“I’m blind, cockhead.”
“Kenton weren’t much better,” Tess intoned, having risen from the cabin. “Before your father took it over.”
Donny couldn’t see it, rearing up beyond the river, but he could smell it. Smoke and fumes and despondency. Even the river turned sluggishly, as though it, too, were weighed down by the smog.
“Anyone about, Gun?”
“Not a one,” he replied. Lighting a cigarette and passing Donny one. “What’s the plan?”
“Ain’t got one, truth be told,” Donny replied. “Scottie?”
“You don’t pay me for my thoughts.”
“Nor your looks,” Donny nodded.
“Lord,” Tess intoned. “Ain’t a single wit between you.” Her boots clopped over the deck, and she hammered on the cabin door. “Charmer,” she beckoned, voice full of splinters and something else. Something desperate. “Get out here.”
Theo came on lead feet. His was moving the way soldiers marched on their last legs.
“Rise and shine, gorgeous,” Gunner said.
“You’re gonna create a diversion,” Tess told him.
Theo’s voice was brittle. “Why?”
There was the sound of someone’s hand—Tess’s, most likely—cuffing a skull. “Wake up, boy. Use your head. A ragtag bunch of strangers creepin’ through in the middle of the bloody afternoon. We’ve got no idea where we’re goin’, and we need time to look around. You can put your swank bullshit to good use.”
“How?” Theo asked, relenting quickly. There wasn’t any point arguing when it came to Tess Colson.
“There’ll be a standpipe somewhere, probably a few, with a town this size,” Tess said. “The river will pump water to ’em. Burst the tops off ’em. Let ’em flood.”
“How do you know they’ll have standpipes?” Scottie asked curiously.
“This ain’t Kenton,” Tess responded. “No runnin’ water. Just a river and some wells.”
The boat bounced off the sandbags and ground along the pier. They each stumbled dangerously over the deck.
“Fuck me, Sam!” Donny near shouted.
“Missed it by an inch,” the kid said.
“I thought you called yourself a practiced driver?”
“Had plenty of practice,” Sam said defensively. “Me Dad taught me himself—’round the Kenton canals, at least.”
“Just throw us the rope,” Gunner grumbled. “And stay with the boat, you hear me? Anyone comes knockin’, you scamper off without us.”
The slope to Scurry was covered in sludge, and they stayed low to it, Donny holding on to Gunner’s belt loop like they were kids, sneaking through the streets after dark, looking for trouble. Scottie had taken Tess’s arm, and still, she seemed to struggle to keep up. Her breaths were too harsh, too labored. She coughed often.
Donny felt a shudder of fear pass through him with every rattle of her chest.
At the edge of town, Gunner turned. “Right, swank,” he said to Theo. “You see that pipe in the middle of the lane?”
“Yes?”
A silence, and then, “You need an invitation, Teddy? Fire in the hole.”
Theo sighed, but there was a loud crack, and the spray of water, volumes of it shooting skyward.
