Page 28 (1/2)

Food downstairs And Astrid down the hall

A different kind of hunger, that And there, too, he had to set a good example

I aloomily

Not that Astrid would…although, how could he know for sure?

His head buzzed with a crazy list of things he had to do Had to get people working on picking crops Had to get people to start carrying their trash to one central location: rats were taking over the nightti from trash pile to trash pile

Had to get a whole list of younger kids set up in houses with older kids There were five-and six-year-olds living alone That was crazy And dangerous One of them had thrown a hair dryer into a bathtub last week and blown out power in their home It was just sheer luck no one had been electrocuted Teeks before that a second-grade boy, living by himself, had set his house on fire Deliberately, it seeet someone, anyone, to pay attention The blaze had consuot around to telling the fire departe old fire truck to the scene, the fire had almost burned itself out

The kid had survived with painful burns that Lana had healed But only after the little boy had writhed and cried in unbearable agony for hours

Was Astrid still awake? Was she lying there in the dark? Sahts?

No She was thinking he was a jerk for authorizing Albert to bribe Orc with beer Thinking he had noit

Maybe she was right

Not helpful Not helpful hat you needed was sleep Not helpful to go over the list of things you needed to do, and the list of things you couldn’t do

How crazy was it that he was reduced to fantasizing about a can of chili, the last slightly tasty thing he’d eaten? How long ago? A week? Fantasizing about canned chili Ha

ers Ice cream Pizza And Astrid, in her own bed

He wondered what it would be like to be drunk Did it et all of that? There was still plenty of alcohol in the FAYZ, even though so it

Could he stop the to starve to death, why not let them drink?