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An idea hit him. A memory. He ran for the storeroom that had long since been cleaned out of food. There were two boxes on the wire shelves. Each was filled with McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces—tickets—from some long-forgotten promotion.
Twelve thousand pieces per box. Hard to counterfeit.
He would have enough to make change for four thousand slugs at a rate of six Monopoly pieces per slug.
“A slug equals six tickets,” Albert said. “Six tickets equals a slug.”
It was a beautiful thing, Albert thought. Tears came to his eyes. It was a truly beautiful thing. He was reinventing money.
THIRTY-TWO
09 HOURS, 3 MINUTES
BUG WAS LEERY now. Sam’s people knew about him. They had since the big battle of Perdido Beach. But now they had begun to take countermeasures. The sudden attack with spray paint had shaken Bug’s self-confidence.
So when Caine drew him aside, careful not to let Drake overhear, and gave him a new assignment, Bug was dubious.
“They’re out there waiting for anyone who comes out,” Bug argued. “Dekka’s out there for sure. Bunch of kids with guns. And probably Sam, hiding somewhere maybe.”
“Keep your voice down,” Caine said. “Listen, Bug, you’re doing this: the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”
So Bug was doing it. Not liking it, but doing it.
He began by drifting into invisibility. Even when he was visible, kids tended to overlook him. They would forget he was there. Once he’d faded, they seldom seemed to remember him.
He stood in the corner of the control room for a while, out of sight. Making sure no one—by which he meant Drake—was going to miss him.
Things had calmed down a little since it became clear that Sam’s people were not going to rush in, guns and laser hands blazing.
But the room was still tense. Drake and Caine paranoid, waiting for attack from outside, or from each other. Diana sullen, sleepy. Computer Jack obviously in pain from his injuries, popping Advil like crazy, but still pecking away at the keyboard. Drake’s bully boys had found some guy’s handheld game and were taking turns playing it till the batteries failed. Then they’d go off in search of more batteries.
No one missed Bug.
So he slipped out of the room, inches away from Drake, fearing the sudden lash of his whip as he held his breath.
Outside, things were better than he’d expected. Dekka was sitting in the front seat of a car, half dozing, half arguing with Taylor and Howard. Orc was at the far edge of the parking lot idly smashing car windshields with a tire iron. And two, no three, kids with guns, concealed behind cars, around corners, all waiting for trouble. All bored, too.
And in very bad moods. Bug heard fragments of grousing as he passed.
“…Sam just takes off and leaves us here and…”
“…if you’re not some powerful freak, no one gives a…”
“…I swear I am going to cut off my own leg and eat it, I’m so hungry…”
“…rat doesn’t taste as bad as you’d think. The trouble is, finding a rat…”
Bug slipped past them and reached the road. Easy-peasy, as they used to say back in kindergarten.
From there it was a long, long walk. With nothing to eat.
Bug felt like his stomach was trying to kill him. Like it had become this enemy inside him. Like cancer or whatever. It just hurt all the time. He’d found his mouth watering when he heard the kid talking about eating a rat.
Bug would eat a rat. In a heartbeat. Maybe he wouldn’t have even the day before, but now, he hadn’t eaten in a very long time. Maybe the time ha
d come to start eating bugs again. Not as a dare, but simply for a meal.
He wondered how long you could go without food before you died. Well, one way or another, he was going to get some food. He’d managed to slip into Ralph’s before, and it was kind of on the way to Coates.
