The Night Children Read online

  Mystified, Jule and Tick watch the old tyrant.

  At the center of the dais, Amos pauses. He tilts his head. He is listening.

  The massed children and Zozzpeople here in the heart of the Dark Hall are much too caught up in what’s going on to hear what Amos is listening for: the whap whap whap of beating propellers. With a nod he looks up, into the center of the smoked dome overhead, as though checking for something.

  The crowd is too angry and disrupted to look up and see what Amos sees—moving shadows above the smoked glass of the dome, the movement of great whirling blades silhouetted against blazing sunlight.

  Reassured, the arrogant old man rakes the room with his eyes. As the night children advance on the dais, he shouts into a microspeaker that magnifies his voice.

  It fills the Dark Hall. “Stop them!”

  Even Amos should see that it’s too late.

  On the night children come, advancing in such numbers that the minions of Amos Zozz are overwhelmed before they can fight back—that is, if they wanted to fight back. The way things are right now, this is by no means certain. The witless vice presidents in their gaudy uniforms and the squads of armed Security don’t know what they want, except for this to be over.

  The young invaders cut through the confused Zozzpeople and the flock of milling guards like a flying arrow.

  Tall in the camo and the heavy boots, forbidding in the ski mask, Lance the Loner is walking point. As the crowd parts, Lance jumps up on the platform to confront Amos Zozz, a voice they all know rises in a loud, clear shriek. “Son!”

  It is Isabella Zozz.

  Everyone in the Great Room falls silent.

  The old man turns on Lance, thunderstruck. “You.”

  Tick grips Jule’s hand. They have stopped breathing.

  Finally Lance speaks, louder than he’s spoken in years, “Yeah Grampa, it’s me.”

  “How could you?”

  Everyone’s breath comes out at once. “Grampa!”

  Lance turns to them with an embarrassed shrug. “Sorry about that.”

  Leaping to the dais, towering over Amos Zozz in his faded camouflage, Lance the Loner pulls off the ski mask. His young face is like a mask even when it isn’t covered—handsome but neutral. White-blond hair. To the end, Lance is careful not to let people know what he is feeling. “Old man, it’s over.”

  Next to Amos, his vain daughter Isabella wails, “Oh Lance, how could you!”

  “Sorry, Mom,” Lance says to Isabella Zozz. “I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  The night children gasp. Mom!

  Lance clamps his hands on the old man’s shoulders. “I tried to make you stop. And you wouldn’t listen.”

  Shaking him off, Amos bellows like an enraged bull. “You’re just a kid.”

  “What you’re doing here is wrong.”

  With a flip of his black cape, Amos stalks to the ebony chair planted on the dais.

  The loner turns to Isabella. “It’s over.”

  “But Lance,” she cries. “It’s what I do for a living!”

  Lance the Loner says harshly, “Not any more.”

  Outside the Dark Hall, there is a boom. It is the slow, relentless thud of something heavy hitting the tall double doors that seal the Great Room.

  “Noooo,” Isabella cries. “My son, my future!”

  Boom.

  “Mother, it’s got to stop.”

  “Children!” Amos snorts. “Children. How can you stop me with a bunch of children?” At the same time he pushes a second button embedded in the back of the ebony chair. Somewhere inside the walls of the Great Room, machinery begins to whir. Too slowly for anyone to notice, the chair begins to rise.

  There is another Boom. This one is louder.

  Lance says coldly, “Do you hear that?”

  “I DON’T HEAR ANYTHING.” Jumping up on the chair, the once-imperious Amos forgets himself. Confused by the racket, he yells at Lance like a cranky grandfather, which is what he is, “Go to your room!”

  Boom.

  Lance throws back his head and for the first time since he and Tick Stiles met ten years ago, Tick hears him laugh.

  The night children are only the front ranks of what’s coming.

  Boom.

  What follows is too big even for Amos Zozz.

