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He removed his hat and bent at the waist to receive her kiss

"God, you stink already," she laughed, wrinkling her nose "That’s your last one for the day, I’m afraid" Then: "So, should I tell you to be careful?"

It hat they always said "If you want"

"Well, then Be careful"

Nit and Siri had wandered into the tent Bits of grass were caught in their hair and the weave of their ju around in the dirt

"Hug your father, girls"

Vorhees knelt and took theht? I’ll be back for lunch"

"We’re each other’s buddies," Siri proclairass froht of theht tears to his eyes "Of course you are Just remember what your uncle Cruk told you Stay where Mommy can see you"

"Carson says there are monsters in the field," Siri said "Monsters who drink blood"

Vorhees darted his eyes to Dee, who shrugged It wasn’t the first ti," he told the a joke"

"Then why do we have to stay out of the field?"

"Because those are the rules"

"Do you proreed to keep thisas they could; and yet they both understood that they could not keep the girls in the dark forever

"I proether, and went to join his crew at the edge of the field A wall of green six feet tall: the corn rows, a series of long hallways, receded to the windbreak The sun had crossed an invisible border towardVorhees checked his watch one last time Watch the clock Know the location of the nearest hardbox When in doubt, run

"All right, everybody," he said, drawing on his gloves "Let’s get this done"

And with these words, together, they stepped into the field

In a sense, they had all becoht of their childhood Cruk, Vorhees, Boz, Dee: they ran together in a pack, their daily orbits circumscribed only by the walls of the city and the watchful eyes of the sisters, who ran the school, and the DS, who ran everything else A tiossip, of rumor, of stories traded in the dust Dirty faces, dirty hands, the four of the in the alley behind their quarters on the way home from school What was the world? Where was the world, and ould they see it? Where did their fathers go, and so of work and duty and mysterious concerns? The outside, yes, but hoas it different from the city? What did it feel like, taste like, sound like? Why, from time to time, did someone, a mother or a father, leave, never to return, as if the unseen realm beyond the walls had the power to s them whole? Dopeys, dracs, vampires, juht of their s There were dracs, which were theas jumps or vampires (a word only old people used); and there were dopeys, which were sierous, yes, but not as much, more like a nuisance on the order of scorpions or snakes So, others that they were a different sort of creature altogether That they had never been hu If the virals had once been people like thereatest story of all was the great Niles Coffee: Colonel Coffee, founder of the Expeditionary, fearless ins, like everything about hi, raised by the sisters; he was an orphan of the Easter Incursion of 38 who had watched his parents die; he was a straggler who had appeared at the gate one day, a boy warrior dressed in skins, carrying a severed viral head on a pike He had killed a hundred virals singlehandedly, a thousand, ten thousand; the nurew He never set foot inside the city; he walked a his identity; he didn’t exist at all It was said that his men took an oath-a blood oath-not to God but to one another, and that they shaved their heads as a mark of this promise, which was a promise to die Far beyond the walls they traveled, and not just in Texas Oklahoma City Wichita, Kansas Roswell, New Mexico On the wall above his bunk, Boz kept a ether like the pieces of a puzzle; to mark each new place, he inserted one of theirto indicate the routes Coffee had traveled At school, they asked Sister Peg, whose brother worked the Oil Road: What had she heard, what did she know? Was it true that the Expeditionary had found other survivors out there, whole towns and even cities full of people? To this the sister gave no answer, but in the flash of her eyes when they spoke his naht of hope That’s what Coffee herever he came from, however he did it, Coffee was a reason to hope

There would coone, and their mother as well, that Vorhees would wonder: why had he and his brother never spoken of these things with their parents? It would have been the natural thing to do; yet as he searched his le instance, just as he could not recall hisone word about Boz’s map Why should this be so? And what had become of the map itself that in Vorhees’s one the next? It was as if the stories of Coffee and the Expeditionary had been part of a secret world-a boyhood world, which, once passed, stayed passed For a period of weeks these questions had so consu over breakfast he finally worked up the nerve to ask his father, who laughed Are you kidding? Thad Vorhees was not an old one, skin glazed with a permanent sour dampness, hands like nests of bone where they rested on the kitchen table Are you serious? Now, you, you weren’t so bad, but Boz-the boy could not shut up about it Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, all day long Don’t you rerief That stupid map To tell you the truth, I didn’t have the heart to tear it down, but it surprised me that you did Never seen you cry like that in your life I guessed you’d figured out it was all bullshit Coffee and the rest of the; it had never been, could never be, nothing How could it be nothing, when they’d loved Boz like they did?

It was Tifty, of course-Tifty the liar, Tifty the teller of tales, Tifty anted so desperately to be needed by so would leave his mouth-who professed to have seen Coffee with his oo eyes Tifty, they all laughed, you are so full of shit Tifty, you never saw Coffee or anybody else Yet even in theits claim; from the start, the boy possessed that talent, toanother So stealthily had he inserted himself into their circle that none could say just how this had occurred; one day there was no Tifty, and the next there was A day that began like any other: with chapel, and school, and three o’clock’s agonizingly slow approach; the sound of the bell and their sudden release, three hundred bodies streah the halls and down the stairs, into the afternoon; the walk fro as their classed, until it was just the four of theh not exactly As theycarts and soddentheir junk back there, no matter what the quarter followed A boy, stick thin, with a gaunt face topped by a cap of red-blond hair that looked as if it had fallen froh it was January, the air raith dampness, he wore no coat, only a jersey and jeans and plastic flip-flops on his feet The distance at which he trailed theh to encourage their curiosity without see: I ive me a chance

"So what do you think he wants?" Cruk said

They had reached the end of the alleyhere they had erected a ss popping out, served as the floor The boy had halted at a distance of thirty feet, shuffling his feet in the dust So about the way he held hiuely connected, as if he’d been pieced together fro us?" Cruk called

The boy gave no reply He was looking down and away, like a dog trying not to le, they could all see the mark on the left side of his face

"You deaf? I asked you a question"

"I ain’t following you"

Cruk turned to the others The oldest by a year, he was the unofficial leader "Anybody know this kid?"

No one did Cruk looked back at the boy again "You What’s your go-by?"

"Tifty"

"Tifty? What kind of na the tips of his sandals "Just a naot one"

"She’s dead or she left you?"

The boy was fidgeting with souess You ask it like that" He squinted at them "Are you like a club?"

"What makes you say that?"