Teddy felt the wind change direction. He looked up and saw a wall of swirling sand blotting out the sky, a tan curtain sweeping toward them.

“What's that?” Teddy gasped.

“Sandstorm,” Albert said. “You've gotta get out of here.”

Upstream, Teddy saw shadowy dunes rising from the bank of the river like a wall. Tumbleweeds taller than himself began to bounce past, threatening to knock them into the water.

“We're wasting time,” Albert said, his tone suddenly more serious than Teddy had ever heard it before. “The tree is near, and the others are coming. You're fresh, full of life. It can feed on you for a long time before we have to start taking turns feeding it again. You've got to get away before they find you.”

“Away where?”

Albert pointed straight into the teeth of the swirling dust. “Back through the storm.”

“I'm not going
into
it.”

Albert frowned. “Look, I feel bad that you're here. I really didn't mean it. I want you to go back and have a life.”

As Teddy debated what to do, the long, thin arm he'd seen before in the water slithered toward the shore, groping for them. Teddy now saw that it was not an arm, but a gnarled, clawlike branch.

“Look out!” he said.

“Yep, it's coming,” Albert said without looking toward the shore. “And I'm gonna catch it for this. Go. Don't turn around. Don't stop.”

“But go where? How do I get out?”

“I dunno. Where you came in, maybe?”

“Come with me,” Teddy pleaded.

Albert smiled. “You go. This time
I'll
try to hold them off, buddy.” He stooped and picked up a rock. “You're almost out of time,” Albert said, watching the branch in the river out of the corner of his eye.

“I'm staying,” Teddy said defiantly.

Albert threw the rock. It sailed into the water and hit the branch.

Teddy cringed as he saw the branch writhe, at first curling up like an injured snake, then exposing more of its length, twisting up from under the water. It was huge, and there were more arms than just the one that crawled to the shore.

“A few seconds,” Albert said. “That's all the time I can buy you.”

Watching the water churn, Teddy saw dozens of grasping wooden claws erupt from the surface of the river. They stretched out like tentacles, reaching for him and Albert.

Teddy turned to flee, grabbing Albert to drag him along. At first he thought Albert was resisting him, but then he saw that his companion was actually being pulled into the river by the spindly wooden hands. Within seconds, his feet and thick calves were submerged.

“I don't want you to see this,” Albert moaned.

As Albert slid into the water, the skin on his arms and legs began to contort and bloat. His face turned purple as the woody fingers of the serpentine branches slid up over his shoulders to pull him down. He fought to keep his head above the water, but it didn't matter—he was drowning before Teddy's eyes, just as he had thirty years ago.

A wet gurgle erupted from his swollen mouth.

“Go-oooo!”

Horrified, Teddy turned and ran.

As Teddy fought his way through the wind, he felt a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. Watching Albert drown was perhaps the worst thing he'd ever seen. He felt awful leaving him, and he had to remind himself that the chubby boy was part of the reason he was here. Still, the image of his swollen face replayed in his head, over and over.

But Albert was gone, and Teddy again forced himself to focus on his own escape. If his theory was correct that the geography here mirrored Richland, the A-house and the window back to the real world would be downriver from Walter's construction site and inland less than a mile.

But the sandstorm was growing stronger, pushing him sideways as he trudged on. He tasted grit on his tongue and felt it in his ears.

After a few minutes in the blinding dust, he wasn't sure he was going straight anymore. With nothing in sight for reference, he wondered if he was actually wandering farther from the window rather than closer. He was also getting tired.

He stopped for a moment and shielded his eyes from the hot, stinging sand. He desperately needed to rest and gather his strength. But as he stood there, a huge tumbleweed broadsided him, lashing his skin with thorns and tossing him head over heels.

He landed flat on the ground, and sand immediately began pouring over his face and limbs as though it was trying to bury him. Teddy fought to his knees and crawled forward, feeling for any kind of protection from the howling wind and sand.

It seemed hopeless until Teddy felt a hard, downward-sloping surface beneath him. He scooted forward and slid down into a concrete ditch about two feet deep with a flat bottom.

