When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [84]
I wanted to promise him pancakes with syrup and all the milk he could drink. I wanted to promise him a real bed without bars and a happy-ever-after life. But I had no idea what the next twenty minutes would bring.
“Go to sleep,” I told them. I put my hand on Oz’s head. “Sweet dreams, okay?”
Oz gave me a cynical little smirk, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d made him a wish, not a promise. I stood over him as he joined the huddle of bird-kids. They were scratched and bruised and I didn’t have so much as a bandage. I didn’t even have a ragged blanket to throw over them.
I bit my lips to stop them from trembling when Max began the Lord’s Prayer. The others joined in and added names to the list of those God was to bless. I didn’t recognize any of the names—except for Mrs. Beattie’s—didn’t know whether they were animal or human, living or dead. There was so much history about the children I didn’t know yet.
Max said, “And God bless Frannie and Kit, our good friends. And God bless little Pip, too, our four-legged friend.”
Who had taught the children to pray in the midst of that depravity? Was it Mrs. Beattie’s influence? Was it instinct? I wondered if God was listening to the prayers? These special children needed Him, were under His protection. It was a knotty philosophical problem, and better left to theologians.
Once the others were sleeping, Max came and sat with Kit and me. Kit asked her for the fiftieth time about the School. Who, he wanted to know, were the people who worked there? Max still referred to the people as them. She was afraid about the School in general. She had been conditioned for years not to breathe a word.
Kit kept pushing her, coaxing her.
“They’ll put us to sleep,” she finally said. “They’re not fooling around.”
“How do you know that, Max?” I asked. I was hoping, praying, that she’d tell me a hokey bogeyman story; some Dr. Frankenstein version of “Wait till your daddy gets home.”
“They kill the skitters in jars.” She looked straight at me when she said it. Her face was a mask of total seriousness and truth. She turned pale. “And they have a kill jar for each of us.”
My breath caught hard. I knew about kill jars. They were containers filled with carbon monoxide. Kill jars were used to euthanatize lab mice after they’d served their purpose in research labs.
“But they wouldn’t put children like you to sleep,” I said to her.
“Yes, they sure would put children like me to sleep,” Max said. Her eyes were small and hard. “They always put the rejects to sleep.” Her voice was barely audible, as if she were talking to herself.
“Eve was put to sleep. And so was Adam… and, I think, so was my brother, Matthew.”
Chapter 89
I SAT BRACED UP against one of the boulders and tried to let some of the shell shock wear off. I don’t swear too much, but I was thinking holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. What a mind-boggling day. I realized that my heart hadn’t stopped pounding for the past several hours. I felt raw, used up, and incredibly tired. I knew I badly needed to sleep.
And yet I couldn’t get my eyes to shut. My eyelids weren’t functioning as they should. I was breaking down.
I was also heartsick and stunned by Max’s earlier pronouncement—children like her had regularly been put to death.
They always put the rejects to sleep, she’d said. They did it as standard operating procedure.
Adam was put to sleep. So was Eve.
But who were these children with the auspicious-sounding names? Why had they been killed? What caused them to be rejected?
Kit came and sat down beside me. He looked exhausted and worried and I couldn’t blame him. “I’ve got a confession to make,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I have to get this out in the open.”
I wasn’t expecting that. Not right now. “Confession about what?” I stared at him. My stomach had already dropped a couple of notches. I didn’t need any “confessions,” but there was no way he could take back his words.
“Will you stop reading my eyes?” he said.
“I’m not. Okay, I am. I’ll try not to. Talk. What is it that you have to say to me?”
He sat cross-legged, facing me.