  Before the MegaMall’s founder and owner can rally his milling Zozzpeople or unleash Security, the adult world comes down on Amos Zozz.

  Boom. The giant double doors to the Great Room fly open with a smash and the outside world comes in.

  But remember, Amos is standing on that chair.

  Suddenly the light in the Great Room changes.

  Above, a pie-shaped wedge appears in the smoked glass dome. Jule, Tick, everybody in the courtyard will be too wild and distracted to see the first sliver of sunlight streaming in as the dome opens and the air fills with the sound of whirring metal blades.

  They are fixed on the downfall of Amos Zozz. It’s all they can think about right now. It’s all they see.

  Fueled by outrage, the people of Castertown and shoppers from every state and nation come pouring in. Now adults flood the Great Room in such great numbers that it’s hard to make out their faces.

  Brandishing brooms and squeegees, the cleaning crews come first and, armed with tools of every description, the maintenance people come. Then come shoppers by the hundreds to be followed by thousands more, alerted by the ranting of Amos Zozz when they entered the MegaMall, thanks to the mallwide communications system masterminded by Lance the Loner in the quiet early hours before he locked the door on the Communications Center and led the attack on the Dark Hall.

  As the adults march in, bearing weapons, Jule and Tick back away. Working together, they free the Crazies and the Dingos; Tick opens the cage and unties Burt, who claps him on the back in a grudging thank-you. The night children back away from the scene, all but Lance, who watches his friends and allies go with an expression no one here will be able to decipher.

  Like it or not, Lance the Loner is in command now.

  More alone than ever.

  Lance has had enough. “Get down, Gramps,” he says to the old man standing on the tall ebony chair. “It’s over now.”

  “No,” Amos screams. “Stand down!”

  And Lance the Loner responds in a voice full of thunder, “Never!”

  “Wait, son.” Amos cries in a desperate stab at saving the situation, “All this could be yours!”

  “Well, I don’t want it!”

  “All right for you!” The billionaire’s arm comes down like the axe at a beheading. It is a signal.

  Lines drop through the dome, snaking around Amos. Uniformed men slide down heavy ropes: the Zozzco he licop ter rescue squad. As they scoop him up Amos wails, “Why, Lance?”

  Lance never talked much. He doesn’t speak now.

  The defeated billionaire cries, “Why?”

  Watching as Amos puts his foot in the loop of a snaking rope and rises to the skies, Lance the Loner, who has finally come into his own, says in a voice that carries up into the dome and out along the long galleries, resounding throughout the MegaMall:

  “Because you can’t treat people that way.”

  EPILOGUE

  IT WILL BE DAYS before the Castertown MegaMall sorts itself out after the revolution. It will probably be weeks or months before business goes back to normal, if there is a normal in the biggest shopping center in the entire world.

  The first thing Lance did after the fall was to destroy the supply of tranquilizers Amos had technicians dumping into the river daily. Heads in Castertown are clearer now, although only Lance knows why. For the first time since Amos Zozz came to the prairie with his master plan and his Zozzco jingle, people are thinking for themselves.

  In a shopping world liberated by children, adults are taking charge. The night children—Lance, Tick, the others—prefer it that way. Their time will come, just not yet. Right now they’re enjoying being who they are
.

  By the time the adults present—store clerks, managers, the few Zozzco vice presidents hired by the mayor of Castertown to take over the MegaMall management—finish the dozens of conferences and meetings it will take to get the place organized and running properly . . .

  By the time the adults in charge decide to go looking for the night children, Tick’s Castertown Crazies and the Dingos and all the other tribes that haunt the mall will have completely vanished from the scene, because before they know anything, the night children know how to disappear.

  In fact, by the time Amos Zozz left the building the way he did, most of the night children were already on their way out of the Great Room, down corridors leading away from the Dark Hall. One by one they slipped back into the fabric of the mall.

  Of course the tribes are much smaller now.

  Some of the night children have been reunited with their families.