Thankfully, he was out of the wind, and the dust seemed to be mostly blowing over the top of the ditch. But his legs still ached from fighting through the sand, and he was tired from constantly running away from the horrors of the dim world. He started to lie down, hoping to rest for a few minutes.

“Don't do that here,” a voice said.

Through the gusting sand at the edge of the ditch above him, Teddy saw a vague face. “Who's there?” he asked.

“It's me.”

“Me who?”

“Lawrence,” the face said, and a large hand reached down to Teddy from out of the storm. “I gotta take you back to the tree,” he said matter-of-factly.

“No way,” Teddy replied. “You'll have to drag me there.”

“I know you're hot and tired,” Lawrence said, leaning down toward Teddy. “Your muscles are sore. You want to lie down and rest. Just for a minute, you're telling yourself. But you won't get up. The sand is already covering you.”

It was eerie how Lawrence knew what he was thinking. And the sand
was
inching over his shoes again. Teddy struggled to his weary feet, swaying in the ditch. “I can still walk.”

“You'll never find your way out of the desert.” There was no mocking or irony in his voice. In fact, he sounded emotionless to Teddy, like a weary robot. It was as though he had almost no energy at all.

“I'll take my chances,” Teddy said.

“No. Look around you. The sand and wind will scour your flesh until all that's left of you is polished white bone. You don't want that.”

Despite his brave statements, Teddy knew Lawrence was right. He was hopelessly lost. The hot wind still tore at his exposed skin, and he spat sand with every dry breath. He was sweating too, losing precious water.

“C'mon,” Lawrence said. “This is a lonely spot to end up. Trust me. I know.”

“This is
your
place,” Teddy realized aloud.

Lawrence ignored the statement. “Come be with us now,” he said.

Teddy reached out to Lawrence. The boy's hand was strangely cold in the hot air.
But you're all dead
, Teddy thought as Lawrence hauled him up out of the ditch.

“How did you end up out here?” he asked.

“I was hunting lizards when the dust storm hit,” Lawrence said quietly, “way out past the gas station at the end of Saint Street. I fought my way back to here, but I didn't know how far I had to go, and it was so hot. I saw Sloot. Don't know how he got there, but he told me the ditch would give me shelter. He even got in first—said we'd walk out of the desert together when the storm passed. But once I got in the ditch, I never got out. I still wonder sometimes how far I had to go.”

Lawrence looked out into the storm. “C'mon, let's get moving.”

He led Teddy into the wind by the hand. Teddy stumbled along behind, too exhausted to argue.

They trudged in silence for a while before Teddy asked, “How do you know where we're going?”

“I've been here a long time,” Lawrence said.

“It all looks the same to me,” Teddy said.

“The wind always comes from the same direction.”

“Where?”

“Everything radiates out from the tree,” Lawrence explained, pointing ahead. “And you have to walk straight into a storm to get to its center.”

As they trudged along with their heads bowed in the wind, Teddy asked, “How did others get here, like Oliver?”

Lawrence didn't answer, but simply pointed ahead where a shadow rose in the dust.
The tree
, Teddy thought at first, but the shadow was too straight, too square.

They walked closer, and Teddy saw that it was a brick chimney with no house attached to it. Some of the bricks were missing, and tree roots ran through the holes. Others had partially crumbled from age. It towered into the air until Teddy could not see the top. At the bottom, a fireplace yawned open large enough for a boy to walk into.

Teddy stepped to it and ducked his head to look up the shaft.

“Don't go in,” Lawrence warned. “Go around.”

“Why?”

“This is where Oliver came through ten years ago.”

“The chimney?”

“Yep. He was stuck in there. We heard him hollering when he arrived, and we had to come pull him out.”

“You rescued him?”

“Well, we had to take him to the tree.”

“Right. Of course.” Teddy frowned and walked around the chimney. To his surprise, another chimney stood behind it. Yet another was visible in the dust beyond the second one.

He turned back around to face the first chimney and suddenly found himself in a forest of chimneys. There were brick walls behind him where the desert had been seconds earlier. In fact, he could see nothing
but
walls. He slid around a corner and walked a few paces, trying to back-track, but he couldn't tell one wall from the next.