  They found mothers or fathers in the throng on the day of the downfall. Some parents found children they had given up for lost, and the reunions were sweet.

  In the confusing weeks that followed the overthrow of Amos Zozz, there were more reunions. Some children searched for their parents among the old man’s discarded prisoners and found them—rejected designers and builders and unwanted workers, freed after years of slavery in the Dark Hall.

  Some parents used the Communications Center to reach children they had given up for lost. Then there are the old man’s “chosen” prisoners. The few who were picked to follow up in Phase Two aren’t anywhere, and some of them have children living here. After a futile search, their children have gone back to their tribes.

  Naturally, the orphans among the night children are perfectly happy where they are, living in the nooks and crannies of this commercial paradise. Some are just happy to be living far from evil guardians.

  Others quite simply love the life and, frankly, don’t want to be found.

  Don’t feel sorry for them. Children without parents can always find a way to survive.

  They’re here to tell you that if you don’t let loneliness hurt you, it will make you strong. Losing someone you love makes you think. It makes you resourceful.

  Put to the test, children who have lost a parent do what they have to, and they do it as well as they possibly can. With others like them, they have settled back into their lives in the Castertown MegaMall.

  Now the tribes are all safely hidden in their various deserted shops and vacant storage areas, where they have set up housekeeping because right now, this looks like the best place. They’ll stay where they are until somebody stumbles onto them and it’s time to move again.

  In fact, the true night children love their hideouts and they love the game, the running and the hiding in places where no grownups come. They love the freedom, the nights of playing in the courtyards and galleries of the complex when the daytime world goes home and goes to sleep.

  They love the MegaMall, where they’ll go on living for as long as they want to before they outgrow this place and decide to leave it because it’s time to grow up in the world.

  For Jule and Tick, however, the long night and the days to follow have raised questions. Before Amos left, he sent his chosen architects and designers off to a loading zone to be shipped out to open Phase Two.

  They haven’t been seen since.

  Are their parents among them? They don’t know. When the chosen were marched away, the boy and the girl were flat on their bellies on the onyx, lying low. They were lying so low that they never saw any faces. Some days they think their parents were in the Great Room that morning. Other days, they just don’t know.

  They have been talking about it ever since.

  Jule says, “That was them up there on the platform, wasn’t it? My mom and dad? Yours?”

  Not for the first time, Tick says, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Yes. I think so,” he says, frustrated. Then he says, “No. I don’t know.”

  “I wish I could tell you,” Lance says to them, “but I don’t know.”

  The three of them are sitting on the loading dock underneath the abandoned music store, swinging their feet. Lance still sits tall in his camouflage, but the ski mask is gone and his white-blond hair stands up in bright spikes.

  “All I can tell you is,” Lance says, “they aren’t in the Dark Hall.” His voice drops. “At least not any more.”

  Not for the first time Jule says, “If we knew where he took them, we could go there and look for them.”

  “If he took them,” Tick says pointedly.

  “I wish I could tell you what he did.” Lance grimaces. “Thing is, we’ve scoured this place. If your folks were still in the mall, I’d know.”

  Tick throws a penny at the tracks below and listens as it hits with a clink. “We’ve been everywhere and there’s no sign.”

  Stubbornly, Jule says, “But we don’t know for sure that they’re gone.” They’ve been over this so many times that even Jule is tired.

  Tick draws up his feet, hugging his knees. “Maybe the police.”

  Jule turns to Lance. “We could ask your mom, but we don’t know where she is.”

  He shrugs. “The minute it came down she was out of here.”

  “Maybe she’s in hiding.”

  “No. My guess is, she’s wherever the helicopters took Grampa.”

  “That was awesome!” Tick grins in spite of himself. “Who knew the dome would open up like that? Who knew that chair of his was an elevator thing? Who do you think took him?”

  Jule tries, “I wanted a SWAT team, or the FBI.”

  “Helicopters, remember?” Lance, who never lets anyone know what he’s thinking, is openly frustrated. “Zozzco helicopters. They’ll never catch him now. He’s gone to . . . I don’t know. My guess is, a secret base. He has hideouts nobody knows about.”

  Tick bares his teeth. “There are a lot of things nobody knows.”

  But Jule can’t give up. “The prisoners too? What about the prisoners?”

  Lance says gently, “You might as well know, Grampa’s got bunkers and castles and desert fortresses all over the place. China, Canada. He could have them locked up anywhere in the world.”

  “All this,” Jule says. “All that trouble and we still don’t know. It’s crazy, facing Amos and still not knowing.”

  Tick moves his hand on the dock so that their fingers are touching. “Books end,” he tells her. “Life goes on.”

  There is a long silence.

  To make them both feel better, Jule says, “At least Doakie found his mom.”

  “Or she found him.” Tick is grinning. “And she apologized. That was pretty cool.”

  “He was pretty glad to see her.”

  “Yeah, but he was crying when he left.”

  “It’s OK,” Tick says. “He has Puppy to take care of him.”

  “I’ll miss him.” Jule makes a business of not feeling sorry for herself, but she can’t keep from saying, “We should all be so lucky.”

  “But we’re not.” To make her feel better, Tick says, “At least this place is back to normal.”

  It’s amazing. Lance laughs! “As normal as it gets.”

  Jule turns to him. “You’re going to run it now, right? The MegaMall? Now that they’re gone?”

  “No. No way.”

  “But you’re the . . .”

  “Best? Forget it. No way.” Lance goes on, “Not on your life. I put some good people in control.”

  “By all rights the place is yours.”

  Lance shakes his head. “It’s not anything I want, OK? It’s nothing I ever wanted, which is why I got on their case.” He grins. “The Castertown City Council can take care of it now that they’re back in their right minds.”

  Tick says, “You mean the water.”

  “Amazing what tranquilizers will do.” Lance gets up. “Let them handle it. I’m done.”

  “But you could . . .”

  �
��No. Don’t worry. It’s OK. There won’t be any more . . . Any more . . .” They are all thinking about the living displays, the captive architects and designers, the spycams in every dressing room. The MegaTrail! “Any more . . .” Lance spreads his hands but there aren’t enough words to fill them. “Whatever that was he did! At least, not here.”

  “What are you going to . . .” By the time Jule finishes the question, Lance is gone. “. . . do? Wow, that was fast! Where did he . . .”

  “Go? Back to his place, I guess.”

  “Weird,” she says. “He could own all this, but he’d rather live down here, with us.”

  “Beholden to no one.” Tick shrugs. “If he has to, Lance will take over, but not right away. He has what he wants. For now.”

  She gives him a sharp look. “What about you? Do you have what you want?”

  The boy considers for a long minute. He seems to be studying the empty tunnel, the endless stretch of empty track. He says in a low voice, “I like knowing where I am.”

  “Don’t you want to know where they are?”

  “I do.” Tick’s voice drops to a serious place. “But there’s nothing I can do about it until I find out what’s going on.”

  “If those were our parents,” Jule says, just the way she does every time, “we need to find our parents. Or I do. I have to go look for them. You?”

  The smile Tick turns to her is sweet and complicated and makes clear that there’s no point arguing.

  “The Crazies,” he says, and that’s all he needs to say.

  His people. Depending on him. There is no leaving until they are all grown and he knows they’re going to be fine.

  Still she tries, “I just thought maybe if there were two of us . . . No use asking you to come look for them, is there?”

  “I have things to do and people to take care of.” He gives her that smile. “You’re welcome to stay.”

  “I can’t go home,” Jule says, but she has come a long way since the day she ignored that LAST CALL. “I know I can’t find Mom and Dad and Aunt Christy without help, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life going around on the WhirlyFunRide, either. See what I mean?”